gerda, at twenty-five

let me pluck the splinter from your eye.

Come to me, let me pluck the splinter from your eye,

See the world as luminous again like the first frost, like the red moon,

Come back and let me call you my brother. I don’t need you like I thought I did.

What we have seen together no one else has. Let us fall into the arms of new lovers,

Lovers who will clean our scrapes and walk with us feather-light onto the ice.

Let us reacquaint ourselves with love, learn that it’s not supposed to smart like peroxide in a wound. Come back to me with no expectations, no deception, no baggage, nothing left unsaid.

Say goodnight from your window. Blink the lights on and off in morse code.

Step into the summer with me.

How is it that we let ten years pass between us?

How is it that you have grown into a good man, a good husband, a good father, and yet you have scarcely changed at all?

How is it that it’s not with me and I can breathe easy now, free from want and wait,

there only in the purest and most immediate sense,

that when all the longing has been whittled away all that’s left is affection?