It’s a pocket of sunlight
through an old, weathered window,
dappling warm and inviting on the bedspread,
an easy place to spend a waking dream.
It’s a storm at night,
rumbling thunder singing low and captivating,
as the pitter patter of the rain
echoes in the dancing shadows on the wall.
It’s a warm winter morning
with glittering snow between the trees,
the dusting of white lustrous and fresh
burying the secrets
of all the days before it.
I was buried.
Trapped in my own darkness,
watching slivers of light come and go,
too disoriented and tired to chase them.
Suddenly,
the dirt fell away from my eyes;
realizations became understanding
and the light didn’t seem so far away.
For the first time,
it was easy to stand up
and reach toward the sun.
The house I grew up in and the swing set in the yard, the lid of the sandbox colored with marker to look like a giant pumpkin
in the town I attended college and the nature preserve behind it, the walking trails bursting with the smell of green life under the light of a full moon
the beach near my apartment in Los Angeles, the smell of sunscreen and salt, and the bluffs of Palos Verdes overlooking a sparkling ocean
the crowded, bustling streets of New York City, decorated with lamplight, no stars in sight, and soft snowfall melting in my hair
on Gramma’s porch, where she would tell me about chickadees and sing A Bushel and a Peck, feeding me chocolate covered graham crackers or popsicles
the theater in LA where I spent hours in rehearsal, selling tickets, and partying until the early hours of the morning, the smells of cigarette smoke and sweat hovering in the doorway
a house my aunt no longer owns, where we had dozens of Thanksgivings and Christmases, carving our names in the foam exterior of the air return in the basement
the house my Pépé built, with its glass doorknobs and pine paneled walls, and late summers picking blueberries from the bushes around the pond
in the heart of a friend I haven’t seen in half a decade, who lives in a city I’ve never been to, without whom life hasn’t been the same-
Pieces of my heart lie in memories and loves, lost feelings and burning hopes,
they are the sum of my scattered soul.
How do you describe it?
I asked this of myself,
regarding a feeling I have no words for
The closest I can think of is absence
nothing sticks
Not in my hands, through my eyes,
or on my mind
everything falls free
A sieve
that lets everything slip out
but sadness
