i’ve given up on days that begin in late afternoon,
skipped breakfast and lunch,
days that fade slowly and end with
****** cut-out holes in eyelids because
the second i close them and it all goes black,
every moment with you comes back
played on fast-forward, the memories moving so quickly
that both our faces are blurred
and it feels like everything i’ve ever felt for you
is overflowing the tub, filling the washroom with
suds that take forever to melt

i’ve given up on those days.

i’ve traded them for ones that begin with
sunrises instead of sunsets,
days that are spent falling forward
instead of trying to chase the past, and i don’t
look back and see something broken, or
something that was better off left unopened

i look back and see our bodies so close together
that you can’t tell where yours begins and mine ends,
i see my heart that grew twenty-three times its size,
i see you and me wrapped up in something that
i didn’t know existed outside of blurry 35 mm
and overdue and falling-apart library books
that sit on the nightstands of middle-aged women
who are bored with their lives

and i’m just so happy i got to love you at all.

but i’ve folded up all the days spent with you
and taped them in the messy pages of my journal
and now i’m running into the sun,
running away from every lie that’s trying to
wedge its way in between my ribs,
running in the opposite direction of words like "regret"
and any feeling that insists that none of it was worth it

because all of it was worth it.

every moment we were together pumps
through my veins, and it will always be there;
it will be there when we’ve both graduated,
when you move out west,
when you kiss your family goodnight,
when you sit in your backyard with tears
in your eyes because you’ve lived a life
you are proud of

it will be there when i finally make it to new york city,
when i kiss someone who isn’t you,
when i find the answers you inspired me to search for,
when i sit on my rooftop with tears on my cheeks
because i’ve lived a life fuller than i could’ve ever imagined

and you and i will live these lives apart,
we’ll move on and forget what it felt like
to wake up beside one another;
we’ll find what we’re looking for elsewhere
and we’ll understand why this all had to happen the way that it did

but what we had will always exist somewhere,
in rotting apples and old mail and unplayed mix CDs,
in mosaics that line the city streets, in sirens and
red and white flashing lights that shine through
your window while you are asleep

you and i were magic,
we always will be.

i want a farmhouse in a small country town
bay windows, front yard, porch swing
a kitchen, a kitten, a wide open sky
night air that shimmers
quiets
welcomes
comforts
sings

          (i want an apartment on the lower east side
          fairy lights, tapestries, window seat
          a painting, piano, a small coffee shop
          city lights blazing
          grinning
          glowing
          up the street)

i want a nice boy who i meet in a church
soft eyes, kind smile, warm hands
a father, a friendship, a safe place to rest
a boy who loves
cares
comforts
understands

          (i want a tall boy with dark danger eyes
          hot skin, quick breath, open doors
          a longing, a trembling, an earthquake, a fire
          a boy who burns
          tears
          touches
          wonders
       ­   soars)

i want to be she who has got it all right
straight teeth, brushed hair, clean clothes
a daughter, a student, responsible, kind
she who laughs
helps
reaches
teaches
knows

          (i want to be she with two planets for eyes
          forest fire, sparrow bones, raging sea
          a warm wind, a strange song, a wide open field
          she who’s glowing
          grinning
          screaming
          running
­          free)

i miss how i used to touch him
and how he used to touch me —
how he would pause to smile between kisses
the freckles that patterned his skin and the
warm, kind, roughness of his hands,
how his room was always clean and i miss
the cross above his bed.
there’s still a picture of me on his wall, you know

'he has always wanted her,' someone said to me recently, as if i didn't know
as if i have ever known something else as fully, as deeply, as completely
as i know those words
i feel it in my stomach, my ribcage, my lungs, the tips of my toes,
the knowledge that i was not the one he wanted, not really,
and neither was the one that came after me
and the one that came before me
and any other girl in his life — because
there has only ever been one girl for him and
i have always known it.
still, hearing those words, it was like standing at the cliff’s edge
all over again
just staring

More and more I’ve been thinking about how you ruined me. Skinny little girl arms and legs and tummies and chests, being touched for the first time, just a little-girl-playing-big with a boy-who-was-already-big. I peeled off layer after layer until I lay in front of you, exposed, fighting the urge to cover myself with my hands because it was you, because I trusted you, more than I’ve ever trusted another person. I would have let you lead me into a burning building.

I always heard that there’s nothing like your first love. I never quite understood until recently. There was nothing like my first love because I put all of myself into it, into you, pressing myself into your hands, trusting that you would take care of me.

I didn’t know, until I was in another boy’s bed years later, him kissing up and down my neck, me feeling the first awful tickle of panic in my chest. I didn’t know, until he told me that he loved me, til I felt every muscle in my body tense up like I had run into a ******* war zone.

I didn’t know. I’ve broken up with every single boy since you. I didn’t know. I haven’t been above to love any of them right because of you. Because you ruined me.

There’s nothing like your first love, they said. And they were right. It’s been four years and I’m still trying to pry my heart out of his filthy hands.

i’m sorry i step away
when you get too close to me.
the truth is,
i am a lot of work to love.
there will be nights when i will cry and cry and cry
and there will be nothing you can do.
there will be times when i’ll fall on my knees
begging God for forgiveness
and the only thing you can do is
let me be alone,
but i will love you for it.

and on nights you are curled up in bed
staring at the wall, facing demons
that i don’t know the name for -
just tell me what to do, darling,
and i will do it.
when you don’t know how to get up in the morning
when the world seems like too much to face
i will be there for you,
whether that means holding your hand
making you a cup of coffee
or just letting you be,
i will do it.

so, we are two people with a couple of rough edges,
shoving and fighting and kicking and scratching and praying
through it all
but at the end of the day i know i can collapse into your arms, exhausted
and we will lie there, breathing hard,
a beautiful mess of bodies
with too much hope and not enough time.

all i really need is someone
to walk this journey with me.
thank you for every day when you choose to be that someone.

There will come a time when we will be gone,
all of us
from this place.
We will take planes and buses and trains,
We will pack up our rooms and kiss mothers goodbye,
fathers clap our shoulders
and look us in the eye, tell us to stay out of trouble.
We will never be together, all of us, again,
in the same way, for we're always changing.
You know how people are.
-
This is how I can miss you.
This is why, though you are sitting with me now,
I feel the particular ache of your loss -
the knowledge that I will go months, years,
without hearing your voice.
And in a way, it is like someone has died -
like you have died, like I have died.
I know my memories will live on hideously,
growing greater and falser with time,
filling spaces and gaps in me
that you never really got to fill.
And yes, I will live on. But there will always be something:
a scratch on my wrist
a ghost on my neck
a deep, trembling silence.
-
If you asked me about graduation, this is what I’d say:
I am a river, you are the sea, and I will keep running to you,
even though the sea is chock full of water,
even though one river won't make much of a difference, anyway.

there is a something that is coming.
it is coming and coming fast. it is colored like death
until the stars come out of it and dance around me,
and they become lighthouses, impartial.
but that is not yet. i am sailing with you now,
we’re on the way. it is dark.

soon, we’re going to come to a fork in the road.
you have to go left
and i have to go not-left.
i helped you pack - or i guess i should say
i watched you while you packed; all i did
was stare at your mouth and wish
things hadn’t happened like they did.
i held your hand and looked at your eyes
because there will be a time, too soon, when
i will no longer be able to experience you.
i want to experience you,
all of you,
all that i can.

i swim in the sea of you. i wish i could drown.
if there were a time when we could have been more than we were
and better, and good,
then i would revisit that time often in my mind. as it is,
i visit all the times we spilled things on each other’s shirts
and couldn’t get them out in the wash.

what would it be like, i wonder,
to walk in the path of your heart?
making maps of your veins?
i still don’t know you, and i guess i will never know you
for too soon the darkness will take us and the fork
in the road will part us and it will only be
rare occasions when you happen to chance into my life.
while i can, i’ll listen
to the marvelous dirt-road mumblings of your voice.
the way you say things
and how the branches of the trees bend down to listen.

am i a fool to hope for redemption by you?
a cafe in brooklyn in winter. snowflakes.
and conversation passing over steaming cups
like we’re fourteen and wishing for home.
wait for me at december sunsets.
i’ll be there and we’ll make for vienna
just like we always wanted.
maybe i’d ask you to play the piano again
and i would rest my head in your lap for all the times
we couldn’t be everything, we tried and we tried
and we couldn’t be everything. and as
your hand slips out of my grasp
and i cry out for Heaven,
please wait for me.
at the sunset, like i told you,
with your arms open to catch the fallout
of how this will destroy me.