here & nowhere else

Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand.

I want you, Love, ugly and wild and real. Give me               your hand, and I’ll reach, Babe, I’ll grip.

Nobody is in love with me and everything is still warm. Still soft. Still rosewater and a typewriter ribbon. Still cookbooks and salt air and sheer black lingerie. Still red lipstick. Still mostly kind. Still often uncomplicated. Still mints at the bottom of my purse, hair held back, pulse thumping through skin. Still sweet tea in a pitcher on the kitchen counter, a cold glass with three lemon slices, a full ice cube tray. I don’t understand how it’s all so light.

How do I carry this fullness when what burns is its absence

It was one of the reasons I loved him : for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person I was when I was with him, for what it was he allowed me to be.

I don’t know what to do with my heart.

Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.