Four Years And Five Months

       Four Years And Five Months


Each year shapes me
like the wind against a cliff
taking with it what
I am done with and
what I long to keep.

Half-dreaming
but wide-awake,
you warn me
of unseen costs and
battles best not fought

(as if I learned
this rebelliousness
not from you.)

and, as I step
to the edge
of a darkness
you sought,
you tell me to find
my own abyss.

Of all the times
I thought you’d died,
the final time
surprised me most.
And yet, I wavered,
between knowing and numbness,
but never hope,
for it had flown.

Now, when I long to sleep,
I tally months and years.
I throw away the elixers
of the decades past
with a ruthlessness
I only now possess

and I ask you,
“what did you expect?”

–Cynthia Sillitoe, September 2014