Postcard from the North

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Dearest,

I am writing to say thanks for thinking of me but no thanks. My hands are in the soil and my body in the water and my mouth is singing. These things take me away from you and the world we inhabit together. Let me go, for trying to stay splinters who I am and could be. The other me is there, beyond the woodpile, dancing with the trees, running through the cove and I try to reach her, I try and try. But you and your love and your sad watchful eyes, stop me.

So let me go. Be brave dearest. Let me go.

M

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About this poem: Trying to write a prose poem has always defeated me. I end up with too much prose or slip into rhyming poetry. Today sitting at my desk, I imagined writing a postcard to those I loved most, saying those things that are left unsaid. Relationships are often a series of silences, filled with what we cannot say. But a postcard, with its space limitations, enables linguistic clarity and the unsaid can be written instead.