toria vd Poet Free verse

Breathless

The mind is an accomplished forger, 
of course; 
it often paints a second world over this one, 
and asks, 
politely, 
for us to inhabit it. 

The sky is a sheet of blue paper pinned above the city.
The trees sway,
as trees do, 
a shade of green that is left unknown.
The streets continue their long business 
of leading both everywhere,
and nowhere. 

I feel it is disgustingly simple to just say,
at times,
nothing feels real.

Meanwhile, your absence proliferates,
and I find it folded inside ordinary things:
the pause before sleep,
the empty chair,
the hour of evening
when the light softens
and every shadow briefly resembles you.

Maybe simply thinking of you would be manageable. 

Instead, you occur to me
the way the sky always exists over a mountain range;
neither asking permission, nor offering an end.

The grief is far too large to carry through the narrow 
doorway of my days, 
so perhaps my mind is performing a small miracle
by draining the blood from my world. 

Colors seep recklessly,
distances expand;

my own voice reaches me 
without certainty it is even mine. 

I stand before the mirror,
and I realize how exhuasted I am from fleeing. 

From running.

I run from the memory of your hands —
the ones that healed me,
the ones that broke me further.

I run from the guilt of leaving you,
though it was only done to save myself.

I run from the terrible possibility
that now forgiving the suffering you caused me 
in fact changes nothing

and that missing you
will not bring you closer again. 

I do abandon myself,
maybe as punishment from leaving you. 

Though, 
I know it was what I had to do. 
That is the unbearable thing.

I leave my body occupied,
my heart beating,
the world flattened, harmless, far away

but every time I attempt to flee myself, 
every road bends back to 

your name
your face
your absence. 

The terror of feeling small,
afraid of you,
praying each night you would finally stop the hurting.

Of the fracture in your eyes,
the desperate plea of a person who just needed someone
to stay, and wait for the storm to pass.

The echo of your laugh, the texture of my cry—
and the simple tragedy that we could never
hold each other just right.

Suddenly,
there is nowhere left to run.

The false sky hangs above me.
The paper trees tremble.
The forgery begins to peel.

I reach for you—
and find only air

because the one I love
and the one who destroyed me
are beautifully, terribly, the same.

So I am left
at the edge of myself,

breathless.

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