This Is Not a Letter / Avery Martin

This Is Not a Letter

Avery Martin

I want to write a poem that is my own. These words, these lines, this rhythm is tainted still with you. Your smell follows me, hesitating in the curtains of my senses, waiting for a cue. Well here is your cue — run. Leave me like a demon to a herd of sheep, like tears like sweat like vomit after a long night. But leave like a breath of smoke never to be recaptured.

I wrote you poems. I wrote you love letters. I wrote you stories and stories and stories. Even my english teachers knew your name. Sometimes I wonder how you stayed so real, with so many words diluting you.

how dare you? I think sometimes. How dare you haunt me still? No matter how many scales I shed, how many pumice stones I fill with my own dust. How dare you linger? Your shadow waits behind each left unturned, blank pages made heavy with its presence. And yet — am I the one pacing outside your door, tempting memory?

We don’t talk, now. That creek bed, once swollen with storms, is long dry, but I remember. Those letters, days and days of letters and writing and words. So many words for you. In the cramp of my hand, the squint of my eyes, in the ink smudged on my palm I find you. Turn the page and there you are. Again.

After all these words, how many more will it take until you no longer run with the ink of my pen? I long for the day when I sit, staring at a blank page, and your form no longer emerges like a mirage to taunt me. For the day when instead of you, my own body takes shape, slowly, alone. When from this avalanche of pages, some day, I am unearthed.