I am pretty sure my love will be leaving me soon
for a woman whose skirt does not lift in the zephyr of her sadness:
we kiss and we tie
maraschino cherry stems with our tongues. The
same labyrinth puts rosy skin in our teeth, here is his ***** hair
knotted with saliva. When I think I have everything,
it just means that we are stuck together –
I realize it does not mean that we are happy together. I think
someone poisoned the water
with glue, and it is I who dispenses more to let my love escape me.
He is as happy as a child who has finished a puzzle
except for a single missing piece, repeating the movements
again and again. That has got to bring it back.
For seven months, we have been handed the gift of pretending I
can feel the inner-workings of who he is and why he is
and I am pretty sure he knows he never has
to pretend again. It is there in the silences: across the room,
across the ocean where hundreds of babies have died,
babes with mothers and fathers and parents who weren’t divorced.
All I hear is my love toying with a Rubik’s cube
he never learned to complete. I have a Magic 8 ball saying
I should let him go. I mostly worry about telling my mom, who will
tell my therapist and then we will have to
close too many doors. As long as I am sad, they are locked. A
key is stuck in the mud or in someone’s molars –
my room is empty, the air is quiet, and he has not even left me yet.

i will always associate back flips
with my first "boyfriend" in the third
grade who has probably now grown
up to be the type of guy who takes
pictures of himself shirtless in the bathroom
mirror and tells his girlfriend that she's pretty
but not quite as pretty as he is.

i will always associate playgrounds
with my elementary school sweetheart
and hearing my favorite love song and
him walking five steps behind and defending
me when he thought i needed it.

i will always associate the rain
with wet tables and standing up
and laughing with friends and talking
and being wrapped in someone's arms
for the very first time and hearing "i missed you."

i will always associate "almosts" with the guy
i never really realized i wanted until it was too late
and seeing him walk around holding the hand of the
girl who wanted him when i didn't and seeing him kiss
her the way he wanted to kiss me once upon a time
and with ******* up really really irreparably bad this time.

i will always associate short time periods with the two weeks
when i belonged to someone I never expected to want,
when he kissed me like i mattered,
when he held me as though he would never let go
and then told me we should "take a break" and
come back to us when the "time was right."

and i will always associate happiness with these times
when i was loved and wanted and needed for just a little while
and believing for just a moment that i was special.

and you know what else?

i will always associate failure with the entrance of something better
i will associate failure with a narrow escape because if it were meant
for me to have then i would have had it but it's not so i don't.

i will always associate life with beautiful complications.

We arrived back home
carrying treasured memories of a blessed journey
tired and weary, glad to be  back home.
Janet said,"I will kiss the ground when we
get back to the USA"
I stepped off the bus
and there, standing in the darkness
with flowers and teddy bear in hand
and his "heart on his sleeve" stood Bill,
not at all a figment of my imagination.
I did not kiss the ground,
I kissed my sweet William.

Today while I was at work I saw a little girl grab some candy from the shelf and shake it in front of her mom to make sure she didn't forget to buy it. As she inched closer to the counter where I was scanning all of the items all I could see were the little girls eyes and the hands that hung on to the edge of the counter. She was so tiny and was still holding the candy in her hand, so excited. Liberated.

I don’t know why that made me so nauseous but all I knew was that this little girl was given a handful of years on this earth just like me. In that instant all I really wanted to do was stop time for this little girl that I knew absolutely nothing about and give her that opportunity to enjoy her candy bar to the very last crumb and let her lick clean the left-over smudged chocolate on her small fingers and small corners of her mouth.

I hope it pleases you to know that she did enjoy it, I didn't need to stop time for her to manage that. As kids, we don’t really have that extreme perception of time and maybe that’s what so beautiful about childhood and also what’s so tragic about what comes after.

I thought this girls whole life in a matter of seconds and I grew to appreciate that little girl. But she will never know this,  she will never know who I am, nor will she ever think of me again. But by the time she left the store I found myself hoping her life is everything she wants it to be.