they looked like strong hands.

We woke with leaves in our hair. I don’t remember what month it was, but I know the sun stung us and we both squinted our eyes like we didn’t understand. Your arms were sturdy like the limbs of an old tree I couldn’t ever find. Somewhere past the cemetery, somewhere past the maple that fell during that lightning storm, somewhere past the tall weeds and blackberries, you hid like a secret garden. There were times I just barely caught you disappearing into it, but the entrance closed just as soon as I talked myself into following you.

This is a chalky metaphor for all of things you kept from me. You used to call me out like that, always taking the words I grew like vines across my meaning and unbraiding them, flattening them out. “You are trying to say you’re afraid.” “You wrote this about loss.” “This is a letter to say you’re leaving, isn’t it?” Paring down my branches and just pulling down the fruit, you made my dimensions flat. I let you unknot me and you got lost in the strands.

--jenna2step