You're like remembering how to breathe.
Not the choking gasp when you crawl up from water or the panting hiss that comes when the panic lets go.
You're the steadying of your breath as you fall asleep.
You're midday coffee and candles just lit and the lilt of a laugh that catches in your throat when you're so happy it feels like you'll break
Seeing the stars through the smog and looking down at mountains from the window of a plane
you're the cold of the ocean and warmth of a bed on the mornings you wake an hour before the alarm and the quiet of a snowstorm in the middle of the night
You're every word I know, but I can't find a way to string them together to explain how it feels when I wake up feeling your heartbeat.

it's abut 9pm and I decide I don't want to be alone



there was a car crash earlier that day up west towards Salida--
some Kansas man who was killed by a driver trying to pass
in the right lane, declared deceased on scene, another man
from Monument who was air-lifted to St. Thomas Moore,
no critical injuries.

I tend to ask God for these big signs, signs that I'll recognize. I tell him
that they need to be something I'll notice because you know me, sometimes I can't hear you. Anyway, signs, crashes. A Kansas man died.  It's 9pm and I pull on some jeans and leave the house.

I'm supposed to be at a rodeo dancing, but maybe I wasn't supposed to be there after all. I have this white dress in my closet that you can't even see, tucked between everything else because it's so thin, lays flat beneath the aztec smocks and cream cardigans. I take it out and brush it off, thread my fingers through the open lace--

10pm. When I breathe soft enough the stars look like they're hanging on strings, like I could reach up and snap them off,
they'd be no bigger than dew drops on a spider web
so light they'd drift up in the night breeze and
set up in my own natural atmosphere.

What good would it have done me to be there? I only ask
myself to assuage the warm fear i've been feeling since Friday
night, a lingering umbrage I did not think would stay--
I can see the white stitches in my jeans that look
like they're glowing,
smells like rain out here.
I wish I was out at Chaffey
for a quick moment, enveloping
someone else in this chanel perfume
makin' someone else envious of the
way another man got to spin me out--

I'm trying to be all these people at once, an  
audience of crowd pleasers piled into one body
It's so quiet, I'm so quiet up on the sideways knoll in
Florence, tired of letting people down easy off the sidewalk
curb and being tossed off the bridge over the state highway myself,
I can't help it, I want to say aloud.

I can't help that I am this way, collected.
calm in hearty hysterics, anxious to tell
you about how I've been fixed,
that warm fear growin' hotter
a coal for every man who suggested
I be less than who I am by pourin' more
into my cup,

I'm trying. I'm trying.

shove your fingers down your throat
- he's gone now honey, you don't need the liquor
it's grown too common to watch the ***** pour from your mouth
and collapse laughing on the bathroom floor
forged in blood and ***** you're a new god as you must be
must believe keep believing remembering
you are the daughter of the woman formed of hate turned in -
who found more love than she dreamed she deserved
nearly died to bear the life she longed for
of the woman who would not fail or cease
scraped through a new world to claw out the life she needed
daughter of the witch stole away
seamless
made of glass and so, sharper, more dangerous when broken
your blood will not drain or cease to flow
even as you will your heart to stop.
Your lungs find ways to expand beyond the
breadth of your ribs
blood and *****
bruises and windows and Ledges and Knives
- these were your becoming
lie on the tiles weeping and laughing
for nothing beautiful was ever borne without blood

Oh. Here's such an odd place to be in, love
In love with you, that is.
Again. Or still. Always maybe.
You're warm and safe, blankets piled on a bed at night in the winter, stubborn and irritating, irrational and cruel. Loving and gentle and excited, comfort and excitement each in turn and I don't know anyone else I'd rather spend days on.
I want and I need,
kissing laughing ******* loving needing exhausting
you
You've come back again and again and have we really only been speaking less than two years?
Me without you. There's a thought.
Me without you. Fighting and fearing and accepting it over and over and -
Can you keep a secret?
I can live without you.
I learned how. I had to learn how.
But oh, I don't want to. I don't want that life.
Safer yes, warmer perhaps, emptier certainly.
No one wants what's ordinary and comfortable for long after they've loved adventure.
Bilbo with his mountains, Odysseus with his sea
I'll take your fire, I think