Maybe this is where it starts.
Maybe this is the first fracture, the first sign
That you,
That you will break from me and fall away,
like ice into an ever-warming sea.
Maybe tomorrow the silence between us will be a moment longer,
stubborn and unbending as “You first” takes our gentleness away.
Maybe tomorrow the warm amber-green of your eyes will have cooled
into the stiff oak of a winter leaf.
A day after that, perhaps a month, a year;
When my unwillingness to bend has coated you with frost,
You will leave me.
You will take the summer with you when you go.
It will be too late, then, to press my heart into your hand and hope.
It would slip through your fingers, an exercise in futility.
The sound of my heart breaking would not be like glass,
It would be silent, lost inside the echo of your footsteps, walking away.
So tonight I will swallow my pride over this imagined slight.
I will climb the stairs and go to you.
I will press my face, wet with tears, against your neck and tell you I love you.
I will learn my lesson before it is too late.
I promise.
-J
A poem in which I acknowledge that sometimes, I am absolute crap at relationships, and then try to fix it.
