We used to wave at trains.
Because we thought they cared
When we were getting smaller and smaller
Behind them.
We thought they cared
Because our parents cared
And our teachers cared
And our friends
And we cared.
That's when we cared.
About the people we didn't know
And the places we'd never been
And when we made someone cry
It made us cry.
When was the last time you cried?
Because it wasn't because of me.
I can be almost sure of that.
Do you ever think of the things
I do to your body?
Or just the composition of all the little things
I am not.
I try not to fancy myself
The philosophical type
But when I think of the reason I am here
I can never push away your blue eyes
Or crooked smile
Or your calloused hands
Or the days you couldn't push me away either.
We have a lifetime ahead of us
Filled with cabs
And airplanes
And buses
And boats
And trains that we can get off together,
Instead of getting smaller and smaller
To each other.

you've tried on dreads, feminism, and barista.
i still don't know how someone who changes their identity
is always the same to me.
you are part of something called truth.
a word i still can't define, sort of like you.
waiting for a four word piece of art
to remain on you always,
you neglect to remember
you remain forever, just by existing to these people.
temporarily stuck in a sleepy town,
with your eyes wide open,
your heart beating fast,
like a bull at the gate, and sadly
we have realized
the world is sometimes a ***** red blanket
you want to take down.
but once you make it through,
this wall of comfortability
and lack of resonance,
you will find miracles.
maybe not now,
or five million words from now,
you might realize that you are of much more importance
than you ever thought you were.
so while you survive off a caffeinated IV,
and enchanting rock and rollers,
i will attempt to mentally record
the life of a legend
who will go to the grave,
denying they were even a legend
at all.

it's not so difficult  
to string words together for you
in a beautiful way
but when i answer your call at two thirty- six am,
i hope you know i love you.
it is not very hard to kiss your lips,
but when i paint you pictures
of what our love looks like
and send it with expensive stamps,
i hope you know i love you.
i don't try much when i wear that dress
you think i look so good in,
but when i sing your favorite songs
into the rook in your neck
while my lips are blue from cold,
i hope you know, i love you.

if i write this poem simply
maybe we can just end
without the dizzy love spill
to slip in and blame each other
for our skinned knees
and i can't stop bleeding
and bleeding
and the blood
will never run out i think

i think about the distance.
how many miles my tires would tread,
turning and turning like the thoughts in my head.
how many drops of gas it'd take to make the journey
how they'd slosh around in my tank just like the
butterflies in my stomach.
due to the prospect of meeting someone i'd never met
but loved wider than the wingspan of an ancient creature
almost as unfathomable as the relationship we've conjured.
maybe it's the celestial coincidence of being born on the same day
of dreary november, almost december.
or the closeness of our relatives who it seems sometimes
wonder why they even planted the seeds of this flourishing friendship in the first place.
mostly i think it is the fact that we are the same
in so many more ways than we are different.
your fingers conduct an orchestra of sound, while mine scrawl out epiphanies on paper
but we're both making miracles, aren't we?
we're both falling in love with the world at the same time, under the same moon, under the same strain of heart
longing to be together
but mostly to be away
from the places we are at right now.
you want my sunshine, and i want your rain.
but i think we secretly just want to be in the same room as each other,
even if it was only regurgitated air conditioning filling our lungs.
because our eyes, for once in our ******* lives would be witnessing visualized faith.
i'm speaking for myself,
but i think we both have found the truth in one another.
and when everyone else leaves you don't arrive,
you stay.
and when i am in pieces,
you remind me you are too,
instead of forcing mine together in a pattern
neither of us would ever be able to decipher anyways.
you make me laugh.
i mean, really laugh.
the kind where i can barely inhale oxygen, enjoying the momentary euphoric absence of necessity, and simply relishing in the smile stretching through my soul.
you tell me i am beautiful in one of the first ways i've ever believed it
and remind me everyday that shouldn't be the case.
we have strange ways of speaking, and sometimes things don't come out quite right,
but it is a different thing to be understood by you.
i know more strength in our separation than in the proximity of some blood
and i swear i can almost hear your heartbeat if i'm quiet enough.
sometimes at night when neither of us can sleep,
much to our chagrin, i read your words on the neon screen
within my palms, in the tone of your voice
and i could swear you were there,
with me,
reminding me we are vastly unaware of what we are to become,
but helping me celebrate what we already know of the labyrinth we inhabit.
when i have to validate the present conditions we are in,
i choose to validate the other conditions i know to be true as well.
we have walked the ravaged earth together in ways, each day growing older in synchronicity.
we spend them in the same zone of time,
the sun setting on each of our days at the same hour.
each of our mornings it greets us with beauty and a knowing
that one day it can glow on our toes, then up our legs,  our stomachs, and finally up to our hearts,
warming us at the same time, from the same place, in the same room,
and all of the sameness may be overwhelming,
even to the glowing radiant life from which this has all had the chance to bloom, but maybe it will be alright
to not be prepared for something wonderful
for once.
i promise to listen to you play, and sing along horribly.
i promise to come to all of your shows, even the ones on the couch.
and i promise that every day i will see your dreams
with the same vivid clarity you do, because you are something i know how to believe in.
and so when you remember to believe,
i hope it is the closeness,
that you see.

Your words fill the pages of my holy book.

I soak them in with blessed praise.

I will take communion from the longing in your eyes,

Nourish and rejoice in my abundance of you.

Enter your heart and treat it as my temple.

Respect with silence the miracles you bring me.

Baptized in your showering adoration.

Washed clean of my heart’s past torments.

I will present you the sacrifice of unbridled passion

And with abandon, trust in your embrace.

Hymns are your breaths between kisses

And these sheets, the alter for our love.

We will rest together until our last days,

In commemoration of the religion we have made.



© AlyssaStarnes

i have a light inside of me.
sometimes it is a prickly light.
like last summer's berry picking,
and your legs in the back of his pick up.
sometimes it is a drowning light.
like your third cheap beer,
and jeans on the fourth of july.
sometimes it is a dim light.
like the pretty dress he never hugged you in,
and the bruises all down your thigh.
sometimes it is a calm light.
like the first long drag off your cigarette,
and a dry kiss on the cheek.
sometimes it is a beautiful light,
like a palm pushing out from your stomach,
and the long road out of this town.