Hey my love, let’s build something here
where the sun still shines and our hearts are clear,
and the bees are humming our favorite songs;
and I woke up this morning and where you should be
I saw hope and I kissed it hello because
I’ve always had so many missing parts
and I only now see that the spaces are holy
and they are where you echo and I will be explored
every day with your sweet apple hands.

We are black fingered spiders spinning gold webs
and we won’t settle for catching houseflies, darling,
we only want butterflies and blue stars
and I could sit here and count the ways
that you make my lips and my feet go numb
but I don’t want to waste any seconds that
might be making sparks, and when you’re this close
my bones are air and the ink on my tongue tastes sweet, not bitter,
and I would bottle this love if I could
and get drunk on it every night when you’re gone,
sipping it in the dark in the empty libraries beneath my feet,
whispering to the quiet books, telling them everything
about the thunder that our hands can make
and every day I wait to find out if I am still steady and hard
and lined with the stinging dust of pride.

You are peace like the way blankets fold,
the way falling leaves seem to be flying,
and you are every star in the sky
no matter where my feet are buried in the earth’s bones,
and just like that I am never lost and we are sailors,
lone and drifting and singing and this warm sea is ours
and I think it’s time we dive a little deep,
I think it’s time we burn this house down
and write about the dreams we see in the flames.
You are gravity and sense and the way a magnet feels north
and the way my feet kiss and ground and you are the reason
I spend hours talking with the birds about the way it feels to fly.

Hey, my love, don’t think I can’t see you there
with your redwood heart and penny-bright hair.
Don’t think for a second I can’t hear those ideas
pounding on the inside of your skull, and don’t worry:
I know they aren’t all clear and light like you want them to be.
I know all those dark things hit you like punches in the chest but
you’ve got iron ribs so you catch your breath
and you walk taller like you planned it that way.

But hey, my love, you don’t have to let them all hit you like that.
I’d take a few punches for you. Really, I’d take them all, if you wanted to let me.

I can see you’ve gotten thinner, my love, and maybe that’s my fault,
or maybe it’s because the tattered girl with the bone-white smile
steals your strength when you’re looking for the extra sheet to keep her warm.

I’m greedy and I want you whole.
You’re precious and I don’t want to share.
You don’t deserve to be empty
so I chip pieces of myself away
and use them to try to fill your holes.

You are stars and mountains, my love, you are a shortness of breath
and you are the echo of two voices off the ceiling of a church.
My heart only blooms in the shadow of yours.

There is a chart that I keep locked away in a dark wooden box
in the shadows of my heart (for I have always loved a secret place)
and on this worn and folded page I marked years ago
the places in the sky that lead me home, the exact pattern
in the clouds when my hands are strongest, every place
that I have ever become a tragedy and in that box I keep
the commandments that came from the fire you lit before me,
scorching my feet, teaching me to be afraid of anything
that burns too brightly; you wove a heavy web of chains,
chains of whispered hints (don’t speak too loudly,
don’t laugh when he smiles, don’t show your legs, don’t be so strong,
don’t ask, don’t take, don’t be, don’t burn) and
I never realized how far your echoes would travel,
how long my bones would be vibrating with them
and how hard it is to hear my own melody through the din.
I am a ship begging to be sunk, to rest beneath the dark
in the serene waves out of sight and besides,
what is life’s poetry without a few shipwrecks?
Little seashell girl, little high tower green glass girl,
I won’t pretend that you didn’t do some damage
with your yawning silence, with your neat black and white and rage hate poetry
but I learned to tread water and I learned that silver words
and hard hands and a friend in the mirror can heal the burns
and build armor and learn every mountain peak of my heart,
and the way the man himself wrote only of his valley,
I have learned to conjure magic out of my own landscape
and after every drop in this rainstorm I have realized
that I am in your debt, little red eyed ash cloud girl,
for this gift, for this journey on foot, for leading me in circles
into the center of my own light.

Hey little black-fingered girl, little-dried-ink-new skin girl,
don’t play with fire, you’re made of paper and with one careless spark
you’ll lose those words boiling in your veins.

You’re an angel with homemade ramshackle wings
and the tick tick tick of the stopwatch in your bones
keeps your pace in the still mountain fog.

Your hair’s stopped growing and your voice has shattered like icicles
but you won’t give up, don’t you dare slow down,
you little doorstep child, you little dark-woods-open-wound hero.
Look me in the eyes, look yourself in the eyes,
paint your face with the ashes of your burning;
chant the song of your feet on the ground and don’t break.

I want your blood on the table; I want your heart in my hand.
Don’t you call my name in your back-alley prayers
unless your pores are ready to open like roses
and be filled with me and my thousand shades.