i stand with my sisters --
hijab-wearing, undocumented
black, brown, beautiful, brilliant;
women who love women;
women who have the right
to answer to their names,
instead of a “sugar” or “honey” or “baby”
yelled by a stranger on a street corner;
terrific trans women;
women, who must have the right
to decide what should happen
to their own
bodies

i stand with my brothers --
men who love men
and men who are afraid to say that they do;
Muslim men, Latino men,
feminist men, trans men;
and those who are neither men or women,
non-binary friends of all shapes and sizes
and colors and creeds;
every person who has never felt
like they belonged

and i stand with my people --
the people of America.
we know deep in our hearts
that hate is not the answer;
and so we march on
and fight on
and force our voices out into the universe
and it is not futile,
it is not for nothing,
it will never be for nothing.

for those who believe
to love is the most important thing we'll ever do:
i stand with you.

“your body is so beautiful,” he whispers to me, 2:30 am parked in my driveway, breath heating up the windows, hands tracing patterns on my skin

your body is so beautiful. this is a body that has stepped on the scale eight times a day, brain noting every slight change in the number that blinks back. your body is so beautiful. this body has cried from hunger pains, has sat on ***** bathroom floors with ******* pressed inside my throat, praying for strength i didn't have

your body is so beautiful. a body that has spent countless hours in front of the mirror, picked apart and scrutinized from every angle; a body that’s been stuffed and starved, emptied and filled, hated and cursed – this is it, this is the body he means

i’ve known boys who have used words as nothing more than keys to unlock doors inside me, who have strung together letters and sounds as nothing more than a means to achieve an end. i’ve known boys who have made promises never intended to be kept, whispered words in parking lots and quiet cars and city streets that have never amounted to what they implied

“your body is so beautiful,” he whispers to me, and against all odds, he means it. and even if he doesn’t, to like this body when i’m with him is enough, to feel at home in this skin is enough

and to hold his hand in mine is enough,
and to see him smile at me from across the room is enough

keep the fan on all night. if only change were simple. your ******* have grown and keep catching your eye in the mirror, a reflection of a girl you have yet to know. you have a boyfriend in buffalo, but here, there is a different boy with shaggy hair and glasses who drives you home at 1:30 in the morning and sings along with you to the radio. he is careful — even better, he’s convenient, and convenience is everything when being desired is what helps you see that girl in the mirror a little clearer in the morning. the sky is pink and nothing makes sense except how you feel right now, in this moment — like the earth itself is breathing in, swelling with air, reaching up, up, up and lifting you with it.

the boy in buffalo plays you jazz records on vinyl and takes your hand on crowded city streets and writes you love letters, but when you sit next to him in a church pew you can’t even raise your eyes to the crucifix. the clock is ticking, and you’re unsure, you’re scared. you steal away into the passenger seat of the boy with the glasses and make him turn up the radio so loud you forget about your own heartbeat. who do you want between your legs, and who do you want holding your hand? to both of them you could just be a beautiful idea of a girl, a long list of characteristics which they each want you to be but which do not add up to the sum of who you are. still, they both look at you from time to time as if they were hungry for an indescribable something that can only be found in the space behind your eyes.

it’s a summer night, you’ve kept the fan on, and everything is possible. you have rescued yourself enough times to know that you are never unrescuable, even though sometimes just picking your body up from the floor is a herculean feat. the sky is still pink and everything is balancing on the point of a knife but you feel your heart like a fist in your chest and you know that you’re going to keep waking up in the morning and that that alone is enough. the girl in the mirror looks like less of a stranger than ever before, the image sharpening ever so slowly. maybe change is only simple when we stop looking back at the people we used to be.

i used to write poems about our reunion
in some brooklyn cafe
before i knew what distance between us
actually was.
no matter how many times it happens,
i am amazed at the capacity of human beings
to grow together
and grow apart.
what i’m trying to say is,
i miss you.

i used to connect the dots of your freckles
while you spent hours
coaxing food into my stubborn
mouth
i was restless and cynical and
i would never tell you when anything was wrong
you had more patience with me
than i deserved

i’ve been convincing myself for years
that you’re nothing more
than an old wound,
but the truth is
there’s a part of me that won’t ever make sense
unless someday, somehow
i see you again.
there is a small place in my heart
that has never stopped
waiting
(and i can’t quite convince it
that you are irretrievably gone)

so maybe it isn’t wrong,
maybe one day
we’ll find our way together
again
and you’ll have grown our your beard
and i’ll have cut off my hair
and i swear
maybe you’ll be wearing
those old jeans
and we’ll talk about the way
i used to untie your shoelaces
under the lunch table

(as if i wouldn’t still
drop everything and marry you
if you would
only
ask)

the thing about mountains is that there is only one peak and the rest is all downhill *****, nothing but raw material for an avalanche.

i don’t think you’re willing yet to see inside all the dusty corners of me, the places where the paint has chipped and there’s a drip in the ceiling and the tiles are coming up.

i didn’t kiss you back on the porch because i wanted to be fixed;

what i wanted was to dig deeper inside the gaping hole of what is already wrong with me.

the thing about setting people on pedestals and mountain peaks is that they will eventually fall

and the best thing you can do when it happens is to rip your eyelids off like band-aids.

--

i am discovering that it is possible to be both entirely certain and entirely uncertain at the same time.

there is only so far you can push me and then i swear

you will have to pick between the body and the girl within the body, so what’ll it be?

you don’t get to have that dream you so desperately want. you get this, you get me, or you can have somebody else,

but i don’t really want that, and that’s where the question is: how much of myself will i give away to keep you?

you didn’t ask me if what you did was okay, you didn’t let me choose, you didn’t ask for consent. these are facts.

--

the thing about mountains is that a snowball rolling down the side can grow to the side of a buick if you leave it alone long enough.

the thing about me is that sometimes my tongue flies straight of out of my mouth if you ask me to talk about things that matter.

here we are again, raw material for an avalanche,

and the tip of the peak is not as stable as i hoped it would be.

tell me you want me, baby,

tell me i’m not going to ruin this.

i guess the thing about people is that they never really want to change, do they?

i’ve dated boys who didn’t make me laugh,
boys who took me to stuffy museums and bland restaurants
and told me i should be veiling my hair in church
i thought i was doing the right thing, i thought
my parents would be proud of me,
i thought maybe i could conjure up
some kind of feeling in my stubborn heart
that would make it worth my while,
everything i was always
supposed to want
in one

instead,
i found you:
a boy who likes silly accents and sneakers and
telling jokes that turn me
into puddles at his feet,
who lives with his mother  
and makes art from obscure things,
who paints just to get the words out and
never matches his clothes
bright eyes begging me to follow, making it up as we go along,
who needs the rule book, who has time to read?
and if there is a better way, we don’t need it;
we’ll take the mess. see,
we’re already there, and
if there is a better way, i wouldn’t know it

your patient hands waiting, waiting, waiting for me.

i am not easy to manage, and neither are you. we exist here, together, two problems, each other’s solutions, all at once.

i’ll never forget that week you were in the hospital. i think back to who i was then, a pale girl with a fistful of car keys, bursting through the radiology ward, intense and very afraid and full of something she couldn’t describe. for you: anything. i could have sat by your side and looked at you forever, letting myself take you in, mine and yours and yours and mine until there wasn’t distance between us anymore.

and even when all i can hear is your voice on the other end of the phone line, when all i can do is listen as you describe a night sky i can’t see underneath a haze of city lights, it’s both enough and terribly not enough. i can’t stop thinking about how much bigger you have made my heart, like my entire ribcage cracked open just to make room for you.

you are so patient for me and i am trying to be patient for you. i am here, sitting on top of clock towers and singing to the moon. i am here, ticking off the days on the calendar until i can see you again. i am here, i am here. i am still right here.

i never told you this, but:
i didn’t want to say “yes” when you asked me on our first date.
i was thinking of someone in buffalo
who was (at the same time) making playlists with my name in the title
and sending me poems in the mail.
you were just on my periphery,
something of a backup –
until you weren’t,
until you were
everything.

all summer, we were just kids kissing on the beach
just sweaty palms, just chasing trains --
until suddenly it became
running down the hallway of the hospital
and sneaking into the radiology ward,
losing my mind in the waiting room
and holding your hand, twisted up in tubes.
i’ll never forget the way you looked at me that week
and i’ll always remember
making out in the x-ray room,
the nurses on the other side of the door
and wondering if the man behind the divider could hear you
when you told me you loved me for the first time

the truth is:
it’s not fair that you stopped wanting me
and started wanting her,
just because she was convenient
and i was far away

maybe one day i’ll stop being angry,
maybe it’ll stop feeling like someone pulled all my bones from the sockets,
maybe one day i’ll stop missing you so much
and maybe, someday, my body will stop feeling
like a burial ground

but in this moment,
like a stupid animal,
my heart is still waiting
for you to come home.

i don’t know how to tell it you aren’t coming.

maybe neither of us are good people
and maybe i should have seen it coming
but it’s okay, for now
to be grateful for things like
sleeping through the night again,
for waking up in my own bed
again
and aren’t you glad
i stopped driving by your
house in the middle of the night?
anyway,
there is nothing pure about the way i handled this

the truth is, i’ve spent too long romanticizing your loss
and too little time on how filthy your hands are,
touching anyone you please
with no regard for the fallout,
the consequences of a boy who can’t decide what he wants fast enough
to spare anyone pain.
you couldn’t even articulate the reasons
why you left me
and so i have no one to blame but myself:
this body you loved was not enough,
this mind, the girl (terrified) crouched at the controls
was not enough for you;
the consequences being
she threw herself at the first person who wanted her
because feeling wanted was the only way
to forget

and you might think you’ve got it all under control now,
a pristine life: job, car, family, girlfriend
but don’t think about the body of the girl you used to love
buried on the side of the highway
and the months and months of memories
you will not touch –
and i won’t think about
all the times i was
waking up in another man’s bed
because i wanted him to be you so badly
i left my dignity out of the deal

just love; just mess, trying
i can’t believe anyone was surprised

IV.

the boy takes you into his house and you come home that night with bruises on your neck. you took your shirt off

and threw it on his carpet and you’re trying to forget how he asked to kiss your stomach

and you said "no" too loudly. you kept telling the boy you wanted to leave,

but he kept kissing you and asking you to stay, and now you haven’t slept

and you have to hold open your eyelids if you want to get anything done. he keeps telling you that

you’re beautiful as if it should fix everything, as if his opinion alone can cure you, but all you can do is thank him

and hope he can’t see past the walls in your eyes.

he drives you home and you’re wearing another boy’s sweatshirt, but you're past caring.

you wonder offhand what he would do if he knew, and that’s all, and you stop wondering.

here i am, clutching tight to your memory with my fists. it’s all i have left to hold without your hands.

children will tell about our love around a campfire like a ghost story because that’s what we’ve become –
the difference is, i want to be haunted by you.
please: switch the lights on and off, slam the doors,
i’ll leave lots of pots and pans on the counter for you to knock around the house.
i won’t fix the creak in the door just so i can hear you come and go.

one of the reasons you left in the first place was so i wouldn’t sit around and wait for you,
yet here i am: sitting around, waiting for you.
i don’t want to do anything else, i don’t think you understand.
i haven’t given up. i’m pulling out all the stops, i’m coming out of the gate with my fists swinging,
i am willing to fight for our love in a way you never were.

i am forcing myself to swallow every single i miss you
i don’t want to admit that losing you feels like losing a limb
i don’t want to admit that i’m still thinking about that afternoon in the car when i felt safe for the first time.
chin up, baby, and be patient,
look at the sky, look at your hands. look at the sky again.
i wish i could know if it means something.

i will always be there to clean up the spills on the carpet
from our drunk friends on new year’s eve
and i will always ask before i throw glass bottles in the garbage
i won’t say that your outfit doesn’t match
but i’ll tell you if the tags are sticking out
and if your hair refuses to lie flat
i will always yell at you for going outside
without a coat, and i will always ask you
to slow down when you’re on your third beer
i will always worry about your rickety old car
that you never clean, and i will always worry
when you tell me your stomach kept you up at night.
there is nothing you can do that would make me
stop pulling up the blankets under your chin,
stop telling you not to drive so fast,
stop cheering you on at every opportunity.
i will always be there, ready to fit the stubborn sheet
around the mattress.
i will always be there,
picking up the bottlecaps.

I.

there’s a boy with shaggy brown hair and bright eyes who runs after speeding trains and rubs my back when I’m scared and always helps me find the moon.

I can still feel his hand tracing circles down my spine.

he is not entirely unprecedented, he is not entirely polished and confident. sometimes both of us are too nervous to look each other in the eye,

but this is forgiven.

this is a boy with black-framed glasses who has suddenly grown strong and steady, whose arm around me is an anchor, who hasn’t missed a day in telling me that I’m beautiful. this is a boy who is causing a small earthquake in the heart of a girl who thought the fault lines shooting across its surface had settled

long ago.

it’s no secret that I’m still figuring out who I am,

how all of my fingers and elbows and teeth fit together, and that makes me nervous. I don’t want the boy to become

the latest casualty in my misguided journey of self-discovery.

on the knife-point between nineteen and twenty, teenager and adult, this is where we stand: the boy makes my heart flutter, and that’s all I know.

tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’m way ahead of you, and I’ll probably pay a price for it,

but just think about the way he ran after that train. the way he got distracted by the moon, the way he whispered to me in his car,

and tell me I’m wrong. go on, tell me.

kissing in the driveway,
grabbing his winter jacket in your fist,
his hand inside your thigh
fake-familiar
it’s not as good as you want it to be
and it isn’t with the boy you want it to be
but it’ll do, it’ll work, it’ll make you feel
good and numb
and wanted,
which is all you need;
the magic recipe of forgetting

long, slow, standing-in-the-middle-of-the-street kisses

walk-me-outside, knew-this-was-coming, i-was-expecting-you kisses

1:30-in-the-morning kisses: soft, sleepy, simple

sparkling, rushed all-of-a-sudden kisses

you-still-taste-like-champagne kisses

brand-new-beginning kisses, kisses that turn the clock,

cross from the old year to the new.

“one more,” you kept saying, “one more, one more, one more."

this poem will be the last time i write about
the way you kissed me in your car last winter.
after this, I will never again admit
that I’ve masturbated thinking about you
for the past ten months.
it feels stupid now to say,
but when you drove for six hours
to surprise me at my show
I thought it was the start of a second chance.
I thought we were, finally, on the same page.
I don’t know why you did it
if you were going to kiss someone else on
new years eve, anyway.


it’s true that I was barely happy when we were together
so it’s hard to explain why, exactly,
I sobbed and heaved and dragged my sorry body
through a new year’s morning without you.
it’s true that the animal itching under my skin
has never known how to stop wanting.
it doesn’t care about all those bad dates you took me on
or how much I cried on the drives home,
it only cares about the feeling of your hands on my skin
and the soft fact of your mouth –
even though you never really listened to me,
even though I don’t think we’ve ever had
a single honest conversation.


i’ll probably be cursing you out for months
no matter how long you kiss someone else’s lips,
and i’ll just have to figure that out on my own.
i’m not sure what will happen when I can speak to you again.
when I can stand in front of you and look you in the eyes,
who knows what this mouth will say?
it knows too much
about the soft place on your neck
where you like to be kissed.
it knows too much about what it feels like
to have my back pressed against your bedroom wall.
it knows too much about the fact
that you only ever half-wanted me:
never quite enough to make me feel like i was seen,
never quite enough to know me.

here’s a truth: i think your love
has spoiled me rotten.
i’ve taken to driving around at night
and visiting all the places we used to go
as if they’re crime scenes;
paying my respects
as if to the dead.
i’m searching for proof, somewhere,
that you loved me,
as if places could hold memories,
as if miles flying under my tires
could make you love me again.

i am seeing another boy
and you know this.
he is rough where you were gentle,
he is selfish when you were caring.
i am trying to force him
into the place you left behind,
jamming together puzzle pieces that don’t fit;
i wish i could say i don’t know why i’m wasting my time
but the truth is, being wanted by someone,
anyone,
is the next best thing
to being wanted by you.

here’s another truth:
so far, loving you has been the greatest thing i have ever done,
the greatest thing i have achieved,
the purest, most noble part of me.

read it as my eulogy: i did nothing great, except for loving you.
that’s what i want to be remembered for.

what i remember most is how perfectly your tiny hands fit in mine

you let me sleep in your bed every night i was in buffalo. you cooked me pancakes, you played jazz records on vinyl, you gave me your sweatshirt and sent me poems in the mail

endless laughs and chai tea and big blue eyes, you are a brilliant universe unto yourself

i can’t believe i treated your beautiful heart so carelessly

your dog never liked me. maybe she knew i’d break your heart someday

I.

you have to get drunk to be nice to me
and you have never called me beautiful.
i thought i was done with boys
who like to shut their women
in trophy cases,
yet here i stand.
when i fall silent
you keep talking,
you grab me without permission
and i cry on the drive home;
this is who we are.
everything is too calm, too sterile;
we are too polite, putting napkins on laps
like it means something,
you’re telling me the same story over again
and i’m nodding, again,
like it matters.
we make-believe love to forget
and we pretend that the kissing
is good.

II.

you think i have forgotten
the person you replaced.
i play along,
as if i still don’t cry about him
in the shower.

III.

maybe i stay because you aren’t asking much,
maybe i stay because i’m scared of what’s next,
maybe i stay because
feeling wanted
is the only way to be numb.

you could say that i’m letting you win.
maybe it really is
that easy.

II.

there’s a boy kissing your neck in his car in your driveway

and everything is warm.

you told yourself to never do this again, yet here you are, and all you feel are his hands brushing your hair away.

the sprinklers in your front yard keep turning on and pummeling the windows with water, and

your mother is on the other side of the front door

and your breath is heating up the windows.

it is summer. you’re twenty and irresponsible, wild and reckless. you’re hanging off the cliff by the tips of your teeth and you keep on losing the moon.

there isn’t much time to think past split-second decisions and sometimes you find yourself

curled up on the kitchen floor in the early hours of the morning: clothes rumpled, makeup smudged, shame wrapped around your shoulders

like an old blanket, like a machine you hope could fix something.

the clock on the stove is frozen and blinking, green light casting strange shadows in the room

and you’re so tired, and you’re wondering how you could ever make him understand.

there is a boy in a bed in a room. tubes are coming out of his arm, one out of his nose, and something is beeping too loud. he looks up at you under half-closed eyelids, and he smiles, and you love him. no fanfare, no celebration — just something taking root in the pit of your stomach and blooming, an unseen flower.

the boy is still in the bed, the beeping is still too loud, but you go and sit next to him and you can’t let go of his hand. he’s looking at you like he knows, like he’s always known — like he’s been loving you this whole time, just waiting for you to catch up.

and in a hospital, in the midst of chaos and disease, a beautiful thing slips quietly into the world. everything is still, and you can’t look away from his eyes.

I think that, from far away, I must look like a girl.  
every flaw de-magnified, every bit of too-much-ness
made lesser by default.
if you silhouette me, my edges are soft.
cast my shadow, she is fragile and delicate.
she is small and palatable.
she is the absence of the existence of me.

my body has become something i crumple and drag
underneath me like a dead thing.
i stuff it into jackets,
zipped up like a body bag.
it has been years and years
since the ghost-flesh of my torso has seen the sun.
i couldn’t tell you how it feels to walk outside
and not check the ground
for somewhere to swallow me.
i couldn’t tell you how it feels
to touch this skin
and believe that it’s mine.

if this body were an evening gown
i’d take it straight to the tailor –
i’d ask him to take up the hem
so i can stop stumbling.
i’d tell him to switch out the scratchy tulle
for the softest fleece.
i’d beg him to loosen it up around the ribcage
so i could finally
take one, real, gasping breath of air.

i’m still dreaming about the way you looked at me in the hospital room.

the truth is,

i don’t how to live in a world where you want her

instead of me.

i keep saying big, bold things

like, I NEVER WANT TO SEE HIM AGAIN

or I HOPE SHE STOMPS ALL OVER HIS HEART

but we both know i don’t really want that –

what i want is the alternate timeline

when you did not leave me,

when i didn’t sob loudly on a train full of strangers

because you told me it was

really over this time.

what i want is

someplace to put all of my love for you

that isn’t within my own

body.

the truth is that my heart feels like it’s broken and blooming all at once.
the truth is, i thought you might be the one
to reach in and rescue me.
the truth is
i cannot stop watching you,
i don’t know what it is that you want.
i don’t know if i could give it to you
if i knew.

the truth is that it has taken a long time for the pieces of my heart to fit right in my chest.
the truth is, i was just beginning to feel strong
again.
if only you knew how your smile has sent all my fault lines into a panic,
every inch of my body braced for the earthquake
bound to come, atoms
climbing into doorframes,
opening the bunkers.
even the way you put your hand in your pocket ***** me up. i can’t pretend anymore.
i’m not pretending.

the truth is i’d **** to put a stethoscope to your heart;
we can play doctor, two kids under the dinner table.
if you run out of here, full speed, i can’t promise i won’t follow.
the truth is,
i just want to know how it ends.

III.

there is a boy with big eyes and warm hands who is holding one of yours.

he is driving with the windows open, an old red car careening down a dark street, and he keeps looking over at you

and you can’t stop smiling. he pulls over just to kiss you and you feel

*****, you feel wild, you feel sinful. you also feel free.

sitting in a lifeguard chair on an empty beach with the sky a perfect canvas of stars, your head on his chest and his lips on your hair,

you feel beautiful and new. you feel understood, you feel known.

he whispers soft words to soothe you and his hand on your back

drives you wild in the best way. you can’t stop kissing him and you want to fall back onto the sand and live forever in this moment

but there is always change coming, always, and it’s coming soon.

even when you can’t hear the clock, the minute hand still spins along.

sometimes i really believe that all that i am
is a girl who was once loved -- but
i’m done pretending that's
the beginning and end of me.
maybe the best moments of my life
happened in your passenger seat
and maybe they didn’t,
who’s to say?
i’m done pretending i have any certain ideas
about what’s coming

i haven’t driven by the hospital in months
because i still get the same sinking feeling in my stomach
when i walked out for the last time and
left you behind, hooked up to a million machines.
this town is dotted with little heartbreaks, places
where you left a mark on me,
and sometimes it’s just easier
to leave,

so i left. a summer in new jersey
was never quite what i planned,
which is fitting, since none of this was.
i'd be lying if i never said
that with every step i take
away from you
my head gets a little clearer,
my smile gets a little more
natural,
and maybe this is just how
healing is supposed to work.
maybe this is just how
deserts are crossed
and mountains are climbed;
step by step.

i had a dream last night that you kissed me full on the mouth.
we were in a room with pink wallpaper,
a room where everybody gets what they want.
i was someone other than myself,
someone stronger,
a girl with a gun in a briefcase.
you, on the other hand, were exactly yourself.
your beard was grown out just the way I like it.
you touched the soft place behind my ear
where i like to be kissed.
i’m afraid to stop running, i spoke into your hand,
a secret.
you don’t have to stop, you said.
you just have to change direction.
there was water pouring through the cracks
in the doorway, Titanic-style.
there wasn’t much time.
why did this take so long? i asked you,
and the water was pooling at my ankles.
the same reason the end of the world
is taking so long, you said.
*we’re all afraid to collapse ourselves and become something new.

we can’t say we like each other
so we drink ***** cranberry out of the same cup,
a pale substitute
for kissing.
we can’t say we like each other,
so you picked a leaf to put it in my hair
and kept a piece in your shirt pocket.
we can’t say we like each other
so i listen to your favorite band
and you take too long to say goodnight to me at the top of the stairs.

i can’t say i like you,
so i will say that
ireland will be lucky to have you.
and after that, ohio.
and after that, wisconsin.
and i will think about the night we sat outside talking at 3 am
and not about the literal ocean
that is about to come between us.
not about the way
you’ll hold the hand of a pretty irish girl
and forget all about me.

if i could rewind time
i would meet you ten weeks ago.
i would tell you i never want to spend time with anyone else.
i would bring you out to the soccer field
and we will look up at the stadium lights
as if something inevitable wasn’t about to happen.

we can’t say we like each other,
so we’ll say goodbye tomorrow
and stuff the things we wish we could say
under our tongue.
i will thank you for lending me that book.
i will wish you a safe trip.
i will not mention the piece of your guitar string
in my back pocket.
i will not say
anything.

men see me as a white canvas,
pure and holy, but best of all
empty

two eyes like projection screens.
a mouth - it doesn’t say much
but it laughs at their jokes.
thin wrists to wrap
whole hands around.

sometimes they peel back my skin
wedge hands between the muscle and bone
scrape out my tissue with
fingernails,
looking to fit a fist
around my heart.
they expect the same thing:
one empty ventricle,
ready and wanting

so instead of giving them my heart,
i take a box
and paint it red.
the keepers are
the ones who
know the difference

it’s
cutting your hair
and packing your bags,
it’s drinking champagne
in your best pair of jeans.
it’s
growing out bangs,
unbuttoning shirts –
to think yours had been closed up to the
throat, all these years –
and everything, all white.
it’s
sunburned noses
and no makeup, it’s
less backward glances
and more plans
for the future.
it’s holding a conversation
and making eye contact,
it’s meeting a man
and letting your feet
grow roots.
it’s
more music, less running,
more danger, and more safety,
and it’s
finally, having a taste
for the classics.

VI.

it means

driving with all the windows rolled down while the sun is setting over the clouds

and the perfect song is playing. it means

running across dark streets because

you snuck out to see him and he is parked down the road,

waiting for you. it means

holding his face in your hands at one in the morning

and willing there to be an alternate ending to the story:

not one where you leave, or he leaves,

but one where we stay here, looking at each other, forever,

and nothing else happens.

I wish I could write an angry breakup poem,
you know, the whole nine yards --
breaking plates, screaming, throwing your clothes out the window.
I felt like I wanted to set something on fire
but when I went to tear your pictures off the wall
my hands were suddenly much too gentle,
wondering all over again
why it had to happen this way.

I hate how you never cleaned your car and never shaved your beard
I hate how you drive too fast, I hate that you never came to visit me at school
I hate that you still told me you loved me even it wasn’t true, but most of all
I hate how you couldn’t give me a reason
for not wanting me anymore

and here I am, stuffing your memories into a drawer and shutting it tight
here I am, staring at the ceiling at 3 am and forgetting how to eat,
sitting on the floor and staring into space
and losing track of time,
sitting at the top of the stairs where no one can hear me in the act of missing
and wishing so badly that I was enough for you

I wish I could write an angry breakup poem
just so I could have something to wound you with
but we both know that isn’t really what I want,
what I want is for you to lie to me.

tell me that you want me to stay.

1.
there are a thousand different ways to miss you.  

i am trying to wrap my head around the fact that you wanted me once and you don’t anymore. i am trying to count all of the things inside me, trying to find something i wouldn’t give up to make you love me again. i am trying to figure out what to do with my hands, where to put useless things.

our love was a castle, a fortress i was ready to die to defend. i didn’t want a big clamoring of drums and cymbals, i didn’t want the trumpets and the fanfare. i just wanted you to believe in me.

i wish i could have known that the last time i kissed you was the last time. i wish i could have known i was saying goodbye.

2.
there is a long list of things that i don’t know how to forget. i am slamming all the doors and throwing rocks at the mirror, singing songs to the moon and ripping pictures off the wall; it’s clear i don’t know how to do this.

i’m not sure if i’m actually angry with you or if it just feels good to want something, to put my body in motion. either way, your necklace is in the trash and i can’t undo it. set the barn on fire, set the horses running free, break the windows while you’re at it. it won’t matter, it won’t feel as good as you want it to, and what’s the point of all the violence, anyway? there is nowhere to put the blame, so here it is, sitting in your hands, and you don’t know how to put it down.

3.
there is so much i want to say to you but i don’t know how to spit it past my teeth.

i’ve stopped waking up in the middle of the night, i’ve started being grateful for any small victory. i’m figuring out where everything fits, what to do with all of the parts of me you have touched. i am closing the books, i am shutting my dreams away in drawers, i am patiently waiting for everything to stop being so hard.

here i am at your feet. i didn’t know what to do with my love, so here it is, an offering. here are my hands, turned up at the wrists.

i don’t think i know how to want anyone else.

my hands are far too full
to touch the faces of boys
who have left me behind.
my hands were made for
holding the universe together,
for catching shooting stars
in the palm.
they are meant for
flying over piano keys,
for writing down all the words
i want to remember, for
making hot chocolate
on the latest of nights.
they are not there to
reach behind me
for someone who isn’t coming back.

it took twenty one years
but all at once, i feel like a person
who tucks her own **** self
into bed, who
stays up late drinking
wine with people she loves, who
wears a short skirt to the party.
all at once, i use lotion,
i eat vegetables, i only wear
clean pajamas.
i have picked myself up off the floor
enough times for my sadness
to stop being interesting.
my damsel-in-distress routine
had an expiration date, after all

and now, all my dreams are
everywhere all at once --
of getting married,
of having friends and keeping them,
of being the kind of person
i can be proud of being.
they are twisting through the soles of my feet
like vines, something strong,
with roots. i am sick of
fleeting promises and
flimsy maybe-nots
i am only in the market for the
deep and long-lasting.

and without even knowing how,
here i am:
the strongest thing you’ve ever seen.

here we are again, back where we started –
a girl, a mirror, hands cupped and
asking for something.
it’s an old story: i loved and i lost, i loved him and he left;
now i’m just left with two phantom limbs, a compass heart
that will not stop pointing to things
it cannot have.
i’m wiping off the spots on the mirror, trying to refocus,
wishing there was a better way, an easier way,
something more forgiving
than looking back on everything lost
and counting every blessed time
i used to be
enough for you.

V.

so often you have felt the ache of the world in your bones, sitting in your chest like a boulder, but you’ve always gotten through it on your own

and although there is pride in that, and strength in that, it is also lonely.

you can only fight so many battles by yourself before you reach a threshold of desperation you wish you’d never known,

and it takes hours and hours of sitting on the cliff’s edge before you can bring yourself to stop looking down.

it takes a moment for you to notice that this time, however,

you are not alone in your looking.

maybe this boy means something as simple as not having to fight alone anymore — 

to have someone in your corner, who may not understand exactly what you’re feeling,

but who always cares, and who offers enough love to help get you through.

the fact of it is:
you can’t just
make me feel
like i matter to you
and then
disappear.
it isn’t polite.
it is very unkind to my heart
and i think you should come back,
as fast as that car can drive
through new york city traffic.
i think you should wrap your arms around me
and spin me in the air
(like you did just three weeks ago)
and tell me
you’re sorry
for making me feel unimportant –
that you didn’t mean it –
that it was all a mistake –
anything.

you can ignore me and ignore me
but what i’m trying to say is
i won’t give up
on trying to reach you,
because that’s what people do when they love each other.
i’ll keep at it
until the day
you say, with words,
that you don’t want me in your life anymore.
that is all you have to do,
and i swear i will bury your phone number,
i will donate our memories to goodwill,
i will peel off all the skin you touched
and take it out with the trash.

okay, maybe i’m bluffing --
it's fitting, the last resort
of the desperate.
i am trying to say
a thing i cannot say.
i am trying to reach
through time and space
for a thing i cannot have.
i can’t think of a thing i wouldn’t give
for one last honest conversation.

and listen, we don’t have to be in love.
i may never stop thinking about
the night i slept at your house
but that is my problem, not yours.
i don’t need you to be in love with me,
i just need you
to be with me.

what i’m trying to say is
i’m going to need you to come back,
and this is not a request,
and i don’t know how to say this softly.

what i’m trying to say is
i am absolutely begging you.

every little girl is taught the same thing:
the princess only gets the happy ending if she ends up with a prince.
that’s what every movie tells us,
that’s how we think the world works.

so the first time you like someone, you’re trembling and hopeful
and you’re ready for the love story
you think you’ve been promised.
but the first time you like someone
is clumsier and less glamorous than you thought.
the first time you like someone, you’re fourteen years old
and he kisses you in a basement, not a ballroom,
and your palms are sweaty
and his gum gets in your mouth.
the first time you like someone
you stutter over dinner with his parents
and pretend that you like meatloaf.
he tells you “you’re mine”
and it’s the first time you realize
you are something other people can own.
however, the first time you like someone
it knocks you breathless when he tells you that you’re beautiful.
it is awkward and halting and precious
and it doesn’t last.

the first time you love someone, you are nineteen
and he isn’t the person you were expecting.
but the first time you love someone
is the first time you understand
the meaning of the word selfless.
the first time you love someone
you sneak out of your house in the middle of the night
just to see him again.
you can’t believe how much bigger he has made your heart, as if
your entire ribcage cracked open just to make room for him
and the first time you love someone
is the first time you really like your body --
because he makes new all the parts of you
you thought could not be loved.
the first time you love someone,
you tell him so next to his hospital bed
and when he kisses you it feels like
you’re in that ballroom you had always pictured.
the first time you love someone
your love will be genuine and passionate and
everything you’ve ever wanted,
but it won’t be enough to make him stay.

restless twenty year old nights call to mind
warm sixteen year old ones,
running barefoot in the driveway,
sitting silent on the porch,
resting my head
so
carefully
on the shoulder of a boy
i thought i could predict.
at sixteen, i thought the best thing about the world
was that i did not have to participate in it –
i thought to shut my mouth and close my ribs
was a certain kind of honor.
i am reaching, reaching, reaching back to that girl,
wondering why she chose to throw all her joy away,
wondering if she knows
how much she must
remember,
how important it is
to learn how to care again.

if i could say one thing to danielle circa 2012
i would tell her to
buckle her seatbelt,
i would tell her to
remember the boy in the hospital bed.
i would tell her that
learning to open her chest again is
entirely worth the night she will spend
sobbing on the highway at 1 am.
i would tell her
to stop putting people in boxes,
i would say
to write more poems
that aren’t about dying.

maybe someday
twenty four year old danielle
will write a poem to me,
and maybe she will say
there’s a big storm
coming; maybe
she’ll sing sonnets to
the love and loss
that will one day buckle my knees
and send me running
into doorframes.
and maybe it’s okay
that i don’t have a raincoat.
maybe that’s just
how it goes.

mornings are for the beach:
whispered self-conversations
and singing in the underpass,
the clearest i can hear myself

peeking out under baseball caps
and sneaking around town
as if i don’t live here anymore,
which i guess i don’t

staring too hard at the sky
and sometimes-nighttime escapes
driving in cars that aren’t mine;
going around, going nowhere,

and everywhere: choked by
memories in every place we ever went,
making this place feel like less of a home
and more like a crime scene

i do not know how to stop feeling haunted

there are suitcases at the end of the bed
and none of them are mine,
the ghost of you is teaching me
how to run.
and – what, you thought i would stay
just to watch you be in love with her?
just to live in the knowledge
that you no longer want me?
you thought i would stay for that?

maybe i am that masochistic,
maybe i really did love you.
but maybe some people can love
boundlessly,
without drawing lines,
putting up walls.
and maybe i
can't.

i’m sick of the way you look me dead in the eye
and say you do not want me.
if there was a way i could curl up in the space behind your eyes
just to figure out what, exactly, your brain is going on about,
catch me hiking up the expanse of your cheekbones.
i wouldn’t miss it for the world.

thank you for making me laugh til my stomach hurts.
i’ve been thinking about the way you touched my back
for two weeks.
i don’t know how to make you understand
the way my heart opened all the doors
to make room for you
despite doing all i could
to keep you out

and the truth is,
i'm past the point of being able to deny you anything.
so build me up and break me down,
take my hope and let it shatter,
a vase on the kitchen tile.
tell me you love me
when we both know
it's not in the way i want.
tell me you'll stay
when we both know
you cannot do anything but leave.
put your hand on my back again.

but let me sing and kiss the broken pieces.
let me try to forget
that you ever even touched me.
let me make myself
believe
i am better off.

listen –
i don’t know what the right answer is.
we both know i’m not any good at this,
neither of us are,
and yet we’re here
still trying.

if i were to say that i took it all back –
if i threw myself at your feet and said listen, you,
i love every grey hair on your head
and i love every stupid word that comes out of that mouth of yours
that i spend too much time wanting to kiss,
i don’t know how i could stop myself from ******* it up again
but maybe i could try, again, to be good to you,
if you’d let me.

the truth is
being with you today felt like a homecoming.
the truth is,
i don’t know how we will make this work.
the truth is
i’m scared that I will hurt you again,
i’m scared i won’t know how to stop myself from doing wrong by you,
and yet here i am, turning up my hands like a prayer, laying flowers at your feet and tracing the wings on your ankles,
hoping that somehow
we can do this, that the distance won’t matter
and i’ll stop biting my tongue whenever i need to speak.

we traded hats before we said goodbye
and i’m still wearing yours.
tonight i’ll sleep in your sweatshirt
and hope that someone, someday, will love you right,
and that maybe it will be me.

we meet by accident, just kids, dandelions growing under our feet
everything bright and new, scrubbed clean
and even the moon, born again in the sky every night
sings to us, like it knows.
you run after trains and kiss me on porches
and i begin the slow, delicious process
of weaving myself into your hair.
every starlit night, every car ride
with the windows rolled down,
every night parked for hours in my driveway
kissing, bruising, touching
and later, the phone calls
i-miss-you-we’ll-make-it-work
studying and going to class
and doodling your name in the margins,
all of it, all of it
including sitting at the top of the library stairs
when you tell me it is over,
including the train ride in which
you say there is someone else,
including pressing my face into my hands
and sobbing on the ferry, months later,
because you say you love her.
we meet by accident, and it is the most beautiful kind:
full of shock and pain
and love and hope
and no, i wouldn't trade any of it,
even though i’m still picking pieces of myself off the floor,
even though
one look from you is still enough
to send my blood
in a spiral,
even now, after all this time

so maybe
i’m just trying to say thank you.
maybe that’s how this ends.