Day by day, step by step,
My feet carry me down and up the slope,
Ever since this past scorching summer,
When you’d inundate all corners of my being.
And even when you’d leave, I’d still
Feel your gaze upon me from miles away,
While a gentle string that only I could see
Wrapped itself around my little finger,
Connecting us and reassuring me
That slightly tugging on it is enough
To encounter resistance and know
You were there, and you cared after all.
But leaves turned red, shadows grew long,
And the loneliest chilly wind began to blow,
Setting the string into a chaotic swirl,
When you left for good and decided to let go.
Tangled around my soul, I kept carrying it with me,
My stubborn heart holding onto it for dear life,
Drenching it in sadness, making it heavier and heavier,
A merciless, paradoxical chain, binding me tight.
Until, one night, my tears turned to icicles
And the frost spread all over, impairing me,
As I helplessly looked up at the climb ahead,
The deceptively calm snow ceaselessly piling.
“I can’t anymore,” I whimpered. “No more.”
Letting out one last, deep sigh, I expected it
To dissipate and die along with the rest of me,
Not take a pale blue shape, kindly meeting my eyes.
A mirror reflection almost, if not for the warm smile,
She put her hand on my chest and pulled out movie strips,
Carefully cherished, tucked away memories of countless
“You’re wonderful, but you hurt, so I have to leave.”
Using her fingers as scissors, she cut away the endings,
And stacked the rest of the stories in my shivering hands,
As if to say, “This is everything that matters.
You loved purely and moved something in their hearts.”
She then gently stroked my temple, bringing back
Long forgotten sensations of early mornings and late nights
When, for a month, frequently running on five hours of sleep or less,
My then aching fingers wrote my heart into twenty three letters.
Swiftly, more safely preserved moments lit up from within
Effortlessly thawing the seemingly unrelenting ice,
Reminding me just how expansive and fierce my love can be,
And how my mistakes don’t invalidate the smiles I’ve made bloom.
As she took my hand, cheerfully pulling me up the slope,
I felt our souls merging back and declaring, “We are infinite.”
Because only when loving do we approach limitlessness,
And I know that, by continuing to cherish the world,
I will also indirectly treasure those who, for their own reasons, left,
Making bowing my head in defeat, simply because it hurts, inadmissible.
So, when reaching the top, I now smile back gratefully,
At the pain, the tears, the ghosts, the loneliness, the scars.
For at the dark bottom of the slope,
In the freezing winter of your blind side,
I shook off these chains, the one last ingrate remnant of you,
And, instead, learnt to love the world anew.