parts of my memory
hurt to the touch
the absence of your hand
a reminder of how I
touched your wound
wound up in a love
insufferable alone
I know the shape
of your absence
to be emptied like a
graceful potter
with those small, deliberate
actions of shaping where
bracing, friction, and
release all spin in meeting
at the round table
on the wheel,
walls established
boundaries I wish I built with you
maybe I became flat witnessing
the shaping of you
witnessing the curvature
of love depending on tender arcs,
bends, and embraces
where I was bent so far
from when I stayed
so open I collapsed
in sensitivity
collapse where I was
the only one falling
in love
in the shape of your presence
as I only fell,
in the drama of us,
to the depth of my openess,
and now I meet,
now I meet
the hurt of your closing
the hurt
of meeting your
love in restriction
even before you told me
"goodbye"
any potter, dignified
and distinguished, I know
now quite ashamedly
leaves the falling
for those already wholly
ready to dive
because any container
vesseled in love
knows not to enter another's
walls and think themself in refuge
in a paradise away from hell
how ashen
I am in remembering
how you were so sensitive
to rejection, to expressions
and to the unspoken
that I now receive
everything you know
can hurt me
though I now recognize,
any container that can hold
another needs to be available
to hold the pain most troubling
near
else its holes will
spill exactly the blood
that once circulated
and held life near