maybe i will learn to love the moon again when it's far away. but i swear, i loved you so much to the point where even my words loved you. and i could see your craters of flaws where you got from absorbing my negativity, only to radiate positivity. and the gray skin under your eyes where you got from watching over me all night, only to make sure i was asleep safe and sound in your arms. even if i don't see you on some nights, i know you're there, quiet in the dark sky. you may have left me for now to continue orbiting the world, but I'm your astronaut and I'll always continue to watch and love you.

and now we are here
starring at each other from across a table
a healthy divide between who I am
and everything you thought I should be
all the idealistic pictures you used to paint of the pronoun you exalted as the fantom:
'we'
all the messes we made and the even messier nights are on the table too,
I didn't forget one word.
and I know you didn't either.
and I might be sorry for talking **** and trashing the way you seemed to adopt every part of me
I might be sorry for making you cry that night I pulled away because I was breaking and you couldn't see outside of your own skin long enough to realize what your use of the weight of your skull and who's shoulder you carelessly used to prop it up for no reason at all was doing to me
what it did to me
I know what I did to you, just because I did something for me
I listened to you cry from the bunk bed below alone and tired in your forand now we are here
starring at each other from across a table
a healthy divide between who I am
and everything you thought I should be
all the idealistic pictures we used to paint of the plural pronoun you exalted as the fantom 'we'
all the messes we made and the even messier nights are on the table too
I didn't forget one word
and I know you didn't either
and I might be sorry for talking **** and trashing the way you seemed to adopt every part of me
I might be sorry for making you cry that night I pulled away because I was breaking and you couldn't see outside your own skin long enough to realize what your use of the weight of your skull and who's shoulder you carelessly used to prop it up for no reason at all was doing to me,
what it did to me
I know what I did to you just because I did something for me I listened to you cry from the bunk bed below alone and tired of trying to understand my ever changing disposition
And I too, was tired.
I was tired of you trying to keep me warm
I felt like **** but it ended up okay because you returned the favor two months later at my 18th birthday party
only I had a shoulder to cry on
and I should have seen it then but I didn't forgive you all those times I could have sworn I did
on my knees in the sanctuary begging a higher power to take the anger from me
I swore I never wanted to hate you but **** it maybe I did
fingers crossed dressed all white at the funeral
I always savored your spirals
but I'm moving on from that
and after three good ******* years of on and off behavioral tendencies
reevaluations and disconnects and fear of all that you saw in me
I'm not afraid anymore to say that there isn't any 'we'
at least not in the way you said it would be
and I don't want to pretend that I'm heartbroken over it
though I used to loose sleep at night
I don't want to pretend like there's still something here
moving on finally feels right
as we ******* over a couple cups of coffee I can see clearly that we are not the same and that we will never be
but you just keep on talking about your job and about the road trip that we'll never take and how good it feels for everything to be 'okay'
back in the old cycle of recycling the same five conversation topics trying to grasp at a singular old flame
a spark of the easy days
but all I can think about is how I've changed
I'm not the same
and the divide is clear
but here we are anyway.

And I pray that the only satin in my coffin
is the green the grass that creeps softly over manicured lawns and hidden wilderness alike
A monument for every day I've walked barefoot and filled with wonder at all that god's green earth encompasses
alive and trembling I have fallen in love with every breath of life from the tangles of ivy to the solitary stars
I move
along with all the horrors and beauties of this life
I breathe
with every fiber of my being
if only to grasp the weight of existence as felt in the simple wonders of this never ending now
so that even when my body protests and my soul lays fallow and barren within my aging vessel I might find peace in the fact that
with every breath I take
I add to the cosmic dance of creation
that I move too with the ancient patterns of the sun
with the birth and death of each coming day I lift my eyes to see all that can be within this endless circle of being
I lift my eyes to see the light
And when my time comes
I will cry up and over and I will breathe my last breath with everything that sings around me
and I will return to the void that I was born from
from dust and light and breath of another
I will return to the start and finish of it all
a place beyond time
a place beyond any need to be
and I finally
simply and purely
just
be.
and so I pray that on that day when my soul leaves my body that the only satin in my coffin is the grass I lay face down in on those rare, tender days when the weight and wonder of it all set in
and I recognized the beauty and terror of it all
we are all just swimming in it
we are all just rolling with the tides
and we must learn to breathe with it
into our up and overs for lifetimes to come.

Gold lines and the light in your smile
Humid nights and spring intentions I can honestly say that it's been a while
We used to drive around this city until all light was gone
But even after all,
the light never left
Even when I slammed the door and you broke my ribs and the night swallowed us both whole
Just when you thought the distance killed me and that I had lost my soul
The distance only maintained the surreal beauty of it all
The evenings on that hill watching the city light up and the sunlight flee
The evenings I showed you the inside of my chest and you showed me your scars
The evenings we were so high above the city and the smoke that I thought we might go back down
But even angels sometimes fall from heaven
Even Adam had to leave the garden
And so fall we did
Far from the radience of our finest nights
Far from the comfort of each others presence
Far from the freedom of our adolescent dreams of grandeur
But the light lingered on
And it will never be the same but
Maybe we'll live to see the garden again
Maybe we'll go back to that hill
Maybe we'll drive around the city again
Maybe we will
Maybe we will.

We dont wear pearls anymore
We don't frequent the same places or walk in the same circles
We don't
And I am letting my hair grow like the ivy on the walls of my childhood home
And you burned that blue spotted dress that you've finally out grown
There is no crime in this tenderness
This too, will change in time
But these days time is taking all of me
These days I write of my sisters as lovers sent out to sea
The darkness and the waves shroud their faces in the growing divide
I lean into this
Over cups of coffee and matching lips I talk to you like I don't still feel the weight of the ever approaching after
Because now
Feels safe
Because now
Is easy
Black and red and faded blue
I know you've got somewhere to be and I do too
But I don't want to leave because I don't know what comes after this
I don't
And there is no crime in that
Imperfect holy bond of the shared years in some sort of purgatory
We grow
And we rise again
Only to stumble back to each other when heartbreak comes knocking again
We grow
And we rise again
Only to find that we don't wear pearls anymore
We don't wear pearls anymore
We don't wear pearls
We don't
But we remember that we once did.

The feeling sings pleasent discourse between the lengths of my young ribs
Swelling and rising like the tides of the fear I had long forgotten since the blunders my youth
The need
The want
The longing to not be left lonely again.
And I'm spiraling in the wave of the aftermath of your touch
Running scared in the ivory forest hidden under layers of skin in the base of my chest
Screaming with the choirs of my blood that this will not do
This is never enough
This is all that rings out in the cathedral in me
As all I am lifts my hands to the light
And falls to the floor in fear and wonder at the weight of it all
The breath in your being
The swing in your step
All illuminates the war in me
The fight in my own body
Between instinct and reason
Between love and lust
Within this bag of blood there is no trust
And though my wings are clipped I will still fight to fly from this
From this inner turmoil over your teeth
I wanted them and I needed them but now I can barely see
Externally stable but internally battling a boiling sea:
This fear of you and this fear of me.
The feeling wages on.

Straddling white lines along the highway into town
I don't know what you're thinking about and I don't know where you are
But I know that some part of you waits silently for me
As I wait for you
And they talk of little soul mates like we've already met and I can't help thinking that I don't even know myself yet
Let alone know how to let someone know me
Leave me alone so I can just be.
I am a lantern just collecting light
I am a moth flying blindly in the night
I am a month or two left of routine
I am the face you've never seen
I am hungry for you
And I wait.