fransivan mackenzie

MORNING HAS COME

two years after we promised each other forever, your right hand holds the door open for me. it creaks like a dead branch of a white oak. sings like a mourning dove stitching a ballad in the breeze at dawn. it glitches. stops. then sighs a silence that blankets the city of my drunken dreams. for the first time in eons, i get a glimpse of the world between the yawning plank of mahogany and the cracked wall, the sun lending its light to everything. go, you whisper. i turn away from your eyes and look ahead as if this landscape is a garden and not a graveyard. a home that isn't housed by your aching alabaster bones, made up instead of skies that do not transcribe the echo of your hurt. go, you say between your teeth. i take a step forward. i do not say goodbye. i do not plead for an explanation. i do not ask you why you don’t let yourself be loved like you deserve. i kissed you in this very spot a lifetime ago, do you remember that? go. your voice cracks. i smile the saddest beam. i take the exit if it's all you can give. i take the past years in the pockets of my coat, along with your name engraved on a ring. i take the memory of yesterday, of me telling you how i'll be happy to bear a lifetime of moonless nights if it meant being with you through it all. i take this as i love you too much. i take this as forgive me. and i will. i do. go. my legs don't falter as i walk. they don't crumble under the weight of our tomorrows. they don't forfeit me to the ground even when you shut the door. ever so subtly like the rasp of a leaf against another. like a sob caught in a lover's throat.