alone

I called you today. You were surprised, how are you fell from your mouth like a toddler learning how to chew with a mouthful of tiny new teeth. I didn't know how to tell you I forgive you and say thank you in the same breath. I met someone new. I met another, but I couldn't swallow the thought of healing him the way I tried with you, and the one before you and the one who I can't forget - who I left like a glass of milk on the counter, baffled when I returned and he tasted sour. I don't leave anymore because I don't enter where I'm not invited. I find myself sitting with my hands cupped in the bed of my lap, staring down at my chipped nails. I have a beard now you tell me, and I think about the number of times you said that you didn't want to look like your father, the man who liked punching your mother in the face. You still write?  I nod, looking at my nails, you haven't posted anything since febuary though. I make tea when we go quiet, the wind from my kitchen window breathing with us on the line. Writing is difficult, sometimes. It comes and it goes. I have to feel things.  I can hear you nod, I can hear you raise your arm against your head, lush brown on brown. I'm not seeing anyone you say. I nod, you can hear that too. You don't want to leave, you like the sound of the wind between us so you ask me about 'the people with the receding hairlines'. I laugh, my voice the only warmth in me. I run down the people you haven't seen since, about Sarah and her miscarriage, Luul and her old man, Wes and his broken heart. After every one I try not to sigh but you hear that too, you say, why do you do this to yourself and I remember why I am alone, why the wind is comfortable between us, why my chipped nails reminds me of how we never fit to begin with, and I think I may write about this too.