Paper Wings

I continue to write my heart out

on pages that feel like the friendship bracelets

I keep in a glass jar.

So I will say it again here

in different words, in broken stanzas,

because I have not felt

whole since we were small and intact.

I miss you, but not the you

that exists without me.

It has been a child’s day

since I’ve spoken to the girl attached.

Who else will play Elphaba

to my Glinda in living room renditions

of “What Is This Feeling?”

All I want is to give her my sweetest

strawberries at lunch

and to fall asleep talking in her teal bedroom.

I would give our shared moon

to bicker with her again

over childish things I cannot remember.

But now she exists with someone else,

and there are no more music videos to produce,

no more ripe strawberries to give.

So I will keep baring my heart in

poems that feel only half-finished.

-A.J