Children get it. They know how to grow up. At least I did when I was three feet tall and losing teeth like mad. I wanted to be everything I ever imagined and everything appealed to me. Spin the classroom globe and discover the uncharted land my finger stuck to. Or study storms by hunting them down and never get scared of a little lightning. Or go even further. Cross those cotton ball clouds out into the endless of so much nothing. They call it Space.
How unfair.
There just isn’t enough life for me to live. Even then I knew I would never have enough time.
You wake up one day and something is missing.
Like that windowpane.
Punched out in your drunken stupor the night before.
But the clean sky tells no secrets
and neither do bloody knuckles.
You wake up and it’s gone.
The things getting you out of bed all these mornings.
And the breadcrumbs of broken glass can’t glint in a 5am light.
But they lead you back pacing by the edge of the window.
A confession, not an apology.
I dug in purpose.
I needed your sternum to rip like vellum.
Because from the beginning,
I knew I would use my fingers.
Lifting ribs
soft from years of melting
around the only part of you
I could consistently burn.
And neither of us screams when my hand is around your heart.
Not even in ecstasy
But I say wide-eyed and terrified,
“Look, it’s mine.”
