All Along

I push you back into the dying embers of my girlhood,

hands firm against the fightless surface of your chest.

What was then so dearly proclaimed

now beat faint echoes in my head,

repeating waves only recognizable

by the habits of an old memory.

I have held each drifting piece of you for fifteen years.

The frenzy slowly became mechanical,

and then coarse, and then finally earnest.

If I failed to keep you together,

I only knew it to be a fleeting instant of rebellion,

where, shortly, I was slapped by the bursting fury

of guilt so unabashedly my own.

I am back and I knew I would be.

At your feet, the words cling

just as constantly as I have to you.

For Kevin Garnett (duh)