numerical sorcery

to M., L.N., M.R.

The numerical sorcery of life – strange and inescapable.
To each of you –
the cardinal loves, the fault lines of my heart –
you were all twenty-three.

The first –
you were my match, my equal, my storm.
We were young and unfinished,
loving with fists and flowers,
breaking apart just to find new ways to return.
And though we stumbled,
though we stood at the edge more than once –
we stayed.
Time tempered us,
until we became less fire, more root.

The second –
God.
You were light through linen,
a quieter kind of ache.
You taught me tenderness I didn’t yet deserve.
And then you vanished,
slowly, brutally,
a sentence passed on your body’s frailty.
I still carry your voice like a worn photograph:
soft around the edges, fading only in places.

And the third –
you appeared when I was already too far along.
Forty-nine, ringed, composed – at least on paper.
And you –
you arrived like spring slipping in through an open window:
bright, disheveled, unaware of how much I wanted to stay in that moment.
We both knew: this could not last.
You were the hour before dawn,
I was already dusk stretching long across the floor.
But still, I hold you briefly, greedily –
and cannot let go.

Still, I remember.
You were all twenty-three –
as if the universe had paused its wheel there,
and I, over and over again,
return to that one unbearable brightness.

To the first – who stayed.
To the second – who left too soon.
To the third – whom I have yet to release.
I count you
not in years,
but in moments
that hold me and slip away.