Chelsea Edgett

Untitled

It’s the dirty of first snow melting.

Dead trees that shimmer with cold manifested,

Attached and holding on like the hair on his chest.

Log homes, layered clothes.

My things still smell of woodsmoke and wine,

Scent-wrapped,

Like the heat did my body on a brown tweed couch

In the basement of a tired town.

He held himself tightly,

And despite my mind wanting,

I didn’t move to make him stop.

So he did.

That’s when I found lines along muscles

and shared space between thoughts.

That’s maybe even why.

It’s funny how strength and pain occupies the same,

In tissue and backbones that carry each other.

In touching one, I felt the other.

We let go like this;

Like words on the wings of paper aeroplanes,

lost in the wind.

The pages unfold to blankness,

drift to settle against my skin.

I left them unwritten.

Stayed respectful of the clean unseen,

At peace in the ice or the fire.

There’s much to be said for the present’s desire—

Nothing more, nothing less.

Although, truth be told, it was hard to go,

To pass on the act of intervening.

So I thought of all the love I have,

and sent some words to give it back,

and sighed the happy kind for my sweet and simple life.

I’m still,

Alone,

And everything is beautiful.