A Step Back
Sonder Spotlight: a piece by Ana
I finally took a step back today.
I’d always been afraid of moving forward too soon,
but I was petrified of stepping back and falling off of a cliff.
I didn’t. Fall. Off. The. Cliff.
I never did.
Yet the fear remains.
I took a step back today because the Earth crumbled under me
whenever I lifted my foot, wondering whether I was taking the step
or putting my foot down.
I stepped back because I fell in love.
With the chocolate brown eyes that shone so elegantly
the soft hair colored hazel, the perfectly structured face, and the
perfectly serene smile.
I fell in love with a man that felt like my home.
I fell in love with a man I’m so familiar with. He haunts me.
He haunts me when I’m awake, asleep, thinking, eating, drinking,
smiling, crying, blinking— he haunts me while I’m alive.
I love this man with such depth that if my blood cells were to be
arranged in a man it would be his.
I love, love, love him.
It’s wrecking me.
I took a step back today.
I walked back until the wall was against my back.
I stared at him one last time as I dissolved into thee air.
I flew out like a passing cloud even though I remember
him like poetry.
I am a language he doesn’t know exists.
He doesn’t know whether my eyes are the color of the sea or the
forest, the sand or the mud, the snow or the coal.
He doesn’t know that my eyes want to be painted by him.
He doesn’t know that my smile reaches my eyes,
He doesn’t know that he makes my skin burn like the sun.
He doesn’t know that my hair is similar to his,
He doesn’t know that my name belongs with his.
He doesn’t know my name.
I fell in love with a stranger I know so beautifully that it kills me.
So, I chose to crumble under the land he walks on because
at least then he’ll leave a mark on me.
I, Ana, have always wanted to be noticed by my sister. I've wanted to do things she did. same thing, same style. if it was dance it was dance. If photography then photography.. if poetry then poetry. I've wanted to be her so much that I found myself in my art. I was trying to be someone she was proud of, I ended up being proud of myself.
-Ana