The pain is adjacent to love—it’s why it hurts to love you.
Some odd years ago, I plucked courage like wild chrysanthemum’s
to finally bury you in my heart. Every October since, I’d visit your grave,
clean the mossy tendrils that spiral around your headstone in an earthly embrace,
and write you a poem—a naïve thing to do, but why do hands of an infant
instinctively wrap themselves around one’s finger? (For warmth).
I’ll admit, I often dug your grave up to see if you were really dead,
stopping myself before shovel met casket.
One year, you awake, working through the loosened soil,
and take a seat next to me.
Unmarred, you’ve aged, like time was turbulence and
you were a chartered flight to the north, that I mistaken for a star.
I’m sorry, I have a tendency to do that a lot—I still yearn for you,
I still want to baptize myself in your light, especially in the morning,
when the soft diffuse light
of the six-a.m. sun streaming
through your sheer curtains,
does so in a bid to bury its
grave on your forehead.
Why do I love you, still?
Upon finding myself at the intersection of grief, and love—
two of the strongest motivators, I sit squarely in the middle
in quiet prayer, awaiting an answer / clarification / a sign.
A car horn blares, the traffic light bleeds into red
from amber. Traffic expertly reroutes around me
as if I were road debris waiting to be collected by
road-workers, and I find myself in the margins in
the lives of others, yet again. I minimize myself in
your company, because I’m scared of encroaching
any space that was not allotted for me.
I will, sheepishly, acknowledge that I let you take any fragments of
myself, at will—compartmentalizing your experience of me,
as needed. You still carry me, I say to a mirror,
riddled with all the grisly parts of me.
