Author: Elizabeth Maynard

The moment, rare
I allow these salty tears
to slip from tired eyes

Cool morning and clouds
shroud a sky that must be blue
if I can dream it

I want to know
what it is
to be loved by you

One day you'll meet me
there at the edge of ever-after
tell me, yes, at last
I can let go of every broken thing

One day we'll almost miss each other
passing quickly on the street
or coming and going in a doorway
Pause trying to remember
the names we once knew
and, forgetting, just smile
saying something about how
long it's been
We won't have a moment
to exchange our stories
of all the in-between
It won't matter as we turn
to face the rest of life apart

All week I ran distracted
by the constant dance
of works leaping and twirling
across screen after screen

I'm trying to remember
what it was to sit and look
each other in the eye 
exhale deeply
and smile

Yesterday I exhausted myself
being the person I though you needed
I couldn't hear the way
you tried to say
I was enough

What would all this be
if you were born a boy?
Would you sleep more soundly
wear wrinkled clothes with ease?
Walk home in the dark
listening to the way the woods
whisper ever so
instead of the sound of
your own heart beating
its way out of your chest?

Speak gently to yourself
as you wander the house in stocking feet
wondering what you might have been
if you had been taught early
all the ways duty is not love

I am not willing 
to believe any other lie
told by any tongue
my mouth or yours