Between Bruises & Blooms

You read something
I wrote years ago

and suddenly
I am back on trial
for a feeling
that already died.

You hold my words
like photographs
from a crime scene.

Look.

Here.

You loved him.

You missed him.

You wanted him.

Yes.

Maybe I did.

Then.

That is what poems do.

They preserve
the weather.

They keep
the storm
long after
the clouds
have moved on.

I have poems
full of grief
for people
I would never
invite back
into my life.

Poems that ache
for rooms
I would rather
burn down
than sleep in again.

Poems that say
I miss you

because once
I did.

Writing it
did not make it eternal.

Pain is not
a marriage vow.

Longing
is not necessarily
a request
for return.

Sometimes
a poem
is where I buried
a version of myself

because keeping her
inside me
hurt too much.

And when you dig her up
and ask
whether I still love
what she loved,

I don't know
how to explain

that she and I
share a name

but not
a heartbeat.

I am allowed
to have had
a before.

I am allowed
to have loved badly.

Loved deeply.

Loved people
who hurt me.

Missed them
after I knew better.

Written about them
while trying
to survive
the absence.

None of that
is happening
to you.

None of that
is happening
now.

So please

stop reading
my archaeology
like prophecy.

Those poems
are fossils.

Proof
that something
once lived there.

Not proof
that it still does.