Why
Why can’t it just be okay
why must I give excuse or explanation
why does society not accept
that I just want to be alone?
Why does guilt weigh heavy
Why can’t…

I just want time alone

Is that so wrong?

Yet even now, at 10pm
guilt weighs heavy
on these shoulders
as I rest
Alone

Airport billboard read:
“Someday is Any day”
“**** that” I say
My someday
is never
Whatever
I’m used to disappointment

When a vision dies
While the love that wrote it breathes eternal
The heart cries
Tears trickle down worn cheeks as sharpened ******
A sorrowful mourning

How can i reconcile Love and Loss?
What to do, Knowing how I must let go?
These tendrils of my need cling so tightly
‘round and through each essential part
of my life?
I understand why…
I just don’t know HOW
Did YOU find a way?

I donned those waxen wings of hope,
Sought to woo the sun…
Too late, too hot I learned
Iron weights alone the rip cord released
As wings melted with nothing to replace
& wax melded to my skin
I wept
Molten feathers trickling down my back
Seeping to my heart
Filled with greying lead
Oh, for lasting, lifting wings!
of titanium, stronger, lighter,
Elevating
To be as Neil Armstrong
In a rocket to the moon
safe landing assured

Oh that these life choices
might be enough to woo the moon
or Winged Mercury
Closer to the shining sun
Light and love
Rather now, as plummeting Icaria
I am a weeping candle,
flickering
faintly
failing
falling
forgotten

I thought I wandered into your tomorrows
the way you wandered into mine.
the opened gift revealed just sorrows
the kind surviving space & time.
I still wish that I could borrow
memories of yesteryear.
yet it matters not how far I go
I can’t seem to find you near.
now I think that you might be fighting
harsh histories of your own.
if only I could put in writing
assurances you are not alone.
I know not the right way to love you
cannot find how to be your friend.
regardless know these thoughts ring true
my care remains to the very end.
With much love always,

I’d rather message you…
Instead I told my friend
about the decrease in red signage in this area.
I’d rather tell you…
instead I texted him
about the coffee shop eves-dropping
leading me to learn a bit of trivia
(fact-checking a statement overheard
I found it to be only half true).

I realized this morning
from a cordial text exchange
with a casual acquaintance
(Siri mixed his name up with my son’s so I apologized for the accidental call)
that his conversation was more engaged
than those with you.
I mourn that you, once counted close,
share less than my son’s classmate’s father.
I realized THIS
Is why I fear sending you these thoughts…
Perhaps it’s not really friendship you wish to hold?
but what is it you DO hope to retain?
Is it memory, possibility,
a thread of connection (never to be strengthened)?
All I know for certain—
this sinking disappointment
of friendship unrequited.

I wish you’d share
the heart-truths of you
as do the other friends I choose
to hold Close.