Infinite Sum
When I was little,
I sent my future self emails on my birthday.
Even then, I was afraid that
older me, full-grown me,
the me that would be paying taxes and
appreciating dreary monotone professors
and reading dusty Greek tomes
(swollen with philosophy),
the me that had matured,
would forget the important things.
Maybe back then I didn’t know how
to distinguish the temporary from
the irreplaceable, but I knew enough
to be afraid of loss.
I cried at death before I understood it
yet I already knew that even when
my body turned to ashes and crushed bone,
I could die again—
my writing collected in a book
no one bothered to read.
My eight-year-old self told me
“Don’t forget what you love!”
“Don’t forget what you hate!”
and oh, the lists of half-buried
memories, of half-baked feelings,
of skinned knees and lost
library books, of video-game
friendships and teachers’ pets,
of not knowing what each day would bring.
My twelve-year-old self told me:
him. just him.
because he smelled like jasper and
tasted like jade
and I thought one kiss
could put my pieces back together,
not realizing that I was already
whole.
My fifteen-year-old self stopped writing,
stopped the deluge of words,
preoccupied by insecurities
too massive to dislodge.
I was finding a way to define myself
without resorting to crushes, to
knives against my skin, to
choked sobs against my pillow.
I was finding a way to use line breaks in poetry without
breaking myself in the process.
Well, I’m not into philosophy and
I haven’t conquered death (yet) and
I never got that kiss but
I’m more than I ever expected—
the sum of hazy summer mornings and
singing softly to music at 2 am and
ripe raspberries and sour grapefruits and
sneakers that never seem to be free of dirt.
Every treasured sweatshirt and
stuffed animal and
emptied mechanical pencil and
piece of paper with my name
written tremblingly across the top,
every word of disappointment or
kindness,
every beautiful feeling I’ve ever
felt,
settles into my skin until
I am swollen
unbreakable.