Corona Lights

There’s a coordinate on my skin in the shape of a handprint

it’s scarred over now, breezy with touch

I’ve never picked the scab,

so it’s healed into the remainder of soft palms, bigger than mine

the spot feels like velvet when

I run my fingers over it, it’s turning grey with age

like remembering the war,

I’ll put your hands on it

and they’ll fit perfectly into its outline

I’ll say,

Feel this place?

This is where it used to hurt

but it’s not a residual haunting like it was before

it’s become a reminder of everything I used to love about you

memory is a funny thing,

filtering out the part where I thought I’d die

when you left and I counted the footfalls, how many times

your toes hit the ground and made a metallic sound

like spare change thrown away on sidewalks,

where I gritted my teeth and lied about it

when my silence became forced but

it’s not the dying that hurts, it’s the birth, it’s

becoming someone I could recognize again and be proud of

whose back isn’t broken under the weight of wanting you

and I don’t remember fighting to

push myself out like all the times before,

when the contractions split my eyes open

and I charged headfirst into a new body,

when I became

all the wiser living with the phantoms

you left behind when you left me

until the phantoms left me too and

I had nothing but a scar where

an exit wound used to be

all I can remember now is

just how good it felt when you’d laugh at the jokes I made

how I loved clicking into place with someone who got it

and how you’d always make fun of me

for drinking Corona Lights

whenever we’d go out

You’re the only one who’s ever really stuck

and now that I’m safe and familiar, warm and gooey

you’ll come back every once in awhile

when you’re lost and the girls aren’t in your bed anymore

we’ll talk like old friends, like we’ve worn each other’s bodies before and

we never touch, only with the tips of our tongues making jokes

that fit into each other’s mouths

like they were tailored to us for sharing with each other

and now

the entry and exit of you is painless,

I barely feel it when you leave the key under the mat

in this revolving door that we both swing around every month or so

when we need to lay ourselves in the hands of someone who knows us

someone who’s already robbed us of everything we had

and then given it back better than it was and made peace

I know now that soulmates never stay,

they exist in multiples to fit your different lives

and then leave to make room for the next one

who will come teach you to need again

you were one of mine,

showing me that not all love is sulfur and a flame,

sometimes it’s just the comfort of knowing, the drowsiness of sleep

without feeling the need to talk and

some people take the good inside of us and make it better

and we don’t realize that they’ve given us the kind of love that

when it stops growing, it turns into familiarity

into respect and brotherhood

the people you could never stop loving will return to you as friends

and set the precedent for knowing how

to be a better half of someone else

and let them be a better half of yours

and you can put their hands on that scar

where they burst out of your skin

all that time ago

and say,

I’ll always have a soft spot for you, love.