Poetry

O, shadow figure

You stand in corners

You hide from light

Don’t let her see you

Don’t let her feel you

You’re only a phantom

Five seconds was all it took for the heart to stop.

The thread was careful under my hands.

Inside of the sterile room one tear dropped

from who knows who. 

No one speaks of the safety. 

A better place, they whisper

yet, its your arms i long to embrace.

they call it heaven,

a place above,

better than the earth we love.

if heavens better,

why does my heart ache for love i can't remake?

because i was exhausted and cranky 
and it was too late in the week to be walking home 
and because texas was threatening to rain all over us, especially me. 

I keep checking 
the places happiness once sat, 

like a pocket 
I’ve already turned inside out. 

Loss is weird,

It twist and churns

Rippling the current

that is my reality.

For a while,

I was so fine,

I was okay with

The cards I was dealt.
 

I accepted what was—

You see the teacher standing at the front of the room —

Organized. Patient. Smiling like she has all the answers.

What you don’t see is the stack of bills on her kitchen counter,

Or the nights she stays awake wondering

If yesterday

was today 

and today was tomorrow

but tomorrow 

today will be yesterday

and tomorrow will be today

and now 

is later

and later could be now

twenty-five degrees out & the air is sweet

with just enough sun to make it taste like springtime,

& flowers, & the freshness of the world after it rains.

we dance without jackets & twirl in the fading light,

Oh, no, I’m not here

For a reason.

It’s an almost comforting thing

The fleck of light of a chance

The infinite things

That had to go right.

If I were a different person

You see a mother and her daughter —

Both smiling, both beautiful, both whole.

What you don’t see is the message sitting in her pocket,

Telling her that her husband isn’t coming home from war.

I struggle to write because I don't want to say the truth. 

That I fucked up and said yes,

I want this.

I am scared because it won't work.

That I fell for his eyes, 

his heart and his voice.