The coin rolled on and on,
teasing the already finished
with fresh hope each time my phone
pinged with spam, family, work.
Not a single word from your side,
except maybe these clouds
that sit over June like unread messages.
I wanted to drop it into many open hats
of street musicians, let it ring
against someone else’s afternoon.
Even today, I don’t think I am
truly done.
My faded map of the moles on your face,
remembers sometimes the way hands
cupped cheeks. Each time I redraw
the map with a singular wish
to hold you close.
My map of moles on your face
draws itself sometimes;hands
remembering cheeks before I do.
Each time I redraw it, the distances
keep getting larger.
One was broken. The other, reckless. One was greedy. The other, naive. It started with a touch. Every love story begins the same way: a moment of recognition. Eyes meet. The soul knows, there, the mislaid key from lifetimes before. And everything changes, though you won’t understand how much until later.
I was lonely before you.
What works in your fingers? What stuck in your voice? What is it in your skin that sets my whole being on fire? Whose song do you have on your lips?
After comes the middle. Where poets and certain songs live. Where the ordinary earth becomes ethereal. Thoughts and bodies fly. Freedom in the space between heartbeats. Lightness. Warmth.
Sometimes that warmth lasts a lifetime. Sometimes you get a tiny repeat glimpse, a gesture, a turn of phrase and you’re falling all over again.
Sometimes, years later, you’re grateful it ended. Because the wound through which the light pours would never have come to be otherwise.
But here’s what nobody tells you about the after.
The breath never quite settles. You remain lost to the world. They’ve found another way to get to heaven. But here you are, still playing their song. Still looking at bridges, birds and trees. Waiting for someone to see how special you are for seeing those birds, for naming them.
You walk streets where no one knows the version of you that they did. You name the birds to empty air.
And if there is no end to love, then this is what it costs, the ache that won’t close. The wound that never scars over
