hillsides.

A boy told me once
I would die on any hill –
and, though I knew he
fought not from a loving
vantage point, I wrestled
with this ghost, these
phantom accusations,
long after he’d gone.

When I see him now, he is
blurry, can’t remember a
line of his face or the
dark look in his eye, and
I know this is survival,
strong-willed erasure,
pushing him to the periphery,
a footnote, a forgotten scar.

A compassionate heart is prone
to forgiveness, so I armor
mine with a mind unforgetting –
in sharp detail, the way he’d
leave bruises over macarons or
ketchup packets, bite my hand
for talking to him and then for
using my phone instead, kick my
ribs for taking him to a diner I
loved because he didn’t,
what a cruel and lonely lover
handing out cruel and
lonely love.

Exhale the anger and indignation,
everything comes out like smoke,
my body a housefire, and
time smoldered fury to ashes, I
pressed up on my eaves, relenting,
there have been so many
gentle rains since, so much
ivy crawling up what was gray.

I don’t long to die on any hill, I
long to live on one, to
plant my feet and reach outward,
pull someone up and make
a home of this world, where
what is beautiful outlasts what
leaves scar tissue, where
we see something soft and
protect it fiercely from reckless hands.