the things that stay scare me most
i went to the beach with a boy and he traced the shape of his heart on my collarbone. he did it like he did everything with the promise of forever. and when a riptide ripped the life out of him, his touch lingered, his permanence permeated my skin. it makes me scared of the things that last, that stay because when love leaves – as it often does, the ache becomes the song that is sung in its memory, a consequence of words escaping naive mouths. It seems i’ve been running for years to escape the grief, the exhaustion that sets in so deep in the cuts and wounds from fingernails trying to erase any trace of loss from flesh. on the odd day that i stare at a mirror, stare at me, i become all the shapes of ugly i have tried to escape. i become the weary mouth of a mother, the lost eyes of a father, the hollow gut of a teenage girl. i become a poet in the worst way-without a pen to write with and paper to ruin but enough words to flood the world. and at the tip of my tongue is a question, how much further, now, until i am the before of our almost
