The Shortest Goodbye Is a Name

Poem

Digital art by author

It’s been a while
since I leaned over your shoulder

and said,
Let me go,

and write myself new,
with another beginning.

You tell me Soon,
and my cry for help

turns raging for love,
a fast dream betraying everything we are.

Go back to sleep, you breathe,
tracing a match on my back

in our high-ceilinged bedroom.
That’s where the things left unsaid reach.

I’m thinking about moving
in some other version of this night

and taking only a wishbone;
this life

like the ghost of a lover
poking its head into the bedroom

to say goodbye
before leaving for good.

What’s safe about this space,
arched and withered

and so close to breaking?
How long can I live here, sustain it with my backbone?

I thought I wanted to be
the kind of place no one would leave,

a body made hospitable.
But every door I held open for another

was a way out,
not a way in.