Your love is only enough to fill a box            a shoe box

It started with the short, sweet notes you left for me:

“Morning, My Sweetness—I award you my bright, wonderful presence”

It ended with the petals of the rose that pricked my finger.

Movie stubs and receipts                    both copies of all the photo booth pictures

(you never wanted your copy—why)

The gum wrappers that you drew tiny pictures of cats on lay to one side

You—you and your love for me exist in this box

I feared losing your heart that I hoarded every piece you ever gave me

I just didn’t realize the pieces would decay

I can sit and shift through the box for hours—yet—the items never change or grow

They never become more

or enough to encompass the love I still harbor for you

 

My love is vast enough to fill the ocean         the great big ocean

Just like that great big ocean a large portion of my love has gone unexplored

I always thought I would have tomorrow to share more

Only tomorrow has come and gone

It left me sailing the pieces of my heart—the pieces that were for you to navigate

Of course, they were too big to fit into a box—you never wanted to stow and transport them

I hoisted the sails and captained the ship

I didn’t mind the risk of drowning

The letters were written for you—but—you never wanted them

“I haven’t the time to read all that—is it anything important”

I find them not contained to a box

One at the bottom of my bag     One under my bed     One stuck in a bottle     One lost at sea

It is all too much—filling every crack and crevice of my life

 

Yours to light—mine to heavy

the scale could only tip over

                        as balance was impossible from the beginning

I was a blind fool

letting you pick and choose

the moments you wanted to give me

             the time you had to spare for me

In the end   even your box of love was really only a tide pool of my own   a self-imposed cruelty