6 months

i.

I am worried I’ll have trust issues for the rest of my life

What is real what is a lie what did I not see

Why is someone I love doing this

When he knows me?

I sympathize and I empathize

Like I always do

I swallow my requests and follow 

Even at the end.

When you hope it’ll finally be different

It’s all the same

I am heavier and lighter with/out you

ii.

Another shoe drops and it feels like relief

The facade is down

Though his words are loud, the truth is steady

It gives me what I could never get from him

I work, I ponder, I volunteer

I take myself up the Hudson on a rainy day

I meet a man and his dog and converse as if I am not floating in space

I have always been a shark, but for the first time, it stuns me that I am still moving

Not consumed by tears every day, externally at least

I feel strangely good, and I love my friends

And I try not to resent the magic of who I’ve always been proud to be 

iii.

I talk a lot, and they let me

There are costume parties (the best kind) and picnics

I sweat and take film photos and try new things with new people

Gratitude and continuous confusion battle for brain space

I let myself be taken care of

And focus in

We celebrate my chosen sister

Free from a job where she wasn’t valued as she should’ve been

We’re all getting so free these days, I think

Remember the disrespect

To keep from romanticizing the cage

Even when you see him and he acts like he doesn’t know who you are and what you’ve done for him. what you would've done for him, too.

I have so much time now !!

iv.

And what will I do with it? 

What do we ever do with our one wild and precious life?

More celebrations, the perfect dress, a fluffy little cat

Time–together–after six and a half years

Signing and singing and mourning and meeting

Lighting candles, watering plants

Seeing where we’re from, finally

I don’t know if I know how I feel

But I take it in and I pray to Buddha

And I cry for so many people

And so many things

v.

I am reminded of the joy of unexpected plans & pivots

Going out and dressing up and buying myself flowers without delay

I made a wish in a tree in the motherland and don’t remember what it was

But may it come true

It is the season of the very best things

And we take full advantage

It is a particular joy to be young and go do shit

Still, I put pressure on myself

And I adjust

And feel so determined to do something and be something

And I do

And I get sick…

I remember what it’s really like to be taken care of.

vi.

Even as I wear his jeans, I am forgetting him

Moving inch by inch further away

From that hurricane of heartbreak where I always had to be the eye of the storm

That will never makes sense

But I’ve turned it over and over in my mind all the same

Less these days, far less

I have come back from the dead with a vengeance

Despite his choices still wreaking havoc on my health

It frustrates me and I urge myself onward, but more gently

I paint, I cook, I go places! And do things!

There’s a wedding and a win and dreams fulfilled

That I can’t seem to process, as if I’m still surviving

There’s Joni Mitchell and things I can’t talk about 

And so many new beginnings

I don’t know what it all means, but I take one chief comfort–

The only people that come into my life from now on

Will have to get to me atop this tower

So thank you (in a way) for making me rebuild my walls so high

That no one unworthy may scale them ever again