The Boy That Got Away
Remember the slow-motion waterfall, us
trying to keep from slipping on the spray-slicked rocks?
I wore a plaid skirt and pale blue sweater, but could never feel pretty.
You could never be more than an outsider — lucky you —
pair of one-eyed jacks every time we played strip poker,
you, born with a blank diary, no future etched by the letters
of your last name, no destiny set by the size of your breasts
or fullness of your red mouth. Never confined by towering pines
or plastic
people pretending to be everything they’re not.
When I remember you, it’s like a dream, a sensory swirl
soothing scent of coffee and a whisper of breath on the back
of my neck, every colour muted by a layer of mist
then gone, a wisp, a ghost
when I reach for your hand and wake up
cold.
Remember when you told me not to be afraid?
That I could leave too, no more coming home
to a red room in a hollow house.
That I — we — could build a new place
together, in a tall city teeming with strangers and light?
I should have left.
But
fear is a knot, I said, in a rope we’re all holding on to,
scared that if we let go, even men from away
will pick up the slack
tie our hands behind our backs
or wrap it tight around our throats.
Kim Mannix is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet, fiction writer and journalist from Sherwood Park, Alberta. She has been published in several journals and anthologies and is currently completing her first book of poetry. You can find her on Twitter @KimMannix posting about kids, cats and all things spooky.