while waiting for the next girl in barnes & noble you can pull out an anatomy book and trace my bones like you wish you could have done before when it was still a viable option
you inched her name into our conversations because it tasted like honey and devil's food cake on your tongue, looked away when i begged for answers
left me writing you letters you never read and calling your name and wishing you good morning like the good girl i wanted to be even though i’d grown so weak
behind your frames who did you see when you saw me? i want to know, i want to know if the guy before saw the same wide-eyed half-smiling half-crying picture of naivety
i hate sensing patterns
you knew
you knew
you knew
but you did it anyway
i knew
i knew
i knew
the ending very well
and i let it happen anyway as if i didn’t know any better
i kept waiting for the broken traffic light to change.
i shivered because my cardigan was too thin,
high-low chiffon skirt pulling an unwanted marilyn and sending chills as i stepped onto the platform,
phone in my hand at 63%, got texts from everybody but you
body trembling on the walk home under the moonless sky.
from now on trusting is going to feel like an olympic sport
i've never been that athletically adept but i'll learn to pole vault the hell away next time when i see the signs loud and flagrant.
third time's the charm right?

you can find my head in the clouds if you look up the residences of bored angels who have made us pawns in their games

you can find my heart under the faucet, i've rinsed it already and it's nearly done drying if not for the occasional drip here and there,
but hush your mouth because it's progress, it's migrated from the hamper where you tossed your sweater after you realized you wanted to get "that piece of dirt" off your sleeve

you can find my soul when you shut your eyes and take a walk through the city in your mind, tracing our ghostly footsteps,
the pedometer refuses to start on the grounds of how impossible that number seems

you can find the rest of me every time you break off eye contact because you don't really want to have that tedious conversation,
in old letters
in music
in lonely 2 ams
in frustrations
in the leftover spaces your distractions and routines don't quite fill.

it's ok because i'm sure i'll reach out for you too somehow,
there has to be a yellowpages lying around my house somewhere.

today while waiting for the train a woman with a voice so immaculate it sounded like a recording sang "at last" and i felt the final slivers of disillusionment scatter,
i felt love the way carrie bradshaw would type fervently about it late at night in bed,
i felt renewed faith in love surge through me.
though the tunnel i then walked through reeked of incense, i marveled at my own rebirth of innocence. wide-eyed once more.

today while on the train a girl in maroon pants tippy-toed and kissed her boyfriend and he sat next to me and she sat across from him. a couple of people stood in front of me, bustling along, but i shifted positions to meet the girl's gaze and gesticulated, "do you wanna switch seats with me?"
the look on her face said it all.
do unto others, right?

when we met it felt like he was speaking to a corner bookshelf of my heart that needed a little bit of dusting. he swiftly picked up one of those books and read from it and it made me feel good.
or at least that's what it says, according to my new journal.
i hope a fellow starry-eyed soul switches seats with you on the train so you can laugh at inside jokes with him,
i hope you can hold hands and marvel at the street performer
i hope you call your best friend and tell her about it while you're walking home,
i hope this happens to you, over and over and over,
repetitive but you're so happy you shed the cocoon of routine and burst out: untethered, fearless, maybe even into song.

cheer up, don't give up.

we are the perfect friends because we freely hold hands
we are the perfect friends because we freely loosen ends
we are the perfect friends because we’ve learned how to listen
we are the perfect friends silent under sunlight prisms
we are the perfect friends, laughing in the middle of summer
we are the perfect friends, always running after each other
we are the perfect friends because we speak like water
we are the perfect friends though we are the imperfect daughters
and love is a soft spoken word shown in actions rarely few

and darling i heard it loud
while i was getting to know you.

i can’t tell why, but
your laugh is just the sweetest
dessert i have had

i think it’s silly:
we speak just like we’re dancing
in perfect rhythms

it’s so fun to dream
that i’d be happy without
my independence

you make me write poems
five seven fives just for our
little one by one

you don’t know it yet
but you are changing small things
like my little heart.

i arrived in this world with no map to guide me but the palms of your hands. you let me hold them sometimes, and they’re warm and inviting.

sometimes you make me feel starry-eyed with your words, or at least that’s what you used to do

but i’m waiting for you to send me constellations of goosebumps running down my arms and spine

i will shape myself into an amateur cartographer, and make it an active point to mark places on the map that we’ve been to together, and as i trace my fingers across towns and mountains we’ve yet to cross, a part of me wonders if we’ll even get to any of those destinations

because somehow you’re staggering and i don’t know why or what’s holding you back

still i persist, i yearn for adventure.

i leave the map unfurled and smooth the creases of my sudden remembrance that i came here alone. i made my own decisions and ran into you in the meanwhile.

you too, were a wandering traveler. your feelings as nomadic as your feet on these lands. i wouldn’t call myself foolish to have ever gotten involved, but you are embedded in my memories. a new story for me to flesh out every time someone asks me how i got here or there. i’ll keep meandering from town to town, but no longer will i seek you — you may find me.

i realized this was not your map, but mine.

warrior by day and writer by night
the machinations of your mind
be my heart’s delight
so give me eloquence if you wish to ****** me
reticence should you wish to repel
for a lover with smart sweet words
is keen to put me under his spell.