the scary thing about being a former poly and proud little egg of a person
is watching a volume of lovers leave
even with nothing more than emotional intimacy and understanding,
sometimes never even seeing a face, only voices over a cellular line.

It’s not to say that it’s a longing for what was,
more like mourning the what-ifs
contentment in the present
but melancholy with a stale taste in their mouth

a sadness, bittersweet heart,
torn apart by so many hurting souls to cross an unknown internet
just two fish in a universal sea,
how do you sever a soul?
it was so much more than this.

We pace the great expanse of space
crying out for mates and offspring, fed and returning to the fold,
Do penguins fear their mother, a creature they’ve never seen,
coming back to settle months after hatching and fledgling stumbling
how do they know?

My heart and body were once roots of a tree,
folds in a blanket,
the crease in a shirt where the hem can be played like a fiddle

one in so many would stop being something to pursue
then why does it still burn this much?
burn with shame and desire and guilt and cold.
burn like a cursed scar, or the way whiskey does
as it sears the cells of the open throat,
both disinfecting and toxifying,
the balance continues to astound me.