i don't tell you
i love you
because it's not like that.
it's like you're a million
different stars
and it's going to take a while
to create constellations.
like that; exactly.

We made marks on our bodies
like iron to paper,
we burned with the ashes of sunlight and all the little things
you used to tell me at night,
I remember waking up so often just to hear your siren voice
and when the wind broke, it broke for good.
We were lovers, we were angels, we were nothing more than cracked jars
on coffee tables.
I know that we broke our spines bending over backwards for this one,
I know we hurt our wrists in the process,
I know we didn't make it but I promise you, we can rebuild what we broke.

You left and you flooded my veins,
I saw a hole in your heart, I saw my face in there somewhere
and I said lover, open your doors,
I'll break this down for you.
But it's closing and I can see the gaps healing perfectly,
I will rip the the flesh from my bones to keep you from recovering.
Somewhere I exist, somewhere my name is in your chest.
I saw you stitch it up and over again in the morning,
the water was in your hands.
We came with a shoval to burry our guilt in the dirt and
we leave in shapes of  broken glass,
I can fix this.

I hold my vows between my teeth,
look at them hanging.
I will rewrite them over until I have covered every inch of your skin.
Distance took a part of me and sailed in across the ocean,
I will write these vows to touch what I have not felt.
The water is dripping from your hands,
look what you've done to our lungs,
You've been screaming at the roadside,
I saw the tar in your blood.

But keep my name inside your throat
and let it sink into your skin,
I will reach inside and grab it when
you are draped in love from him.  

I loved you, it was etched into the trees,
I heard your voice inside the smoke
and caught your breath between the breeze.

I burned my fingertips writing this one.

I'm not sure how much of you I know yet.
I know that 75% of you is a river
while the remaining 25% of you remains unknown.
I am making you sound like a science text book.

The other day, I called you music, and flowers,
and everything else I could think of that
would grab your lips and make them curve upward
to smile.

I'm not good at writing poems for people
who have made my veins into a swimming pool
to backstroke through.
I'm not used to being warm like this.

I know that we can sometimes be identical and sometimes,
it's hard to convince you that you're breathing
but let me put it this way,
you are hurricane Katrina, the shredded buildings,
the ceramic plate my mother made for me through the aftermath.
When I was 15, it was hanging on the wall and fell
from a thunderclap. Yellow, with my name on it.
I have called you baby on an estimate of four times a day
and we are trying to fix it.

We will slow dance in the living room and
we will not notice the windows whistling
but what you do not know it sounds like a storm
but love, I hear you name through the cracks in the doors
when the rain sets in.

I haven't said much already.
Hurricanes are awful and you think you're more like the
sound the sky makes when it's upset.
But everyone likes the name Katrina anyway.
Metaphors don't get me anywhere but listen,
hold me like I am the only building you do not want to destroy.