my heart has its own memory and i have forgotten nothing
lord, i worry that love is not more than violence
i hate to wait for you unbearably and breadcrumbs will always look like a feast to a woman starved of affection
i’m learning love as an act of mercy I’m learning love as an act of sacrifice
maybe in another universe we didn’t let go of each other
maybe in another universe you chose me
maybe my worst sin is that i have destroyed and betrayed myself for nothing

One day when the oceans turn to ice
Ask me the mistakes I have made
One day when the sky is on fire
Ask me if what I have done in my life has been good.
Some have crept and crawled and slithered their way in and out, some have arrived softly and quietly and stayed.
Ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made me into. I’ve fallen in and out of love so much that now my hands are libraries of all the people they have touched.
What the ocean says, that’s what I say.

You begin to wear the same shirt almost daily. You sit very still.
You feel most at peace when no one is watching, you feel most at peace when you imagine he might be thinking of you like you think of him.
You let him convince himself and you and the world that the pain he caused you isn’t real. You spend days and months questioning the reality of those four weeks in London. The world agrees.
You convince yourself that nothing really mattered, and no one could truly care.
You start to resemble a crumpled gift bag in the corner of the room. You were once something to somebody.
You tell yourself you should have known better. After all your mother always told you about over watering plants as a child because you never knew how to stop giving.

On Saturday night I open my legs for a man I don’t love
On Sunday morning I cry for you in the kitchen with my friends over coffee
Every gentle part of me wants to give up
But it took a miracle to make me, and I go on being made
Love is in everything around me - look for the clues and wild women well, they don’t get the blues.

Your mother cries without tears. Your mother has sad eyes. Your mother has never had anything she ever wanted except you.
And you tell her to give in to the demons that possess her, and that god has never blessed her in this life.
You think, I’ll be greater and smarter, more grown up and a better daughter to make it worth it for her.

You told me I looked like your prayers, so I asked if you had ever begged God to die.
Time is honest, and every morning looks more and more like forgiveness.  
But every October you cross my mind, and I force myself to swallow your memory because I never told you how I always knew you’d break my heart. Every October, I close my eyes and imagine a life spent loving what is already good.

I am done talking about my sadness like it’s some holy thing.
My skin is all honey before noon. I wake to celebrate the anniversary of a lover I never kissed. Of a body I never once adored. Then kneel back into a dream where I am good and loved. I am good. I am loved.