on letting go.

Winter found my bones early this year. I’ve been shivering for a week straight, standing on my front porch wishing the sun would light a fire under my skin and make me warm again. I didn’t think I would cry this much, but every morning the salt clinging to my eyelashes greets the day, and I am trying so hard to just wipe it away. We agreed on this: goodbye. But my body’s got a memory that my muscles keep and there are places where you plucked the rocks out of me. They found their way back and now I’m heavy with all the weight I learned to love without. My fingers don’t want to uncurl themselves from the promises we tucked under each other’s loose edges, the places I let you pick apart with your quiet Latin fire—the parts of me you pried upwards. I wanted to keep us safe, close at hand and unchanging, but you’re not mine. I wrapped my winter heart up inside your summer bones and found a home; now I’m cold. Crying into the bend of my elbow like the world won’t know and I can trick sleep into finding me, I was wrong. You were wronged. And I will miss you at my right hand, the gaps you filled, the months you spent, the parts of me I let you keep. I said “my heart is breaking, Bird” and you stuttered something chaotic but beautiful, like bird wings, fluttering.
--jenna2step