The Structure of the Thing

Jessica Gould

Hold on to it until it explodes inside your palms.
Hold on to it like the enclosed violent hydrogen that it is,
and be grateful you’ve been given the privilege to even know it
exists.
The best things are always lethal.
It hurts to fall and it hurts to love,
so falling in love takes the entire cake
along with the leftover pizza in the fridge and the ice cream in
the freezer.
Good thing too, because you’re dieting
like always.
I always wondered how long it would take for all these seams
to come unraveled,
but once you fi nd that fi rst loose thread and give it a tug,
it all falls apart
pretty quick.
I’m sorry about that.
I thought maybe
we would have more time in limbo
before we had to give it all up and try for something
new.
Maybe it will be something better, but I can’t promise you that
and
I can’t seem to talk over the wind rushing in our ears
this explosion is far too loud and the debris is fl ying
past our faces,
scratching at the corners of our consciousness until we look,
until we tell each other it was all okay in the end,
even when we’re not sure.
Especially
when we’re not sure.
But still, I’m not sorry for the time we got
or the broken bones in the aftermath
or even the fi ght about who was becoming more like their
parents.
(And you win that one, darling, because the pupils in the
mirror
look more and more like my father’s every day).
I will remember it all
because it was the best and worst of us,
the most beautiful and ugly we have ever been.
We fought
and we fought for each other
and in the end we are destruction
annihilations
but sometimes
that is the only way
to truly
rebuild.