Starfish

For years, I slept on one side of the bed.

Even alone, I folded myself neatly into half a mattress,

leaving room for a future body, an imagined weight,

the shape of someone else's shoulder and their breathing in the dark.

I became fluent in making space for the many you's that preceded you,

each with their hands and their lips to reach for,

each giving me a reason to stay close to the edge.

I learnt to sleep as if love was something I had to accomodate,

as if wanting meant shrinking.

But then of course, came the heartbreak, and the almost-love

that undid itself in my hands like a hemorrhaging doll made of string.

After that, the bed grew so enormous

I thought the silence would devour me,

arriving with all the noise of its perceived loneliness,

and it's inventory of absences that ache in my backtooth.

But tonight, I starfish:

Arms flung wide, one knee crooked into the open air,

strecthing supine diagonally across the mattress

like a creature finally washed ashore from the sea's relentless torment.

Ahh, finally, expansion:

I enlarge, grow bigger in the space I'd reserved for someone else,

for this quietness is not emptiness, but plump with relief,

asking nothing of me and asserting no pain.

This absence on accord of your silence, is not loneliness,

but the soft astonishment

that my body was enough, more than enough,

to fill this room all along.

So tonight, my darling, I do not sleep waiting and small,

but as a starfish,

all open, all limb, all unapologetic splay,

and for the first time,

the whole bed belongs to me.