Spilt Devotions (Preface)

Back again from the brink of destruction
I made my bed, I won’t get reparations
I spent a week in the Pacific Northwest
I saw the worst of it
You swore it was the best

I don’t mean to be calling you out this way
But I gave you the keys to my heart
And you didn’t stay
You made copies for all of your friends
I had to kick them out again

We had a two year tale
Steeped—stale—in the romantic air
You were never a prophet though
Just a hopelessly lovelorn soul

For who can see a movement in the midst of it?
And who’d ever believe you if you said you did?
Cause this wasn’t love, no
This was art

So I pine and I whine and I tell myself
“Just like the divine, I won’t chase but attract”
And it all became clear:
Nobody really wants me here
But it’s convenient
So I stay anyway

Keep me in mind but never in practice
Or something of the sort
For aren’t I just a canvas
Waiting to be adorned?

Donned with your suffering,
I suffer the strife
Of giving nearly all I had
Even my life

For you could love me in the distance
But never in touch
All the letters that you etched
Were sentiments unprofessed

And if I should be the one to falter
On my way up to the altar
I will be the one condemned
I will be what you forget

For isn’t it prophetic
Though we can’t quite yet confess it
You can keep the classics
And I’ll take the romantics

I won’t get caught on the semantics
Of how it used to be
For history is too close to me
And my world has started shifting

One thing about devotion
Is that it is found in extremes
I suppose, in a similar fashion,
So are all these writings

Embellishing a fleeting feeling
Across minutes or pages
Or filmstrips or memories

To immortalize their brevity
And give them a space to be

free