☔️

Don’t forget me all at once
Let me slip away in pieces.

Lose my voice today,
Tomorrow, my laughter,
Then that flicker in my eyes.

Let my words fade like old songs,
Let my kindness dissolve in silence.

I want to fall from your memory
Like raindrops
Dripping from a soaked branch
Not like a lifeless corpse.

☔️

i was right
and it hurts less now
truth was you were needed elsewhere,
and i can stand still
in your absence now

back when rose colored lenses could be found right where you left us.
i was mad, i was sad,
but i see you , and the simplest emotion is glad
and im so proud of you

what you need—
you needed you little g’
I know you’ll never be ever to face me

You're poison dressed in lover's skin,
A saint outside, a sin within.
Each time I try to walk away,
You pull me close with words that play.

I drank your lies like sacred wine,
And told myself that you were mine.
But every kiss, a sinking stone—
I drown in you, and die alone.

So take what's left—my breath, my will,
Your silence fits me softer still.
If I must die to feel your bliss,
Then let me fade in serpent's kiss.

Between the spaces we never filled,
a quiet ache lingers—soft, unseen,
like love remembered in a breath.

9 years ago
your son was 9, you were forty-two
your wife was nearing forty

I was eighteen
daughter 1, fourteen; daughter 2, thirteen
and daughter 3 was only 6

we've experienced anniversaries,
birthdays, funerals
(my dad, my grandpa, my papa)

breakups, and new boyfriends
(just with your daughters, really)

graduations, retirements,
family arguments
chaos and heartbreak induced by alcoholism,
(and now years of sobriety)

first home purchases
(your daughters and myself)
(your son is living with me this summer)

and a pandemic...

much has happened since June 17th, two thousand and sixteen
but the biggest thing yet
will be this Saturday
June 7th, twenty twenty-five

daughter 1 is twenty-two, now
and in three days she gets married
your son is eighteen, now
and he will walk her down the aisle
(he told me he cries whenever he thinks about it)

your wife is nearly forty-nine
she will be there with her boyfriend
(they moved in together, in the house they built)
(they're both sober)
(she referred to him as her husband the other day)

daughter 3 is fifteen
(she told me she doesn't really remember you)

I am twenty-seven, now
and I will read a passage from the Bible at your daughter's wedding -
(just like I did at your funeral)