Cristina Leone
Image by Amy Shamblen via Unsplash
Here’s to a generation of women
who’ve come of age believing
that our truest selves are counterfactuals
walking paths from which we’ve long since diverged
and to which we can never return.
Here’s to sitting quietly
with the loneliness of missing
the people we never were,
to living life
as an apology for all we are not –
as a breathless, defiant attempt to fill this odd chasm
left behind by the loss of the idea
of potential.
Here’s to knowing
imagination’s ruthless underbelly
with more intimacy than we’ve ever known
what is here before our eyes.
And here is to learning
to lie
to ourselves, and each other
about how and why we came
to hate ourselves, and each other
and about where the forgiveness must start
in the end.
Cristina Leone
Cristina is a cognitive science nerd who also sometimes likes to write. She lives in Toronto, Canada.