the birds came back after winter
and asked about you
and i told them that
i gave the dream back
and so they left, their feathers fluttering and
giving the sky a new voice
and their hearts believing just a little less
and i carried that guilt
knowing they lost something and i was the one
to take it from them.
you’re so gone, you’re another life.
but if it counts for anything, you were a good life.
all your seasons were warm and things grew.
when you didn’t eventually show up,
i pictured you on a train somewhere,
sleeping through your stop and ending
up in an unfamiliar city.
or else on an airplane landing in a time zone where you belong
to a different tomorrow.
my heart is sleepless now and so it can’t dream.
it’s okay if you can’t forgive that. i can’t either.
i even lost the sky
and then a country and then another
and i was a native nowhere and my heart was fluent
in no language
and words began to fail me
so i failed them back and it didn’t help
and i tried to draw a new map where the people i loved
could be found easily
but it led me elsewhere
and i forgave that too
and then tried to forget the word for homesick
in every language
and erased it from everywhere,
even the poems
not yet written.
which maybe means the poems were kinder
but not as honest
so they hurt in new ways
that were crueler
and others noticed and saw through it
and filled in the blanks
which means the ghosts became impossible to move
and impossible to ignore
so i gave them names because it was the least they deserved
and i called after them and fed them well
and so their haunting got bigger
but i couldn’t blame them
and i was kind
and good
and they took it as permission.
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