Impossible

it is just a little bit absurd how little I was when I left you.
walking around like half an ant, waiting to sweat out the toxins of you
and I am still trying to remember what I felt like before we became
the thing that changed my mind. I was so ready to be unsure
for the rest of my life, and then you happened to me
and I brought you in closer than a dark secret and breathed you
for too many days and nights. you are thicker than blood in the air
and you filled my lungs just as fast. I became one of those people
I used to pass on the street, who look so certain, and I knew
they were being held by someone lovely at night. your lips
must have been drugged. they altered my vision of the future
and my sense of self. I was so ready to be unsure forever, but
I changed my mind because of you. and then I changed it back
because of you. and I have looked in so many directions for answers
that my neck has broken and rebuilt itself a hundred times over
nothing looks the same from that cracked-spine angle
sideways and bleeding all the love I had stored up for you
I made myself into a patchwork quilt of all the things I thought you wanted
little threads fraying at my edges where I couldn't quite keep myself
together the way the pattern said I should. but I unravelled
long ago enough that I should be able to gather my fabric up
and sew myself into something new by now. somehow I still sit
shaken and alone, pushing and running when something good
shows up on the horizon. my reflection even laughs at me sometimes.
calls me weak. the mirror has become an enemy, and I cover it
with white sheets when the sun goes down. I heard once
that some people do that when a loved one has died.
it seems appropriate, mourning the loss of the version of you
I thought existed. you were a ruse that I never saw coming.
and I still hear echoes of skepticism from our friends --
I know they whisper behind me and they wish I could take one step
forward, just one single step, but instead I write poems about you
five months later. we have been apart for almost as long
as we were together. and yet I still look like a shadow of myself
and I still talk about you at parties, and I still wait for you
to drift out to sea and find some other town to pillage
and I feel like the only one left behind on the shore
while you've sailed away, and taken the best parts of me with you
I always thought I was a mermaid, but I know if I dove
into the ocean I would only follow the wake of your ship.
I know it is time for me to unclench you from my fists
I know it is time to stretch my neck and learn to swim
I know enough time has passed that I should remember
how to breathe again by now, even with you nearby
and I know that nothing
has ever felt
so impossible