Birch Trees

I clutch at the magazines, the letters, the newspaper cutouts I look through your old notebooks tracing over rows and rows of numbers a library catalog, a stamp l’m looking for something more personal something that could make me feel you again there are birch trees everywhere you look I missed them, I longed for them almost as much as I longed for the time when you would hug me, pat me on the head and call me by a new name every time I saw you it would be something different it’s been years, but I only just became ready to take this step, to forgive and forget I prayed you get relief and you got it but now I understand why they wanted to keep you for a little longer why they wouldn’t let you go I stare at the birch tree, right next to your old apartment building and wonder if you would stare at it too you probably didn’t, you didn’t care for them like I do you’d just pass by and get home to your books the books that lay in my room now the books I grab, I flip through in hopes of proving that you had once existed that you weren’t just writing on a page