i do everything i can to remember you.

when i listen to silence i think about yours
how you rarely said a word and
somebody like me could never understand

when i stood beneath the sydney harbor bridge and watched the sky explode into every color
i thought about you exactly one year earlier
i pictured you smiling at the southern stars
and i smiled to myself
smug
knowing i was the only girl to whom you'd told that story

the only girl you may have loved

when i'd hear skeggs on the radio during summer in gerroa
when i lifted my surf board over my head on seven mile beach
when i met another boy
also tall. also dark. also handsome.

i realized that i'd been searching for the best pieces of you in every new chapter of my life

i put on an old sundress i know you loved. i thought about the way you would look at me when i'd wear it.

i think about all of the things you would do to me if you saw me in my new sundress.

i let my mind wander to every undignified place as i struggle to focus on now.

on Right Now.

i do everything i can to remember you
so i don't hate myself for not knowing how to forget.

I told you once I was a poet
You asked me to paint you with my words

Words aren't enough for me to tell you how I feel
and besides
I only put my pen to the paper when my heart aches so terribly, I cannot speak them aloud

Here I seek refuge
Here I find peace

I could only write you a poem if my soul perished at your disposal
I could only write you a poem if you could make my tears stain the page

Some days I am so happy I don't even want to speak

What makes you think I can be an artist if I am not starved?

I could tell you that every time you kiss me I feel every string in my heart tighten and collapse
I could tell you that you make me feel like I am re-born
over and over again
and yet, I know that a piece of my soul has belonged to you since men could breathe

But I don't want to do that

You make me so happy that I couldn't diminish what you mean to me into a finite number of lines

If I am being truthful
Maybe I'm simply not a good enough poet to bring justice to describing the way you make me feel

Don't let the pages of my notebook turn wet as I romanticize how terribly you've hurt me

You're the first man who has ever made me feel so alive that the only thing I can do is live

So let's just live