fate has lead you through it, you do what you have to do

[sluice]

these cold gray skies
these branches reaching up and up into the whiteness
i still dont know how to let you go
in phases, cycling, forever cycling in this spiral out and away and then back in
to float around your sphere
to hate you
to love you
to be angry at you
to throttle you
to assuage you
to explain to you
to defend against you
but never to let you go.

im learning. slowly.

left on my own to attach to a figment
filling in the blanks with my projections
and there are
so
many
blanks

that winter
the first one i was apart from you
i walked and walked
for miles, late at night
alone
cold
driven along by some inexplicable pounding inside
a ceaseless string of yearning
flickering like a candle
trying to figure out how i was going to go about the business of finishing raising myself
and not naming it
never naming it

on and on in frozen darkness
or in the biting light of day, exposed and watching my breath leave my body
it was unbearable in the day

ive journeyed thousands of miles beyond the concrete and pavement of your expectations
set to fail
to be your punching bag
your scapegoat
watching you set up everyone i loved to turn against me
realizing it wasn't just you
it never was
the gaps and the fissures and the deep precipices
all lined up behind both of us to craft our personas
and fitting relief against a tapestry of horrors
oppressions
racisms
hatreds

like a firehose of hatred has a righteous aim
ever
and with grief im learning
that my own hose cannot be leveraged for justice
it must be tapered off
the energy redistributed

and my god,
i have to just
let you go

i have to teach myself
to just
let you
go