i know there are bigger things than me -
                                                  your music and your art
  but the way our eyes catch across the room?
that's big too.

                                                            and i know i'll write stories for you someday,
                                                                               and you'll pick out a song with my name,
                                                                           when your hands have nothing else to do
                                                                       (your restless musician fingers
                                                                                and my writer's ones always searching for something)

and i know i don't abuse your substance of choice,
                                                                                             but my substance of choice is you
                                      (and they said you quit,
                                       and i wonder if it was for me)

                                                         and even so -
               the way our eyes catch across the room?
that has substance too.

he knew how to walk, with the most delicate balance
200 feet in the air
His delicate pointed feet padded onto the rope
his narrow hips
and strong skinny-muscle arms
were like a song
he had red red lips
and black black hair that curled around his ears
and he wore in his eyes a sparkle

and she knew how to walk, with the proudest swing of her arm
through a pit of lions
And with a point-toed bow
how to make them lie down, gentle as kittens
She knew how to sweep her arm up, and make their knees bend
and their red mouths yawn at her, sweet as kisses
she knew how to cast me secret-eyed smiles with her lovely curling mouth,
look what they think i can do
but i knew
that they were seeing the magic in her
that i did

i remember the great proud elephants,
and the wise rap-tapping monkeys
the tigers prowling and proud in their cages, so sad
i remember the lions, and how they would roar and roar
until she came around, and then, like anything, they would purr

i remember the ringmaster in his coattails,
sweeping his cane and tipping his hat, shouting,
"LADIES!"
crash
"AND!"
crash
"GENTLEMEN!"
crash crash crash, a fabulous,
intoxicating,
crescendo

i remember me
with my hat lowered, and my eyes glittering out from under it
my lips curled and coy
and my feet,
planted lightly,
as if to dance.
With a sweep of my hand I would make magic for them.
A rabbit
A scarf
A beautiful woman disappearing behind the snap of a lavish red cloth
leaving the audience
gasping
and gaping.

once, someone asked me how i did it
i told them
think of the tight-rope-walker
the lion-tamer
think of the ringmaster
magic is people, i said
and people
perform.

we were sisters, weren't we?
i remember when we were young -
everything was easy then, wasn't it?
before your beauty bloomed and
my plainness stayed,
before the curve of your hips and the sparks of your smile,
set my mother's heart on fire.

we were sisters, weren't we?
when we used to kneel by the hearth for fun,
digging up buried treasure,
sifting through the ashes with our clean-girl hearts,
laughing.

that was before the bitterness choked our home.

we were sisters, weren't we?
you used to crawl under the covers with me,
whisper ghost stories and laugh at me when i got scared.
i reflected your prettiness then,
it shone on me like
the sun on a mirror,
my glass face unmemorable and making yours
all the more dazzling
(not that we knew it:
we were both beautiful,
before we knew any better)

we were sisters, weren't we?
i held your hand when my mother cut you with her words,
i stood up for you when she worked you, i did.
i never once raised a word when you would come to my room,
crying and
raving about her.
i held you when your missing for your own mother rose up sharp in your heart, and i
defended you when my mother spread words like thorns in the villages.

i never once envied you your beauty.

we were sisters, weren't we?
and when that prince came for you,
laughing and
pebbling our window with stones,
i helped you shimmy out into his arms.
i would clean the mud off your shoes when you would stumble back in,
right before the sun came up,
i would put you to bed and make you tea to warm the early-morning chill out of your rose-pink cheeks,
and i waited for you that night you didn't come back.

we were sisters, weren't we?

and you left us.

twirling sweeping circle-strokes of a paintbrush
on a color-soaked canvas
and humming softly in the
quiet
of the room
and the
quiet
of the creating
and thinking as a dip into the
swirl of color on a rainbow pallet,
the point of the brush into a dab of
yellow-green and blue
red at the corners and a swirl of
purple
and drifting across
already paint-curled surface giving
life to the lifeless and
color
depth
meaning
to something simple
and so, so complex.
studying, softly, with
open-swirled mind
dizzied with the colors and the
unspoken and unspeakable
meanings they have and they hold
you.
sighing and shifting, glancing
from one painting to the next
to your own and
spreading colors like a waterstain
beautiful and unstoppable, this
madness
this
abandonment
this
knowing of the world in a point-tipped paintbrush
this
holding of the world in your paint-stained hands.

she was brushing her hair
when she glanced out the window and caught a glimpse
of him cresting the hill.
she sprang to her feet with a yell of
"****!"
and then
"ow!" as foot upon foot of hair
got trampled under foot slippered foot.
the tower was high
and she thought she'd hidden it well
but they always came,
and she really wasn't
in the mood
to be rescued.

in the purple-blue, and star-glittering night
yellow swirls shot across the sky
and the black tip-topping trees, swayed.

i learned, standing
in the sweeping grass of that bruise-colored
gem-bright night
of dreams.

i dreamed
of rain, and of blue wind
of soft meadows, and of driving sieges
of oceans rolling over yellow sunset-dappled beaches
and of birds, wheeling.

in the falling sparkling yellow, of that purple-blue night
i spread out my arms, tilted up my face
and twirled in the whispering waist-high grass
twirled
until the stars were golden halos over me
and the purple-blood sky was reeling
and the grass rushed up to meet my back
and i laid there, breathing, and i laughed.

I used to write to wend my way out of the darkness,
to talk myself out of the sadness,
to cure my broken heartedness,
but now I find that

Because you took my heart in your hands
and because you bared and repaired me
I have only joy.

I alone hold the joy of your freckled skin,
I alone know your virtues
and I alone hold your sins.
I alone know your tenderness, your truth,
and I alone have you, and

You, alone, carry my burdens and my vices,
hold my laughter and my care,
and you alone have brought me here.

can't you see it?
  my pretty smile, my petty laugh?
i will scorn you for scorning me  -
               your half-hearted aggression!
i will still see magic
i will still see love
you will see nothing of that
   nothing of me.
my secrets
             so beautiful
                            and not for you.

I remember your tousle-haired bright-eyed breathlessness
in the night over the summer.
We were playing some stupid game with our little brothers
to make them happy, and because one of them didn't know how to shut up
You knew just how crazy I was about you.
That night over the summer,
you smiled at me, more shyly
and more accidentally
than a friend.

The last time I saw you
in the dying summer light,
of my house.
Our families watched us,
watched me,
and it ended up (probably,
not on accident), just us two alone
in my basement.
I don't even remember what we talked about
and I bet you don't either.
I remember when you were leaving, and that look in your eyes
("That boy," my dad told me after you had gone, "wanted to hug you.")
and that I was too afraid to even get up to say goodbye,
Because I knew if I got too close to you
I would probably explode
(you, my dear, will have
your work cut out for you).

The truth is, my pretty boy, I am pining.
I am going over all the blond, flirty girls you could be seeing
who aren't me.
I am thinking over that look in your eyes, and listening to our mothers
talk on the phone
about how shy you are, (but not with me)
and the truth is, my pretty-eyed golden-curled boy, I adore you
and I am thinking that the next time I see you
I'm probably just going
To kiss that half-scared look out of your eyes,
because, my pretty boy,
I am sixteen beautiful years old,
And in December you will be too,
And we sure aren't getting
any younger.

the dancer
she pads, across
black-painted stage
scattered with fallen glitter
like stars.

she raises her arms -
head turned
to one side, eyes
down, and
face
serene.

she leaps
and light curls from her toes
sparkling
swirls.

her body makes
fierce
hostile
whipping
and beautiful turns,
round and around
she circles
she
twirls
kicking up
dust and
stars
which drift around her
in the silence
of the awe
she strikes.

her feet make muffled
bare thumps
as she glides
and lands
no music, only
the quick swish of her
ruffled skirt
and the
gentle pads of her
light leaping

she is silent, she is
reposed.
her eyes never find
the audience that watches her
they are fixed on
the stage
her lips
they move
counting
whispering
beats,
barely.

she spins
and she leaps
she twirls
in the heavy velvet-silence
of the black theater
she twists and bends
and leaps and circles.
the silence
proves true
her incandescence,
the golden swirls
twist with her.

the dancer
she falls
still
toes point towards floor
arms hover
eyes search the blackness
which, as one,
explodes.

what poetry is:
a cacophony of tangled-up images
and slashed-to-the-bone words.
a waterfall of bitterness and
passion and
(words, just words).
a jumble of unorthodox punctuation,
and spacing,
and spelling,
a painting with verses of rainbow-colored years.
foggy-eyed venting,
bitter-mouthed shouting,
soft-hearted pleas
to the people
(hearts and love).
not-quite sentences,
half-finished ideas,
cliches and brutal originalities,
shocking in their genuine
and raw
and profoundly inspired power
(things we didn't know we were capable of).
cravings and achings and wantings and knowings and
(words, just words).
so won't you read between the lines?
it's all so much simpler



than it seems.

pining and finger-twisting;
watch me weak with wanting you.
your golden-haired laughter,
and your soft-crinkling eyes
  do they read the words behind me
    (three of them, overused but
   achingly true)?
haven't you heard?
well, i won't spoil it, but
they're spilling over, so i'd
brace yourself, if i were

you.

"You know, what the most annoying thing is?"
Stacking box, after box, after box
in her empty-floored home.
"What?"
"Knowing how," stack, "lost," stack, "I'll be."
She drops to a box, face in hands. "******* it."
What do you say
To the widow of an adulterer,
To the crier of sorrows
you've never known?
"I'm sorry."
"******* it, you're sorry. Everyone's sorry."
What do you say to all the bitterness
of a woman stacking, stacking, stacking
The boxes of her new life?
I sit on the divan by the window. "What do you want
me to say?" I ask.
Naive.
"****, I don't know." Sighing. "Say you know
He really loved me
And that even though I'm just your pain-in-the-***
broken-hearted
and stupid older sister,
who's made too many mistakes to count,
and who's never ever been there when you need her
because she's too busy with her
piece-of-****
******* accident
of a husband,
you really love me too."
Looking up at me
with tear-swimming
mascara-ringed green eyes
under a black fringe
of artistic bangs.
"Of course I really love you." The automaton of my voice.
"You're my only sister."
Tears falling onto
white velvet wrists.
"I really miss him.
That *******."

If only
he hadn't been
the adulterer

With me.

The cancer ate my sister's heart,
her liver, her bones,
and now I'm alone
with my sick-stomached guilt
and my never-told confession.
Remember, we were younger. Our neighbor's sister
came home with a ****** nose and you turned to me,
"What would you do if that was me?"
6 year old certainty, "I'd **** them,"
swelling with 6 year old bravado,
"I'd ****
anyone
who hurt you."
Our mother was appalled and our father told me not to say things I didn't mean, but
I meant it then.
And sweetheart, I mean it now.
I can't **** the cancer, because it's already killed you.
I can't **** the husband, because he's already dead
(left you widowed and heartbroken, my only sister,
and I am to blame).
And so I'm standing here, looking at the
jagged-box-shaped rocks so far far far below,
and I'm thinking
(stacking box, after box, after box
in her empty-floored apartment),
and I'm wishing
(to the crier of sorrows I've never known)
and I'm breathing
(if only he hadn't been the adulterer)
and I'm jumping
(with me).

something me-shaped with you-shaped and crab-legged and two-faced and kindly and fast-paced and sweetness and slow tastes perfection for you and for me and for worlds that could be in your smile.

his whole life, in those
big-brown eyes
(burning, why aren't you helping me?)
everything wrong with the world is in
the divets between his ribs
the sharp jab
of his collarbone
against his black-black skin
(****, my iphone's broken again).
this kid has got to be twelve
starving years old
(he doesn't look half that).
we first-world *******, looking at that photograph
(feel sorry for a moment).
his whole world pooled in
the furrow over his eyebrows
(not understanding
his misery).
a hand wrapped
all the way around his arm, pulling him
back towards
the hunger,
but he stares
he
watches
that camera lens,
waiting
for
his
call
his
cry
to
be
heard.

he said,
(this boy
who is not who i love
but could have been
in a life
where i didn't love
someone else already),

"i would kiss you now,
if i could."

i said,

"i know. i feel it."

i said,

"it's in the air."

i said,

"it feels thick, between us."

i said,

"the air

feels

tremulous."

"tremulous," he repeated. "that's good."

and so we sat
in the tremulous air,
me and this boy i could love,
but don't,
but don't,
but maybe.

we sat in the tremulous air
and we didn't act on it
and i'm glad,

but now

i can't

sleep.

it's why we write these poems, you know.
we are a delicate
    and intrinsic
        and easily broken bunch.
when our feelings creep out
    like sneaky, giggling children,
and then someone
  -some of them
               don't even mean to -
crushes them
and we call.
   "wait!"
      we call
    "i didn't even know
           they got out!"
but they did.
  some people
a tender friend
a boy as adorable,
                     breathless
                           clumsy
                              and careful
                          fumbling, but trying
                                                as can be
cradles them
   delicately, in their hands
and knows
         they must be tended
well -
   isn't that
          why we risk
the crushing?

for you, we bundle into the car,
the littlest
(half my brother and twice my nuisance)
and the middlest
(14 going on favorite)
the bitterest
(only girl and pen-in-hand)
and the biggestest
(20 years
of bombastic nonsense)

30 minutes and four cornfields later
he'll start.
"i have to ***."
"there's a bottle up there, dad."
"dad, i have to ***."
"dad."
"dad."
"dad."
and he's going to *** in that ******* bottle
which will inevitably stay in the car for the remaining 8 and a half hours,
sloshing and yellow
too dangerously close to the color of something
you would actually drink.

the two youngest
will get into some sort of argument
some sort of argument that i will intervene in.
"shut up!" he'll say.
"chill out!" i'll shout.
"you chill out!"
and my father and my stepmother
will eye from the front seat
until one of them turns around
("relax, madeline!" sharply).

and then the oldest
like clockwork
will act like he knows more than he does about something
(my father will just chuckle, but i'll begin, "bullsh-" i'll begin, but my stepmother will hiss,
"madeline!" as if i've killed somebody
even though the 8-year-old curses even worse than i do).
he'll make a face at me
and i'll make a face at him.
the littlest will
inevitably
stomp on my seatbelt about 30 times a second
which i will not be able to stand,
and we'll get into an argument which will turn into me
versus
the whole car
(afterwards, much stewing,
and resentfully cranking my ipod up as loud as it will go).

9 hours and 12 thousand cliff-faces later

we'll get there.
we'll make it.
we'll only be
a little worse for the wear.
we will be swept up by our twelve billion aunts
our nine billion uncles
and our three billion cousins,
like we always are.

someday something will be missing.

first it was your back,
and the postponement,
and eventual cancellation of our trip.
then it was your surgeries
(why weren't they working?)
and then it was a series of words i don't understand

stage

                                                               ­                                           inoperable
           ­                                 3                               ­             

                                                               ­          cancerous                                                      ma­ss
lung
                            malignant
                                                                ­                                              radiation
                                    
            therapy        ­                                                                 ­                                                 chemo

you may crumple in
on that blackness inside you,
that's eating you alive
one lung at a time,
pushing,
on your back,
until you can't even stand.
the fabric of our family
is plucked by this
disease.
this is my poem, my plea
for you
and for us,
that you not pull into the blackness,
and that you fight the tumors and the tests
and that you win.

i'm jonesing for a human being -
can you do that?
i am.
it hurts like a rose-smoke-burn in my throat
and a deep-throbbing ache in my chest -
      waiting for you
counting the days
until you're mine
to inhale
and exhale
and inhale
again.

i drink until my chest holds an alcohol-emptiness.
the pain is hollow,
the joy is hollow,
the pain is gone.

i smoke until the alcohol-emptiness is as full as it can be.
i fill it and i fill it and i fill it,
i feel it and i feel it and i feel it,
and it's the kind of feeling that doesn't make you feel at all.

the exhalation, it clears more than just smoke,
and it empties more than my lungs.

tell it to the lighthouse boy
the sleepy-eyed resounding boy,
tell it to the lighthouse boy,
who wakes his days away.

sing it to the lighthouse boy
the bright-mouthed smiling smart-*** boy,
sing it to the lighthouse boy,
solemn, sweet, and still.

cry it to the lighthouse boy,
the hold you close and call-out boy,
cry it to the lighthouse boy,
who thinks his thoughts alone.

fling it to the lighthouse boy,
the bending low and catch it boy,
fling it to the lighthouse boy,
to carry on his own.

and oh,
did you ever see eyes so sad?
blue-green as the foaming sea they watch,
stiller than still and deeper than you can imagine,
gazing to your depths and
speaking nothing of them.
so tell it to the lighthouse boy,
the sleepy-eyed resounding boy.

tell it to the lighthouse boy,
who casts it out to sea.

and the fire smells like acid
and the moonlight looks like rain
and the ground, my feet don't feel it,
and suddenly i am filled.
with fear and with longing i am filled,
the brooding fear and the desperate longing.
the brooding fear that he won't know -
he will be missed.
he has been loved.
and what if i, at the end of it all, am only lost?
and the moonlight looks like rain
and the ground, my feet don't feel it
and i'm fearing the absence
and i'm waiting on the pain,
and i'm fearing its absence
because my heart, it's going numb,
and i swear, i can feel it,
the turning-away of feeling,
the willful numbness,
the manifesting fears.

i've been in my bed, which will always be the bed,
                     as in, the bed,
      where we spent the last of our virginities
in the push of hips and hands and two-note gasps,
and i've been thinking.

i've been thinking of
     all the firsts i gave you and
         all the things you meant to me
and how
  you will always be the boy who
     sat on a table and sang me my favorite song in front of everyone and
          didn't give a **** that his guitar was out of tune.
now that
is a ******* gesture.

i've been thinking that i need to learn to look you in the eye again.

i've been thinking of how
   all i've done for the past three weeks is walk away from you.
       and how just because you walked away from me first
                                        in the biggest way possible,
                                                     that isn't fair.
you deserve more than that
    for how hard you've tried.
i've been thinking that i haven't let myself see that very well.

i've been thinking of how
  right now
    i'm beginning to feel like i could talk to you, and make myself stay,
          and look you in the eye, and not hurt,
or like i could never talk to you again, and still be okay.
i've been thinking that that's a start
                 to something friendship-shaped and okay.

i've been thinking that maybe i'll take a break from you for awhile,
      maybe patch up the sore places in my heart, talk to some new people.
   learn some things, you know?

i've been thinking that maybe i'll talk to you tonight,
      and for the first time i won't be bitter. there will not be underlying pain in my words.
there will be no accusations. no corners to back you into. no hidden hatred. no left-over love.
     there will be just you. and just me. and we'll be fine, one of these days. i'll be fine.

i've been thinking that that can start
    as soon as i let it.

girls like me, we can't make ourselves stay.
i wish i could, i do.
i can't shake the itchy-skin feeling of being here
and i can't help but want to get away.

we have fickle and jealous hearts, girls like me.
we can't trust ourselves to be loved
because we love so changeably.
we're difficult, girls like me.
difficult to love, difficult to fall out of love with.

we're born with anger.
we have all the ghosts and the wisdom our hearts can hold.
i am difficult to please and it's no one's fault but my own
and i get tired of people and i get tired of places
and no matter where i am i always want to leave.

i don't choose to be as restless and as jealous and as jittery as i am,
and i don't choose to feel so old some of the time
and i don't choose to be so guarded, so hypocritical, so abrasive.

girls like me, we are beautiful and strong and ages old -
it has been since the beginning and it will be till the end,
spirits like ours.
we are breakable and irrepressible
afraid and invincible
and we are made to survive things and to know things
and we are made for the wildest of laughter
and we are made for the too-big types of sadness
and we are something to see.

so they'll stand where they stand,
   the whipping man,
      the bleeding faced and skin-tossed man,
and they'll hold you in their crippled hands and they'll tell you,
                            "life's for this."

and you'll hear them in the whipping sand,
   the storm-tossed seas and reaching hands,
                  and know it from the whipping man, and you'll say,
                           "it's all there is."

and you'll dance it and you'll sing it and you'll cast it out to sea
       you'll shoot it through your ****** veins and never think of me

and you'll forget the things i told you
     and the things you've always known.

                                you'll give to the winds until i come
                                             to lead you home.

no one told them it was the place
that we watched the water go by -
sat, for hours,
and watched the water go by.

nobody said it was the spot where i started to move on from the boy i loved
and where you stopped caring what your father thinks.

it's the spot where we sat in the roots of trees
and smoothed sand off of purple river stones.
it's the spot where the old lumber mill had been decaying,
and where the kids would go when they were too old for the playground.
it was where the stray dogs poked around in the rubble and the lumber scraps
and where the stray cats fought and made love.

no one told them it was where we sat
and planned out our lives together -
a pair of girls with too-long legs and our hair askew
whose clothes were covered in paint
and whose hands where used to climbing the tree behind the bakery.
no one told them it was our spot,
our best-friend soul-speaking spot.
nobody said that it was spots like these
that hold the heart of our little town,
our artistic-afterthought town
with its peeling-paint coffee shops and friendly passersby.

they built concrete trees over our spot on the river,
an ugly corporate jungle.
they put grey bricks in the sand and shoveled away the purple river stones
and dug up the roots of our trees,
and now we'll have nowhere to watch the water tumble by.

no one told them it was the spot, our spot,
and no one will remember it but us.

and on the cusp of it something happened
(a two-people-one-bed sort of something,
  so happy ******* new year, everybody)

things i love
   (such as)
books and rain, knowing snow
will come again
have nothing to do
             (i'm afraid)
with you.

count the paint stains on my finger-breadth
one for every year of my life, or
       one for every color of my heart?
  paint my words into tapestries of canvas-strewn
truth.
                
things i love
     (such as)
leaves in autumn, breezes in spring
  walking my dog in the midewestern rain
have nothing to do
   (think what you will)
with you.

things i love
     (such as)
a golden haired boy
   particular small niceties from strangers
thinking
writing poems in margins
      dancing by myself
holding the world in my always-steady hands
have nothing to do
     (cry me a river)
with you.









so there.

i'm sorry that things were easy
until i made them hard.

  i'm sorry i stayed mad so long when we would fight.
i'm sorry that i got jealous of your friends
    and that i didn't say "i love you" back sometimes.
i'm sorry i was so shy around strangers and you weren't.
i'm sorry i didn't try harder to make you happy.
i'm sorry i have trouble looking at you.
i'm sorry i can't talk to you.
i'm sorry that i'm starting to cut you off.

   i'm sorry we never got to make love the way i wanted to -
    properly, you know? with a bed and candles and all the time in the world.

i know you wanted that.

     i'm sorry we'll never spend the night somewhere together.
         i'm sorry we'll never be able to wear shorts in the nighttime and be somewhere outside and look up at the stars and feel the warmth of the air.
                i'm sorry we loved each other in the winter time, because it's ugly, and even at our most beautiful it was hard.

  i'm sorry you felt like you had to make things up to my parents.
    i'm sorry you never did.

i'm sorry i sometimes wouldn't tell you what was wrong.
i'm sorry i would cry when i got drunk
   and that i couldn't be alone at parties
and that i lost your jacket that one time.

          i'm sorry you fell out of love with me.
       i'm sorry for your left-over feelings that you don't know what to do with.
               i'm sorry for our rough patches and our arguments. i'm sorry if i could have done more.

i'm sorry if you feel guilty. i'm sorry if it's my fault. i'm sorry if i pushed you away.

i'm sorry if it seems like i hate you. i'm trying to let you in.
it *****, and it's hard.

i'm sorry it's taking so long.

if it were up to me?
   ****. it'd be cigarettes and tea
     and my giant cat by a giant window, and sparse furniture, and wooden floors.
it'd be a certain someone and poems scattered around every paint-splattered surface,
and writing on the walls in sharpie,
and tights and socks and sweaters and walks in the park.
          it'd be mid-morning sunlight and sleeping till noon and no walls separating the rooms.
         it'd be london or new york or maine or ******* canada or something -
something far away and obscure and artistic
where it rains a lot
so that i can dance.

the emptiness in my belly
is brought on by the knowledge
that you have your funny-tragic
thinking-feeling
trying-failing life
without me in it.
and the fullness in my heart
is brought on by the thought
of your voice and your face,
your shining-eyed and dimple-pocked mischief,
and by the hope
that someday
i'll have you.
the tears in my throat
are brought on by the fear
and by the realization
that i am not
the only person
you could love;
by the revelation, of our sameness
and of our happy differences.

and the words at my lips
are brought on by the thoughts in my head
which are brought on by the beating of my heart -
*i love you, i love you, i love you.

watch me -
i'll braid my pixie-short hair,
wear stars in my eyes and
dance like everyone's watching:
can't be done? i'll do it.
never been done? it has.
watch me -
i'll laugh at all the wrong things,
trip both ways on the stairs and
get up beaming:
i'll snag my hair into pretzel-braided crown around my merry face and i'll
spark my eyes at you when you look at me doubtfully.
watch me -
i'll rock what i rock
talk what i talk and walk how i walk:
swirl black into wings over my dark lashes and
my eyes will laugh underneath,
smile my wolfish smile with my one wonky back tooth,
and i'll blow you away.
watch me -
i have no idea what i'm doing,
and it's a hell of a thing
to see.

Boy,

Those girls who are breaking your heart,
oh, my darling - you don't know about them yet.
What a cruel
and vindictive bunch,
who will eat your kind heart out
and who will snap your fragile bones.

That family that stings your pride,
oh, my dear - they don't know about you yet.
Your pain, my love, hurts me in deep-down ways:
Your pain in your imperfection,
your insufficiencies,
your too-hard caring -
You are enough for me.
You are perfect to me,
and oh, my dear, I love you.
Your pain, my love, is the same as mine:
Your all-you-have is their not-good-enough,
but you are good enough for me,
and I am good enough for you.

We are two kind people in an unkind world,
two almost-there-trying in a too-fast whirl,
and I'll hold you up if you'll hold me.
Boy, you know you've got it,
and boy, I know I'll have it,
the sparkle in your eyes that means
(you'll be okay).

We could be okay together, you and I.

Boy, I think you're perfect
and I think the world revolves around you.
I think the sun shines out of your smile
and the stars live in your eyes,
I think the moon is in the soles of your Nike's.
Boy, I think you're something,
and boy, I think it's one thing,
that I simply can't afford to ignore.

-Girl