I AM A CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL ROMANTICIZER

I am a certified

professional romanticizer—

a curator of nostalgia

a dream-weaver of past present and future

Daydreaming grips me and pins me in place

i become paralyzed by the weight of reverie

I am a sculptor of memory

chiseling away at the sharp edges

polishing the jagged remnants of those who have wounded me

and those, i in turn, have wounded

i gild them in sentiment

rewriting history page by page

until the truth is something softer

something i can hold without it cutting back

I have been in a season of recalibration

fine-tuning my senses if you will

My sight

learning to look at my world with fresh eyes

because really, aren’t we all just living in our own little universes?

my hearing

observe don’t absorb—

that kind of wisdom that kind of restraint

my taste

discovering what i crave what i reject

what lingers sweet what turns bitter

my touch

to be softer more deliberate

less reckless with the way i reach for things

my smell

sharpened to sniff out the bullshit, before it even settles in the air

I have shaken hands with isolation

sat across from it for long enough

that it no longer feels like a stranger

seclusion has become a familiar ghost

hovering just within reach

They said the eruption would be the hardest part—the moment everything cracked open

but no one warned me about the fallout

the slow agonizing gathering of debris

picking up the pieces if you will

The ‘woe is me’ train has long since left the station

but that doesn’t mean the echoes don’t linger

a small voice still whispers i deserved better

and right behind it, another answers so did they

I have become fluent in awkward reunions

in the delicate fumbling art of retying frayed knots

or rather

trying to sew together what was severed—and thread doesn’t grow back

so this is where we are now

None of it has been easy

but i’ve been told it’s necessary

and so i pray the lessons sink in

I teeter between white-knuckling the past

and surrendering to the unknown

one foot still planted in the familiar

the other reaching tentatively for a life i have yet to understand

leaps of faith have become second nature

i spent too long waiting for permission

now forgiveness—that is the task at hand

for me, for the girl i was,

the girl i am

and whoever it is i am still becoming

ahh the classic tale of a girl with growing pains