You see, there was a promise I had to keep.
I was straying South from the river-side again.
I was walking to the edge of where he once held me like
a promise and I held myself, back.
I wanted to be gone. I wanted to be
collarbone. This child-like lie, once broken, now a ridge of
jagged calamity stuck in apology. Things never happen the
way we say it happened. But that doesn’t mean the pain wasn’t
real. That doesn’t mean that for one moment, everything was
on fire and I was screaming. I was stuck. I was two years’ worth
of wanting, of waiting, of pushing my body out to sea and hoping
it’d come back to me.
And I can’t tell you all the ways that I have
made myself a lighthouse for other people’s storms. But I still carry
their salt. I still carry their thunder. After the clouds have cleared and
the damage is swept away, I just wanted to be remembered for the ways
that I have saved.
I was straying South from the river-side again.
I was walking to the edge of where he once held me like
a promise and I held myself, back.
I wanted to be gone. I wanted to be
collarbone. This child-like lie, once broken, now a ridge of
jagged calamity stuck in apology. Things never happen the
way we say it happened. But that doesn’t mean the pain wasn’t
real. That doesn’t mean that for one moment, everything was
on fire and I was screaming. I was stuck. I was two years’ worth
of wanting, of waiting, of pushing my body out to sea and hoping
it’d come back to me.
And I can’t tell you all the ways that I have
made myself a lighthouse for other people’s storms. But I still carry
their salt. I still carry their thunder. After the clouds have cleared and
the damage is swept away, I just wanted to be remembered for the ways
that I have saved.