Fragments of Cassandra

My bed still smells like you.

Not faintly;
not like a memory
that has begun surrendering itself to time.

It still breathes your name
whenever I pull the blankets to my chin.

Your fingerprints
still sleep upon the drinking glasses.

They still cling
to the door handles
as though your hands
might remember the way home
before the rest of you does.

The shirts you left behind
still hang over the chair,
creased exactly where you abandoned them.

Your washcloth
still waits
on the corner of the shower shelf,

patient,
as though tomorrow
you’ll call my name from the other room,
and I come running to find you
simply 
asking for a kiss.

Your side of the bed
still carries the shape
of someone expected.

I have not asked it
to forget you.

People would probably call this grief.
But grief feels too final.

This is something quieter.

A hope so fragile
it refuses to disturb the dust.

Because if I wash the sheets,
if I wipe away the fingerprints,
if I fold the shirts,
if I clear the evidence
that you were once here;

what if that is the very day
you find your way back?

What if you walk through the door
expecting to find your life
waiting where you left it,

only to discover
I had already packed away
the last pieces
that still believed in us?

So I leave everything untouched.
Not because I cannot let you go;

but because love,
at its deepest,
does not always look like holding on.

Sometimes

it looks like making sure
there is still a place
for someone to come home to.

And if you never do,

then one day
I will wash the sheets.
I will wipe the glasses clean.
I will fold the shirts.

Not because I stopped loving you;
but because I finally understood

that the last remnants of you
were never trapped
inside cotton,
glass,
or fingerprints.

They had already made a home
inside me.

And no amount of water
or soap
could ever wash
those away.



Be’ahava,
The Mourning Bird