Because I have fallen in love with men like shadows, I have learned what it means to hold onto my light.

You do not have to remember the day you recognized your own autonomy on the same day you continue to define your freedom.

Take it easy.

Letting go of a round shouldered man who wanted to change my signature means touching the slimy parts of my bloodstream ink jar heart.

It means peeling back the window shade to smash the glass pane eyeteeth of my youth.

And remembering the key to unhinge my jaw tension voice sans stones and lacking sweetness.

It means saying goodbye today and releasing my ribcage parakeet hands to catch my own thoughts.

I am through with placeholding promises and biting through backwoods in order to forget the pieces of strength that I love so much.

I am told that my anatomy is the sheer academy of my lack of sensibility and that my sense of autonomy is just my way of rebelling against my own skin.

Because I was born in a body that is just a little too small to contain such an opinion, and so this must be just the remainder of some book I read, right?

I am told that at times my mouth traces outlines larger than my hands can, and all I know is that my fingers stretch to try and reach the cord that turns off the light on my porch so that I can find the streetlight shadow puppet.

Because I am at odds with the lightbulb delivery of my best friend’s idealism and my body’s realism and it’s all a sense of alchemism when I’m searching for altruism.

I’m told that I am too big for my body, or “for such a little girl, you’re very smart,”. I used to start in the plus-size section of stores, only to be escorted to diminutive floral prints and capri pants.

I am still mistaken for a lost child at the airport, I am still advised not to go out in certain areas after dark, I didn’t realize I was small until I wasn’t listened to.

date a boy who owns a sewing machine
and takes you to feminist modern art exhibits

date the son of a librarian
who can tell you all your favorite stories
while you fall asleep

date a boy who wears a chalkboard helmet
to ride a motorcycle to the top of the mountain
to see the city lights

date a boy who follows you up mountains
to kiss you in the wind
and run his hands through your hair

and date a boy with glasses
who pushes them up on the bridge of his nose
after he kisses you

your voice still sounds like flowers
but now your hands feel familiar

I’m glad you wear a helmet when you ride your motorcycle because your brain is far too pretty to be splattered on wet pavement

I’m glad you take care of the humans in your life because your son is a genius trapped behind his own shaky hands

I’m glad you’re honest with yourself because your teeth hold so much truth that your tongue still astounds me

I’m glad you always ask how I’m doing because it helps me to remember to ask myself.

Strangers are nice to me because I’m pretty, but I wouldn’t be much without the rest of you.

I think we’re all just honest missing pieces

shoved under the couch or chewed past recognition

we fill these flaw with tact and with sarcasm

with extremes and shouts and prayers

and kisses and each other

i have plenty of dried leaves and hot water at home, but my winter self hikes four miles in the snow for a cup of tea.
i know more words than i had ever hoped to understand, but i still shuffle them like tap shoes to place meaning on my notebooks.
i have seen mountain views that make me weak in the knees, but i still need to see what else the world holds, and if that makes me reckless beyond being someone’s wife, then so be it.
I understand that the life that I want is not one that should be kept up with or stood alongside, but one where I deign mystery into my own flesh and mysticism into my own sky