Before

when I think about me I don’t think of anything. I listen to the whisper of melting snow- the snap of spring and a muddy surrender under my feet I imagine I am a quiet place, a still pond, a nook to sit and think, absent of complexity and try to drown this sinking feeling

when I think about her I try not to think of me. I wonder what the frog sings or how the dragonfly laughs, I wonder how dizzy fantasies and amber monarchs pirouette in the pit of my stomach, because I cannot control my own body, suffering under this heavy drop and incessant tug of affection. so instead I think about the before, candid and sublime, when our teenage hearts hadn’t grown yet

how she taught me to create worlds beyond the bored drum of summer when I’d skip ballet lessons, ignore dishes desperate for washing, forget about the boy down the road, all to sit on the porch steps with her and make friendship bracelets

but now I am hypnotized, made a fool by her iridescent soul

celestial eyes and crater of a heart everyday is like fresh dew on a softly mowed lawn or the feeling of waking up with the sun, or remembering the taste of your own voice after years of silence.

in the before, she braided sticky locks of my golden hair, unafraid of the knots and promised we were fairies when I was really a witch. she plucked blushing honeysuckles while I cackled belly-laughs at birds who were friends just like us. we soared over fallen birch trees, hid behind rocks from the old man with starved hands, left reminders of us in the woods, searched for spoons in the creek, renamed ourselves and cut each other's hair. but these childhood polaroids no longer matter in the before

because now, she is calling me beautiful as if it is my name, the words falling out of her lips so sweet and slow like syrup. everything is different yet the same because now, she is planting her roots, and blooming like a wildflower, reaching healing the dark trenches of me. and she is still a chasm, brimming with love, just like before