To you,
Know that I will never be your dream
That my hands are just a little too small, you can barely feel them holding on
That this obstinate heart will always refuse to follow your melody and will try to find its own place in this symphony
That never will your world slow down because these feet were never made to settle beyond a frame

I am like rain in excess; I am not a need to be sought after
I am puddles to be jumped over and over and over
I often find myself in buckets tilted over drains
Because I always spill into houses who never wanted my pains

To you,
Know first that our love was, is, and will never be a fairytale
That maybe our happy endings are found in two different books
And characters whose names are just not written here yet

We have learned how to dream with our eyes open
Believing in the possibility of de ja vu but situated in today
We have studied how to make excuses for our stubborn selves
To fake ink in these pages of the stories we have written out of daydreams
Out of wanting but knowing we could not keep just yet

To you,
Maybe our forever is just for now
or maybe for now is simply the start of our forever
One step at a time, we'll get there;
whether there is found with you a breathe away
or at a bus stop with one bidding farewell,
I can never tell
I can however pour out to you all I hope we would be
But we will only know what can be in the time it will be
So I'd rather keep it to myself

But know that you are never forgotten
There are tears reserved only for the memories of you
Places I could never quite stand on again because
My silhouette would always fail to fill the spaces like you’d always do
Words on repeat that never lost the sound of all pain I knew like “almost”:
We almost made it,
You almost stayed,
I almost held on,
We almost fell,
You almost relapsed,
I almost let you,
We almost forgot that our love is not all that we have
That our hearts are never always right
That our love does not define the word itself
Know that I never doubted your love
But there is a love that came before them all
Written in the prologue by the writer up above

To you,
Thank you for loving that I will never be your dream
That my hands are just a little too small, but you can better hold on
That this stubborn heart will always refuse to follow your melody and have added its own beat to your symphony
That never will your world slow down because these unsettling feet have drawn you out

I am like rain in excess; I am not a need to be sought after yet you chose me still
You say I am puddles to be jumped into again and again and again
I often find myself in buckets tilted over flower pots
Because I finally spilled into a house who knew the worth of this "excess"

To you,
Thank you for loving the rain.
For saving me in buckets and closing the drains
I will never really know why I love you lover
Because all these could never find reason of its own
But maybe this little girl simply took after her Father
Who loved beyond the uncertainty and visions of the other

Thank you for pulling me down from skies
For reminding me that my soles were always meant to kiss these grounds
That dreams aren’t always the best,
That one day I’ll thank God for handling the rest

So I throw away my worries and cast my cares aside
I need not fret about being saved because though no prince was sent, the King came down himself
I was never formed as a half in search to be completed
But created as a whole with the option to love beyond the convenience
And out of all these choices,
I chose you to love you

To you,
I’ll be okay.
I am slowly remembering to not seek warmth in the created but in the Creator
I have found the praises He has always filled my heart to store
And have learned to shout them again
My home is not in your arms but wherever roof my Father settles me down
His love is too vast to be swallowed by this ocean of tears
That I have stopped forcing myself to settle for dreams
This heart may be longing for the sun it always found in the rubbing of our two hearts,
But He? He filled it with the universe- with stars and galaxies, with some I have yet to know what

To you,
How do you end this poem? Find satisfaction that these lines will justify memories that will never die and memories that are yet to be?
I. Don’t. Know.
So then listen to the silence that will come in between my stepping back and the applause
Because maybe, hopefully, saying nothing will tell you everything this compilation of carefully collected words could never hold

Darling, this is for you. And maybe me too.

What is it with four letters?
That mere intersections of lines and loops
Of curves and edges
Of creations of ballpoint pens
Have managed to spell the faces of the voices that keep me up at night

P-A-I-N. Pain was the story of age 5
The reverberation of the door slammed shut
It is the sound of my mother’s wails and my father’s rage
It is the sight of skin kissing skin in the most unromantic of ways

H-E-L-P. Help were the tears that have run dry from age 16
The tugs and pulls, of scratching to hold on to anything and everything
They were of hand after hand that stretched only to push and silence the crying of the girl left with nothing
They were the stares that spat on my face, whose breathe have filled my lungs with words
Which said, “you are not enough” , “you are a mistake”, “you will never be more than your failures,”

L-I-E-S. Lies are the roommates that have taken over my bed at age 21
They were the tags that came with the packages of death and failure
It tells me bedtime stories of fault and regret until I dream of only those
It is the gate that have forced its way to barricade my heart because my heart; no, my life; no, my existence is undeserving of interactions outside these walls

What is it with four letters?

D-O-N-E. Done is the selection of ropes and blades, of bullets and train rails at 23
It is finally believing in the bedtime stories of defeat and condemnation
It is stepping on that last rock, layers above creations worth saving more than I
But no, done is the shadow that stretched into my vision
It is the intersection of two lines that drew a gap between my feet and the fall
It is the truth of the fallen and the risen that have tilted my head to look back
At nail pierced hands that have been embracing me all along

R-A-I-N. Rain was the prayer I said at age 25
It is the drops of red that dripped from places in His body that are now just scars of triumph
It is the ocean that kisses the shore anew a million times a day
K-N-O-W. Know was I never forgotten
It is the realization of a presence that have charted my life’s story since day 1

What is it with four letters ?
What is it with four letters?
Wait, what is IN four letters?

H-O-P-E. Hope is man redeemed
It is the truth pain have tried to numb us of and lies have tried to replace our memories with
Hope is glorious substitution, it is of spared lashes and whips
It is the inhale and exhale of a man enduring
Of steps- right, left, right, left- of a body stained with blood untouched by this world of gravel and dirt

Hope was of a baby born on straws resting on earth’s grounds
Hope is from His last breathe, a scandalous end that exhaled life into a new beginning
It is Chapter 3 of an “undeniability” that defeat is a myth refuted by an empty tomb
Hope is redemption from resurrection, deliverance from remembrance
Love and grace eternal
Forgiveness impartial like fire that consumes all sides: past, present, future- the done, doing, and did

Hope is Christ taking flesh to save a creation unworthy but loved still
An irrationality made reality
Accept that this is not the end, that life may have moved without you but the Author of life has never failed to write you in each time
So stand today with an authority respired by Christ and rebuke the sayings and said
Of screams and whispers by your stories of ages 5, 16, and 21

Know that you are the King’s beloved, paid by a price with an amount that transcends infinity
Darling, hope is a four letter word written in strokes that spell L-O-R-D
And as everlasting as those letters spell is hope as eternal
So place a cross on your front porch
So next time pain and lies pay you a visit, they’ll know that your home is not of bricks and stones but of a body lined with bones and flesh of man who have conquered their master who is death

Bask in the divine, it is finished

To the brave ones who love,
Don't you ever dare apologize
For choosing a creation so clumsy
You knew it would drop your heart on its first beat

Not for the moments you chose
To let their pride scratch your heart’s surface
Until they have dug deep enough
Tears have sprung up from its depths

Not for the moments you decided to say it out loud
Hoping that maybe, just maybe,
The winds would listen and whisper it back to him
When all he sees are the marks loving has left him with

Not for thea moments you gave a little too much
That the absence of your selfishness has attracted
all your broken little pieces back into place
That it terrified them all

To the brave ones who love,
Don’t you ever dare apologize
As if the ability I have given you
Has made you a mistake

Child, your capability to love is not a defect
You must hide under your sleeves
And yes, it hurts, it will hurt most of the time
To feel so much and give so much yet receive only pity

But love,
Love still
Love when they give love
Love before they give love
Love when you wish to do so
Love when you are blinded by hate
Love when the world is filled
And love when the world has forgotten

Give it even when surrender has escaped from the lips of your own self
Because I will be there, I will be there when they have sacrificed your heart into the flames of their own greed
I will gather every last bit of the ashes and cup it so dearly
That I may breathe life into this pile they have left for the wind to blow away

And in the times you have given so much, too much,
You stare at a fogged up mirror
And the love that you seek to receive has been blurred
Remember my nail-pierced hands that have wiped the mirror clean

Because this love that I have designed for you to receive and give away
Is not a weakness to be denied to avoid being crucified as I was
Because yes, love brought me death, but child do remember
That it was also love that exhaled life back into my scarred torn up self three days later

This love that I have sewn into the thread of your identity is a love so transcendent
It has spilled into the fields and skies and have caused them to love in the way they know how
The sun in spreading its arms enveloping you with its warmth
The trees in the sacrifice of their leaves in the hopes that just one would land on your palms
And of men- of faint smiles, of thank you's, of pats in the back, of poems whose letters your face it creates

So love
Love with every beat of your taped up collapsing heart
I will make it new everyday
Love with the touch of your cut up fingers
I will close them up with my nail pierced hands
Because I am love and I am with you

To the brave ones who love,
Don't you ever ever dare apologize
For choosing a creation so clumsy
You knew it would drop your heart on its first beat

Because I never did.