do you keep space for the quiet things?
do you make room for the loud ones?
i have been unlovable
i have thrashed upstream
to the mouth of the river
and drank its spring dry,
bent my body around
the truth
and called it a waxing moon —
i have been unlovable.
i don’t know how
to tell you i’m sorry
without a payment plan,
crying out to the chariot
each day to help fill
this cup i’ve emptied.
i have been unlovable,
but i hope to not be
someday, when i can reel
the tide back in,
apologize to the moon
for wearing its face
like a shield i was
careless to break.
the peaches in the bowl seep sugar,
softening in the humid air, sweet,
but rotting, growing muddled against
the glass like roots, muted and plundered
by the hot, beating rain.
dusk dyes the sky in brays,
and when i catch you in candlelight,
alone in saffron shaped silence,
i feel the air swelling like a pulp.
the milk curdles, sour, in the fridge.
but none of it is anyone’s fault.
it rains and doesn’t here.
someone i don’t get to keep.
we can never go back,
and isn’t that the most
brutal thing?