On the way back to my rural house, I thought about goodbye
and how you just left as a deer crossing the
highway. I could do that now –
I have a paycheck, I do not need my parents to sign
for us to marry or be taken off of birth control so we can have babies.
My feet no longer wobble when I climb into a train car.

These rainy nights are like gingko supplements
because now I can remember everything about you and I.

Your too-thin-for-winter pajamas on the carpet, your nonchalant
manner of breaking my heart. I knew
then to be a detective: my mission to abort goodbyes
just to forgive you for old hurts and

whatever else
I may find.

Through my veins runs cranberry juice, red as blood
frozen over from the
winter of mine that you ruined. It is June and you are still sorry for
what you did, it is June and now I am sorry, too.
Sadness made my ribcage sprout into a ripened peach tree –
cut them open, nothing’s inside. We are all runaways.