Duality.

I wish I had more answers,
but first, I would need the
perfectly framed questions.
What do I do with an invisible
thread, a lifeline, that I wasn't
planning on using? I am constantly
surprising my darkest thoughts
by moving forward each day.
And for the days I move backwards,
or stay quite still, I give myself ample
room to breathe, to accept my position.
Sometimes, not moving is the wisest
choice, the safest course of action.
Sometimes, everything fluctuates and
spins and makes my skin tingly,
my head dizzy, my legs numb; it feels
like witnessing a birth within me.
The busy ants crawl up my thigh, the
long grass inundated with dandelions.
The warm breeze breathes for and
because of me. Yet, in the seame moment,
the opposite exists. Bugs cover every
limb, darkness overshadowing light.
I feel demons mumbling under my skin,
the blades of grass conspiring against me,
sharpening their ends and their wit.
The wind tricks me into believing I will
never be safe without you. Because here,
in this very spot, and in the acres surrounding
us, we were able to rest in the uncertainty
of time. It didn't matter if the weather, and
our lives, would eventually become restless.
Nothing mattered but the sanctity of a
shared moment. Now, I count the months
since you've been gone, and I feel centuries
old. It feels too heavy of a burden to have
known you and loved you and lived for you.
I will live the rest of my lifetime carrying
your memory, never making new ones with
you. But maybe, time will be kind. Maybe I
will learn to be more forgiving of myself,
when I wonder why I didn't do more, why
I seemed to be frozen in the idea that it
would all work out, the very concept of
you leaving unknowable, unfathomable.
This must be coping, this attempt to put
into words what I don't usually share in
everyday conversations, because it's easier
to start the day by shuttering death and
locking the door. Only, at some point, I
return home, to this exact reality, one that
somehow coexists with sorrow and
inexplicable joy. And I, too, have to somehow
mend the cacophonies inside my mind,
learning to live with the depths of emotion,
of the authenticity and pain of the human
spirit, of healing from the loss of you

(and the loss of me).

_________________________________

Wrote this on my lunch break on 5/14/2022, and formatted it, with a few minor edits.