You keep canvases in your ribcage.
I know you do, I’ve seen them.
They might be dusty and a little bit torn,
but you’ve still kept them all this time.
You’ve still kept them in hopes that someday
someone would come paint some beautiful
masterpiece with every last one of them.
You’ve kept them hoping that they would
one day burst with cherry reds and
sapphire blues so that you might hang
them in the empty spaces inside you.
But I’m here to tell you there are no empty spaces.
Believe me, I’ve looked everywhere.
There is nowhere to hang those future paintings
because the pine green bursts from your eyes
and the whole spectrum of living color
flows through your skin.
You fill the growing cracks inside of me
with carefully selected tones from your palette,
and you keep stars held in their place
with glowing moonlight from your fingers.
So I’ll remove each canvas from inside you
and plaster them with pieces of what you’ve given me,
only hoping they can turn out as beautiful as you.
I am no painter,
but I will try.
No work of art comes close to the expanse you
hold in just one finger,
but I will try.
My God I will try.
And you will keep these finished frames
as reminders that there is nothing
as beautiful as you.

The first time I saw you
I couldn’t look for more than a moment.
Now I always have to look at least twice,
and that’s still not enough.
We get lost at least three times whenever
we’re together, even if we spend the whole night
on the couch.
*(It took four days for me to gain the courage
to ask you if you would like to spend
an afternoon with me, even if it was not that day).
I need at least five seconds to find my footing
after looking into your eyes.
It took me six tries to come up with
something good for number five,
and I’m still not satisfied.
I skip the seventh step down (not counting the top one)
on my basement stairs because it’s the one
that creaks the loudest on yours.
We spent exactly $8.00 on the dessert we ate
fifteen minutes before Chili’s closed and $2.82
in late fees for the movie we returned that night.
Nine hours is a lot of time to spend
looking to my right, expecting you to
be in the passenger seat,
even though I know you aren’t.

You always use the back button
on your phone,
never the home button.
You’re scared of exiting something completely.
You’re scared of leaving things behind.
You’re scared that home will take you far away.
But home was never meant to be something
to run away from.
It isn’t the park down the street
where you played as a kid,
or the hardwood floor you collapse onto
when hours past midnight become
too much to handle.
It’s not the splintered wood and bent nails
that keep the four walls around you standing.
Home doesn’t have an address.
Home never had an address.
Home was always right here with you.
It’s always right here with you.
So when things become too much
and you feel too weak to push forward,
you will learn to push the home button,
and you will find me.
I will be home for you.
I will always be home for you.

I’ve gone color blind from staring
at the sun for too long,
or maybe at you for too long.
The leaves and sky seem to blend together.
Days start to blend together.
I hope the grass doesn’t bother you,
because my legs feel as if they’re made of it.
Always collapsing on each other,
even though I wish they’d collapse onto yours.
The worn out Oak that has spent today with us
is giving everything it has left,
but it fails to keep hints of sunlight from your face.
Sunlight always finds your face.
For as honest as we are,
you told me today that we are liars,
and I cannot disagree.
Because even though I say, “Nothing.”
when you ask what’s running through my mind,
I see oceans in your eyes
and constellations on your lips.

I’m falling desperately for pieces of you,
and all of you at the same time.
I know I’ve stumbled in so deep,
but there’s still more for me to find.
If you’d like you can call me a fool,
and I’ll be as foolish as they come,
but that still won’t explain how
your eyes make me go numb.
I’m keeping every little bit,
because I can’t bear
to let it go.
The subtle curve your soft lips make
when they hear me say your name,
and the freckle on your collarbone,
your right, my left.
I think of how I feel so much more than skin
when you simply brush against me.
Your hand in mine.
My left, your right.
This isn’t a poem,
it’s a 3 am conversation on your basement couch
and a quiet night spent on the bench next to the lake.
I can never write poems about you,
because it’s impossible to write a poem
about poetry itself.

Ernest Hemingway once said
"Write drunk; edit sober."
But to hell with that,
I'll give you my worst.
I'll give you all the pieces
when my heart decides it's too much
or too little
and my mind forgets the difference.
I swear I'll sink right through the floorboards
if you don't find someway to fill the spaces.
You are the sand clenched in my
scraped up palms,
sticking to the worst parts of me;
the ones that everyone else finds
too messy,
too broken,
too tired,
too empty.
You find someway to keep my broken limbs
moving forward, even when I have nothing left.
I have nothing left.
There is nothing left.
And I've checked this over a thousand times
to make sure every letter is in its proper place.
It must be perfect,
even if I'm not.
Because even if I give you my worst,
you always deserve more than my best.

There are things I think about doing with you,
like folding laundry with the windows open
and hearing the crickets chirp outside.
Like listening to the turning ceiling fan slowly
make its way around itself,
while we dance and make our way
around each other in the center of the room.
And you stumble slightly on the edge of the rug
that always rolled up a little bit,
but I am there to catch you.
I know you tried every day to fix that corner,
but you need not worry.
I will always be there to catch you.
I know you try every day to not crumble
and shatter into thousands of little pieces.
I know you’re scared,
but you need not worry.
I will always be there to catch you.