There is a Room Full of All of the Imagined Versions of You I’ve Created
Poem by Halle Preneta — 9/8/22
I
The one that will hold my hand when I cry.
The one that will read every word I’ve ever written to you.
The one that will drop everything the second I say
“I’m in an emergency and I need your help.”
Running to come stay by my side
as I fall into an abyss I feel
like I’ll never climb out of
yet know I will eventually
because ladders weren’t created for nothing.
I sometimes wonder if you exist inside nothing.
I send you words with no return;
letters bouncing back into my mailbox,
saying “sorry, couldn’t find her.”
I ask about you at every meeting only to hear
“sorry, haven’t heard from her yet.”
I hunt for your star in the sky
only to find darkness.
II
In these moments,
an imagined version of you, a shadow,
comes and sits in the chair that is next to me.
We talk like real human people.
Watch time tick by in slow motion
never wanting this moment to end,
your shadow to fade
even though it always does and always will.
There will always be a different path right in front of you.
A different angle to view the sunset from.
A letter that’ll never make it to you,
hovering inside the ether
asking the universe where you are
only to have no answer.
III
When the imagined versions of you live
inside the shadows of my home,
bleeding away what is real and what isn’t,
I find myself clutching onto something;
onto you, onto your words,
onto your fake persona I made up for myself
and I realize in this moment that maybe,
there’s something that should’ve died a long time ago.
