I would tell you this
if I knew how to say it
without naming you.
I watched a leaf burn.
Quickly—
green, then black.
I almost blew out the flame
to keep it from aching.
But I didn’t.
I watched it whelp
in its own cracking
two small red places
burning inside the dark.
And I thought of you.
Not because you are the fire.
Because I could have stopped it.
I didn’t.
Once I found your laughter
inside an empty glass.
I put the glass to my mouth
and tasted nothing.
Still, I washed it
and put it back in the cabinet.
I did that for months.
Sometimes I took it down
just to see if anything had changed.
Nothing ever had.
But I knew your mouth had been there.
Somehow, that was enough.
One night I held it against my ear.
Your voice, maybe.
A breath.
There was nothing.
Just the glass.
Just my own breathing
coming back to me.
After a while,
I stopped taking it down.
Years later, I found it behind the plates.
I picked it up.
For one second,
I heard you laugh.
I put the glass to my lips again.
And this time—
Salt.
Not yours.
Mine.
If I could
I’d paint you a sky
low enough to reach.
A sky without distance.
Why?
I don’t know.
Maybe because I’ve spent
an embarrassing amount of my life
making myself comfortable
inside things that weren’t good for me.
Love, especially.
The kind that asks you
to become smaller
so it can stay.
The kind you keep calling love
because you honestly don’t know
what else to call
the thing you can’t leave.
Maybe that’s why
I wanted the sky so low.
Not because I wanted to reach you.
Or maybe I did.
I don’t know.
Maybe I just wanted
for once
something I loved
to be close enough
that reaching for it
didn’t hurt.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
Maybe I’ve spent too much of my life
loving things
that required me
to hurt myself
just to get close.
I want to live on a mountain
where the mornings smell like wet stone
pine split open by rain
and cold earth.
Where the windows stay open
and the curtains move
even when no one is touching them.
No phone beside the bed.
No little red numbers
telling me who needs me.
Just a blue bicycle
leaning against the house
its frame cold with morning
one tire resting in the grass.
I would leave before the sun
came all the way over the ridge.
The road would still be damp.
My tires would press
dark half-moons into it.
There would be fog
caught low between the trees
and birds somewhere above me
I could hear
but not see.
I would ride past wildflowers
past fences silver with dew
past places with no names.
The air would taste green.
It would sting my face
and fill my lungs
until there was no room left
for anything else.
No voices.
No unfinished conversations.
No one asking
where I am.
Only the small metallic click
of the bicycle chain
the soft crush of gravel
my breath
going in and out.
I would have a small house
higher up the mountain.
A wooden table.
A white cup.
A bed beside an open window.
At night
the sheets would smell like wind.
Sometimes rain
would begin in the dark
and I would wake
to water tapping the roof
and the whole mountain breathing
outside my window.
I think I would sleep differently there.
Deep enough
to forget myself.
And every evening
I would ride home
while the light disappeared
from the road.
The trees would turn black first.
Then the mountain.
Then my hands
on the handlebars.
And for a few minutes
there would be nothing in the world
but the blue bicycle beneath me
the smell of rain coming
and one small light
burning in the window ahead.
Mine.
I think
I could be happy there.
I have spent so much time
trying to become
someone
who didn’t love you.
Nothing changed.
Except
the person
trying.
I have never told a man
I loved him first.
Not because I didn’t.
Because I believed
love should recognize itself
before it had to be named.
I thought if it was true
it would arrive on your lips
before it ever reached mine.
Then you happened.
For the first time
I wanted to say it.
I carried those words
like water in my mouth
afraid that if I spoke
I would lose
both the water
and the thirst.
So I said nothing.
Instead, I loved you like the wind
the wind that finds your face
before you have opened your eyes
that moves through your hair
and catches in your breath
leaving you to wonder
what your heart remembered
that your mind could not name.
It hurts to love you
because the feeling is real
and has nowhere to go.
No place in your life
where it can remain.
So I carry it into mornings
into songs I cannot finish
into every quiet place
that still makes room for you.
I have questioned everything else
my judgment
my timing
the meaning of your silence.
But never this.
Never the love.
I only wanted one impossible thing:
for you to know
that somewhere in this world
you were loved
by a woman who had never told a man
she loved him first
and still could not bring herself
to tell you.
So if, on some ordinary morning
the wind finds your face
lingers for just a moment
and catches in your breath
let it be enough.
Let it carry the words
I could not.
I have been thinking about the terrible fact
that people can become unreachable
while still being alive.
There should be another word for this.
Death is too complete.
This is something else.
This is knowing someone is somewhere
washing their hands,
looking for their keys,
standing in front of an open refrigerator
deciding what they want—
and not knowing
if you cross their mind at all.
And why do I torture myself this way?
As if I cannot see myself in a mirror.
As if I need someone else’s eyes
to tell me I am still here.
I stand in front of myself every morning.
Same face.
Same mouth.
Same body that has carried me
through every terrible thing
I was certain would finish me.
And still,
one person’s silence
can make me question
everything I know about myself.
This embarrasses me.
Not because I loved.
I have never been ashamed of that.
But because I keep returning to the silence
as if it contains an answer.
Was I too much.
Was I not enough.
Was it my body.
Did something in me become disappointing
once it became real.
Look at me.
I want to say this to myself.
Look at yourself.
You have a mirror.
You have lived inside this body
for more than half a century.
You know what it survived.
You know how many times
it had to become yours again.
And still,
I stand there
looking directly at myself
and somehow
I am waiting for someone
who is not here
to tell me
what he sees.
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.
I want to kiss you
because silence
has become too crowded
inside me.
Maybe
if I reached
your mouth
I could finally learn
the grammar
of everything
you refuse
to say.
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