Everything Around Me is Singing

The blue left my hair the moment
you left me
the times we grew in and apart
full of morning promise
I never knew you at all

Or rather, I forgot myself
Had I known my own skin I would
have shadowed someone else
or remained still like an oak
alone in a glade

I am a stoic
(you wanted me fragile)
and I am okay
(you thought I was frail)
I repair my dreams
(There is not much to heal)
I lie, I lie, I lie
I burn with gratitude still

Hopeless and hopeful
photographs litter my floor
clothes ready and packed, my Van Gogh off the wall and cracked
Allow my music to sing of me instead
creased letters and charred ashes

You blind me, the love of forgetting
begrudgingly sighing, I envision you laughing
everyday and every evening
I see you laughing

So like a fawn, I am laying in this glade
my hair coiled around some roots
and cicadas perched on my elbows
fingers entwined and silence is missing
everything around me is singing

Memories that matter and memories that don't
I dream in drawings
You are now just a sketchy line, half-erased
But somewhere in a folder
is a portrait I will hang forever
by the door

Today I feel beautiful
Gorgeous in my emptiness
as though the butterfly beneath
the cocoon unravelled
Oh why aren't you here to see me?
Why am I beautiful in secret
Why am I a vision in silence?
It makes me sad,
sadder than you know,
sadder than you've ever seen

Place myself in certain light
and imagine you laughing.

My shutters are blue like a flower
from head to toe I am wrapped
I open them and blink slowly
The deer in my yard is staring warmly
you are a ghost call in a guitar-strum backyard

and like a doe, I am sleeping in this glade
my feet now rooted to the earth
the butterflies adorning my hair and opening their wings
my heart is entwined and silence is missing
everything around me is singing.