Remember when you heard my name for the first time?
You thought it was a play on words;
I said it was just a play,
and you laughed like you knew the difference.
Remember the glittering forever you saw in my eyes?
I told you it was a trick of the light.
You said it was just a trick, but
we could make it real by wanting it—so I started wanting it.
You asked about my favorite lie, and I said, “I don’t know.”
You laughed, either because you got it,
or because you didn’t—and that was just as funny.
You didn't lift the weight of my words,
how they sank like stones in my stomach, obscuring my glitter,
waiting to see if you'd notice when they lost their shimmer.
Remember why we didn’t drive to the coast?
You thought I was scared of the ocean,
but I knew it had swallowed too many endings already.
The waves couldn’t wash away your ambiguity;
they would only drown my swell no salt could soften.
Remember that postcard I never sent?
You shouldn’t, but I feel like you would.
I wrote it one night in a knot of longing and spite:
“Wish you were here, but it might be better that you’re not.”
How many Dear John's sit sealed, unsent,
lost in transit between what was promised and what was kept?
Between what was enchanted, and what’s now dead?
Remember the night I asked what you'd save in a fire?
You said, “Everything.”
Like you could shove hearts and histories into pockets
without splitting seams. You can’t escape unscathed,
lock the door, and not stink of the charred bits you abandoned.
Meaning things and speaking things are not the same,
and if I wasn’t choking on smoke, I might try to tell you:
some things are meant to burn—
Some things are both the light and the trick
and the play goes on regardless.