Of Slinkies and Words

Vocal chords taut
Like a euphonic ripchord
Pulled from its mooring
Then promptly wept over.

When a change is irreversible
Can it ever feel good?
Tangle a slinky
Then try to bend that shit back into shape
And tell me you don’t well up with that childlike horror
The epiphany that rings through your head
That it will never be the same.

Words are like slinkies,
when you bend and twist them
 they never retain their original shape.
I love you means something so different
when it echoes in your cranium
At the sight of them
Than when it’s spoken aloud
you can’t take it back.
Once spoken its been bent.
It can’t be unheard.

What existential dread can compare
to the death of a slinky?
The realization that the marks you leave on the world
Are more often pen than pencil.
How do I reconcile my fear of change
with my hunger for my truth,
when the changes are like test answers on a scantron
That I already handed in?

What if I’m wrong?

Well… the ripchord is pulled.
My voice is shot from the hundred times I declared my love for you,
Ninety-nine times in my head,
and once aloud
and that last one was the most resounding.

Don’t ask how we come back from this.
I don’t know how, and I don’t want to.
Not since you responded to “I love you”
with a pen stroke so elegant it cut my heart in two:

"I love you too."