17 - Hands

Maybe it has been a long time. Inside, I hold the years to me like I once held her, like I once held all of them. Outside, only the parts of my soul I have never asked for, never wanted, feel that wash of time and are washed, a beginning taken away, always gone too soon, always leaving less behind than hoped for, even by me, willing to be rid of it all.

There is a thing that we both have made, she, for reasons I may never know or understand if I did, I because I saw what she was making and despite myself I built it with her.

She is holding my hand again. She chooses when. It seems like it should be this way. Where does my love go when it is not wanted. There are ruins reaching like my own heart to a sky, an imagined heaven, a safe place to lay down again without fear, to hold onto her, to hold onto anyone again. We never made these things. I look up at these beautiful, cold silhouettes but they are not ours. We have always built this other thing, the thing that we hold when we hold each other. The thing that we take with us when we leave. The thing we try to turn eachother into, regret that we aren’t, regret that they aren’t. The thing that will heal and kill us, love us when we lay weeping, bury us until we are dead.