I thought I’d forgotten
what it felt like to love you.
How easy it was, like
leaping from the side of
the sea into soothing water,
like the snow sliding away
beneath a sled. How easy
to love you.
Forgetting was the inverse
like—two
bodies curled around one
another for the
first time, for the last time.
Swimming ashore
was never forgiving,
climbing snow
was never gentle.
But I had forgotten,
I thought I had forgotten,
until you returned with
the cruel words that made
waves crash backwards,
snow fly up into the sky.
The inverse, again;
you were always giving
me inverses.
How much you could
hurt me still, with words
that remembered loving you.
~Rory Finnegan
what it felt like to love you.
How easy it was, like
leaping from the side of
the sea into soothing water,
like the snow sliding away
beneath a sled. How easy
to love you.
Forgetting was the inverse
like—two
bodies curled around one
another for the
first time, for the last time.
Swimming ashore
was never forgiving,
climbing snow
was never gentle.
But I had forgotten,
I thought I had forgotten,
until you returned with
the cruel words that made
waves crash backwards,
snow fly up into the sky.
The inverse, again;
you were always giving
me inverses.
How much you could
hurt me still, with words
that remembered loving you.
~Rory Finnegan