A Poem For You

A Poem for You

It’s okay to cry to funerals.

A loved one’s, a friend’s, or even a stranger’s.

Because death is as permanent

as the grass stains on my favorite skirt

after I took that walk with you.

But it’s not okay to cry

over you.

It’s okay to cry when someone is born.

To celebrate new life and innocent.

Because the radiance of this new life

is more beautiful than your smile

even if I can hear your laughter by just

remembering that smile.

But it’s still not okay to cry over you.

It’s okay to cry when someone moves

especially when that someone is you.

As much as we all talk of wanting a fresh start,

familiarity is the home where we’ve sown the seeds

to the life we have.

Even if one of the seeds blossoms early and as a result, withers away

it’s still not okay to cry over you.

It’s okay to cry over a break up

of any type of relationship:

romantic, platonic, anything.

But I never understood where we stood

because I always had one foot in platonic

and the other in romantic. And you stood on the fine line

blurring it away as you pleased.

But I still shouldn’t cry over you.

It’s okay to write

books for your dad, novels for your mom, encyclopedias for your sibling,

and series after series for your friends.

But all I should write for you is on a single page

because no matter how many paragraphs I write,

no matter how carefully I phrase every sentence, and

peruse all my syntax…

All my letter will say is:

I let you break my heart which is why

I refuse to cry over you.

Sadly,

even before you read it, laugh at it, and burn it,

I’ll have already cried over you.