A rustled leaf

I have thought about the small season in my life of meeting you, the choices I made, the growing up I had to do. Pain in my gut from getting over interactions with other people, trying to be open in this poetic way and feeling this stark cataclysmic introduction that was ultimately unilateral.

Poetry came out of the bud of the impetus and a varied poetry came out of the stark re-creation and infiltration of the bombastic artistic, psychic, and sexual energy of our brief and truncated exchange. The later poetry was a one-sided fertility to which I regret impinging upon your dignity and autonomous boundary. I was childish and self-loathing in copious self-obsession. 

People grow, some slower. Sorry for pissing all over the living room on this one, whatever I wrote it came from the bent paper clip of the heart, the blood-noodle soaked in the pot too long, vulnerability in orchid petal bloomed, fallen, and dried to a countertop rushed into an inevitable olfactory souvenir. 

I remember your aroma and what was once deleterious now ameliorates in the white pillow snow, the crescent curve in the river, the rise on the levee and that quiet space where I know I am a better man for having met you in the exercise and muscles for what it means to forgive myself, to not demand permission to declare that a moment matters, but to live in one’s imperfect truth to humbly attempt love. That is a bravery I once snuffed in regret, I now let breathe in the open air of rustling leaves.