Sometimes the feeling of sadness just overcomes me. It is like a black hole forms inside, and all the pain becomes like a million million tiny knives hurtling towards my core. It is dark, too, threatening to expand and fill up my whole being. I usually don’t know whether to cry or scream. Whether to curl up in a ball or run out into the street.

Tonight, I saw a picture of the puppy that used to love me, the one I lost in the divorce, my little Rufus. I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead, but I miss him. I miss the person I was when he was still a part of my life. And maybe I even miss that life, even though I know now that it wasn’t what I thought. It wasn’t meant to be my forever. Or my happily ever after.

I want to believe, though, that love can’t be subtracted from your life. That maybe that love of/in the past, my puppy, hopefully even my doomed marriage, still exists within me. It was real, and it is mine to keep.

Such as every time you're late, a little more
        and when that smile creeps up the edges of your face again

Moments we both throw our heads back and laugh, we probably
                    even forget exactly what self-consciousness is

I am cracked open, like an egg / like a geode / like a book
                                                   gilded edges shining in the silence

There are almost no words
            but I speak anyways, metaphors pouring from my lips

My fear is so loud and yet
           you listen anyways, the fence to my sparrow

A landing place
      a profound invisible string reaching out between us

It's been almost 10 years we’ve been together
      and my love does not flutter. It is calm & I reach out

From the inside to sing that this love is more stubborn
      than the hummingbird’s love of the flower,
                   the hammer’s fondness for the nail,
                                        and even the night’s tenderness towards the dark

November 18, 2020