I bought a Ouija board
on impulse, to contact you.
Then I remembered:
for you, unlike me,
there was life after love.

They asked me what you were.
“a cancer man,” I said.
They frowned and politely clarified —
“we didn’t mean astrology.”
“Neither did I.”

In the safe of my heart,
next to my grandma’s earrings,
and my dad’s childhood art,
I keep your devotion.
The way you said my name—
with such emotion
I am a hoarder, I know
who am I hurting, though?

Just like Sylvia Plath
I found myself still
before all the possibilities.
And you know what?
It really ****** me off.
There’s one fig I really wanted—
Where I’m birthing his kid.
Honey-dark and out of reach.
Yet it haunts me,
every other spring.

The wound is forming a scab.
New-knit memories are healing it back.
The wound will scar,
so it could be skin again.
To feel, to be caressed—
by the sun,
by your touch,
by the rain..

The wound will be skin again.
To be scratched and ripped away.
The wound will bleed—
but it will be skin again.
Healed by a newly-formed scab,
woven from fresh threads of recollections
and bedtime-story yarns.

I heard an expert say
missing someone
is simply an act of love—
So often woven
into unhealed pain
and heart-sores.

I thought of the night
I vowed to engrave
your laughter in my soul.
Kept safe as a personal vinyl,
sometimes replayed—
because I kept my word.