The necklace you gave me is pounding the first letter of my name against my chest,
an alphabet of ribs, as if it must prove I’m still inside it.
Metal remembers what hands forget,
Your warmth, your promise, the way you fastened me
To a meaning that never finished forming.
Drunk on the unexpected discovery,
I want to unhook the clasp from the story,
To let the night breathe where the metal sits,
To feel my name without the weight of your certainty.
Yes, this is what happens when belonging comes out of incomplete discovery:
We carry each other like maps sketched in fog,
Call it destiny, call it almost,
And only later learn the legend was missing.
When you said you loved me
I believed you,
But you were handing me your blindness,
Wrapped like a gift, ribboned with hurry.
You wanted the shape of me,
You loved the echo, not the room it needed.
Run…..run…..
The future is already here,
It moves like weather through a locked house,
Fog finding the seams.
One step ahead—always—
And I, barefoot, still tying my reasons.
Alone again: that is me in the crowd,
The soft conspiracy of bare shoulders
The hush of a thousand private verdicts.
I study faces like difficult books,
But find only the margin notes I wrote myself.
I have no gift in reading men’s souls,
But always wanting…
Should I still try?
The question rises like steam from a street after rain.
Perhaps I am blind too,
Not empty of sight, but full of mirrors:
Seeing what I place, naming what I hope,
Tapping on the glass of a possibility
And calling the echo true.
The necklace pulses—letter on sternum—
a metronome that keeps the time of my mistakes,
and also, quietly, the time of my becoming.
To be distinct is to step back from the outline,
to let the shadow have its ending while your body walks on.
Run… run…
or don’t.
Stand perfectly still and let the future find you,
It will, with or without your sprint.
When it arrives, ask it for nothing but clarity:
the courage to wear your name without armor,
the grace to read no soul before it speaks,
The discipline to keep your eyesight honest.
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© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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