she says into the receiver it’s funny how life finds us
in circles as she twirls her hair around her fingers.
his heavy breathing on the other end is pierced only by
silence dark and thick with emotion that
slithers through the line and pervades her skin.
words echo through her head and she knows this time that
she has found her way back to the beginning again.
back to the place she swore she’d never be.
each time he holds his breath she begs him
in her mind to speak and release her from the grip
of the guilt she knows she should feel.
but he will not speak thinking that she can’t find her way
to truth without taking his circling path again.

she is ceaselessly bound to this way she’d once embraced
but now it has the strings of her heart and she is trapped.
she only can see to the width of the circles she’s made and
beyond is like an endless sea that taunts her coming and going
like him and forever eroding away at her shores.
the waves rush in and lull her to sleep but only to
rush out again taking life with them in each stroke.
each time she awakens she sees her circles have shrunk until
the waves close in and begin to eat away at the center of her
coming closer to her core and at once drifting further out to sea.
and each time she awakens to see him vanishing she wonders
if this will be the time that he never comes back.
yet each time she sleeps she forgets the sting of emptiness
and in her slumber she welcomes the waves.

but she won’t let him ride the waves this time.

“goodbye” she says and in her mind she sees
his ocean spiraling down the drain in a tornado
washing away her circles and flushing out her soul.

05/08/2004

Posted on 05/08/2004
Copyright © 2024 Kate Swearingen