Unraveling
You lost your father too young,
now, every relationship feels like
an eventual unraveling. Don’t hold
on too tight. Not to anything or
anyone, or you might get caught in
the tangle of something that won’t
last. Your father started dating too
soon, making you wonder if he really
loved your mother. Now, you don’t
believe a single word your boyfriend
says, even when he writes it with pen,
on paper, and slips it under your door,
the way you always dreamed someone
would. You mother used to worry
that you would fall from the trees you
loved to climb. Now you don’t climb
trees anymore, but that might just be
because you are older now, and adult
life doesn’t make space for climbing
trees. Your father hated cinnamon. You
pour it over every dish. He loved his old,
retro sneakers and wore them until they
went from white to gray, from bouncy
to thinning rubber. Now you walk
barefoot. But these silent protests don’t
quell the missing. The unraveling. The
running out of yarn and angry poems
for your moleskin journal. The one he
bought you that time, at Barnes & Noble,
when the two of you went out for coffee
just because. Just because it is good to
enjoy simple rituals together. Where are
you, God, when everything is unraveling?
Do you see past our busy nothings? Do you
hear beyond our numb, prayerless scrolling
to the moans of grief, deep in our gut? And
do you notice the way we blame others, so that
we are never forced to look down at our own
empty hands?
