When I Ask:
Have you ever sung to birds in cages?
I Mean:
When will you learn to stop leaving breadcrumbs for the dead? When will you learn that they cannot follow you up from the grave, even if they wished to?
When I Ask:
When was the last time you felt remorse for a flower you plucked?
I Mean:
How many faces have you traded for daffodils and irises? Who taught you how to mime guillotines with empty gestures and soigné decorum, to become familiar with severing beauty from imperfection when you trample flower heads underfoot?
When I Ask:
Why do we light matches when roman candles burn brighter?
I Mean:
What about transience is so remarkable that we would trade eternity for the temporary? Why do we torture ourselves with legacies preserved in syntax and syllables, as if we could ever capture our photograph history in a single moment, in a single word?
When I Ask:
Have you ever torn out your tongue and salted it, so you can swallow it without choking?
I Mean:
What does regret taste like on the nights when the pillow is too warm, the sheets too cold? Who leaves the glass of water by the bedside when you’re feverish? Do you rehearse excuses to make conversation palatable?
When I Ask:
Do you leave the door unlocked intentionally, or just to provoke me?
I Mean:
Where did we begin pocketing pain like pebbles? Where were we when we first realized that skipping stones does not mean hurling them for target practice, when seas and crowds were at once interchangeable in sentences? Where will you be standing in the room when I present to you the mound I built of my apologies, when I show you that casting stones is not the only way to make our burdens lighter?
When I Ask:
How many different postcard stamps can you describe without closing your eyes?
I Mean:
Will you roll down the hill and lay beside me in the grass next summer like we used to do, before anger became the only language we were confident enough to articulate? Will you uproot every bitter misunderstanding and plant daffodils and irises there for us instead? Will a castle arise from your pebbles, a kingdom from my promises?