Dim string lights on a soft summer night

the ghost of you in this photograph
I see you now, I can almost feel
the motion of you passing through
both our bodies

Cut the small talk.

is it possible to spend your whole life fighting love
fighting for love
here I am and there you are
fighting for and fighting against
chasing a moment a sentence a feeling
is it possible to spend your whole life
determined to making it work
and is it enough? is it ever enough?
is it more than you could ever wrap your heart around?
is it possible to spend your whole life worried
of possibilities, whether or not these things will come
will I ever find a place to lie my worrying head
in the form of a lovers lap, corduroy pants on an autumn's day
is it possible to spend your whole life searching
is it possible to spend your whole life hiding
I've not a million lives but one
Love, where is my one?

How to express the weighing
Tenderness in my heart for you

How to explain
My heart
That is losing its shape
And taking form of
A condition

Invisible and critical, demanding
How to make sense of this

Longing here, in the empty shelves of my rib cage
Where you stand before me
Our feverish hands so close to touching
But they do not touch

How to let it be known that
You are wearing down, softly
The parts of me I stregnthened most

Should I laugh about it?
This comely irony, my soul burning bright for you
On winter's coldest night

Tell me, how should I behave?
What façade should I turn to?
When this means more to me than I know it should

How should I conceal, love
The layers
Of you
That can be found in me?

Remember that one time years ago on thanksgiving day when I was feeling so sad and had gotten in a shaky argument with my mom so I drove miles and miles into the night crying along to Radiohead, and all it took was sending one brief text message for me to end up at the step of your garage-bedroom door. your family had just finished eating dinner, I met your uncle for the first time, that might’ve been the last time I saw him, too. we spent the rest of the night in the dim of your bedroom, lying down on raschel blankets you’d carefully set out on the floor for us, my body like a crescent moon cradled in the orbit of your arms. darling boy, I’m falling apart again, and it’s in these times when it hits me most, when I realize the significance of your Autumn skin, of the monolithic bones behind them that held me close the way they did, that held me together as on that night. I’m sorry I didn’t know it then just how lucky I was. I’m sorry that I’m writing something like this now knowing all too well that none of this will ever reach you.