Avalanches

Blank page, blank days, sometimes I think there's a blank expression on my face but it's only a front, you must know that by now, it's all a mirage. When I walked into that bar that night, when we sat at the edge of the ocean and felt the weight of everything, when you slept a long quiet night without nightmares, that was real. He says it's in your eyes, softly, but I know what's there and it doesn't mean a thing. I'm a writer, you know, I can make all of this up and you wouldn't know: that's the beauty of art.

The ground thaws more by the day now, I stop along the river to photograph every new flower. I don't know what I'll use the pictures for. Perhaps I'm trying to gather the riches, to never lose them. But the truth is you can lose anything and nothing can be done about it. The ground thaws more by the day, and the glacier in my chest with it. How sweet to breathe, to run my fingers along my skin and feel it again, to remember joy, remember hope. And yet, with the spring floods come every other emotion hidden in ice, comes every sad memory, every shard of abandoned excitement, every scar my body built just to survive. I know these wounds are mine, and mine alone.

So I keep the flowers close. Pad the wounds with petals that won't last the month.

The truth is,
You wake up with yourself.