The way lodgepole pine trees,

mature and stocked tight,

stunt their growth, crowns dwarfed, 

limbs kept small

just to stand apart—

somewhere in the years between us

I stopped loving myself.

Which is to say, I stopped being capable

of loving you: the space between us

a constellation of instinct,

self-destruction, compassion, practice.

Which is to say, it’s taken this to know

that I will curb my outstretched branches—

heart now pitched and sealed as a cone

with sharp-tipped scales, mind a splintered

bough, skin once succulent as inner bark.

Sometimes a good tree decays

from the inside out, which is to say,

our love is rotten, mushrooming

clusters of spongy poison.

The hardest part of knowing this

is knowing this