I have been weeping too long
for this to be anything but an end;
my cheeks are carved like sandstone
and I am as un-beautiful as I have ever been.
I know how to leave, now.
It is a lesson built slowly across the years,
in my curved grip on the wheel
and the indented crescents of my palms.
I have been learning with every word I swallowed,
every silent breath I dared to take
without you.
Today, I must say this:
that the footprints I leave on this world
won’t be inside yours, or behind them, or beneath them.
There is nothing left between us but the empty sigh of sand dunes,
the cross-hatched trace of white across my past.
And that, too, shall fade.
Author notes
there is nothing left
but frozen words,
double yellow lines
and skin too raw
for touch."
-aanika
A contest entry
- prose & free verse by sideways hourglass.
550 points, ended February 23, 10 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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This is beautiful. I felt it.
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