Temporary Weather

I have loved men
the way rain loves old cities

completely
recklessly
without asking permission
to flood every quiet street inside them

And in return
I became fluent in absence

I learned how to survive on fragments

There were years
I mistook longing for purpose

Love should not leave a woman
feeling invisible
inside her own life

And sometimes I wonder

was it my exterior
that kept them from seeing me clearly?

The woman they desired
was never the whole woman

Perhaps beauty has its own loneliness
Its own terrible distance

They saw the face
the body
the perfume entering a room before I did

but not the trembling tenderness beneath it all

Not the woman
trying to survive another ordinary heartbreak gracefully

Not the exhaustion
Not the depth
Not the terrifying sincerity
with which I loved

Maybe some men only know
how to approach a woman’s surface

And maybe I became so luminous outwardly
that my soul stood quietly behind the light
waiting to be noticed

Now the house is quieter

My sons are grown
Their laughter lives mostly in photographs now
in closets filled with the soft archaeology of motherhood

And I

I no longer panic at distance

I no longer chase what retreats

I have learned
that some people only know how to love in glimpses
beautifully
sincerely even
but briefly

like lightning illuminating an entire ocean

I do not hate them for it anymore

But I no longer build homes
inside temporary weather

These days
I sit beside myself more gently

I let the dishes wait
I let evening settle slowly onto the furniture

And sometimes
late at night
in the black reflection of the kitchen window

I catch sight of the woman I became

still soft
still carrying oceans
still dangerous with love

but no longer standing at the harbor
begging ships to choose her shore

There is a difference now
between loneliness
and peace

I finally learned it
in the quiet after everyone left

And God—

what a beautiful thing it is
to become your own safe place
after spending a lifetime
asking the world to let you in