Semantics

When I think or talk about you,

time seems to get in the way.

I always forget,

or maybe I want to forget,

that your time –

our time together –

has ended.

I find myself using words like ‘is’

or ‘does’, ‘will’ or ‘has’,

but then the sharp slap of memory stops

the flow of words.

Then I remember that memory is all we have left.

All I have left of you.

It is so hard to change ‘is’ to ‘was’,

to acknowledge out loud the realities I don’t want to be.

Time rambles onward

like a run-on sentence,

painfully punctuated by grief and loss,

but I have to complete this sentence alone now.

This story will keep writing itself

whether I want to read it or not;

better that it be the truth, an honest retelling of who I am

and how I came to be.

And so I must remind myself to put you in the past tense,

because you will never be present again.