Reading · The Poetry Kiln

Dear friends 🍂 🍁 🪶

I hope you’re as safe & well as you can be. :)

I wrote this poem after visiting two of my best friends in Spain in 2025. We only see each other in person once a year (if that), so I’ve been curious about how long-distance & long-term friendships exist, struggle, change, etc. I don’t know that this poem is quite there yet, but whittling it down has been fascinating. I hope you enjoy.

Thank you so much for reading, as always. Please take care of yourselves (as well as you’re able). ❤️‍🩹

With care & gratitude,

Mik

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

In a way, don’t we always forget the time
between time—the time apart
in figure eights, moving
away & back together?
Something draws us back 
across each other’s paths: A tree we recognize 
without its leaves—comforting 
as the first clear breath during a cold 
California morning, biking to practice,
preparing to sand our bones
until they weren’t quite ours anymore. 
How unsettling & terrifying that
away from each other we’ve changed,
that what we love can break 
down—become new faster than we’re able 
to learn to love.
God, it’s been hard to believe 
in everyone I’ve never met
inside a body I think I know. But as it was
for games, when we stacked days
we’ve long forgotten,
some trees produce fruit once 
every 2-3 years, and live to at least 300.

A new dispatch, from St. John’s, Newfoundland.
The next installment of my fairytales-in-verse series: “The Little Mermaid” - Part 7.
For the one-and-only, wonderful Conscious Writers Collective, I write previews for our upcoming guest speakers! Take a peek here.
Full archive here 🫆❤️‍🔥

Long-Term - Revised

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