I love you like rain
Soft and warm
A gentle lullaby tapping on my window
As my heart echoes it quietly beneath my chest


The morning air is different
Full and heavy
It doesn’t weigh me down.
I float through the humid air,
air full of you
A clean, mild scent
Like summer’s sweet beginning

I love you like storms
Loud and crashing
Hot and bright
A strike of lighting
lanced through me

I love you like clouds
You filter the sunshine,
Refine the light,
color my world

I love you like heaven on earth

Isolated but never alone
surrounded by noise
yelling and shouts and anger and doors
creaking and slamming and sliding
footsteps constant
the house is never still
and I can't break my silence
I can't say a word
I cannot sing the way I wish to
freely and loudly and brokenly
I want to rip my vocal chords out with the sheer force of my cries
but I keep them quiet
small sounds muffled by sheets
I want my friends but they are long gone
Some far by miles and some far by will
willful ignorance
I'm wounded and their messages are salt rubbing in
digging into my skin
tearing thin lines across my skin
razor thin lines down my legs
down my arms
thin lines I imagine but never carve
I won't because I know now
I know how to breathe
I know how to sleep away the hurt
sleep for weeks and months
sleep through a pandemic
sleep through the pain

I can feel myself tucked inside.
I want to come out and feel,
deeply,
but I am trapped in my chest.
With each breath I remember
the hollowness where
a swell of feelings
once perched,
like a sweet bird
singing to me constantly.
I miss the warmth of its weight within me;
I turn up my music to draw it back out;
I am afraid it’s been lost to monotony.

But if I close my eyes
and breathe slowly,
deeply,
I can almost feel my diaphragm brush the edges
of that same cluster of emotions
that once lived close to my heart

I climb slowly
gripping each ledge, each pebble
leaping from perch to perch
nearly flying.
Each breath sends chills down my stiff spine.
Each heartbeat drums strong in my fingers.
Each moment moves slowly until it passes,
until it is gone and I must move onwards,
upwards and onwards.
Directionless, I merely climb for ages,
days and weeks and summers pass
essays and applications
money and apartments
endless obligations I halfway want.
I've done what I'm supposed to do.
I don't know what to want,
what I want.
Happiness is to the north, but I dropped my compass years ago.
I stumble in each direction, moving closer, farther.
Still, I climb, clinging tight, promising myself another year.

Summer heat beams down, angry and punishing,
brutal light blinds me as my shoulders burn.
My nose and cheeks are freckled, ancient specks once lost
to childhood memories of swimming and sprinklers.
The belligerently blue current bounces
as the shrieks and the smiles of countless kids
chime through the air,
bittersweet as the memory of you.
You who once laughed quietly, like happiness was a secret you kept
from the world,
shared only with me
and the quiet house by the coast.

Now the ports, run down, rotting,
while waves lap at the thin shoreline,
are an eerie mirror of your mind.
Now the chlorinated water only reminds me of your eyes,
clear, but still too far to touch,
distant but reaching,
searching for my name,
for my face,
for me.
I will not visit again.
I will remember you as water, stretching on forever toward the horizon.

Bundled in blankets

       my skin is cold

Closing my eyes

      your smile is warm

Summer heat beams down, angry and punishing,
brutal light blinds me as my shoulders burn.
My nose and cheeks are freckled, ancient specks once lost
to childhood memories of swimming and sprinklers.
The belligerently blue current bounces
as the shrieks and the smiles of countless kids
chime through the air,
bittersweet as the memory of you.
You who once laughed quietly, like happiness was a secret you kept
from the world,
shared only with me
and the quiet house by the coast.

Now the ports, run down, rotting,
while waves lap at the thin shoreline,
are an eerie mirror of your mind.
Now the chlorinated water only reminds me of your eyes,
clear, but still too far to touch,
distant but reaching,
searching for my name,
for my face,
for me.
I will not visit again.
I will remember you as water, stretching on forever toward the horizon.