In Waiting I Found

It’s like I cut the string

And subsequently,

The other half of me fell out

Like

My bowels

Sliding out of my ass.

Fell into a bottomless pit.

A pit I dug with every jarring thing I said.

Every sick word I blew in your face

Like a burp of sulfur.

How quickly things have changed is dizzying

Nauseating how it’s spun round and round.

No more matching dresses, no more giggles hidden in tiny fingers. 

Or swapping sticky candy.

Popsicles with the dog.

Summer skin drenched in tap.

Never childish again, youth bottled tight inside but robbed with each breath.

I just want to hold hands once more,

Before I looked so much like mom.

Before the world was so large it swallowed up each murky memory I held onto.

Still a silly little girl. With no time to be one.

I don’t want you to leave,

But I think you must.

Cause I don’t see me in your eyes anymore,

Don’t feel your essence clung to me like a tumour on my back. Don’t carry you around with me anymore.

Swapped my daydreams with bags, that just got too big to make room for you. Too big to carry. 

But how much lighter you were than the burden of existence.

Then the mess that stains my arms.

I miss making room for your pain,

But I’m afraid I stretched too thin.

Please forgive me, 

but in my waiting I found, 

longing for what once was is as fruitless as a cat, 

bounding tirelessly after a laser. 

Stupid with joy in the moments before palming it, but in it’s waiting it finds

That there is nothing there to grasp.