The moon spends every night borrowing someone else’s light. It never calls itits own. Only we do. The mountain never claims the snow. It simply wears it for a while. Every spring, the trees receive their leaves. Every autumn, they give them back. They hold them through sunlight, storm, and summer, then loosen their grip when the season asks. Love wasn’t something I lost. It was something I was trusted with for a while. We were not Evergreen. But that doesn’t mean we were any

I thought veils were lifted to reveal a future. I was wrong. Sometimes they’re lifted to reveal the truth. Devotion, it seems, doesn’t always receive permission to stop. For a while, I kept waiting for the current to change its mind. But you cannot reason with a stream. You can ask it to dry, but it will always remember downhill without forgetting where it came from. You can ask the beaver to dam it all for you, but that won’t make him start building. Maybe that is healing: a

Maybe you mistook me for a pebble, meant to be skipped. Now that you’ve cracked me wide open, can you see I was always a geode? My toothbrush still lives beside yours. Because every time I left, I never imagined not returning. I told you I was a boomerang. You never disclosed to me that you were a frisbee. I wonder whether you’ve moved it. Or whether it’s still waiting better than I am. Your silence feels like a reckoning. The bird I gave you still uses your shoulder as a le

Once, you asked what food you were to me. I said oatmeal. You looked almost offended. You heard boring. I couldn't find the words to explain that comfort was the highest compliment I knew. Oats are hard until warmth teaches them another language. You were the first thing my body reached for every morning, the way I broke my fast. You were warmth arriving slowly. Once, you told me we were never the most passionate couple. I never thought companionship was something to apologiz

I skipped town. Not because there was somewhere else to be. Only somewhere I couldn't. I left trying to do right. No wonder it all feels so wrong. Finally, a gas station where nobody knows whose future fiancée I was. My rabbits never ask where we are, nor where you went. I keep telling myself this trip is for me and I almost believe it. Homesick. But where is home anymore? Somewhere between leaving and arriving, I'm becoming an island. Every mountain looks at me with your eye

Grief is trying to untie a knot by pulling the wrong string. Each tug tightens it until the tangle becomes something you've made with your own hands. There are scissors beside you. But cutting would mean no going back. So you keep pulling. To heal is to pull the knife out. Everyone tells you it's the only way. So you pull. And you catch your reflection in the maroon pool beneath you and mistake yourself for him. You still hope the neighbors' footsteps in the stairwell are his