love

Love Her Now, While She’s Here

Artwork by Nora Jesenski

One day, you’re going to hurt
when she leaves. In forty years,
when time has turned her
fingertips to sand, you’ll
place an SOS on the island
she created. You’ll search
through the grass, past
canopying trees you
use for shade. You’ll shoot
flares in all directions
wondering just what to do
if your heart
can break hard enough to
be lost in a sea of metaphors.
And it can. It can drown
trying to find its way back
to civilization, paddling through
crashing waves and sub-zero
temperatures. It can starve,
losing its grip living on
coconut milk all day long.
It will miss her homemade
chicken tetrazzini with
lemon to pair. One day your
heart might find the shore
after traveling thousands
of miles in search of what
it lost. Maybe one day it
won’t. It won’t remember
the fights you both had or
the time she dropped your
glass cold brew coffee carafe.
The bad will slip away and
you’ll remember how she
looked better with silver in
her hair, how it paired
well with the green in her
eyes. Your heart will remember
and find home on the side
of the bed she slept in.
It will find home at her
kitchen seat where she
called them dippy eggs.
Your heart will replace the
blood it pumps with
the water from the clouds
she now belongs to.
Love her more.
Love her every day.
Love her now.
One day you won’t
be able to.

—

Poem by Austin Julio

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