I expected a metaphor.
A saying to guide us.
Some blurry detail to wrap around our days.
It was wonderful.
And then it wasn’t.
I became possessed.
Low-level fury and sorrow joined hands.
I tried.
I really did.
Hoped to turn a corner and leave them behind.
Choking in the kicked-up dust.
But they dug in.
Started eating my heart one tender bite at a time.
It gets smaller by the day.
I barely register the doves now.
I used to cry when they rose like paparazzi from the field.
The sky would fill.
I could hold on to that.
The paradox of a thing so empty yet bursting with life.
They say explaining kills the magic.
I’m hoping it does the opposite.
Somehow brings it back into being.
But I know better.
Gone is gone.
They’ve been here for as long as I can remember.
Sometimes I even celebrate the anniversary of their arrival.
It’s a quiet party.
Just shadows and burning.
Get close enough and you might hear it.
A faint crackling.
Like a spark.
The ocean in a shell.
There was a day the wind died.
The crickets paused and you held your breath.
I think you sensed them then.
Their strange weight.
Your eyes widened such that all the words that could have been said spilled into the world at once.
I pretended not to notice and picked up a knife.
Took an apple from the basket and carved it reverse-wise, peeling towards my thumb.
You must have known then that my wounding was not a matter of if.
I wonder what it tastes like, my heart.
Not the meat.
The pent up desire.
They won’t say.
Refusing to speak with their mouths full.
And they’re always full.
I’m amazed by how delicately they bite.
Tiny teeth.
More needle than fang.
I’ll live forever at this rate.
But that’s not true.
This is where I’ll die, on the grass.
It will be one of those days I’ve forgotten to be sad.
I’ll see their wings and know it’s the last time because a tear will alert me to the quiet.
Not the ambient hush of far away seas, but clear, like dawn.
The ash of mornings after.
Once again I’ll see you as you are.
You’ll smile a not-sure-why-I’m-smiling smile and the silence will deafen.
Will be the very cause of my death.
Maybe there’s a chance we’re like the arrow.
Flying true, and forever halving the distance.
Never reaching the end.
I smile back.
Stroke your neck.
And together we watch the sky.
The sun sets.
A distant myth of certainty.
Winding down.
