With a Match

I once believed in a bay leaf.

I wrote what I wanted
on its dry green body.

A name.
A wish.
Sometimes only a word.

Then I burned it.

I watched the edges curl inward
the leaf blacken
the handwriting vanish
before the wish did.

I have believed in candles.
In numbers appearing twice.
In dreams arriving before dawn.
In songs playing at exactly the wrong moment
and therefore meaning something.

I have asked the dead for signs.

I have left coffee
where no living person would drink it.

But the bay leaf—

I believed in that one.

Maybe because it came from the kitchen.

Because it was ordinary.

Because it had spent its whole life
being dropped into pots
to make something taste deeper
without ever being eaten.

There are things I wrote on those leaves
that never came true.

People who did not stay.

Doors that remained closed.

Bodies that did not heal.

Love that arrived
and still could not belong to me.

I used to wonder
if I had done something wrong.

Used the wrong ink.

Burned it incorrectly.

Asked for too much.

Still—

every once in a while
I open the cabinet
and see the little glass jar.

Dry leaves
pressed against one another.

Quiet.

Waiting.

And for one second
I become the woman I was—

the one who believed
the distance between wanting something
and having it

could be crossed

with a match.