let's write poems for showers again this year

Thumbing through words of almost six years ago,
me, gingerly handling them as if the oils from my skin might melt them into the stuffed air of my apartment.
Love of a different kind for a man of a different meaning to me now,
angst and still (always, from hindsight), naïveté, but

I had so much weight in my fingers then.

When did it all slip?
My mother said our family has genetically shallow fingerprints but I don't know if that has anything to do with my grip--
maybe it has more to do with why I punch these walls, because an open hand leaves no mark,

no history.

Kindness is all well and good, and compassion, and those imprints stay on the petals of each bloom I am planted closest to,
but I have never moved past the feeling of wanting to be in the bouquet, or the single rose in the vase on the table,
or the wild one left to climb up the brick walls in a vine.
Legacy is such a difficult outcropping to sail past.

I know I will likely start to get so busy again as soon as it starts,
but let's try this again.

If we're going to be further distanced--isolated--
it will give me another code to crack;
another wooded trail for my fingertips to race down,
chasing that beauty, that treasure, never catching it, but satisfied nonetheless
once I am run out of breath each day.

Saving all my breath for this next marathon,
Love,
Me.