I don’t know where you are. In life or in thought.
You carved me.
Not into the soft fabrics of stone, Michelangelo’s passion project,
but in the chest caving way that echos across years
and states
and moments I can’t trace, but still feel shaped by you.
There’s parts of you in most I meet, and everyone that knows me will know aspects of the you I once knew.
We never broke, and though wilted, the flower never died.
We unraveled. Quietly, circumstantially, slowly, in ways that never made sense out loud. A boat tethered in a still wake, just climate enough to disintegrate the fibers. A brisk breeze, never windy enough to cause national alert.
And that’s what’s made it so hard to let go.
No fight, no final draw. Just… silence.
Stillness in a room that once danced.
Swayed sacred memories under a Scotch taped mistletoe. My once eggnog grin boy.
I’ve looked for you in places I know you’d never be.
Cramped hands scribbling thoughts I won’t send.
I’ve read your words and heard them in the faint memory of your voice.
You told the history of us in stanzas.
I’ve carried the epilogue of us since, so you can hone in your next plot.
I think I’d want to ask nothing.
Just watch you breathe.
See what time has softened, and learn how Plan B became Option F.
Shake your hand, like we’re meeting again. Detention divvy in the cafeteria round two, yet not starting over, but seeing clearly as we’ve become.
I don’t expect that moment will ever come.
I needed this not for reply,
but release.
You were my first mirror.
My first awe into ache.
And I think, in a way, you’ll always be.
God ****** that wake.
It’s time for me to stop waiting cave-side for echoes. The occasional ping in my heart pager is plenty.
I hope you’re loved in the ways you couldn’t ask for yet, and all of those thoughts have found safe, understanding hands. Ones that mark color into your inked rib flowers on occasion, and the snake not remind you of me.
Perhaps if I understood more of those too-long-car-ride convos.
I’m shoulding on myself.
I hope laugh still covers your face, and your brows scrunch into your nose.
I hope you feel free, and the flight wasn’t stifled by a storm along the way.
I hope if you think of me, it’s with a faint yellow softness, not a sting.
It’s impossible to forget, but I must rid myself from the weight of remembering alone.
There’s no gym routine that fills the space, but watering cans to garden around the museum of us.