inevitably so

and though you speak in snowflakes
your frost no longer bites
but only melts upon me
for i am warm.

i would have continued sharing the wonder with her, in ways both intimate and amazing, but she says she no longer loves me, to which i can say nothing in return, only sigh and feel compassion as i would to any other who sinks away.

and i hear echoes inside where she used to be.

oh i know that this isn't the end to me, not even an end. this is another day. i do what i would have done in any case. i live, i breathe, i allow myself to be sad and joyful in turns, dazed, amazed, through and through. in motion without moving. and sad.

one night i sit up in bed and cut away several pages of a book that i'm reading. i've never liked those pages, just knowing that they're there has always bothered me, pages full of suggestions and recommendations, telling me how i should understand something. so off they go, into the trash, leaving behind only jagged stubs of paper, and a sense that some wall was removed from where it stood between me and the universe. on i go.

and later, on another day, another time, today, i sit in the kitchen and i remember you, and the pit of my belly is falling down, down, down through the floor and the ground and the core into emptiness. i can sense how fucking good it'd feel to become hard now, how fucking good it would feel to be bitter and full of hate. but i no longer know how, damn me but i don't know how. i've forgotten what i don't need, i've forgotten what i have no use of, so i forget what i can't remember, and notice the song on the radio. humming inside and tracing the ceiling, and the timeless softness re-enters my eyes.

softer, softer, soft enough to consume sadness, know it sinking deeper into me, know it touching me as it passes through, know it leaving a little something behind, a little something for me to recognize it again when it next comes by.