Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it
- Richard Siken


there are two facts upon which you ground your love:
     1. you are damaged
     2. they are going to leave

you do not come screeching out of your mother’s body believing this about yourself
     you learn how
     over time
     over minutes and months
     over years

you meet people and take them into yourself
     wrap them in your chest so deeply
     you know they will never escape.
     they may exit your life
     walk away,
     go where you can’t find them;
     but not the presence of them
     the core of them
     the feeling of them inside of you
     beating and glowing and sighing
     like a heart
     not that. that will stay. you’ll make it stay

you’ll teach yourself to grip onto those final remnants
     the way a dying person grips onto breath

you will hold and hold and hold
     not letting go, not knowing how to

you’ll grow a well of absence inside yourself
     and nurture it into a great and incredible yearning:
     this hall of memories within you
     these faces you cannot forget

you will call it grief. you will call it
     *mine

the girl who shows you the truth is
     ballet and brilliance
     you watch her sideways on the bus
     where she sits with her mother,
     face swathed in light,
     profile outlined in radiance
     like the ring of a solar eclipse
     and you have only been around the sun
     nine times
     but god,
     the quiet, uncomplicated
     beauty of her,
     the straightforwardness of
     her warmth—

she is the first person to whom
     you are not biologically linked who sees
     something more in you
     she notices your fire and tends to it
     until it becomes a towering
     blaze

but the last night you see her
     you are sure you are going to die
     caught in the seats of theater
     in front of a stage on which
     this girl dances
     like she has nothing left to give
     but love
     and an utter lack of
     fear

the last night you see her
     she embraces you
     and her hair is curled
     and her lashes are lined
     and her lips are rosy
     and you could scream out with what you
     feel
     but cannot explain

the last night you see her
     the elevator doors close
     between the two of you,
     splicing your longing,
     sending you off onto your own
     barren continent

the last night you see her
     you learn that you love
     and people leave
     and that the people you love leave
     and that this is a truth you almost
     cannot bear


[how to turn my grief into something
     powerful
how not to equate my longing with something
     flawed, something ugly
how to
     rise again
how to
     survive]

these are the things you ask yourself now
     when you are naked and alone in your loss

these are the questions you stay alive to answer
     because yes, you are damaged
     and people leave
     but that is not everything there is to
     this filthy-heavenly existence
     you cannot seem to
     escape

you carry your sorrow like an old handbag
     but you are growing tired of its weight
     preparing to incinerate it and spread the ashes
     the way you spread your devotion:
     bravely, and now,
     without remorse

you are learning that you are damaged
     and wonderful, scarred
     and sacred
     bruised
     and divine
    
they are going to leave
     but you will go on in spite of it
     you will go on because this is
     all you have

you and your heart
     and your overwhelming forward momentum

your love