My eyes bare upward,
as though in prayer, longing, like the one thing
of which finds itself briefly gorgeous; simply,
to cut a cord to see you smile.
One day was all it took
for me to begin to say the word Sanctuary
when I really mean Stay.
The day when I misheard the meaning of gone
to mean something destined to come back.
I’m sorry,
your hands make waves in my fragile mind like a body
being dragged recklessly over the sand.
And-
When we shall meet again, two grown women, with
years of distance between them, I will grasp at you with
all the grace of a dam breaking,
each memory, for each year of separation teaching
simply that absence doesn’t
always sink low enough to mean leave.
Yes decay is a part of life in the same way
I wish I could have been held by you
when this world overcame me like a
coffin over a corpse. You are the most
beautiful Spring I store within me.
Yes, as a baby girl and all, I still managed to remember your voice.
Much more clearly than I remember how to use
these hands; immersed, in the art of ink blots on a page. Writing you a road
to come back home.
Nanny… Only you have the power, to hold the hearts
of 17 people in the palms of your pale hands, stained with years of memory
and never let a single one go.
Within the space resting apologetically between us,
there is a cliff hanger I must reach the end of and please,
I want you to know that
Each time my heart turned into a fist, trying to punch through
walls to somehow reach you,
when I tried to jump through heaven and hell in attempts
to be able to call your name and somehow, manage to get close enough
so that you could hear it,
It wasn’t simply self-destructive.
It was the ties of a desperate little girl who missed you.
It’s never simple. Your torn heart strings are so unlike
the ribbons I tie around every forth thrusting surface,
I cannot keep you.
I shouldn’t keep you.
The truth is:
I know a lot about loss through years of pondering it,
but yours is still the one I have never gotten used too.
