One day,
unexpectedly,
unprepared,
you will rediscover
the part of my soul
that you took away from me
and that you hid,
and you forgot about.

Somewhere strange,
like in between your couch cushions,
or tucked inside the pocket of an old hoodie,
you will find it.

And you'll hide it away quickly,
hold it tight in your palm, behind your back.
And she will kiss you.
And you will think for just one second, that it was me.

you know that feeling you get when you wake up
right before the alarm clock goes off?
that is us.

we are as carefully constructed as sand castles...

always one grain away from the hour.
just one inch too short of making the rollercoaster,
and tippy-toes now just won't cut it.

we are a missed flight.
i ran my fastest, carrying along our bags, bulky and heavy.

my palms keep getting blistered,
and i know for sure its not the monkey bars
or that baseball bat,
i kept swinging.
one homerun for every hundred fouls.

we are one mile short of the marathon.
a violin strung too tight to symphonize.
a micrometer short of the ratio--the golden
green of nature. but Frost knows best
that nothing gold can stay.

we are the silver medal,
and never could i settle for second best.

we are tired, weighted eyes
longing for closure,
and peaceful slumber.
but our lids are taped wide open
and we have stared too deeply,
too certainly and stubbornly,
into the past that
like an orphan on his birthday,
there never came a present.

we are that feeling.

we are the breaking point,
that moment right before you lean in
for a kiss you'll never get to steal.

the longing after lightning
for the thunder,
only ever finding silence.

and no law of physics can explain
this hole now.

we are a dead and ancient language,
a star that burned out just one century too early
to ever shoot into a wish.
a wave lost in the ocean,
a tree fallen in a forest so vast,
so pure, so untouched,
it didn't even deserve to make a sound.

we are two figments of one imagination.
a dream we are both too afraid to wake up from,
a grip so tight that everything just slipped...

...away into the wind that caught
your hair
and mine
and the wing of a seagull,
soaring steady above the coast
into a sunrise
we will never arrive in time to catch.

i can not believe in a life without you.
it goes against my whole religion,
which says that above all is love
and that nature holds all secrets of the universe
-so that when every star above my head
somehow matches the gleams of your eyes,
or the curve of your lips remind me
of the oceans ever-stirring waves.
or when the wind that catches my hair
does so to the rhythm of your rising,
falling chest with every breath-
i will not take for granted
the small and subtle ways that i can find you
in the world's most simple, natural places.
this is not a love that was made,
but rather found,
as the diamond is uprooted from her earth.
you are the most precious stone
i'll ever get to hold.

if i could measure myself by your terms,
i would become that feeble pile of gray dust
you sweep under your rug,
or blow off of the dashboard of your shiny blue car.
i could be that lonely scuff mark on your shiny white shoes,
new and barely broken in.
new and barely broken in, like that heart
perfectly beating in your perfectly toned chest.
when did it become so easy
to trim my value into useless puzzle pieces
trying tirelessly but aimlessly
to fit into those tiny awkward spaces we create.
i spent the last few years of my life,
attempting to escape comfort, fearful
of it's promise--like loathing the end of the night,
i have run fast into the moonlight,
hid beneath my covers, shaking, screaming
JUST ONE MORE HOUR.
it can not be over.
you can not be leaving me now,
can you?
while i am swelling up with tears,
and need to be felt, so deeply now
beneath your skin? i pick and scratch
at your freckles, but you are cute and made
of wrought-iron dimpled blonde steel,
and i, too weak, too worthless,
too useless, to bend you into
pretty loving shapes.

how can i fear the end now, that is it finally
seemingly eternally here. where do we go
now? how can i rest, abandoned, leaking
words, dripping
thoughts into a bucket that,
at any moment
can
spill.
this is goodbye.

i used to have a garden green.
and planted in its soil a seed.
i watched it grow and wrap around
everything sprouting from that ground,
until my garden did become
a sea of plants succumbed to one.

and thicker still the vine did grow.
i reaped beyond what i could sow.
but when the thing one day decayed,
my work in rotten petals layed,
upon the dirt, who swallowed them whole.
my love a mountain, now a knoll.

like the flap of butterfly wings,
and softer, smaller, thinner things.
golden shimmer blackened rings,
the tips of your limbs fluttering,
landed weightlessly on my skin.

tickling to my bone glowing hot,
you whispered in my ear, the *****,
hairs at end by winds collapse,
revealing secrets, treasure maps,
weak rubberband encircling snaps.

the spot was marked by sweat to graze
the endless fields of goosebumps raise
an image of a butterfly, it plays,
and whisked into my range of hair.

when i can smell the sound it makes,
and feel its taste in stomach aches.
the butterfly of the body shakes.
into its home, my heart, it takes.
and wraps in black my golden shimmer veins.

your breath the breeze that brought the butterfly's
wings to form to speckles of your eyes.
and lashes batting winked into the skies,
and kissing cheeks and spaces between thighs,
to make goosebump mountains to scale.


when you feel the flap of butterfly wings,
in your bones valley, in blood springs,
into your ear a hush, whisper, the insect sings,
and pulls you in by golden harp strings,
wrapped in black in ropes and rings.
a melody in passion, it begins.

i feel you as a time of day.
you are the turn of the clock,
the passing of the clouds above my head,
the face on the moon,
the song that lulls me to sleep,
the little bit of grace in my step,
the feeling of a full stomach.

you are my home run, my A+,
my favorite food.
i feel you in all of those moments of bliss.
and in the moments of worry or doubt,
you are the feeling that can bring me back to life.
my rescue team.

i feel you as my favorite weather,
my favorite bundled up hoodie,
the opportunity for me to catch a leaf
as it falls from the tree to make my wish,
the blowing out of birthday candles.

you are the spin of the earth.
the pull of the tides in my lungs,
my breathing, heart's rhythm.
the banging of a drum,
i feel you as a perfect melody,
a symphony,
a masterpiece.
a poem.
of skin and bones and beauty.

you are the moment when class lets out early.
the bus coming on time.
the taste of a cold beer,
the funniest scene of the movie
(that we both know we'll ever see in its entirety).

i feel you in every moment that is slightly better than the last.
i feel you in the spinning of the wheels of a bike, or a car, or an ambulance.
the glow of the moon. the curve of my clavicle.
i feel you in the cycle of a dream. my REM sleep.

i feel you like a faith i never lost,
a whirlwind that circles my body
and tingles me like pins and needles.
i feel you in every way that has ever been defined human,
and in ways i'd like to believe divine.
i feel you inside and outside.
the striving to get better. the will to never give up.
the most beautiful things in life
are made even more beautiful because of you.