We are all stories. That is why sometimes I stare at strangers when they don't realize. We carry stories on our skin, in our eyes. We tell them no matter how desperately we try not to. They emerge, no matter how we disguise them, and throw off light, and god, people are beautiful. Look at them someday. In the park or the cafe or on the subway. Look at someone's eyes. There's a soul in there. There are fears and desires and shames and obsessions in there. There's art in there. And you get to live in a sea of souls. Ever think of that? You have the dubious privilege to spend your whole life next to some of the most exquisite beings ever created. You get to look at them, to touch them, sometimes, to love them, even, and speak to them. You could change them. Like adding a brush stroke to the Sistene Chapel, you could be a tiny part of the vast, perfect, incredible work of art behind someone's eyes. You get to decide whether you deface these souls you live near, or add to them. You get to write a part of the story they carry.
Me, I want to tell stories. I want to tell stories for people who don't have the words, don't have the courage, don't have the means. I want to tell beautiful, complicated, messy, elaborate stories. I see these people and they're just... They're art. They deserve to BE art. They deserve to be set upon a stage and shown to the world so that their rawness can carve pathways, can start fires, can change souls by the thousands. I have no desire to be myself- I want to tell stories. Stories I see in strangers' eyes. They crave to be told. And I crave to tell them. It's true- myself, I am not vast. I am not loud. But I don't need to be. I need to tell stories. And whoever will listen to me will listen. And that's enough for me.

I write your name
                              in red
   sunlight
seeps through bottles
          on a windowsill
   margarine kaleidoscopes
         on legs

naked for a change
(early summer risky business)

Floorboards yawn
     under the weight of our stories
   I take showers
        as well as baths now
   Can't be twenty-one here
older   shush you couldn't tell

   Roll my finger
   make your piano tingle
like when our wrists
    bump together
    when spines crackle
on books bought yesterday
    this city   bubbles
        all fiction

You think
monochrome
     makes you look better
     camera   snap   done
jazz sashays around the room
    head out a window
hear people as nosebleeds
                    scrabble about

You flirt
        (what a discovery)
like flowers in a vase
   orange juice   bagels
ten-plus-ten toes

     (A moment
where your eyes ache
     into mine)

I hop
stepped jumped
into this mess

     you know as well as I do
     what a delectable
mess we are in

Today will not be the same as yesterday as much as you'd like it to be
I finally learnt to remember the image of deserts etched across your knee
Yearning is a cheat; it weaves into clocks and watches pretending to be time
And I know that when it comes to us coincidence might resign

You let the city in your lungs collapse under this emptiness that’s your earthquake
I hope you refuse to smile if it isn't for my sake
I wish for the days to be gone that are you and your concrete frowns
For now I only wish to see you safe and sound
I will caress your white shirt soaked in mud
If you promise to stop jumping off buildings, staining the parapet with your blood

And so we depend on borrowed feelings
Don’t you think that remorse is time worth ticking?
For me, it skims across lined pages
And for you, it settles back into rusted battle cages

Truly, it’s another one of those questions your tongue holds no answer
I am familiar with the way desperation forces you to bite into inked rubber
I've been scratching spirals into wooden floorings
In an effort to take the pain out of waiting

And if you look up, the shadows are holding out their hands
You turn to me, your face contorted in the strain of trying to understand
I cannot bring myself to smile because confusion lies in everyone
They’re whispering your name; they’re pulling us into oblivion

Your "I love you's" are like a blanket
They keep me safe and warm
No matter how many words I stitch
I know it will someday be old and worn

Preparing for hibernation
When it's only just now spring
I cherish the birds each day
Every time they open up and sing

Because I can foresee the leaves falling
I know our love is finite
Because even while looking forward
I'm stuck in the hindsight

So as the first snow falls
I'll enjoy our remaining time
And prepare myself for the day your "I love you's"
Will no longer be mine

I want to lay down in a green field, with rain falling in a light mist on my cheeks,
And I want to let myself grow roots,
Let my heart take hold of the soil and feel the damp imperfection of it.
The roughness and the cool, dark flavor of it that seeps inside you and won't leave.
I want to breathe.
I was so sure that everything was over.
I was so sure that I had to fight. To survive. To put my head down and trudge on.
I was so sure I would never have the chance to lay in the grass and think again.
I wish I could explain this complex joy.
It's so pure that it feels like grief.
It's what you see in the tears of people who thought their children died in a school shooting when they finally hug them and feel their small, warm heartbeats, safe and sound.
A relief so complete that it destroys you.
A love so powerful that it ruins you.
A happiness so intense that it breaks you down in sobs.
I was so sure I would never be home again. I didn't know how sure. I refused to know it.
But here I am, and I am lost to this feeling.
This impossible reprieve.
I don't believe in god. I don't worship in temples or churches.
But I have known rapture. Rebirth. Total salvation, so perfect that it breaks my heart.
It doesn't come from god, from heaven or hell-
For I hold both of them in the pit of my stomach,
And sometimes they war,
And sometimes they burn,
And sometimes
They reach out and touch each other's faces with such love and tenderness that the light they throw off
Shatters my skin like it's a shell made of sugar,
And washes the entire world white.
I want to surrender to how afraid I was that I would never feel truly at home again,
And how utterly grateful I am that I have another second to believe that I might.
I want to spread myself on the cool ground and let my body sink inside it,
Thank it for touching my shoulder blades and my hair and the backs of my ankles with its comforting solidity.
It feels as if my lungs have grown, as if they'd been locked in bronze for months,
And only now have they remembered how vast they used to be, and how hungry to live
And learned their art again.
This joy comes from something greater than god.
Greater than punishment or salvation.
Greater than wrong or right or good or evil.
This is the spark that jump starts every soul
That begins us
At the very start
The first breath,
And it has begun me again
And I don't know why it did,
But I feel so lucky
I feel so
Saved.
I don't know who or what to cry to,
To thank,
To repay.
I only know that I can breathe.
And that I have never had such moving gratitude
For anything in my entire life.