i sat beside you
speaking of cruelty
and the way your hands move
softly
loudly
burning like fire.

i don’t think i ever truly left the girl i was.
there are still small pieces of her everywhere i look
her scissors under my pillow
and her posters on my walls of the sad music she used to listen to
i think she left her antiseptic cream somewhere
maybe under my bed
or in my closet like another one of the skeletons
and sometimes i’ll replay her playlists
not to become her again but to remember what i lost in her
some precious part of myself
i’m desperately trying to grow back-
rebuilding it
from her eyeliner
and her blood-stained tissues
the marks she left on my body
and the marks she left on my heart
everything she took
and everything she gave

i’ll follow to your room
or into your arms
and i’ll sit and wait when you’re upset
and need quiet,
until you’re ready again-
but my mind won’t be with you.
my body will stay and it will lead my actions,
what i say to you,
but i’m constantly crafting,
conjuring spells with my words
and slowly,
softly,
making sure this fleeting moment
does not pass.
i won’t forget a word
that escapes your lips(
which i so often write about)
as i quickly etch them into the corner of my mind
and let them take over my thoughts-
you’re everything
everywhere
ready to be my art
my oxygen
my water
my light

i remember every single thing you tell me and do

and not because i have good memory but just because it’s you

and whenever i touch you i wonder if you can feel my love through my fingertips

and when you speak the world feels like it’s been paused, like it needs to stop so that it can listen to you fully

i worship the ground you walk on and i thank the air for letting me breathe the same as yours

our love is sacred and sometimes it feels like you’re the temple, and the statue, and the god, but also someone praying with me, someone who feels like home

i want to love you even in silence

give me that and i’ll give you all i have

maybe i could wait forever.
maybe i won’t.
maybe what we had was meant to last.
maybe you were meant to leave.
whatever fate decides is right,
i’ll always think about you.
i could write a book,
build a life,
form a religion,
from the way you looked at me.
god.
the life i thought we would live.

i listen in
to the whisper of the trees-
like a silence that the earth
can’t quite hold,
words that try to be secrets
kept between the land and the sky
but the wind grips my sap-stained palms
and the branches reach into my soul
like bones crawling out of a grave
and into the air
quietly
but there.