all of the resentment is gone.
trickled out the holes in my heart
shaped
colander,
the one sitting silent now in my mothers sink,
leaving only air-dried, starchy, sticky love
the kind that
stands up on it’s own
has a bit of back
bone,
the kind that’s
known
around town, eyes that meet, hat tips;
the kind that
brims.

you swooped in
stole some part of the heart of me
leaving behind a stitch, a scar,
a patch; pieces indelibly swiped.

today everyone knows me as my eighty percent and oh
how i’ve simmered at the thought
aggravated at you being the understood, the generally accepted;
the catch in my breath, the white space.

you’re the placard,
the place-card; 
in me,
everyone knows what you signify. 

but while for so long i’ve seen you as a pause,
i’m suddenly realizing before you came along i was pieces;
bits
scattered and gapped and uncertain.

thanks to you, i’m changed
formed into a familiarity
granted an ease
opened up by being sewn shut.

your goal was never my contraction,
i see that now.
you stuck around
invested in me
visibly
permanently

you’re all that has ever held me together.