Pulling Weeds | A Poem

 

I could never have written this when I was in love,

because I was too erratic to settle on any one interpretation of how I felt. 

I embarrass myself,

the way I used to chase lightning with a metal can in my palms.

I imagined that's what attraction was, or had to be.

Attraction is not love but rather a fantasy. Attraction whispered in the void lacking mutual appreciation-

that is easy to be blind to. 

They always say people want what they can't have, that a heart wants what it wants.

Controlling oneself and the emotions harbored in flesh, is always within reach for ourselves

but is never simple or easy.

We stay up late at night crying and lamenting all the haves and have-nots, every tangled emotion we can't seem to unravel,

every knotted harp string making our veins.

We are distracted by the strange music that our heart plays

and we choose to ignore the paths that draw us in,

where we wander down corridors littered with our own vagrant lingering shadows.

It's such a strange reality that we often find ourselves lost in.

I wish it wasn't so easy to drift apart, disconnected self among it all,

no longer able to recall the feeling of fingertips touching fingertips,

or the tingling shiver thrusting itself down your spine when lips touch the warmth of your neck. 

It's hard to be introspective when you're high on the pursuit of fulfilling your own joy 

with written prophecies in leather-bound journals you penned with black ink spilled from the clogged tip of a ballpoint pen.

So much of my days I found myself trotting the unpaved trails winding themselves 

switchback up and down the arched mountain ridges that I thought would lead me to you.

You wrote me a letter once,

and in my mind I tell myself I actually did read it.

You told me that you couldn't fall in love with me,

but then there we were running through tunnels dreaming of futures

as ‘I love yous’ echoed down the concrete walls,

spilling out ahead of us chasing the geese resting on the river twisting its way down from the foothills

and clashing with the lower levels of the valley where we ran together

bickering about who looked better in a beanie

and who could actually go fastest on the longboard and not die.

I haven't told you this but I can still taste your lips,

the way you kissed me on the roadside there in Meridian.

Your hair purple, shining in the low light of summer heat.

You sunk your teeth into my lip and I can still taste the metallic whisper of your breath.

Your arms tight around my waist, I would have skipped the rest of work just to hold on to every minute that I could with you.

When did the late nights

spilling secrets to each other,

turn into something built on non-mutual exchanges. 

Somewhere I am telling a joke about all the futures that I imagined with you.

I secretly know the punch line to this joke is myself but I still find that I am wishing you would tell me if I was alone in this,

I wish that I could know if sometimes you daydreamed too.

I promise I'm pulling out all the weeds from the garden I built,

it's just going to take time,

they've been festering in the unattended spaces,

roots creeping beneath the soil where I thought it all could remain undisturbed. 

Spores have leap-frogged from corner to corner,

but each day I am pulling out another until I can rake the surface clean.

Maybe then I can set perennials in the soil, to eventually overtake and bury all the things that I refuse to let go.