sometimes my anxieties are like intricately built sandcastles. i have been known to worry and fret over these sandcastles for hours, even days, at a time. i will collect millions of grains of sand and sloppily sculpt them. they are not usually beautiful or special or anything worth my time at all, but i continue build these castles. it’s like i have to. if i stop, what else is there anymore? what do i do? there is a sandcastle for all of my worries, all of the things that shiver beneath my chest for too long, anything that leaves my bones aching after all of the clocks plead midnight.

a year ago i was sitting on a sun-painted beach surrounded by two thousand sandcastles. the wind was beating the breath out of my lungs. the ocean was far off, so far i could hardly even see the dancing silver waters. i kept building them. i was tired and i was crying and building these hideous sandcastles of anxiety with my bare hands. people would pass me by, briefly, shaking their heads like i was something broken. i was miserable. i was always alone and i did nothing but build sandcastles. a year ago i was sad but no one knew why. a year ago i was sad but i didn’t know why.

but now i know you and the ocean is much closer, i can see it pushing back and forth all hours of the day and feel its song, because you are the ever-present waters that collapse my anxieties. i still build them often, but you continually take them away from me and they are forgotten. i do not know where you put them. i just know that every time i speak to you, you extend your long arms around them and they crumble. most of the time now it’s just me sitting on wet sand as the white-wash curves of your waves swallow every one up. i make you laugh and my anxieties sink. every new worry i have, your edges swim to the shore and carry it off. no matter how quick i try to build them, every time i blink they will be gone. i don’t know how you do it.

sometimes i think about joining you in the sea, but i’m scared. i don’t want to lose that part of myself. i’m afraid of what i won’t have anymore if i leave this fragile collection of crumbled sandcastles behind. i’ve fallen in love with the call of the sea and the storms that it brews, but i can’t abandon land just yet. your waves silently ask me all of the time but i can’t let go of this just yet.

i hope one day, when i’m ready, the ocean will gently carry me away, too.

yes, i know your heart may not often feel the whirlwind car-twisting hurricanes that mine does, but i will still listen every time it speaks. its smallest whisper is catastrophic to me. (i know you don't think it says very much at all sometimes, but it does. i listen.)

   even when the leaves fall to kiss
   blades of grass come autumn or
   when i wander down tire-beaten
   dirt roads or when strangers ask me
   questions that i don't know the
   answers to, you will always be a
   thought that blends into my brain.


i tried falling out of this -
i tried to staple and bind my feelings
shut and turn my head the other way,
i tried to let someone else's
face embellish my thoughts
and let someone else ask me
questions while i shoved the words
i'd always wanted to say to you
to the back of my throat.

   i tried;
   i really did.

but you are too intricately woven
through my ribcage for me to unravel,
you've left to many scars on my lungs
from my hammering heartbeat.


and even if you never spoke to me again,
i think you'll always be there
humming under my chest:
"hello, hello, never forget the things
i gave to you."

all the words i ever write
anymore are stained with you.
                     even the words that
trickle down from my lips drip with
    your blue gridline thoughts,
your pitter-patter raindrops of
words, your hindering heart.



nothing about me is quite
the same shade anymore
                  because of it;
      the fabric of my eyes
               tinged brighter,
    specks of gold blinking
beneath my skin.


i could scratch symphonies
into broken concrete or
        smear paint
                 across windows
or sway my hips this way and
that and they would say nothing
            but you you you all over


            my heart is just you you you all over

my friends don't understand why i'm so preoccupied with this boy that is always so quiet, so negative, so lonely. i've never told them before but i think i relate to that feeling of loneliness. i know how it feels to cement heavy walls of silence around your exterior so no one bothers to come inside, and say nothing when words jump into your throat, and feel everything but then feel nothing at all. it doesn't make much sense but i fell for you because you have eyes that always ask me questions, eyes that take my anxieties and pull them into the calm ocean in between your lungs and hide them there for me. “don’t worry,” you say. you always say that. i worry. “don’t worry.” i try to stop, for you.

but then i start worrying about you, and it's an endless cycle.

i claim you as my cure, the mellow remedy to melt in my bones as i walk down the hallways. i don’t want to throw myself down flights of stairs anymore. i don’t want to melt into the sidewalks with the rain. i don’t want some distant boy to fly to me and carry me away and i don’t want some boy who doesn’t know my name to turn his eyes in my direction. i just want you, and you’re here. i just want you, and you can see me.

the truth is i always write about your eyes because they are the only thing that makes me feel cared for anymore. they are the only thing that deserves my writing at all and you are the only thing i ever seem to want to write about anymore. i don't want some glazed-over faux-shine of love. i don't want to want you one day and be forced to forget you the next. i just want to tuck any of your nightmares in my pockets, knowing that you are my own dreamcatcher that hangs along my heart. i just want lazy conversations like the humid summer air that suffocates my soul every july. i just want effortless, and that's exactly what we are.

i like to sing and you don’t understand it, but i wonder what you would say if i told you that i can hear you singing. the melodies of your fingers and the falsetto chill of your skin and the harmonizing of your laughter with my own and the waltzing scent i sometimes notice. it sings to me, you sing to me, you are my silent musical that shakes me down to my very bones.

and someone asked me the other day how i love a boy that doesn’t know how to love, and i just shook my head simply because you taught me everything i know.

i used to be sad
i used to be sad
all of the time, gnawing at my nails
and bleeding burden in my mouth
as i daydreamed disasters, always
straying from words like "love."
but you taught me that happiness
is not anything that you ask for

when you see happiness,
you seize every crevice and angle and
corner of it, it is yours -
but only if you do not ask for it

you taught me that
there's too many creeps of sunlight
hiding between raindrops
as they fall,
too many open oceans offering
anchors on their beds to pull
us down under,
too many "not enoughs" and
not enough of anything anymore
because everyone is always
asking

you taught me that
if i want to glide along railroads,
i musn't turn into a bullying engine
that shouts and kicks and pushes,
but i must turn into the girl
who knows exactly what
freedom sounds like

and you taught me all of this,
you taught me
everything about love,
without saying a
single
word

i want frightening things running laps through
       the cycles of my veins i want nothing
but inevitable exhales and high pitched-insanity ringing
in my ears and the calm lulling of oceans
hugging my bruising thoughts  

       i want to write you letters between your
       tightly-bound layers because you let me
inside and sometimes let my soul wander there
i want crashing into endless fields i want shades of
yellow dancing over my daydreams

       i want the corners of us to overlap in subtle
       ways i want knowing glances and secretly
pressing your smiles to the delicate lining of my
ribcage because i don't want alone anymore i'm not
asking for alone because now

       i want to let everything surround me
       suddenly until i am nothing but this, this
complete euphoria and maybe i want too
much too often and though i would never
admit it i'm sure that i want

       (you)

and i’m starting to think

i need a lampshade big
enough to hide the
possibility of us
under,


because we are light we
are fallen sun and stars and skydust
beaming brilliantly without cause


and most importantly

we are
possible.