Your long fingers tap on my nervous heart.
I love your fickle soul
and freckled shoulders.

You say you won't find peace of mind
in a cinderblock room
or on a piece of notebook paper,
so you crumple up your doubts
and hide your body with mine.

My shrunken lungs cannot draw breaths
not used to say your name.
I will be a blanket to warm your bones
from your downdraft hopes.
I will comb your hair with my fingers
on the days you don't wake.

But my heart breaks
on battlefields you will never hear of.
I lick wounds
you will never know to see.
I train my trembling hands
so they may gently soothe you in sleep.

I can love you better than I can fix myself.
I will fight becoming what I fear
in order to be all that you need.

My mother has always said to me,
"It will always be okay.
No matter how bad it all may seem,
You will change,
Things will change,
And you will be okay."

"Can I?"
"You can."
"Will I?"
"You will."

I will swim in the storms
That drown my course of action.
Like a tree,
I will grow to fit the mold that Nature intends.
Like leaves,
I will always find the light.
I can grow hotter than my feverish skin;
I can run faster than blood can run.

I will shake the dust off my lungs
and the cogs that turn my mind.
I will blink the sand from my eyes
and jump in every mirage’s puddle,
And don’t you dare tell me they’re not there.
Don’t tell me freedom is a facade.
I will go blind with stars in my eyes,
knowing I have seen the sky.

I will clear the fear from my throat
and sing to the crows that wait on my shoulders.
“Move along.
Keep going.
It is not my time.

For I have changed,
And things will change,
And I will be okay.”

Can I?
I can.
Will I?
I will.