The Embrace

He held me fiercely inside a forgotten June.

The people humming beside us had no say,

along with the spotted butterfly chasing the hem of my dress.

The town spoke for itself, listening long enough

to see my hand against his neck and my eyes

weary from the space

he left (me).

What’s strange for me is that every flashback I had of what we used to be was full of beautiful memories. I hardly remembered or dwelt on the small fights and bigger battles we had in the last half of our relationship. Instead I went back to the first time he held my hand under water in the jacuzzi, or the time we were saying goodbye on my front porch when he asked me if I was cold and I said yes, so he threw everything he was holding down and held me tight enough to make me forget my chill, or the first time he kissed me right after he sang You Raise Me Up in my passenger seat and leaned over under the intersection at Baseline and Emerald to place a soft and subtle touch on my cheek, to him asking me what he should call me on my birthday, the night we star gazed alone in Azusa Canyon, the moment I was half asleep but awake enough to hear him say that he wanted to spend his life, his whole entire life with me, and the night he told me he loved me under a field of colored Christmas lights, the first days we spent apart during the holidays when I swear I fell more in love with him by each mile I moved, when he surprised me with a bouquet of my favorite flowers and a Circle K hot chocolate at our park, every touch full of life, gentle but passionate life together from surf to sand to snow to us, inseparable, connected at each instant, even when he tore my heart right out of its chest, leaving me in an empty house to wail with remorse, striking me with anger when I didn’t grieve the way he wanted me to, turning stone cold when I tried to let him go.

We stood as statues,

lifeless to the unfocused eye

waiting. Ready to give in.

Ready to come alive and I know that

he felt it too, the power in that hold,

backed against the fear of repetition but

I was his. We were real again. He was real again.