It’s Always About You (Even If It Isn’t)

This evening I looked closely at

the girl who was not me

and found the same handwriting on her love-note

and the same metaphor you used on my birthday.

This evening I sat in my room with a pen in my hand again,

and pretended everything is as good as it was when I was younger,

and my heart was a glass always half-full

love and ambition and hope mixed in somewhere

in all the muscle and tissue.

But not everything is wiser in retrospect,

and I am older now, but my fingers still burn with all this,

and on nights like these I am still a paper-doll girl

with too many metaphors.

I am older now,

but some things refuse to change.

Like how I am always searching for metaphors

in the sky, willing this town to become beautiful.

I still write poetry like my life depends on it,

like every word is a gasp for breath. It is

the only way I do not end up writing about you.