In all honesty

 I was sitting next to his door with my face in my hands when I confessed,

“I keep forgetting to breathe. I keep holding my breath and I have to remind myself to inhale and exhale.”

I think about that often, there’s a lot of secondary thoughts to that one.

But really what I mean to say is that the act of breathing is supposed to be reflexive,

In the way writing is to a poet.

But each night as I remind myself to breathe I try to construct lines of poetry in my mind.

And I find myself restless.

There’s too many eyes, real or perceived.

And the red notebook by my bed still has engravings of letters long given away. etched into the page.

In between practiced breaths and stilled fingertips I imagine those letters combusting, bursting into flames until nothing is left but ash. But Ash. A return of pieces I had given away. 

And even in my imagination there’s still a spark left inside of me.

I want to write something beautiful. Something so aching and familiar that I can recognize the fingerprints in the words,

But when I reach for it I am left grasping in the dark.

I have no metaphors to loosely convey the echoes in my heart. 

All I have is —

I never found any intention in the scars left behind by the men that I have loved.

Cruelty is for childhood. 

Maybe that is why he felt so familiar,

Reminiscent.

The collection of report cards, ribbons, trophies and accolades that never amounted to a mother’s love.

One would think it was natural, like breathing.

I think of the way I stared at my hands on my best friend’s countertop, inches from hers when I said:

“I’m afraid.”

The words tumbled out like red wine from a glass across a white table cloth, I knew that I couldn’t take them back.

I could see the words sinking deeper and deeper in a way that even Martha Stewart would find herself unable to remove.

Somewhere underneath the shame I could feel my mother.

Even so,

I found myself  sitting on his floor with my head in my hands next to a rack of shoes I had lined up neatly on occasion.

I’m reminding myself to breathe when I tell him

“I’ve never really learned how to leave. I don’t know how to leave, only how to be left.”

But to him leaving has become an art and letting him has become practiced — like breathing.

Over a month later I call a love that has long healed.

I want to ask about the act of loving me and leaving me,

But don’t,

I can feel the distance in his tone.

The years that have grown between us,

And my apologies are more natural than the air in my lungs.

I am forced to find comfort in dial tones.

Empty mailboxes.

The gathering of dust.

In between each inhale and exhale,

I take stock of the things every man I’ve loved has left behind, shifting them to replace what has been taken.

There is not enough to fill all the gaps.

Sometimes when I find myself holding my breath — I make a fist until my fingers turn white and then let go. Watching the color run back to my fingers.

Sometimes we have to practice.