Leave.

Toss clothes like fluttered wings
In this bag.
Throw just one ******* my shoulder and
Go.  

Roll the windows down and amp up the music so loud I drown
Out the static of sadness that never ends.

Find the narrow path that no one takes
In the valley by the headwaters of the lake

Won’t even scan the brushland for snakes,

Just walk

Away

Can’t make it right anyway
Can’t make anyone stay
Can’t fill up their world with what they deserve
Tried to play every role but I’m really

Just
One
Girl.

Wonder what it would feel like to find the serrated edges of the rock on the top of the highest cliffs and just

Step off

Wonder what it would feel like to tell the world to *******?

Wonder if I can walk high enough to leave half of myself
Underneath the glory of the ridgeline
Stamp her shadow down with these boots and

Rise lighter

Less encumbered by the pitiful way she cries
Walk the rough trail that cuts straight up the rocks
Stand on the top
And let the sun
Burn the guilt off
Melt my heart right there on the mountain

Let it go

In the currents across the river washed rocks
Carried away to the nadirs of the sea
Where there is no special place for tears

And the whales leap up and breach the waves

And everything that ever mattered lifts in the arching spray and

Evaporates.

But I am just a girl
Knees in the cool dirt
By the forest’s edge
And I’m not dumb enough to give it all up
Yet

And there isn’t really any blade to this hurt
Just a dull ache
That falls away the further I follow the river
Through the quaking aspens
Along the pine framed cliffs
Into the sky.

I can leave it all behind
For a little while
Toss this canvas bag onto the rough ground
Turn around

And walk into your waiting arms.