I wonder what it would be like to say goodbye;
to merely exist in your memory
like an unspoken afterthought,
encapsulating your mind with should have’s.
To be thrown back into the pile
of used goods hanging on the rack of
thrift stores, waiting for someone to run their
hands along my seams the way you once did.
I’d nest with the pile of other undesired, but
somehow beautifully tainted garments-
fifty cents for the blouse that’s missing a button
where the boy with the rough hands pulled too hard
Five dollars for the fringe dress that a romanticized
dreamer left her youth in, clinging to the thread like
loose hinges on a door, opened up too many times.

I wonder if I’d recover from the uprooting
of the hands that feed me comfort,
the ones that pulled at a snag on my cotton skin,
unravelling, until all that was left was an
exposed garden of messy words and unmet dreams.
Would the weeds of my mind spread like
an infectious disease or would the remains of
what it felt like to lay under the stars at the age of
seventeen fertilize the ground beneath me with
hopeful potential that lust can still grow as we grow.

I wonder what happens to the ones who grow old with love
If it keeps them alive or settles them into wishful longing
for the days when their hands met in child-like harmony
eager to taste the trick that was called growing up.
I wonder if the hand the old man places on the small of his wife’s back
guides her slow moving limbs in affection, or if his
fingers are grabbing at the silk of her blouse, trying to
remember what it first felt like to fall.


I look into the mirror, met with eyes that
have grown old with experience.
The days seem to pass quicker and the nights don’t
feel as young. You ask me what I want from this,
and now all I do is wonder-
where, oh where, did the time go?