After multiple traumatic relationships,
years of cynically happy single-ness,
and a series of mismatched puzzle pieces...
No gesture,
promise,
or amount of time
will ever render me accustomed to saying,
"I love you,"
and hearing,
"I love you, too."

My mind is tired
from the marathons it’s been running
around my head,
trying to make sense of a society
so hell bent on hating one another
under the guise of Christianity.
You think everything is black or white,
right or wrong,
conspiracy or honesty,
when the God I know can’t work that way.
Send me to sleep tonight
without a prayer,
because I don’t know what to ask for anymore.
For now,
I’m content with the bed I’ve made
deep within sheets of grey.

I used to do anything to drown out the silence,
a silence that cradled every missed opportunity,
the bad timing, and the ache that accompanied it.
I have tried to build many sculptures on top of the faith
that gets me out of my bed sheets every morning,
each work more beautiful than the one preceding,
but too often it’s either left a swollen mound
with a fist imprinted upon it,
or I run out of clay,
trying to cement the shattered pieces back together.

My worth is not a broken promise
nor a plea to be bargained.
I am not a locked, teenage diary
for which you have to find the key.
My skin is the cover of hardback book –
strong, durable, thick.
I may seem daunting or closed off,
but open me,
and I’ll spill countless words full of the
stories and life experiences I wish to share with you.
All you have to do is ask.

Lately, the silence feels like home,
a place where I can exist peacefully
without desires or expectations.
I used to find my enemies here;
They nearly strangled me.
Today I’m enamored with my own ability
to not only survive,
but live,
without trying to find the reset button.
For now I’ll reside here
until I can figure out how to finish a piece of art.

It’s been a rough year– especially this month and, furthermore, this week–
but there is a single, irrelevant moment that my brain has been playing on repeat:
You were making dinner in the kitchen, music saturating the room –
most likely some smooth jazz ballad you’ve crooned a million times –
and you took a break from the stove to try to dance with me.
Embarrassed by my inability to dance socially without being awkward,
I swindled my way out with an excursion to the bathroom.

There aren’t many things I would change about the last few months…
not the inebriated tears I couldn’t trap behind my eyes,
nor the hours I spent listening to you ramble on about
everything that excites you,
which is everything.

It’s the simplest moment I regret the most…
I just wish I would have danced with you.

I used to start fires with gasoline, sometimes with caution and other times in haste. Either way, the quickest light of a match could smother my darkness with light. I had myself convinced it was so much easier that way, a routine way to manage my soul. It took me a little too long to realize my burns were caused by my own explosions.

I’ve learned to appreciate the slow kind of burn, the smallest smolder that gives way for your sight, the lingering echo of crackling power, and the fragrant tenacity in a glow that grows. The beauty of a flame is that it has the ability to ignite other fires without diminishing its own. My only wish is that we as humans could figure out how to do the same.

For now, all I know is that a single spark can ignite the flame, and the smallest, most seemingly insignificant flame, can light fireworks across the sky in celebrations and calls for support. I just hope no one summons the rain clouds before then.