If I Stay

2024 Poetry Project — #7

Photo by A. L. on Unsplash

i wait on you to speak,
as if that was ever on the table —
not when you’re standing in line
for somewhere you don’t want to be.

i ask you no questions anymore
because i stopped feeling the bruise
of what it meant for my heart
to ache as i crossed your lines.

i sit in a little toy box of my own making
and wonder where the world sits in it —
and i wonder about you so much
that it’s like a second life i’m living.

if i stay —
oh, what if instead i travel wayward,
bent on some mission of absolution —
a fury road of epic proportions for just me?

i beseech you quietly,
and you stopped unnerving me
with your whispers between the lines
even though all i want is to know you true.

all the poetry is for you when it bleeds out
like a vein tapped for bloodletting —
and some sphere of motion is all I have
as times sinks on and on, the hourglass solvent.