aquí nomas

I look up in a meeting and someone is wearing a built to spill shirt. a reminder that it’s another summer of missing somebody. a yearning that’s lit, stings my skin the longer I sit in the sun and burns through everything I feel. how many more summers until I’m missed too?  

  my best friend and I sat on the patio the other night. they asked about my woes, I told them. I asked about theirs, they told me. they’re going through a divorce from a young marriage. I recently ran into an old love, one that ended badly. we talked about love when you’re young. how big the love is. how it’s actually so big we don’t realize. we don’t know what to do with it. we fall into what we think we’re supposed to do with it. so we never really see how big it gets, how huge it really is to tether and tangle your life with someone else’s. even when it ends, there’s no doubt there was love there. to what extent and what fiber doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of it all. we felt the big love. and it’s everywhere now. we carry so much of it with us. we think of it even when we don’t. I didn’t know what to do with it. so I did what I thought I was supposed to do. in ways, I failed it, failed the other person. but I look at it from the roof now and see what it was. next ti...

sometimes it’s no more than as it is, ticket stub from a train in paris kept on a mirror,  an old novel once shared on a new bookshelf,  the perfume always kissed off found at the bottom of my old purse. little pieces strewn about, ashes of what was, blowing by with the passing of time. 

in another universe we’re driving around in the plymouth,  sitting in our usual seats at arts cafe, spending our sundays close.  waking you up with coffee at bonks cabin, my hand on your thigh, bare feet on the porch. maybe I’m forgiving you again over our usual at Giorgio’s,  keeping your secrets from my friends, asking if your friends would think of you different, believing change is coming after a trip out of town. maybe the glass you threw at the wall hits me instead.  maybe it’s the same in every universe.  and every universe, I’m glad I’m out. 

nostalgia holds me the same way a counterfeit bill keeps value in my wallet.   

we kept a horseshoe above the front door, a formica table with twinkling stars we found in a garage sale, kitchen green with plants hanging off every edge, and shelves you made me by hand.  you kept photos of me by your side of the bed and I rested my hand on your back when I slept.  we had hooks for our keys with our initials, your grandmothers meatball recipe in the far kitchen drawer, and a lighter from our night in japan sat safe on our desk.  the dog kept her paws off the kitchen floor, I cried in the shower so you couldn’t tell, and you slept further away til my hand couldn’t reach. shards from a glass you threw stuck to my selena record I kept on the wall, you turned my photos face down,  and your coffee mug stayed in the same spot for weeks after the day you left. 

they say god laughs at those who make plans, so does grief.  except she sits beside you at the dinner table while you laugh amongst friends, as you make your bed in the morning and she keeps caught in the corners of your mattress. she remembers when you forget, reminds you the knocking you feel isn't hollow at all, rather full of the love, the wonder left with nowhere to go. she sits while god laughs and tugs at your pant leg.

two birds perched on a barbed wire fence, the sharp edges of time passed cutting into mind, the painful bits that have since scarred over, keep the tally, maybe it’s god or the cosmos but it all comes together, I am alongside those two birds.