For years
I looked at my pupils in the mirror
saying your name
to see if they still dilated.
For years.
And when they finally stopped,
I still had a hole inside me.
For years I tried to forget your name,
wouldn’t taste it on my tongue
or repeat it if spoken by another.
For years.
How I wished to unlove you,
feeling you walk around inside my heart,
seeing you walk around outside it
when you had found others to replace me,
while I just simply was not over you.
It wasn’t until I’d had his hands on me
for months
and until I got pregnant—that life
was the love that finally pushed
you out of the place I’d given you.
Years can go by now
and I don’t think of you,
but every now and then
I dream of you,
and every time,
you’re cold, unreachable, blank—
like the last time we spoke
after we both had moved on,
when we met
and I had coffee
and you had none,
looking at me in icy blue.
Why did you even invite me?
Perhaps I will never know.
And so, I hope this poem
speaks the words
I’ve never been able to say.
I hope it is closure
of a good kind
for me,
even if you never read it.
This poem is meant to say,
I loved you.
I remember you loved me.
We had so many good shared experiences,
too, despite the crumbling.
I’m proud of what I know of you,
what I’ve heard about your life,
which isn’t all that much.
But I want your every success,
am truly happy for your happiness,
as you’ve had it.
I am rooting for you in everything.
That’s love, you know.
And maybe that’s what that last
meet-up was meant to show me.
My hands cupped a dove, warm,
with an olive branch extending toward you,
while yours held a wintry glare to blind
the unsuspecting just trying
to move forward on a slippery road.
So, here’s to my forgetfulness,
because,
though I don’t think of you often,
when I do,
when I take the time
to remember,
despite the years,
it hurts,
still.
A sort of epistolary poem for Dora’s “Despite and Still” challenge at dVerse, which I am way too late for linking to, and for “Forgetfulness” at What’s Going On?