I wish I’d met you in a different lifetime
further down the line.
In this hypothetical lifetime,
we’re stronger and smarter, quicker on our feet,
Full of grace and thought, ready for anything.
a life quite close the end of it all, perhaps,
When we’ve learned just about all the lessons
Conquered almost all the demons
When we’ve found ourselves **** near the best that souls can be,
So close to eternal bliss we can almost wrap ourselves in it.
I wish you had found me a bit more evolved,
A life in which we’ve found a perfect niche for our respective selves,
We could spend these long days on our own cosmic plane,
Sipping herbal tea and
contemplating the complexities
Or the simplicities
Of it all
where we go from here,
And how it could be possible that we fit so nicely into one another's
Grand schemes,
How lucky it is that we found each other just in time
For the end of our journeys, whole and full.
I wish we could spend these moments in peace,
Where we can count our combined spirals and
questionable decisions
And painful memories on one steady hand,
Where we don’t have to weigh
Who needs more in the moment,
Where we don’t have to fight so hard for happy,
And we wouldn’t have to white-knuckle it when we have finally get a momentary taste.

It’d be nice,
Wouldn’t it?
To love and let love
To know the answers and let the questions
Roll over us without a care,
Without getting stuck there?
To just enjoy what the universe has made of us?

But then again,
on second thought,
I think I’m quite glad you’re here, now,
Somehow,
Maybe this is lucky.
Maybe lost and hurt
and ages away from where we’re meant to be,
Unsure and certain that we must missing some essential thing,
Something everyone we admire seems to have found,
Something they keep tucked away for only the elite to know,
Some compass or map
Or fountain of youth
Or maybe we just haven’t read the right books
Heard the right songs
Gotten the right diagnoses
Had the right conversations
Visited the right places.
Regardless, I think,
This lifetime must have been meant for us.
Maybe,
I think,
I don’t so much mind the white-knuckling and
Trying to understand and
Asking too many questions
And tallying up the ones that are ever-unanswered
As long as you’re doing it next to me.
The getting there, i’m beginning to think,
might be when we need one another most.

a.m.

Once upon a time, you and i ruled the world.
Our little piece of it, anyways.
We were the mermaids and the witches and the princesses of the best backyard i’d ever seen,
We perfected the art of microwave s’mores and
Cannon *****
And we cried the way that only prepubescent girls can.
We had each other until we didn’t
Until we did,
And so it goes.

Our lives look different now.
The world is bigger than it seemed before,
And crueler.
We always talked about how we’d get here one day,
We just never imagined what it would take from us.

Somewhere along the way,
You and i traded in chasing golf ***** for chasing highs.
And dreams.
And men who always seem to overstay their welcome.
At some point,
we learned how to swallow hard
and keep our heads down through the thick of it
And to fight like hell to get to the other side.
Neither one of us made it through unscathed,
We were beaten and broken until we weren’t sure if we even had enough left to make a life worth living.
I couldn’t tell you how we did it,
But ****, i’m glad we managed.


I suspect that you and i,
We’ll be sitting on one another's beds
Recounting each and every scar
until we’re 90.
Maybe one day we’ll upgrade to King sized tempurpedic mattresses with silk sheets.
Maybe one day you’ll be breastfeeding your (second) baby.
Or we’ll be going over my (second) divorce papers
Or we’ll be planning a wedding.
Maybe we’ll be somewhere warm and worthwhile
Or stuck in the same cornfields we’ve always known
(please, god, anywhere but the cornfields)


To be honest,
I have no idea what our talks will look like in 10, 20 years.
What i do know is that it’ll always be you and i
Far too late at night
Staining the comforter with tears and wine and our bleeding hearts,
And for a little while
We’ll remember what it was like to rule the world.
Even just a little piece of it.


a.m.

it was only after you hurt me, after you sat back and watched me burn up in the fire you set, only after I spent so long desperately trying to stamp out the flames, overflowing with love and letting you soak up every bit without ever saying "eventually, I am going to dry up, eventually i won’t be able to extinguish the inferno you’re feeding", it was after I lent you my time and guidance as if I was a library with no return policy, it was only after I watched you take and take and take, and i filled you to the brim with encouragement, love, letting myself become empty, it was only after I built you up to be a tower stronger than any architect could design, after I let you watch me crumble, never once stopping to pick up the rubble, or better yet, after you brought the wrecking ball, it was only after I stayed and stayed and stayed, only after I became the mouse when all I ever wanted to be was a lion, after I allowed you to accept everything I had to offer as if you were a God and I was merely a lost and broken child who needed nothing more than just one blessing, it was only after you convinced me that I, someone so frail and unworthy and naive, could not survive this harsh world without you.

it was only after that I understood how a hiker who is trapped between a rock and a hard place can have the strength to gnaw off their own arm in an effort to survive.



a.m.

You held my hand.

While Andy Dufresne crawled through a river of **** and came out clean on the other side, you willed your fingers to find mine.

I wanted to tease you, “don’t play palm reader, i don’t think there’s a rosetta stone for untangling this mess”,

But I didn’t.

Instead, I let your thumb make maps of me, charting my mountains and valleys and taking inventory of the cracks you could gently crawl your way into.

I wanted to say, “it’s dark down there, don’t let yourself get lost because I’m not sure that you’ll find your way back out again, and trust me, it’s no place to make a home”,

But I didn’t.

Instead, I let your fingers ****, where does it ache? Where are the fault lines that just won’t give? Where are there fires waiting to ignite?

I wanted to explain, “the fires inside of me aren’t something to roast marshmallows around. These fires destroy towns, burn whole cities right to the ground”

But I didn’t.

Instead, I watched your fingertips search for mine like kindling, wondered if you touched the stove one too many times as a child, wondered if maybe you weren’t afraid of getting burned.


I wanted to be honest, “I don’t know how to write love anymore, my hands don’t know **** about soft, only know how to etch in my notepad with splintered bone and blood”,

But I didn’t.

Instead, I let myself melt into the laughter that followed a joke you so cunningly told. And suddenly, poetry felt more softened butter and less barbed wire.

I wanted to warn you, “they shake sometimes. These hands are more bull than butterfly most days, tend to do more breaking than building”,

But I didn’t.

Instead, I steadied myself in your breathing. Let your heartbeat echo in my ear and decided that I would never, could never, make a china shop of your chest.

I wanted to give you one more word of caution, “I’ve waded in my fair share of ****** rivers, thought about drowning myself in them a time or two to put out the flames, I understand if this is too much, if you’re already taking on enough water of your own”,

But I didn’t.

Instead, I wanted to tell you what I was thinking, that maybe, you’d trudged the same waters, wondering if somehow we’d both come out the other side clean. calloused and cracked, but clean.

But I didn’t.

I wanted to ask, “can you be patient? no one’s ever treated my fists like teacups, I don’t know gentle. But I can learn. You can teach me.”

Instead, I didn’t say much. We watched Andy Dufresne make a free man of himself, tasted salt on our tongues from the tears or the ocean, some relief from the dry mouth the *** so lovingly gave to us, felt the sun on our faces and hoped the Pacific was bluer than either of us could have ever dreamed.

And you held my hand.

And somewhere along the way, I found myself holding yours, too.



a.m.

i promise i'll get better.

i won't ruin all your sheets with mascara stains and snot, i'll cook for you and sit through movies and family gatherings without bouncing my every extremity incessantly.

i'll get better.

i'll stop asking for so much and give more and i swear i'll be more myself. i'll wake up with the sun and you'll wake to me, the window, coffee, a book, breakfast. the mornings of puffy eyes and snoozed alarms and stacks of ***** dishes will be a distant memory.

promise.

i won't need you so much. i'll stop disrupting your evenings by asking you to come hold me through the thick of it. i'll take my alone time with a strong shot of gratitude and a healthy dose of missing you, but not enough to send me spiraling.

i promise i'll stop keeping you up so late with the sound of my thoughts echoing so loudly i swear you can hear them too. i'll get better at keeping the volume down so that every conversation doesn’t have to be saturated by the weight of it.

i'll take care of myself so you don't have to. i'll give you the best version of me, consistently, daily, the way you deserve.

i promise.
i just have to get better. i promise i'll get better.


a.m.

My poetry has never been soft,
It’s all etched and carved
And written in blood
It’s the grit and tar of this life
It’s the hope that if it lives on my page
it will no longer live in me.

This, I know how to write.
I know how to metaphorically catastrophize my existence
Into stardust and shudders.
I know how to write my pain pretty,
Doll it up,
Deck it out,
I can make this **** beautiful enough to take home a miss america title.

But you?

I don't know how to write you.

You’re all
Soft voices and 4 am kisses
And touches and cassette tapes
And i can’t write that with a pocket knife.
How can i write so delicately the way you calm my insides?
How can i write gently how my mind was a polluted cesspit until you planted flowers in it?
Maybe this isn’t some meadow in the sunshine
Maybe it isn’t all that smooth
Or simple
But I’m finding that the bleakest corners of my mind
Are much brighter,
More beautiful,
With you in them.
And I simply don’t know how to write that.
And for once -- I’m grateful for the writers block.
It means that this is easy.
Peaceful.
Loving.
Certain.
Genuine.
Kind.
It’s all I want in this world and it’s all that I don’t know how to turn into prose.
I hope this will suffice.


a.m.