they don’t feel the burn until they’re ash.
My palms damp, I shuffle through the shoebox, stopping when I find a poem long enough to fill the entire lined page.
I’m sorry
I hide it,
the times that I’m weak.
I’m sorry
I smile
all the way through it.
I’m sorry
I can’t show you
the way that I ache.
I know you don’t get it,
and I know that you want to.
But this kind of cut
doesn’t bleed.
It’s a million sharp edges
bursting inside me
and cloaking my lungs
in toxic ash.
When I inhale,
I choke on them.
When I exhale,
they contaminate all that’s
beautiful.
So I’m not sorry you don’t get it.
But I love that you want to.
Maybe that’s why
it’s better this way.
My heart thrums a mile a minute, my breath coming out in a rush. This can’t be right. There’s no way. But as I trace my fingernail over her writing, I know it is. These words came from my mom. A part of her I’ve never known.
My fingers tremble as I place the poem carefully back in her shoebox, reaching for another, then another.
