To say that I hate her
would be to suggest that
there is a version of this story
where I can still sleep with the lights off,
there is something strangely familiar
about the glow of fluorescent lights at 2 in the morning.

It is also to say that her letters no longer
gather dust in the boxes underneath my bed.
That there isn’t a picture of her still between the tired
pages of the old family bible I no longer read.
I have never been good at forgetting
the walls after dusk still remember her name.

Maybe it is because I once loved her,
Or maybe it is because I still do
Like the way Daedalus still
loved the warmth of the sun
even after it took away his everything;
I too still sometimes smile at the bringer of death.

Though this is not to say I still don’t
try to fill what the gods have named unfillable.
It is not to say I no longer believe in magic,
it is just  to say that I am tired
of trying to summon what is not coming back,
I am tired of hating me more than her.