By Cherstin Haga
The pavement was hot and rough
against the bare soles of my feet
and, in my hand, a letter. The
glare from the stark-white paper bounced to my eyes,
burning the impression of my words against the backs of
my retina, and it was my handwriting, as I’m
writing this now, with
black pen, typical, letters sharp and precise. The
paper had been cut into a triangle, covered in words I’d
not yet written. I told myself the end of you
before I knew the truth.
You were a thorn, rigid in beauty, alive in pain,
and I would scratch my surface on
your side, leaving me torn and broken.
We’d hold each other’s hand, promises of together
blown over thick, green landscape until they reached
the place where the rocks began, our whispers bouncing off
the jagged terrain, splitting promises into nonsensical ideas,
things that we’d never say out loud.
You would become an anchor, hard, heavy, not to hold me
steady in a sea of uncertainty, not shelter in a storm, but a
weight that would never let me rise. Water would billow my hair
in the rhythm of your wave, your tide, face swollen reflecting
only the light you’d let reach me, and I gave up gasping for
air a long time ago.
I held my letter, my words cold and immovable on the clean
paper, and I remembered how to walk inside, one foot after the other.
I walked to the shelf in the bedroom that held our wooden memory
box, and when I lifted the lid, you were gone.
Cherstin is a thinker, part-time student, writer, full-time mom.