To Ache, To Love, To Let Go, And To Love All Over Again

I stayed up way too late last night writing and thinking about how some days I want to lose myself in love

and some days I want to book a trip to Italy by myself and drink wine and eat pasta and marvel at old fountains and cobblestone streets

ache in a solitude that shares a border with lonely.

Something in me is opening, changing

I no longer think I need to wrap myself in a pink ribbon, make myself pretty

be what people expect me to be

squeeze into a box small enough for a man who can provide me with a safe and comfortable life but never asks about my art.

My dad’s toast at my sister’s wedding echoes in my mind

“All a father could want for his daughter is for someone to love them!”

But daddy

what about a woman

who loves herself?

I think in this life I’ll love and let go

and love and let go

many times.

I’ll fall in love with people, cities, books of prose, the kids I work with

and myself

when I’m topless by the creek with a book a boy lent me while we drank beer and talked about poetry

and myself

when I’m hanging art in my first one bedroom apartment that is all mine and no one else’s

and later that night when I’m eating Thai food in the bathtub

burning candles, scraping wax off the bathroom tile.

I’ll lose myself in love until my heart cracks open

surrender to the cycle of

bloom and die and bloom and die.

It’s March and today felt like spring

but tomorrow it will snow

it’s okay

summer has been inside of me all along.

I want to get lost in it all

to ache, to love, to let go

and then to love all over again.