i think i am spread across
c o n s t e l l a t i o n s
my heart on too many suns
to keep track now.
if home is where
your heart is then my home
is in missouri
so we keep begging the sky
to give us one day together,
tie bedsheets in a line headed
west and east like we're
going to stretch across the
atlantic one of these days.
i swear some mornings
when it's quiet i can hear
a buzzing inside my chest
and i've known for a while
it was you. but how do
i whisper that across a
static line, to your face as
small as the screen on my
phone? we deserve much
better moments than
we've been allowed.

twisting my ears to try to open up my brain
it's like the sound of waves against rocks
bashing fists against skulls
i miss you already but i'll always take the pain over forgetting

I wish to age like a wrap-around porch
In a thunder storm,
While generations tell tales,
Sipping drinks.
A porch of blinking stars,
A shelter out of rain,
With ascending and descending friends.

I will age like a tree,
Grow stronger in the wind;
Give shade and shelter to all
Beneath my ring-aged limbs.

I wish to age as a river bends,
Contiguous with all shores;
Floating everyone I know
On eternal waters,
A current winding with no rest.

I will age like a star,
Burning bright, giving light,
Something to reach for.

I wish to age like a mountain,
With secret caves and riches.
And you can rock your soul
Around, over or through,
Solid, snow-capped summit,
Beckoning you.

I will age as the moon,
In stages, full and new;
Each night different,
Unnoticeable fading,
As all who age will do.

i am trying to remind myself that
i am the one who has always held
my skin together on the worst days,
the one who has sewed myself back
up time and time again. i have picked
my own body off the bathroom floor
more 4am's than there are numbers,
taken myself to bed. no one has cared
for me like i have cared for me and
yet i don't know when i stopped
thinking i was my own home.

i sit on the
cold floor
of the shower,
just me and
myself, and
i tell her there
are good things
in the world.
aren't there? i
know there is
a reason she
and i have made
it this far.
there are
beautiful things,
megan,
beautiful things.

my days fill up
like balloons
with forced breath

seeing light
shine through the messed up blinds
like a projector playing a movie across my skin
about something slightly nostalgic
but very far away

when i leave my house
my skeleton is magnetic
i feel nothing
but the push and the pull
the lack of choice
and a deep-cutting desire
to once again
have the world
and my body
belong to me