June was the longest year of my life.

The Moirai conspired to show me how different paths would play out.

On the day of reckoning,

I stood at the altar,

Calling upon false gods.

My voice turned to hushed whispers,

Then a broken prayer—

God began to sound like my mother,

Tone-deaf lullabies, swaddled in codependency.

Even though the chord had been cut for twenty five summers,

I still cannot breath without her near me.

Would this fledgling ever learn to fly?

Or risk always being bound to the nest?

Now, I am chained to her shadow.

Unseen extension of her spiraling sanity.

She’s starting to forget the name she agonized over for forty days and forty nights.

And all I can do is watch as the dominos fall into each other.

The curse has not been lifted.

Something nefarious waits for me at the end of the road.

My ears echo the tolling of the bells.

With all these sunny days,

I still cannot make it out of the darkness.

I reopen old wounds every time I write.

I guess this is how bleeding leads to beauty.

The hands that held me when I was new never felt colder.

I feel small again, like a blip on the cosmic radar.

One day,

I am going to join the Death March with nothing to show for living.

My obituary will be a list of regrets a mile long.

But you will never hear me say that I regret the love I gave.