Watch

I.
Watch the girl, the coward, scared.
Watch her steps, her hand in his,
stomach flipping, forehead creased.
Watch her stumble, almost fall—
watch him rush to catch her,
watch her twist away.

Yes, watch her, see her,
through her pixilated mind,
fingers jerking, typing
what her eyes can’t see, can see—
don’t want to see.
She only believes what she wants to be true.

Watch the girl watch herself,
trip herself, catch herself.
Watch her standing upright, dazed,
convinced that she’s still falling.
Falling hard.

(She never hit the ground.)

II.
Little words on little pages,
ink on white on thoughts on dreams.
She walks barefoot up the driveway,
talking, grinning, laughing, acting;
groping blindly for the words
she knows she has to say.
Words used to be so easy for her.

Silence, but for the birds,
ever-present birch-tree birds.
Silence as his arm curls around her shoulders,
silence as her thoughts arrange.
Silence as resolve clunks into place.

She speaks.

Silence rips across its soundless seams,
tearing to tight-woven cotton shreds
that fall from her eyes in ragged strings.
She can see.

He nods, slowly, chooses words—agrees.
Doesn’t want to hurt her—her!
She who wrote the poem, she who had the dream,
she who stole away for a weekend
and returned inside-out and upside-down
with a notebook full of backwards words
and pain.

She can’t be hurt anymore.

III.
The girl faced the boy on the driveway in the woods.
A conversation overdue. Words that needed to be spoken,
slipping softly forward to gently speak
what wasn’t as hard to say as she had thought.

The best kind of breakup is mutual agreement.
She nodded, looked stoically ahead.
In a week, he’ll be on a plane
to a world half a planet away
where she used to live.
And she’ll be alone
but she’s okay.

She thinks she did the right thing.