Longing Space

Lingering on the stairwell, I promise to walk away,

knowing that the door must shut

for these windows to open.

Being sentimental, and fearful that the past might dissolve,

I make a pile of the things I will continue to love from afar:

Old letters, scrawled books, the painting of a blue Iris flower

that reminds me of my late grandma and new beginnings.

Here was one, an Iris flower born impossibly in December:

A sudden bloom against despair,

purple-blue petals strong by virtue of their tenderness.

Sometimes, I think the strongest thing we can do

is to remain tender.

The truth is that with all this present plenitude

there's no longing space left

for the scraps of this temporary life and its jaded language.

Even my skin, so scrawled by your hands, my body

written by you, for you,

is blank again,

petal like, and ready to bloom

in the hands of others.

Yet as I stared out on the courtyard of my life

full of such things: (the books, my anger

the letters you wrote me)

I asked the moon,

is there a way to package up love lost and gained?

And it shone back at me: "No"

Not even if I squash and stuff it between my ribs,

or swallow it whole, and let it sit in my molars,

or box it in the atrium of my chest? "No".

No, in the end you are too heavy, you four-year-u-haul

of my previous life:

Meadow trees, Bernini's bees, the ceramic mug imprinted

in sunflowers, the way the sun had fallen on your neck

the first time the tide changed, and eventually,

the hardening of my heart to you.

So, after months of painful unboxing,

I can finally let go of the memory of you

and as I open the windows to greater kindness,

I can at last, smile as I watch the scraps of us

waltz away like petals in a wind-stream.