Cicadas on the hillside

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

When you smile, I don’t see it on you. Instead, before me is a woman I barely knew. The Who you were before trauma mutated, as it does, into the mistakes. And your mistakes are my injuries.

I brush all of that away now, as best as I can. You’re doing it again. Smiling with all of the potential in the world. Years are flaking off of you. You are temporarily new. Temporarily safe. I could hug you. I could try to forgive…