i find it hard now to make excuses for why i haven't let you go.
mere words are tripwires.
(how can i call you a piece of my past when you are still so very present?).
i am no longer as eloquent as i used to be.

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i still stand at your door.
it has been four months, and just as soon, twelve.
(each morning i wake with hopes that your grip will have loosened).
i am no longer as strong as i used to be.

but perhaps it does take a strange type of strength to be so hopeful,
to think that someday,
even after all this,
you might see in me even a fraction of what i see in you.

truthfully, that is all i ever wanted.

but often, the things we want require change we cannot bring.

i have spent so long trying to make my valleys into mountains,
but sometimes the earth does not want to be moved.

//

i have given up on excuses;
i will drag you along and wait.
someday i will tire of holding your hand so tightly.

(a.m.)

when I was a little girl
my mother always said
"a boy is only mean when he likes you"

after all these years
maybe that is why
I cut and burn and bruise

I am loving myself
the only way I know how
in the way my mother taught

sometimes,
often times,
i am cold.
there is snow within me and wild winds outside my door,
and i watch from the window while my crops wither.

i silence the sun.

he stands at my gate with nimble fingers and begs to be let in,
but i have always been a grove of shadows,
and he knows there is no space for him.

sometimes,
often times,
i am cold.

but other times,
spring finds me.
it lifts me up into its gentle arms and suddenly i am a field of clovers,
lucky,
rising up.
suddenly i am baby’s breath, i am pure,
i am a blooming hyacinth.

i am warm.

i know what a change in season feels like.

and i try to be loving.
but on the days when i have gotten up
and planted my seeds,
you are still tangled in thick black weeds and roots.
on the days when i am a rose,
you are the thorns,
and on the days when i grant the sun a chance to speak,
you take his tongue.

i know your pain; i have lived it.
but i will not give up my songbirds just because you are only left with crows.

i know what a change in season feels like,
but you are always winter.
and sometimes, i am spring.

so i will flourish.
and i am sorry.

(a.m.)

i no longer speak to the wind,
she doesn't listen,
and she blows whichever way she wants

She was wild like skinny dipping at midnight, stars watching overhead and falling in love with moonlight. The way it lay upon her skin made the ocean envious of her depths within and sometimes between us. She was my sister, not in blood but in orbit. A Venus to my Earth, forged from the same collapsing star and if the universe was in fact to be infinite then this moment would happen again, and again, and again an immeasurable number of times. I found comfort in this thought, knowing though our existence was meaningless, it was still full of feeling, and this feeling, right now, it insisted on existing forever.

for a moment i couldn’t remember your last name.
for a moment it started with a different letter,
was spoken in a different tongue.
for a moment i had forgotten it — that is, if i ever knew it at all.

you used to be so clear to me.
you were, at a time, tangible —
so much more than a memory.
i loved you then and i could say that i love you now but
you cannot love a memory.
not in the same way, no.
you cannot talk to a memory,
nor laugh with a memory,
nor live with a memory.

and so i keep you
frozen in time,
a fragment of the past.

like ashes in an urn i put you on the shelf,
never to be disturbed,
only to be put on display.
i thought you’d be safe there.
i thought that the ashes in an urn don’t disappear because
what more can ash crumble down to?

but today,
for just a moment,
i couldn’t remember your last name.
today,
for just a moment,
you slipped away.

and now i wonder if i ever had you at all.

(a.m.)