I thought  I'd never run out of things to tell you,
but I don't have words for how little time I have left to tell you
that you are my favorite problem -
what has kept me smiling on so many days when I forget what my face feels like without tears on it,
or how to breathe without my entire body aching,
or what the point of conversation is.

The point of these words is to tell you
I don't know how to put words to what I know will change.
I have watched distance and difference hurt too many people
to think a postcard promise will be enough.
It's not nothing, but it is change, and I'm not ready.
If there's one thing I believe it's that timing will never feel right
but it always is, it has to be. That is what we do -
make meaning, make sense, take care to wear our growth like capes
and our pain underneath our jackets.
I hope we can fight the myth of the strength of stone
even as we build new homes in ourselves.
I hope I still get to see you in your pajamas, making breakfast, brushing your teeth. But I won't.
I don't know how to tell you that
in any other way than this.
Thank you for changing me even if
you'll never really get from me how.
You have.
Simply by helping me be a bit more alive,
a bit more human each day.
Sometimes that means laughing at a cat picture;
sometimes that means crying silently on the couch,
trying not to let you see me but maybe you did anyway -
either way
Both give me a little bit more of me to work with.

I know I said I don't have words but I guess I had a few.
I hope they sound like an "I love you" to you because
that's all I really have to say.

Dear future,

When you roll your head over to me in the morning, my whole world starts.
They say we can't feel the earth turn,
as it constantly rotates at a speed of some unfathomable number,
But looking at your tired face,
hairs curled in the shapes of bedsheets,
eyes swirled with just-ended dreams,
I know we have reached a just-ended spin.
The earth stands still for you to switch from lying on your side to your back.

You are that big of a deal
to me.

I am scared to make someone a planet.
I am scared that people are just signs to lead the way,
each a day in the past, built to leave - not to last.
But I want to believe
that you can be the sign that never leaves -
sharing a sense of direction
meaning,
affection,
and always.

So when you roll your head and ask me
what I'm thinking, I'm thinking this:
I am so grateful
for how still
and moving
we can be.

Some days you are on my mind so much
That my stomach turns its way up to my throat
So I can choke on my own insides
trying to keep me alive
other days, the sky is blue. I watch clouds go by and you cross my mind
Like a fly who buzzes but doesn't bite.
When I go to sleep at night,
I am in the dark whether the next morning
will mean bleeding or breathing.
so I just go on sleeping
and waking
and again.

do not spend your precious time
on people who do not want you
if she does not love the way your
mind turns into movement,
how your body turns at the exact places,
do not worry, because someone will.
The very proof of this sits in the fact
that when you see her, your chest
spouts off rocket fuel,
your head isn't sure where to land
so you end up smiling -
the kind of smile that could turn into tears
if you weren't so ******* sure she didn't hear
even a single bird when your eyes met.
she didn't feel even a single flutter from your
legs, grazing underneath the table.
but you feel this, flutter and bird.
Which means, someone else feels for someone
what you feel for her.
And you better bet that someone else will feel this for you.
Do not spend time on men and women who don't not want everything that you are.
People will not all want you.
Not in the way you need them to -
people will not want all of you.
Do not waste time when they want one bit of you -
waste time when they want all the bits and sticks and stones
that make up your lopsided human home and then,
it won't be wasted.

we write about mothers because we know
they know pain. they held us so tightly
they must’ve known what it’s like to let go.
i write about fathers because i know
mine knows pain. his eyes dart so quickly
he must know how hard it is to hold on.
i write about my parents because i carry
all of their flaws in me. their wicked ways of
wishing the worst on each other, of loving
until they forgot what love even was.
you cannot teach what you never preached
or practiced. I do not know how to forgive.
No one has ever shown me.
i try watching the birds. the clouds. the ocean
maybe these are the things most skilled at
moving. at becoming and re-becoming
each day. i write about mothers because
one day i might be one. one day i might meet
a father who needs me to hold tightly,
and i might need him to forgive.
if i am blessed enough to hold you,
i want to be strong enough to show you how
to live. so maybe you won’t have to write
about mothers or fathers, and you can write
about birds. clouds. salt water that doesn’t sting.
if i can’t - if i still fail to love enough,
know that even though you're born of my struggles,
your victories are yours to build.
i hope that even if you can’t write about something,
you can listen. winds don’t change
on their own. they all have mothers, too.

The push and pull of ocean waves
stretching hands out too far
your feet are dangling from my bedside
drinking, tangling the inside of our
heads. Underneath my hair
is more hair.
I wish I could dig deeper
find Atlantis. Find reasons
to let salt sting my wounds
still healing, still open enough
to keep me closed.
are those your memories
spilled across your stomach now?
the tissues are next to the lamp
It's my turn to make a mess next
let the seafoam roam my skin
and forget my carefulness
building walls I call foundations
crawling in throats we call recovery.
I want someone to discover me
buried in piles of laundry
at the bottom of the ocean -
the tide is pulling
and I am pushing
fighting my own arms,
dangling nothing more than toes.

slips in like hot summer
curving through swerves of defenses
cultivated in times of snow, of solidarity,
of certainty certainly now found
missing.
squeeze through pipes of dreams
and memories.
I'll always remember your fingertips
pulling my organs apart.
feeling it piece by piece, row by row
i am missing more and more of
skin, of summer, of snow i'll no longer know to recognize
creases become center pieces.
shadows become lamps.
i am left here to ask for more cigarettes,
spiraling through like smoke on water
sitting, asking,
"can I enter here?"
before disregarding any walls.
all we ask is for walls
to keep summer still.