The Separation Appears

sitting across the couch

knees pulled to your chest,

parenthesized by yawns,

you asked me in your living room:

“when did the separation happen

between being

those people in the memories

and the people we are now?”

I looked at the wrinkles behind your glasses

while raindrops peppered the leaves,

filling the silence

through an open window

i looked at your partner

hand-carving stamps on the floor

while your cat

sniffed open bottles of ink

i didn’t know the answer then

& i’m not sure i know it now—

i still feel like the same person

from three nights ago.

but when nights turn into

weeks,

months,

years,

the

separation

appears:

like mountains collapsing

into the Pacific,

making new homes

for sun-mottled seals

like a river on the Wisconsin plains

meeting prairie foothills,

streams rejoining

somewhere closer to sunset

like a tree in Texas woods

slowly split by rot,

a source of solace

for feeding fungi

like the striations of Colorado canyon,

stone forever

colored by change

the tender place where words

leave the body,

float across the room,

meet strawberry blonde-stranded ears:

“I love who you were

& I love who you’ve become.”

maybe it’s not a single break,

but a slow erosion—

one I’m glad I stuck around

to see.