you know that feeling when
you stare too long at a word and
you no longer grasp the meaning so
you stop looking?

perhaps that’s why
you fell out of love with me

you stared too long and
decided to stop loving

i know your mirror is your guilty comfort
and your worst enemy

i know your fingertips brush the glass
as if it is to be worshipped
and to be feared

i know your eager mind craves a counting down of numbers
on the weighing scale, as if each kilogram
is a weight lifted off your chest

i know you can lose yourself in that labyrinth
of measuring tape and small waists and big expectations
of mirror shards and makeup and meticulosity

but do you know that
you are nature?

there is the night sky in your hair;
the moon, she dangles in the curve of your ears,
her constellations flung across your cheekbones

there is the sun in your skin, fire-gold and blinding bronze;
his warmth shines in your radiant smile,
his light dances in your honey-brown eyes

and the way you move, that is the forest, did you know?
sparrow wings shape your collarbones,
the fox lends you his easy charm
the deer gifts you her swift grace

so my dear,
remember you are more than measurements,
for you are from nature herself:
and no ordinary numbers can describe
the beauty of unparalleled creation

she was not the sun
nor the brightest star

she was the quiet, unassuming moon;
gentle gleaming light that tumbled
through my window sill,

silver strands of mercury woven
through her starshine hair
that beamed

just as bright
as anything else in
this galaxy

only morning skies mourn
the death of the stars;
icy cold,
as bright as flame,
they glimmered yesteryear:
a flash of warmth,
a wink of light,
then nothingness again

my first love was literature:

my first skipped heartbeat belonged to lazy afternoons
when i skimmed my hands over the surface of an open book,
all surface tension, skipping stones and soaring -
i could not get enough.

next was my fluttering stomach, from tempest-tossed evenings
when fiction and a flashlight were my friends
where i read of silver mountains and dreamt of golden seas -
(the best books always followed me in dreams.)

and last, my first hitched breath, stolen from moon-still nights
when i drummed my fingers across the printed words
to soak them in like moss does fresh-fallen rain -
and that was when i knew that i had fallen

deeply, irrevocably in love.