the relationship between compass and home

1. people are always poised to leave you.
i don’t know when you’ll realize that,
but after you do, it’s over.
you can’t hit snooze, you can’t forget it.
love lasts longer than
people do.

there’s nothing to stop it either.
there’s no joke you could have
told, no times you could have held your tongue.

it’s probably not your fault.

no one can keep people, no one can make them stay.
it’s in our natures to fidget,
to flinch, to crave freedom, to long for the horizon.
it is us that leaves. our temporariness is
our own humanness.

2. she has cuts on her arms and they are faded.
i wonder how exactly they got there. i wonder why
they got there—the series of events
that led to what always seems like
a fucking forgone conclusion.

i wonder where i was at those eight moments.
i wonder what i was doing,
how i was feeling. i wonder when I got so distant
that a phone call or a voice message or a
goddamn text was too little to bridge the gap.
i wonder when she gave up on me.

3. i wonder when they healed.

4. this is for my temporary existence, here.
it is for the people i have left
and the ones who have left me.
this is for the jokes i told and the tongue
i could not hold back.
this is for the people i am holding back.

this is for the times i never thought
to stop, for the times i never thought to think.
this is for the first brick in a bridge, the one that wonders
how in the world he is supposed to cross this distance.
this is for healing, slow and ugly, scabs and scars
and three in the morning relapses.

this is for you. this is an apology written kind of
like a love letter, kind of like a
dear john note.

5. i’m sorry i missed your play.
i’m sorry i missed your phone call.
i’m sorry i  missed the first time you heard that joke
that never fails to make you laugh. i’m sorry
i read your text but pretended to be asleep
i’m sorry i treated you like a season and only ever loved you
in the summer. i’m sorry i saw your
scars and wrote a poem about them instead
of talking to you. i’m sorry.

6. i swear one of these days i will figure out
how to love you right.