By the time we got back to Colorado,
the trees had started to rust.
I had forgotten how Fall crisps the leaves there.
High and dry.
I had forgotten, too, that every footfall
sets hordes of grasshoppers a-ping.
Colorado is childhood,
big and blue.
I keep forgetting my brother
is grown and can love a woman.
I keep forgetting how to be happy.
How to be true beyond self-protection.
I only remember that I was
too much for my mother.
Too much for the world.
The first man I picked
couldn’t stand feelings, either.
We disintegrated.
But at my brother’s wedding,
months before mine,
with my second chance, my love
turned to me and poured his soul into mine,
and I realized I had not yet experienced
in this lifetime
what it is to be whole.