The Book of Weston

You return to me in waves

in dizzy bright suburban streets,

in the grocery aisle, the bookstore,

across a white Saturday morning sky.

That's when the plans we'll never make

reveal themselves to me, stillborn,

alive in another timeline.

This is when you strike me like

emerging into summer heat,

like the past isn't done with me yet,

like the present isn't strong enough

to hold you back.

What could I possibly learn

from this relentless feeling?

As if attachment is a sin. As if

our scattered minds could stop it.

As if it isn't our original nature.

Logic tries to snuff it out

like throwing a blanket

over an atomic bomb.

And when you come to me this way,

tears follow laughter, one after another,

inseparable like codependent lovers,

erupting from the reservoir behind my ribs.

This is the pain of an old self dying,

the past embracing the present,

dragging it into oblivion, entangled in ash

like the mummies of Pompeii.

Who said healing shouldn't feel this way?