When I teach you,
I'll try to be kind.

I'll keep your dreams in mind,
and try my best to keep their
        breaths.

When I teach you,
I will hold your hand till the time is
        right,

and I know you can do it on your
        own.
And if you need me, for work or for
        safety,

know I'll always be there.
Because when I teach you,

it goes you then me,
you have dreams ahead while I live
        mine.

When I teach you,
I'll try to keep your dreams alive.

I'm looking for a home.
I always think I've found it,
But I'm beginning to realize that maybe life
Is all about finding home,
And if you find it
You've finished.
Maybe life is just about chasing
Whatever makes you feel like you're home.

You know those people who burn love letters
After the breakup?
I'm not one of those people.
It hurts me to think that anyone could.
What sense is there in denying that something good happened
When such little good comes into such a long life?

When you said we should get a tattoo together
I knew you'd leave someday.
Is that weird?
I knew, that moment.
And I was sad about it for a month
But I never said anything-
When I know things, I just know,
And there is no reason to rush the end
If it's coming anyhow.

I wish I could say I didn't expect you
Not to miss me.
I wish I could say I didn't expect
Not to miss you.
But I see it all coming.
It's my special gift.
I know what home is
And I know when it leaves.
See, I don't leave home.
Home leaves me.
And that's okay.

But I think I need to say
Because I think it is important
That for a minute you were home
To me.

For a minute, your arms were enough.
Your husky smoker's voice,
Your fairy wing shoulders.
For the barest moment
I could see home in your eyes,
And oh,
I lived in that moment.

I am
Such a wanderer.
I'm not sure
I'll ever have roots.
No.
No
I'm not sure
Roots
Will ever have me.

Growing up I used to cry because I missed home.
With my head in my mother's lap
In my living room
I was just too young to explain
That I didn't know what I was homesick for
If I'd only ever lived in one house.

I thought I found home once,
The real kind
And I'm still homesick for that feeling,
That addictive, safe feeling
Of thinking you know what the next day
Will bring you
But
Just like home
That knowledge is never what or when or where
You expect it to be
And it never stays for long.

This isn't a love letter.
This isn't a goodbye, either.
Or maybe it is.
I suppose that
Is up to you.

I guess all I wanted to say is
Knowing you was like driving by a house in the suburbs
Late at night
And all the lights are on
And someone forgot to draw the curtains
So before you round the next curve you can see by accident
A slice of happiness
And maybe you see yourself there
With someone's arms around you
And a cat on the back of the couch
And in that moment
You're home
And then whoosh
It's gone behind the trees and you
Have to keep going forward
Because
Well

You've somewhere to be.

Knowing you
Was kind of like that.

I fell in love with you all over again in a hospital waiting room

I fell in love with the deep purple under your eyes
like delicate bruising

I fell in love with the paleness of your lips
from lack of nutrients

I fell in love with the way you moved slowly
and achingly wrapped in a white blanket the color of your skin

I fell in love with the deep crimson of your blood
as it ran through your IV

I fell in love with you again as I laid with you in the hospital bed at 3 am

we’d been there for 10 hours
and you had a little too much morphine in your system
and a lack of sleep
when you pulled me close and said

“I could really see myself marrying you some day”

and that was right before you kissed me with your dye stained lips
so they could see your insides better on the x-ray

I fell in love with you again when you looked at me with your
big hazel eyes that turn black around the edges

You said god had sent me from heaven
An angel to watch over you

I'm not too sure about that but what I do know is:

I Do

if i could
i'd lasso the wyoming wind
and ride it like a wild mare to wherever it is that you now call home

you'd find me pounding on the door
     with a bottle of whiskey in my white-knuckled fist
     and a bubble machine eating the paint off your late model car
     and how far i'd come to find you would instantly become irrelevant when you'd smile
          it's been a while

i still catch myself wondering if you catch yourself wondering about me
and the places i've seen since i last saw you
     lacing up your boots and diving head first into the blue of early evening
you didn't even tell me that you'd be leaving

but you did tell me a thing or two
  about the birds
    and the trees
      and the sea
        and your heart
the way it missed beats like i miss stop signs
and you'd once said that it was scared
     always waking you up in the middle of the night
     and telling you that it's alright to want to run
you sure did seem to be good at running

so i swish scotch between my teeth
and atop my gums
to make my tounge believe in singing
and i climb to the tops of the palisades to slingshot siren songs your way

          "oh won't you stay,
               just a little bit l o  n   g    e     r..."

then the record skips
and i slip from my dreaming
back to a shoreline where the washing machine squeeks
and i can be found grinding my teeth
like a lost little god in the grotto

oh
     where did we go to
     when we left to get old
and brittle
     like a tree no good for climbing

we dissolved our youth within the golden glow of nostalgia
marked on a calander long since dead and torched
     that fall when we learned to feel
     and burried each other beneath the heaps of rotting aspen leaves

"until next time, my darling."