With Mirei

I saw her alone not even trying to hold back tears

She was all curled into herself,

and my face contorted briefly

into her

and I learned that when you feel pain, you become circular,

wrapping around yourself like gauze on an open wound,

Trying to avoid any tarnished

self

I crack open my chest and fit her inside. I’ll find

a place for her brokenness, and then it will be

both of us. Closer, human, whole

We echo in tandem: I know that

Feeling

- Dedicated to a girl I knew and left alone during a moment when she should have been held close