So It Goes

“So it goes,” she said
and I believed her not because I believed
but because it was her.
Her words rarely found my brain
but rerouted to my heart every damn time.
Even as we sat, staring into the sea,
salty water rolling down my cheeks,
I believed her.
The blue sky full of sunshine had become a lie.
“So it goes,” I said.
Perhaps repeating it would make it logical, rational,
easy to accept (even easy-er would have been okay).
Gentle platitudes were not her.
She spoke in direct half-truths, not emotional truisms,
though nothing made sense in this moment,
so maybe I had it all wrong all along,
or maybe she was a bitch who had held my heart
like a leash,
or maybe I could have opened more and presented her with
something…shinier, something worth something more.
“So it goes,” she agreed; the last words of hers I heard.
The waves drowned out her voice,
a symphony of white capped white noise
filling my ears,
drawing me in.
In bare feet, shirt to the ground, I walked to the edge.
The water licked my toes,
tickled my thighs,
embraced my arms and chest.
“So it goes,” I said as she kissed my lips.

-MjM

Source