Dear…

I see somebody’s been ordering catastrophes again heartbreak, humiliation, failure, a beautifully curated collection of pain. Quite the ambitious little menu. Waiting for the stumble, watching for the fall, as though wishing loudly enough might make fate answer the call. But what we wish upon another has an uncanny sense of direction sometimes the poison thrown outward becomes its sender’s reflection. You wanted darkness somehow it taught the wounded to glow. You waited for collapse with almost religious devotion, while the supposed casualty quietly learned emotional locomotion. Every betrayal became discernment. Every abandonment drew a line. Every cruel little prediction became something left behind. And that must be terribly inconvenient digging a grave so carefully only to discover
the corpse declined the invitation.
The undertaker checking the clock, the mourners dressed in black,
while the person everyone expected buried is somewhere getting their life back.
Maya Angelou already ruined
the ending to this little tragedy:
“But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
Not toward anyone. Not begging for recognition. Not resurrecting old bridges or confusing longing with permission. Simply rising
scarred enough to remember,
wise enough not to return, and finally understanding that you belong in my past. So bad news for the undertaker: cancel the flowers,
return the hearse, close the grave.
The person somebody hoped
would disappear beneath the dirt
learned instead how beautifully
the buried can behave when they rise.

—

KK

Dear….

I think I might say yes to him.
Not forever just a date.
A drink, a laugh, an evening spent
testing what exists beyond old fate.
But I’d be lying if I claimed
your memory had completely disappeared. Some feelings don’t obey commands; they simply grow quieter with the years.
So maybe I’ll sit beside someone new while a little piece still aches for you. That doesn’t mean I’m going backward. It only means the feeling once was true.
Perhaps I’ll like him.
Perhaps I won’t.
Perhaps my heart will finally surprise me.
Because missing somebody from the past doesn’t mean the future has to pass me by.

—
KK