by Kinnason Jackson
I was better at writing poetry when I was younger.
I kept feelings at arm’s length, just close enough
to dip my quill in and turn them into something:
a visual,
compare a lover’s eyes to the milky blue of the sky.
Sounds,
your soul as cacophonous as thunder and lightning,
Nightingales singing promises of tomorrow.
A feeling,
the hands of paranoia wrapped around me,
a monster lurking at the bottom of the lake.
A moment,
our lips like slippery parchment,
wanting, wanting, wanting.
But I’m older now. Something changed, as it does.
When I go to turn myself into words, that ink is elusive;
I dip a finger in, and it scatters like a school of fish.
I am left staring at my own reflection in the muddiest of clear waters.
Nothing is as it was, disconnected.
The realization an astronaut has when the tether has ripped; the last thing to go.
I’m free floating now. Those earthly writings could mean anything. That sky is
gray, your soul devoid of acoustics, my Nightingales
clipped their chords;
perhaps I have grown out of personifying feelings as monsters and birds, when it
was me all along under their skin playing a part to make it make sense. The parchment
dried; don’t mistake spit for ink,
it holds no promise of writing a love story.
No, maybe I was never better at all.
Better didn’t have a thing to do with it.
I am changed, instead.
Exchanging hands with every age and passing on and letting go,
like pollen collected by a bee and a petal blown away.
The essence is not lost, just transformed, yet still traceable: a memory.
If we transform, so does our work, and in it there is:
Loss
Doubt
Fear
Melancholy
Anger
Grief
And so much hope and potential glittering like treasure within them.