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you told me
to be selfish for once in my life
but I am
every second I don't ask
for the one thing I wish
more than anything
I could have
because asking for that
could mean losing you
and I am far too selfish
to risk that
lovers, we are young and
our hearts and our heads can take us
halfway 'round the world
but we can make a wanderlust home
in the space between our heartbeats
when we're curled around each other
the bed too small for all the love we have
knocking at our door is as simple
as carding your fingers through another's hair
we know you're never more beautiful than
with sleep and sunlight in your eyes
and lopsided curls falling at your cheekbones

and on the days that caffeine replaces blood in your veins
and tiredness pulls at your eyelids and your head
dragging them down, love, we'll tuck you in and
keep the coffee coming

and winter sunlight may be watery but it's
never brighter than squinting against the snow
and finding that your smile
is still the most blinding thing we see

and spring will return us to our roots
reaching against the tide of the world
to keep our love alive

oh loves, I'll love you even more
every turn around the sun we make
every spin that sets the sun to rising
always falling through the endless space
and still I know the most important

space

is the space where your breath
mixes with mine
the spaces between your teeth, the
spaces we made for us, the
spaces we'd die to keep

the space we made in a blanket fort
before anything else
wishful thinking
sometimes words fall from my mouth before I can stop them
though I knew they were on my mind and I
wanted to say them I just
didn't think I'd have the courage but
it was so easy to just
let
them
fall
and sometimes there are words bursting through my lungs
begging to be heard but
you're gone now and I'm aware
suddenly
I didn't say nearly
everything that I wanted
to say to you
You're my best friend and
I don't even think before calling you that
even in front of people who
might feel like they deserve that title

but you're fading into the background of my life
slowly but
burning bright
I see you there but you
never come forward
so I know it's not me
that's letting you leave it's
you
leaving
on your own

this isn't how it was supposed to go, you were
supposed to be
everything to me we were
supposed to be maids of honour
for each other
if we weren't each others' brides
I don't want to imagine a world
where you aren't as important to me as you were
that summer,
your head in my lap and
my heart in your hands
the sun dancing around us and,
later, us
dancing in the dark with
bright lights briefly outlining
young bodies that I didn't know
quite what to do with yet
(but I think you did)

and I won't lie and say I'm never jealous
of your perfect face and hair and body and brain
because I am
often but
I never begrudge you any of it I just
can sometimes barely function and you seem
so
put together and I wonder why
you keep me around

maybe you
finally started wondering
too
you said this song got you through a bad night
and I listened to the song on repeat
but what I really wanted to know about
were your bad nights
because I have those too and I wanted to know
if you mean the same thing as I do when I say
I had a bad night

I wanted you to tell me
about every bad night
you've ever had
so I could shoulder some of them
for you
(I've gotten used to carrying around
endless bad nights
in my back pocket
I'd barely notice the extra weight of yours)
lay it on me,
I can handle it

the songs that got me through my bad nights (and
days and weeks and months)
are precious to me
and I hold them to my chest like
you held me

and if that's how you feel about them too
then I love you for sharing them with me
(I'd love you anyways)
(I didn't think it was possible to love you more but
something always seems to happen and suddenly I
do)

and I'd never ask you to carry my bad nights for me
but I feel like you could
maybe
tame some of the wild that lives in them

there's no telling where
or who
we'll be tomorrow morning
but let's ride out this
bad night
together
you could be a little dream of mine
not a big dream like
running a marathon or
defending my PhD thesis
but you're a little dream in the same way that
winning the Nobel Prize
is a little dream of mine
probably never going to happen, but I can't help but hope
there are days my words
run dry like sandpaper
when the pen hovers over the paper
and no poetry flows

but you seem to draw magic out of me
sipping through a straw straight to my soul
words are pulled to the surface
like water from the ground

you make my mind
shape syllables slowly
turning them twice or three times
over
you make my
words wrought iron

it's like butterflies burst under my skin
as I ache
to write about you
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