A Lantern

Hours after you leave, I sit still

I feel it coming over me like a moonrise

This emotion that makes its home in me

For a little while, all at once

Creating the tides of my heart

Coming and going

This feeling wants you

It longs, it calls

It forms words that lead nowhere

Urging me to throw myself against

The wall of Us

To say “I love you”

And “I’m sorry”

And “Please”

This moonswept heart pulls me

To turn the wheel again

Begin the spiral 

Let go the little liferafts of my journal

My cards, my books

My poems, my friends

It wants more of you

More, more

More and more until I’ve reached the bottom 

Of the ocean 

And I’ve dug my fingers

Into the wound of you

And there I find

Myself looking back

Wearing a shroud of fear

Curled around a lantern

Of all the love I withheld from myself

And so I sit 

And breathe

I let the rain fall

Let the longing rush through me

Like wind through fields

Driving seeds before it

To take root elsewhere

I smash the lantern at the feet of the past

And let the light consume it