the day I found out

the day I found out doesn't exist

is this chance or a metaphor?

I don't believe in casualidad I believe in

synchronicities

I am always making meaning

you are always thinking about everything

Anniversaries mean a lot to me

I say it as a form of explanation

I hold it like a notebook in front of my chest

covering, protecting, the tenderness

I look for reasons to grieve, to mourn,

for moments where my tears can burst through the everyday

like a form of avalanche - is this performative? is this wallowing?

(her words a constant specter: life moves on fortunately and unfortunately)

your voice on the recording the other day, more high pitched than I remembered it

and affected and kind and I so longing your approval even then, years in, so wanting you to

choose me.

some things must not ever stop breaking your heart

it is futile to compare pains what is the point when what you are feeling is the 

slice of the knife in your chest

the holding in your palms of everything you once were and will never be again.

the right thing

 if I could stop focusing on doing the right thing

maybe I could manage to do anything

maybe I could find a way to stop this unproductive

self-flagellation. I am like a bug caught between two panes of glass

I see both lives and I cannot choose one.

Don't you see? I don't know what is best for me.

I don't know what is truth and what mirage.

What about the left thing? The thing that is left behind.

I judge myself incessantly for trying just trying to take care of myself

in a world I no longer recognize and have not for years now.

The fallacy of thinking decisions are simply black and white

and not disintegrating spirals of life like orange peels in an adept hand

And what is wrong with a little bit of regret anyhow?

But just a shot god and not this constant drumming thrumming humming

pummeling of the inside of my mind for just doing its best

honey I'm just doing my best

trying to sort through what's right and what's left.

A small kindness

It makes me feel soft 

The way 

He comes over and asks me where I was 

And says it is worrying 

And offers me some of his snack 

Small acts of care that reaffirm 

The two of cups 

The balance in the question and the situation 

To search for it and find the resonance that rings true

The sun moves in pink streaks across the sky

And I adrift in youthful memories of love and irreplaceable wounds 

Rise 

Stand at the window and remember 

Open the latch and lean out in the cool air 

Well aware of death down below 

Of my own teetering 

Choices of destructions a tilt away

And I look at the pink in the sky 

as even now it disappears 

turns to purple to the expectant gray blue of a morning 

Like a secret I wrap it shut 

And go to wash myself clean