The Girl Who Lived Twice

2024 Poetry Project — #11

Photo by Vasily Nemchinov on Unsplash

i ask you so many times
why you haunt me
on the page —
and it’s a second life

maybe someday i'll become
the girl who lived twice
all because she penned
so many stories in her wake

i wanted you, it’s true —
but i didn’t want some risk
of a happily ever after
gone by midnight’s kiss

princesses and witches,
dragons and thieves —
oh, maybe i’m the one
lost in this scenario

i ask of you again and again
why the tide is making me ill —
and why the happenstance
makes me crumble at every notion

tomorrow i’ll be fine again,
but today the words linger —
and i sit in a backward world
where i’m asking for moonbeams

i sit in silence, quake with it —
and i wander in a labyrinth
of my own silent making
every single day