From One Month Ago

You know it’s been, one month and nothing’s changed

I’m still here thinking about that feeling, trying to regain

The poem that started off this track, it’s the same but now

I’m writing for the future instead of what’s back, behind –

You know it’s all, it hasn’t changed for what,

For nine months now at least and I’m here, still the same

Pages open, the thousands of photos and, the tens of

Thousands of words I’ve read, letters on my knuckles like

Letters on your back, like letters I still lack I can’t gain,

I follow this pattern again and again and I don’t. I don’t try

To escape from this loop it makes me smile more sweetly than

The bitterness I cry, I don’t ache – like the way I did

The rake across the lungs in that grade, it’s different from

The same. Instead I smile so damn, so wide, my friends all ask

I stopped trying to hide, I let go and they, they turn away but

It’s still there, so raw and so full and so bare in my lungs

In my chest, I don’t wait I don’t rest I explode, open and up into it

It’s the same. It remains. It’s the same.

And no, nothing’s changed from one month ago, and no

I don’t try to pretend I’m not waiting on edge

At the edge of my book is the dates – and they wait

And no, nothing’s changed from one month ago. I’m still

Writing poetry about leaning out the window sill,

Waiting for the next, explosion of smiles and meanwhile

I wait still.

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