I See Myself In Her
-For Melissa
She asked me how long does it take to heal
In what time allotment, exactly, will it take
For forgetfulness to become a reoccurrence
A blessing for the haunted
Memories that can be bleached off
White sundresses put on in order to frolic
On beaches with waves washing away
Each grain of him
How long did it take for you to get over him?
Days? Weeks? A month or two?
Hope shining like a naïve flashlight during the eclipse of hardest times
Beaming on me, waiting for an answer
How could I tell her, honestly,
That it took me years
To overlook the smallest details of his smile
How he only has one dimple on the right side of his face
The way his hands felt, every line and crevice of his fate
Thought to fit mine perfectly?
How could I tell her, truthfully
That no matter how many times I washed my sheets
I would catch the scent of him at 3:45 am, sometimes
Or hear his faint tapping on my window
When it’s really just, my imagination
That she’ll spend months waiting for him to text her
Call her, email her, think of her
When really he’s lying in bed with another women but she refuses
To believe that it’s over
Or how my heart still aches, just a little
When I hear he asked about me
Or that he can no longer say my name out loud to our mutual friends
Could I muster up the courage to explain to her
That it took me 2 years, 3 months, and 16 days to realize
The ugliness of being pathetic
It was time to rise up and take the lead
Time to forget all romantic casualties
It’s only yesterday that I found myself straining to remember
His faults, forgetting the man and only remembering the hero
How could I break her heart for the second time by telling her
The truth?
She stood there patiently waiting for me
To pull a metaphor out of a hat, something poetic
Comforting, beautiful, reassuring
I see myself in her
Wanting people to lie to us to see the Zen in ourselves
It’s like we’re all in the same play with the same roles but different names
It takes time for each actor to fulfill the destiny
Others emphasize while others downplay
Moments in time
|