I’m Sorry I Couldn’t Stay

We travel through towns and crowded cities, everywhere we go laying our claim on the land with our Converse and combat boots, initials carved into tree bark and dandelion seeds set free into the wind.

But we’ve reached a crossroads here.
You want to step left,
And I want to run right
into warm sun and possibility

until you lose sight of me like summer light behind autumn storm clouds.

We used to know each other.

Like the dirt beneath our fingernails, like the squish of mud between our bare toes.

You used to push me on playground swings and I’d imagine a future, big and far away. Not knowing then, that this is what we would one day become.

I never imagined that the shift of wind
would blow us to two different places,
two different dreams.

When I lay awake at night I listen to the tree branches, the crickets, the birds too confused in the hot-cold weather to know if they should go or stay.

I think about our sun-kissed skin,
the cities and towns we’ve traveled,
the scars we learned to trace with fingertips,

to remind us that who we were isn’t who we’ll become.

Your feet are in old shoes, tattered, worn, familiar. I have bare feet, ready to crack and callous with a new adventure in every step.

We’ve reached two separate paths, like Robert Frost said.
But divided you cannot conquer both.

It was never about you, about love, about fear.

But about the decisions we must make when the world’s against us, when our hearts pound in our ribcages saying go go go.

It was about me.
And my need to run.

Through towns and crowded cities, laying my claim on the land, writing my name in every place, setting my wishes free into the wind. Becoming new.