anniversary
You died two years yesterday
there isn’t much else to say.
You lied.
Don’t try to hide it.
You sid
“I’m not obsessive,”
“That’s not my goal,”
“I stopped,”
“I just wanna talk, not to get you back, but just to explain,”
“I’ve moved on and no longer care.”
Then why are you still texting me,
asking me how to move on.
Telling me I gave up so easily
on something that had a “future.”
Want the truth?
I’ve never moved on so quickly as I did with you.
I had a bad feeling the entire time leading up to your “mistake”
and once I realized what happened,
I was sobbing,
grabbing my stomach where you touched me,
completely and utterly confused as to why I feel this way,
“It was nothing, right?”
“I’m being dramatic, right?”
I’d ask myself repeatedly.
That’s when I realized.
and my feelings for you disappeared with my sorrow and uncertainty.
They were replaced with anger.
I hate to say I’m angry,
it only makes me more angry.
But I did what needed to be done,
and so I’m done with you.
You are not forgotten.
You are not forsaken.
You are not what happened to you.
You are not the pain.
You are breath in the dark.
You are the quiet heartbeat of survival.
You are the girl who lived.
And lives still.
Close your eyes if you can.
Put your hand on your chest.
Feel that rhythm?
That’s your proof.
You are still fighting.
And I am right here with you,
every heartbeat of the way.
A pear’s tender flesh gives in an instant.
A give
give
give
and sudden break.
The jolt of teeth closing a gap
The sudden burst of sweetness on the tongue
The fleeting taste, the juices dribbling down.
Consumption’s joy is in that moment.
But to gorge upon them?
To glut your belly with their flesh,
Let their juices cloy upon your tongue?
Joy turns sour.
Never changing.
Lacking substance.
So, too, with your sweet words.
Adora:
You squeezed
into a one-piece
mounted the rear
of the Rambler
license plate 390-K-W
You rested your legs
between the
rumble seat and the spare
struck your pose,
smiled, showing
what they chauvinistically
called “cheesecake”
We were between
two wars
Thousands walked
the streets
jobs
farms
pride
gone
Lives obsolete
the camera edits all
leaving just the
sassy and young
The lake is a woman,
wide sumptuous hips
fed by the rush of waters
that flow into her belly
through the bottleneck between worlds.
The natural beauties measured the days
between her legs and arms
born of glacial ice shaving the land,
advancing, gurgling, gouging great troughs
that incubate sea monsters
who flick their a tails while seiches crest
like the swish of a skirt as she walks away.
Mouths frothing with hunger.
The world which bore her
fouled the water with dead
who once where one with the world.
They burned the river
and the fish sank heavy with mercury,
and roads scarred the land
leading to the city on the lake.
To the right hand’s palm curled around a wisp,
Something so gentle as a willow’s switch.
To veins intertwined in flesh,
Taking life into leather skin,
And the beloved lungs that lift the chest,
Gaze kindly, noli timer—
May we all be pulled,
Gently,
From muddied waters,
Clay keeping us tender; kindred—
How could I meet a more masochistic muse?
Left to sterile stares, and the case’s cold desolation—
Without meaning or mercy.
Humanity,
Tell me the being persisted when the was body sunk.
If I could only take the hand,
Unearthed now,
And feel the innocent touch of what I will become.
