You were always better at love poems
Which is truly a tragedy
Because now who will write you the eloquence you deserve?
There is something terribly fitting, and yet sad,
That when I think of how to write for you,
"Your Song" immediately comes to mind.
However, unfortunate for you, it's also true.
If I had anything better to express these wavelengths vibrating in my chest,
I would do it, to show you the depth, volume, mass of my affection
For the way you hair only knows how to grow up,
For your hobbit-like, animated toes,
For hands so perfect, Michelangelo couldn't have done it better,
For the ever-shifting newness of your irises;
But as previously lamented,
I have nothing but words.

Even more unfortunate for you, love
I was always more of a math brain.
Ah! If only there was a formula,
One where x equals the buzzing in my knee caps when you're standing close enough to touch,
And y equals the deepest secret that cummings tried to explain,
Where there's a tree and a sky and bud.
Something I could quantify,
Like how your star sign and mine dance around the earth with one another.
How it all means nothing by itself, just some shots in the dark
But because of love, some of those shots meet their target.

One day I'll write you a love poem,
A real one.

I have a horrible tendency to take things too personally
To the point of tears and anger and losing my temper to the Aries hiding in my chest.
I cling tight to past wrongs and embarrassments, much longer than I suppose I should.
I criticize to the point of cruelty, a dark narrative of flinging insults from one lobe to another,
But don't worry, I get my fair share.
I judge more often than a public servant, and my sentences are always strict.
I wage war on a social anxiety that is, was, and always will be myself,
And even if the anxiety recedes, the weariness of battle ensures a losing result.
I live to escape the life I'm living;
In the stories I read, I am the brave one, the right one, the fearless daredevil:
I exercise regularly, do back flips as a hobby, and have no fear of microphones.

I talk entirely way too much about myself.
Give me a crisis and I'll make it about me.
Tell me you're having a hard time right now,
And it'll somehow be my fault.
If it's not my fault,
It'll somehow become about how my relationship with my mother has deteriorated to me listening to her last voicemail to me two years ago
Or how I fell through the rotten floor of our trailer when I was nine.
Can't think of a subject? I'll just talk about myself.
Don't believe me? Just read this poem.

I don't have to fall asleep with the TV on anymore.
The sullen silence waiting in the click of a light switch
Doesn't intimidate my eyelids anymore.
I don't stare at the glow in the dark stars
Placed on my ceiling long before I was ever an occupant.
Their soft green glow isn't necessary to still my uncertainties.
When I close my eyes,
I smile when the still-frame of your face arrives
I can wiggle my toes and cling to my blankets a little tighter
Wishing, longing it was you in my arms.

No more holding back my love for you
With the dam of Bee Arthur's and Betty White's voices.
No more counting the number of breaths until I fall asleep.
No more,
Because somewhere outside my cheap mini-blinds,
Under the same moon and stars
There you are, living a life where you love me, too.

It's that time of year again
Where the heat turns up to 11
And suddenly I'm boiling like a cauldron over a hearth
Leaking out all my impurities.
Purging my illness like a lightweight two martinis too many.

Spring was a lie
Summer is my rebirth
And I sweat it out like the metaphorical labor I'm going through.
It's July and my ghosts of Christmas past
Have decided I'm getting too Scrooge-like, again.

Reborn, like I said,
But not without requiring a death to make room for this new life.
And in this death I am haunted,
Revisited by all those summer ghosts
Pain after pain, brought back to spark in my vision
The kind that induces goosebumps and clammy palms.

Some memories, the ones that leave you gasping for air,
Like the time you fell flat on your back from the playground ladder,
Lungs in shock, stunned
Those memories don't fade with time.
They'll disappear for a while,
Fly south for the winter months,
But that summer heat is too familiar.
They'll always come back,
Lurking in parking garages, apartment gates, and on park benches.

Winter cold may sting,
But it was winter who brought you,
And winter when you chose to stay.
It was summer who took you away,
And summer again when you left.

Now the solstice has come
And I've already begun to simmer.
Time to grow anew, again.

Like two overstuffed pillows long forgotten in the attic
Slammed together in a great concussion of sound
BLOOF
All those particles of god knows what flying into the air,
We call them bunnies
because it's safer than acknowledging all the creepy crawlies now flying into our nostrils
I am shaking the dust off of these lobes in my head
Clearing out proverbial cobwebs
And beating bad habits with broomsticks
Like you would an old rug.

*Shake the dust off
And start writing again.

Man, whoever said 'long distance is hard'
Has to be on the royal court of understatements.
It's not hard, it's sitting on the ledge of possible,
Looking out onto the abyss of impossibility.
It's being the one left behind,
Hoping their heart doesn't set up roots where their feet have.
It's being the one who left,
Learning to balance the old life with your new one.

Long distance is paranoia at war with trust.
It's hearing your partner's fingers tap tap tap
On the phone screen,
And wondering what messages this 'nobody' is receiving.
It's having unbalanced days stretched out over hundreds of miles
And hoping they miss you, too.

Long distance is making your dog sleep in their spot
Because that's your version of a warm body.
Long distance is sending them off with love
And hoping it's enough to bring them home safe.
Or bring them home at all.

It's as old as war, adventure, itchy feet,
And I will cling to its age like a prayer
Whispering to it at night in my dog-warmed bed
Asking for the power to not starve off of
10 minute phone calls and 'thank you's.

Because he will always be worth it

It's fading, I can feel it
Like those moments when the day passes
from twilight into the dark
It is undeniable that night is settling in.

And I'm uncertain what my responsibilities are
Am I to stand watch,
Hold your vigil until the sun rises once more?
Or is this more like an omen,
A warning of the darkness to come?

All I know is the hourglass
And nothing can stop her sands.
Should I be clogging her drains with my bare hands?
Or is it time I simply lay back
And dream of the weight to come?

No answers can be found here,
There are only darkness and sand.