Violeta Noir

Some people believe love changes us

I don’t

I think love reveals us

it shows the places we’ve hidden
the rooms we’ve locked
the truths we’ve postponed

sometimes it asks us to wait

sometimes it asks us to leave

sometimes it asks us
to become someone we have never been

If this story means anything
I hope it is not that someone loved too much

I hope it is that one little boy
finally discovered
he did not need another mother

he needed to become a father

Whether he becomes that man
is no longer mine to know

So let me remember you honestly

not only as the man who walked away
not only as the silence
the waiting
the unanswered calls
the life that never fully opened

let me remember a love that was real

a man who met a broken woman in the woods
and helped her find her voice

a man who was tender when she needed tenderness
who saw what she hid
and reached toward the places
no one else had known were there

let me remember what was beautiful

and what hurt

let the love remain true

let the hurt remain true too

let neither truth erase the other

For a moment
I dreamed of a village

a crowded table
children running between rooms
holidays shared
doors open
no one hidden
no one left behind

I saw your son beside mine
my daughter becoming a woman
adults carrying their own wounds
so the children would never have to

I wanted that

I meant it when I wrote it

but it was only a moment

because long before there was a village
there was a woman looking toward the horizon

I have always wanted the world

strange cities
unfamiliar roads
oceans with names I have only read
people I haven’t met yet
stories I couldn’t possibly predict

I have always imagined reaching the end of my life
surrounded by people my family doesn’t know

arriving from everywhere

each carrying some ridiculous story
about who I was
where we went
what we did
and how the hell we survived it

That was always me

And now I see something
I could not see then

everyone in that village
had somewhere to grow

your son into childhood
my children into themselves
you into fatherhood
the wounded boy, perhaps, into a man

and me

I would have become the protector

protecting children
from choices they did not make

protecting peace
from truths too uncomfortable to hold

protecting you
while you learned to stand

protecting everyone
until there was nothing left
of me that did not belong
to someone else’s survival

while everyone else expanded

I would have learned to fit

around schedules
around guilt
around histories I did not create
around decisions I did not make
around a life already crowded
before anyone remembered
to make room for mine

I called it a village

but somewhere inside it

I was getting smaller

and somewhere beneath the weight
of everything I was protecting

my wings would have folded

I am not willing to fold them

not for love
not for a chair
not for a village

not even for you

I do not want smaller anymore

I want expansion

I want passports worn soft at the edges
cities whose streets
have never heard our arguments
oceans I have not stood beside yet

I want hotel balconies at sunrise
coffee somewhere I cannot pronounce
music spilling from windows
in places where nobody knows my name

I want adventures
that become stories
that become laughter
years after I have forgotten
how afraid I was to begin them

I want my children someday
laughing through their tears

meeting people from all over the world
carrying stories they have never heard

discovering pieces of their mother
they never even knew existed

I cannot leave them those stories
if I spend my life protecting someone else’s

Maybe I was never meant
to spend my life protecting
one small corner of the world

maybe I was meant to meet a thousand

to love people
to leave people
to be changed by them
and sometimes
to change them too

to collect stories
instead of responsibilities
memories instead of promises
horizons instead of waiting

I see my children building lives
that do not require me
to sacrifice mine

I see stories waiting
that have nothing to do with survival

I see laughter

desire

friendship

I see myself writing

not because I am bleeding

because I have something to say

For so long
I thought home was something
I was supposed to build around people

a husband

a lover

children

a village

some arrangement of chairs
that finally proved
no one was leaving

Now I wonder
if home was never the table

maybe home is the woman
who carries herself with her

So thank you

for the afternoons beneath the trees
for galaxies and mysteries
for tenderness
for desire

for seeing me
when I had forgotten how to see myself

I will not make our ending ugly
just because it ended

I will not make our love eternal
just because it was real

I can honor what was
without asking it to become
what it never could

You found a woman lost in the woods

and because you once helped her find her voice

she learned to find her own way

not home

to her

to the woman who always wanted horizons
strange cities
unfamiliar faces
stories worth bringing home

the woman whose wings
were never gone

only folded

So let me remember you

with love
with hurt
with gratitude

let neither truth erase the other

I looked back one last time

not with regret

with gratitude

for the love
for the lessons
for the woman I became
somewhere between holding on
and finally letting go

then I turned toward brighter skies
and spread the wings
I almost folded

because somewhere along the way

I found her.

Goodbye.