When I spiral, it’s no waltz

I don’t fall like autumn’s leaves,
I lack their certain grace;
No -
I plummet like the driving rain
Blowing through cigarette smoke late at night

Is that what you wanted me to tell you? Not quite?

Stop searching for my poetry, it makes my skin crawl.
I’m not your great mystery, your tiny dancer
Your savior or your sin

For the love of god,
don’t stand in the waters at the bottom of this cliff
waiting to catch my fall

Go back and wander through the graveyard of my lovers
And memories of New Jersey,
If you don’t believe me

Let me walk out into the evening, like Auden may have done
I’ll be there to watch when the lovers have left
And the deep river still runs on

This is the first time these walls haven't been mine.
The first time since I picked out yellow paint and swirled pink-red rose buds onto it when I was four
The first time since I kicked a hole in the door, crying
The first time since I sat, looking out of that window (which is no longer quite mine) and dreaming of the places I would, could, might go

It's the first time since I snuck my first boy in here, parents gone and brother upstairs
The first time since I cried myself to sleep
It's the first time since I stared at the walls and talked myself off of the edge
The first time since I laid here, right here, but when it was mine, listening to records softly play

It's the first time since I climbed out of the window late at night and sat on the roof
The first and most rebellious thing I had done (it might still be)

This is the first time that these walls haven't felt like home.

You're so brave.
You say all of the things to me
that I've always wished I could say to you.
Somehow your kisses mean more than mine ever could
they're holding the remnants of your honeyed words.
And every time I see you I want to tell you the truth
I want to say it when we're leaving the train station, walking down the block, grabbing coffee, kissing by our elementary school.
And every time I see you, you steal my words away
So I'll make jokes, talk fast, run away, dart around all of the things I've ever wanted to do.
I can't imagine why you keep me around, always choking at the last moment
"I love, being with you"
"I love, the way your breath feels on my skin"
"I love, how you manage to hold me, even when I'm walking away"
And I do love all of those things. All of these moments with you,
moments that will be gone before they've begun.

And, my dear, my one, my only, my sun, my sweetie, my all
Those moments with you are what make it at once
so easy and so hard
to love you this much.

You told me once that I look like Audrey Hepburn
And walk like Katharine
That I am, in every way, a creature of another world.
They want, you said, gesturing widely around you,
the smallest pastoral pleasures: clothes, money, husbands
You, you said, looking at me, only me
"You want romance,
adventure,
the Stars.
I would run my own feet raw looking for every treasure in the universe
to lay at yours"

I'd love to love you
unsure and scared as I am
I'd love to love you and your touch
Wrapped by a fire or in a park
I'd love to love you and your dark hair and blue eyes
that love me back just a little too much
I'd love to love you
but I'm leaving so terribly
soon.
I'd love to love you, but I'm going away.
I'd love to love you, beneath a pale moon
but I couldn't bear, after, to say

goodbye.

You told me
late last night, (long past the time when
we could sensor our messages with
just the right amount of polite indifference)
how you have always been able to say what you need to me
better with a kiss
than with words.

Meeting you
was that moment in Spring when
Out of the frost and the rain and the cold and arid cries of Winter
The sun decides
on an impossible whim
To pull the leaves from hiding
And so one morning
before you have time to adjust to the glisten and green

They're alive again.