We were born with a flood
and the town welcomed us in:
everyone's arms strung in an endless blanket.
I looked up at my mother, remembering
when she was my shelter.

I had heard the beating;
it was rough, it was heavy, real
somehow. But it was not life.
She lost so much of me during the birth.

I grew up on weekdays, never the
weekends, those were a haze.
My body stretched but followed the
form of the flowers, stooped and wilting
in the fall.

Summer was too thick, the air, the trees
were luscious but painful to look at.
Winter was a noose around my neck,
I felt each snowflake before it fell.

But spring! I was in my element.
My leaves unfurled, my petals opened -
beauty, in the ****, green flesh, human.
You only saw me then. You only
wanted to hold me then.

My mother blessed you in a
shower of nervous chatter, her way
of making you a part of things.
But you were always distant, far from here
in some tiny glass sphere or cube.

I knew when you stopped calling; it
was the end of spring but I hadn't
yet begun to bend.
But you were always right on time
to cut yourself free of me.

On a whim,
we packed up what little was
left of this strung-out relationship and
rattled out of town in your raucous,
senile rustbucket.

I thought for sure the engine’s cacophony
meant we'd be stuck on the side
of the road in no time, but you
just smiled serenely into the mirror,
pressed the pedal to the floor.

This is why I love you, you know,
because you're calm even
when I'm freaking out beyond
belief and my hair starts to frizz.

Baby, this rope may be
frayed and burn us as it slides along the
palms of our hands, but we hold on
nonetheless, to all that we are,
never slowing, never stopping, rolling
on and on.

Some things just can’t be explained,
like your luminous eyes and
spidery fingers tapping
gently against the desk.

Snow swirls down
outside the window,
and here I am on the sill
with my forehead propped
against the chill of the glass.

"Cool," I say, and
it is a dream within
a dream of reality,
and nothing seems to
make much sense anymore.

You break those things
that I deemed unbreakable,
perhaps even my weighted heart.

Kitchen appliances hum softly,
logs shift in the stove, an uneasy chorus.
The shower sings too, softly, faintly.

I wish you and I were tangled together
in this inky night.

All of the others would cease to exist,
even the body dancing under the cascade of water,
the body which may or may not have been invited in.

The fire flares up, burns with an indescribable vibrancy.
I can almost see your face close to mine,
lit up by the flickering of the flames,
a shadowdance with all the intricate details of you.

Liplocked, bedlocked, lovelocked.

I have never wanted anything so much
as I want this profound happiness with you.

Even here, alone in this dingy room, I feel it,
the shapes it creates in the staleness of the air,
the near-tangible texture that it holds.