Coury Palermo

The taste of sour-sweet is what you leave – triumph & the forever process of walking wounded.

I began you with nothing more than the air left to my name – endless attempts at my design and countless plans for reinventing the wheel.  You looked more desperate than ever.

I slept your winter – braved your cold – one transitional defeat to the next.  Four months of holding on – to what, I still can not define.  Maybe the possibility of the only thing I’ve ever known – the tick that makes me breathe or my reality of nothing without her.  Whatever your reason – the words were never far.  The “come together” of wilderness and inspiration.

I wrote your days and drank your nights – building backwards.  I’ve heard it said that “life’s worth all the dying we do” – this is never true in the midst of passing.  When “the endless in between” is seldom more than a glimpse & hope is rarely strong enough to surface – we simply exist.

We stab and claw – tearing at anything that resembles “making sense of a bad situation” – and then you appear.  Hindsight and the small smirk of where we were.  The third person review of our turn in time.

Spring came and finally, ink hit paper. No more pretending I had a career – I was official.

The next few months are some of my favorite lived – hope found a surface.  I dove into the task of connecting – story to strum – no agenda but enjoying something earned – and again, you appeared.

The wicked chance encounter – a few weeks of make believe.  Over and done.  Stolen.  What I had not wanted for years – allowed, touched and lost in mere moments.  As if the grief were not enough – the last of my possessions, gone – ripped from my brilliant adventure.  Defeated, numb – I returned to the constant reminder.  A dose of unknown penance for choices I would give the world to change.  Or would I?  I teeter on that thought by the minute.  So much learned – a lifetime in seconds gone.

Summer fell and Fall seemed more empty than ever.  The things never shared left me remembering what could have been.  Wanderland had become the home beneath my chest – I wrote to catch my breath – and breathe, I finally did.

I don’t regret you nor would I change you.  Twelve months of “never the same”.