you are an
exfoliant;
coarse and fine
you scrape me raw
painfully
but in the end
your sharp cuts
hide an ointment
and my soul
thanks me for you;
for this change,
a renewal,
healing after
necessary
destruction
(out with the dead,
in with the new)

but the only thing thats moving
are my thoughts,
they race ahead and below
and i've given up tracing
the trail they blaze before
without a doubt
burning out

the sound of the highway outside
whispers through this rain-tapped glass:

quiet and fleeting and constant,
so like wind and rain and nature,
ebbs and flows, soothes with those
highs and lows and breaks—

with no telling when it will end,
just a rhythm like sleepy breaths,
a lullaby in the making

i prefer this noise to silence
outside my window in that dark;
a vast world alive and vibrant
while i slip into muted dreams

there is a glow about you today
a warm sun blanketed in sky-gray
and though the world still spirals
for a second, with you, i can forget

it would have been easier if you were cruel
if your tongue dripped poison and not honey
if your words cut because they were sharp
and not because i showed you my soft places
if you had been malicious instead of careless
it would have been easier for me to heal
if you had been less easy to forgive

like a flower in a high place,
i cannot help but gaze upon
the beauty prospering adverse
to callous wind and granite stone;

one day i will watch you fall grace-
fully, petals aflutter, and mourn
the absence your passing creates:
a world less beautiful and rare.

you and i are not puzzle pieces
not two halves of a bigger whole
and if there is a key to my lock
you do not have it, but your smile
makes me want to open up anyway

the deft way our fingers interlock,
this digital embrace, isn't perfect
due to a higher being’s design;
no, it comes from the days wishing
i had the courage to hold your hand

but while we’re alike in many ways
your body is still foreign, changed;
a language i’ll spend my life learning
by your side or pinned under you
(any which way that you will have me).

there is a part of me that
chases, clamors for, craves your touch
(soft, steady, gentle or far too much)
a stubborn/reckless fraction
of an imperfect whole;
yearning to cage the still uncaged,
to catch myself a lost angel.

but your heart is too fragile,
too precious and too complicated
(untarnished and unremonstrated)
and my grasping fingers, they
would leave smudges and stains
handprints upon a handkerchief
****** white in this world of ink.

you are not a blank canvas
that tempts one into leaving a mark
(writing my name, my love on your skin);
you are a finalised masterpiece,
every line perfection,
and to change, covet or chain you
would be the highest blasphemy.