How To Stay Wild

On the way home from work, my fingers itch.

I am trying not to call you. I know

that if I do, you’ll answer on the second ring,

eager and soft.

And darling, to be candid:

I want better for us both.

In the cool dusk of the ride back to my silent apartment,

my eyes prickle with unshed heat.

I tell my therapist that I will never again

take a lover who does not celebrate everything wild in me,

who fails to put their faith in my feral.

I tell my mother that I tried my best with you.

That you stopped growing with me, somewhere in the freeze

of our last desperate winter,

started to choke the wild

right out of me.

I don't mean violence here.

Rather,

I tell my best friend that it was as though

you’d wanted my edges blurred.

Like the spill of ink on my shoulders and the scent of summer lightning in my hair

was suddenly too potent – distasteful, even. (In contrast: the night you first laid your hands in awe upon me;

told me you’d been looking for me

since as long as you could remember.

Only magic until I'm acquired.)

On the way home from work, I give myself exactly one love song,

one that I know will make me think of you, and probably cry

more than a little.

The way I hold the warm leather of the steering wheel changes. The way

you used to hold me

is becoming a memory.

And the grief I feel climbs into my throat,

cloven-footed,

and I let it –

I invite it in: here,

take my last thin strand of breath,

render me sharp and blind.

I am no mother,

no wife; nothing soft or preordained.

The harsh beat of the reminder: you were never built

for cowards.

The apartment is still standing, somehow.

There’s no real emergency. The death of you and I

felt serrated, an attack,

but really,

it was liberation

however bloody,

however rank the cauterized flesh.

I’m an animal newly escaped from the gentle deadly press of apathy,

limping but alive.

I stand in my kitchen, the cat winding around my ankles,

listening to the tap run, steel-padded, into the teapot. And I think:

Thank you for this freshly broken heart.

Thank you for the empty bed,

for the microwaved dinner for one,

for the quiet breath of the last time you hung your head and told me

the truth,

for the years of magic rescued.

I will sleep tonight, a thick coat of elderberry tea on my tongue,

and wake to the mutter of the cat splayed content on your pillow;

maybe the only being here who’s known from the beginning

that you never really saw me.