To My Ex, an Explanation, an Apology
5.2.2019
I am not sure where this will end,
looking down a long road
that disappears over some horizon
that I think I’ll call
midnight, I’ll call
a moonless light,
stars not quite bright enough
to lead me home.
My ego clouds over the constellations,
fear swirls in the gray ash of water molecules
mixing itself in trepidation,
the anticipation of anger
so out of control like
watching someone strike a match
and try to light a single leaf on fire
while the whole forest is already
consumed in flames.
I call out to them,
“what the fuck are you doing?”
They don’t answer, just keep trying
to strike the match until
they, too, are consumed
by the flames.
I turn away, because I can’t bear
to watch the fire I started
and all that it’s destroyed,
can’t even mutter the words,
no matter how many times
you lash out with embers
scalding my face, instead all I
can imagine are if those embers
were the same ones that
forged these rings,
hammered so delicately as to fit us
so perfectly, if only I could fit you
that same way.
When you first saw me
standing on this long road, you
saw evergreens and blue sky.
Had you only looked closer you
would’ve seen the match box
in my back pocket.
I warned you that I was broken,
you doubted that was true,
even as you watched me
set myself on fire,
until I broke you too.
Until you trusted me with everything,
like wishing every piece of you
on some falling star hoping it
would land in the palm of your hand,
and when one finally did,
you realized that wishes burn true.
Until I made promises I couldn’t keep,
my heart so badly wanted to,
but everything I am would eventually
shatter.
Those evergreens now enwrapped
in flickering tongues,
the blue sky now raining the ashes
of what we built, and when I
reached the horizon
I found that the road did not continue,
there was no horizon at all,
no greener pasture,
no ocean of love to wash
hope around my feet,
just a parapet before a precipice
of failure.
I was born with a match box in my back pocket,
waiting to be who I always have been.