Starting Over #1

I fold the day in half like a page in a book,

saving the spot where I read the perfect sentence

I never wrote.

Turning out, turning in,

the days are a brew.

I wrestle through the old pages and eagerly

attempt a view at the new.

I see where two hands lifted me into the sky as a child,

when I was a bird. I see when kisses

gathered in my cheeks like collected nuts and then,

where later, I held them close in the winter. 

I feel the embrace of snowflakes on my nose, the

collide of water passing as I swim, the flutter of a leaf

in the wind, and the burn of fire on my left shin

from when I stood too close to the flames.

I hear you, I hear you, I hear you.

I taste everything again, even the bitterness

of a liquorice fern root. And that's when it ends,

when the spot I've saved lures me back just

to leave it all behind.

The page unfolds.

I rip it out,

whispering, "forgive me."