There are thoughts I once thought
That I will say even if I no longer think them.
Significance is changeable and
Far more temporary than we think, until
We find reason in its permanence.
Significance is personal,
Individual,
As interlocking with our own bones
As the muscles that allow us to move.
I’m not talking about significance in general
But significance in particular
Significance that is a deep breath
Filling lungs
Before pouring your heart out,
Or significance that is a gaping hole
In our chest
In our hands
Or in the air.
You are a significance greater than these
You are a significance that’s both a hole and a rupture,
And a seed become tree
Filling air, sprouting leaves.
You know me.
I can feel you knowing me.
You say my name like you’re savouring it and
You look at me like you’ll never have an opportunity again and
I sit in my room writing poems about you
As if one day you’ll read the words I’ll never say.
You are the only poem I’ve never been able to perfectly write
And maybe that’s why I’ve written so many.
I sit in my room writing poems about you
As if they’ll help me solve you,
But you can’t always solve a poem,
They need to be experienced.
That’s what I mean when I say:
I have so much to say and nothing at all.
I cannot speak my feelings when they really matter,
When I really should
Or when I really want to.
I just can’t get them out.
You are a significance greater than all I know
For you are my fear of the unknown.
I experience you in feelings, more than thoughts I cannot comprehend
And words I cannot write.
I don’t know who you are to me or who you will be
And I am tied up in knots over how to write you
So I just write and write in hope that time will untangle
My thoughts so I can read them.
I think of you more than sometimes, maybe there are just too many
Thoughts confined in an unsharable space
That I can’t see them.
You are my biggest contradiction,
You are the one thing I cannot plan for.
You are comfort within my discomfort
Of not being in the know, despite my craving for such a satisfaction, you
Are my biggest uncertainty.
You are questions and curiosity
But the question is always paramount to the answer, so
Maybe I secretly don’t want the answer
Maybe you are a mystery better left unsolved, because
Maybe your significance lies in the wonder you present me with
That keeps youth and love alive.
Our souls spill together as we try and figure out the sky
And we will never know the answers to the questions we pose
But we experience each other as we ask them
Just as I experience you when I write.
Significance is personal, individual,
And this particular significance is you.
Afterword,
You are a chapter of significance enclosed in the story of me,
That was the chapter, and
Sometimes I write words and reread them
And struggle to find who wrote them.
Maybe my poems will never be read by you
Because I didn’t write them for you to read.
You are a mystery I will never solve because I am no detective
And I will never perfectly write you
Because you are not the one I am supposed to perfectly write.
You will always be significant,
Because you are teetering on the edge,
You are a question until I stop asking
But I am deciding to let it remain unanswered.
I am deciding to let you fall out of my sight.
In contradiction there is paradox and tension and how
Am I supposed to find fulfilment if I’m constantly questioning you.
Constant curiosity is a death trap because I’m not living my life
I’m partly living yours
And I
Have a whole life
To live on my own.
Time has indeed untangled my thoughts and I see
Now, I never spoke my feelings because maybe
You were never meant to know and
There are words I never said because
They were never meant to be heard.
I need certainty and you give me everything but,
And I want to experience beyond what is written.
Significance is personal,
Individual,
As interlocking with our bones
As the muscles that allow us to move.
You are a particular significance
but not its entirety.
You are a significance that is a hole and a rupture
But despite all I once thought,
I think that was always all.
You will never be truly gone
But I am letting you go,
And maybe I’m letting you go
Because I finally found it somewhere else.
I think I’ve found what I’ve been looking for.
Lauren Kathleen 