⎯⎯ ୨ Did I Tell You Yet? ୧ ⎯⎯ ─ a poem ─ unfortunately, or blessed, it could have been a season, or a decade, but it was months we disappeared into, conversations i shouldn't need this much, not at my age, not while insisting i am self-sufficient, not after all that’s happened, but somewhere between then and now, or was it before, you became the person I call without announcing the emergency first, which under it carried dozens more commitments, one being our commitment to returning, to picking up the thread wherever it fell, so i do, disappear, sometimes, and so do you, but neither of us mistakes distance for departure, friendship, believe it, or not, lives in that promise too, i love the versions of yourself you become beyond my sight, i love the stories secondhand, the victories i hear about weeks later, and here i am, on the other side of the country, on the other side of another difficult year, holding news i haven't told anyone because somehow i am saving it for you, which is embarrassing, maybe, to admit that after all this time your attention still feels like a place, but it does, it does, and i am ashamed to say it, but i must say it: there were moments i thought the world would keep taking and taking from us until there was nothing left except old messages and mutual history, had i not, and thank God i did, placed some portion of my life in you, but friend, friend, you should have seen it, us: through all the leaving, a constant, under the time, my borrowed courage. *. * · - author's note - *. * · After “Do You Know What Today Is?” by Danez Smith. When I began to write this poem, I must admit I did have a singular person in mind, but as I continued to write, it expanded. It became rather a composite of different people, experiences, and moments. Although the poem is written in the address of a singular “you,” it is ultimately meant for all those who have, in different ways, moved and are moving through my life with a lasting imprint. . . . ⇢ ˗ˏˋ poetry: @Q1nix ࿐ྂ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ thank you for reading
