where the path doesn’t turn

dear you,

you watch the branches move without wind,
as if memory alone could bend
what time was meant to still.
or maybe it’s just the chill
of not saying what you ought.

there was a gate once,
splintered, half-hinged,
more pause than passage.
you walked by often; but never through,
somehow near enough to feel it listen.

you’ve forgotten how to ask for anything
without apology.
so you name the ache after weather,
after distance,
after all the things that leave
and still manage to stay.

lingering at the broken passage,
neither in nor out,
your hands are full of keys
to locks that never needed opening.

there is no message here.
only this:
you turned back
before the path could turn you.

yours, kate

(artwork: the path through the forest by pierre-auguste renoir)