I may hide my face when I cry but please
do not ever understand that as an act of contrition.
when you weep, your hurt is something sacred.
do not ever be ashamed.
I will sing you to sleep with that song that says
when you weep the world cries with you, that the ocean is a sea of tears
shed for the pleasure of sharing your pain.

I have been springing leaks from other people
for as long as I have had fingers to plug the cracks,
spent many hours wrestling with the rusted faucet of my feelings.
I have never learned how to turn it off.
I know your sadness seems like a suit
custom-made to fit but I also know you as
a girl who is capable of growing. spread your shoulders. tear the seams.
there is a certain satisfaction that comes from the destruction
of everything you were supposed to love but never did.

I should know.
I spent last night with only the seam ripper to talk to,
shedding the last of my dovetail layers.
we both know sharp objects keep their secrets well but if you listened closely
you might hear it whisper about how it pricked my finger
and found poetry in my veins.
You will find that people write things that make you want to believe them
and that sometimes belief will hurt too,
but I promise you the things you place in the palms of hope
will be given back in the shape of other people’s hands.

And I know there are days when your sugar plum feet
are raw and melting from the puddles
but just remember that sometimes words are made of letters
that we can slide into each other from
and a crack between two people is just
a new seam waiting to be sewn.

the wooden sticks are in the fire
and never have I ever
seen your face in the flames.
the hair on your knuckles singing,
the hair on my head smelling like smoke,
I will still be breathing charcoal as I fall asleep.

I will still be tasting melted sugar on my chapped lips,
salt in the hollow at the base of my throat.
incandescence behind my closed eyes.

we flicker and we fall.

play that song. the one with the
sweeping rhythm, the one you could
lose a person in.

lose a person in it.

close your eyes.
swing a little. dance that dance that looks
like spontaneity, like you’re keeping me guessing,
like you’re waiting to take flight.

don’t go.

I put the pen to the paper and
I try to make the meaning,
you dance
near the fire and you try not to get burned.

I walk back home and close the door
and you sing me to sleep
silently
from across the street.

sing a little sweeter. I’m still here.

thank you for that bonfire smile.
thank you for the warmth.
we have seen this movie many times
but I must confess that I still gasp.
I still weep.
I still beg you not to leave me right before

you leave me.

I have written this poem many times
waiting for a different ending
but never have I ever been this close
to the flames.

set me alight.

you are a scar that only I can see
in the mirror.
I have already thrown too many pieces of paper
into the flames trying to write you as
a beauty mark or a burn.

come here.

touch me.

it has been many years since I have dreamed
of breathing fire.

Tell me about the day our hip bones
said hello.

Your eyebrows curved
like cupped hands,
how that was more than I’d expected,
how the hope bleeding through your fingers
stained my temples when you touched them.

You believe and it makes me want
to build you a skylight,
sunk in the rafters like a baby tooth
peering shyly from dark gums,

my heart is a broken down *****
but you play it just right.

You’ve got the body of a musician and
there’s something beautiful about your
skeleton being on display,
your shoulders are blades
and they cut right through me.  

I was a safety deposit box,
holding things that were not mine.
I was springtime in New England,
all baited anticipation and lasting chill.

You are an Arizona rainstorm.
You are moisture in the desert, thunder in the silence,
utterly unprecedented warmth.

I have been many things, but never once
enough.

You haven’t touched me
in ninety-one days. I don’t
know how to tell you.

I haven’t seen your
face in twenty-six days but
it does not miss me.

I’m not allowed to
say I need you so I’ll say
this instead. I care.

I do think I love
you. I don’t think it’s enough.
But I still read the

notes you wrote me. I
still trace your signature with
my eyes. You should know

the spider of your
handwriting still crawls into
my heart late at night.

I haven’t called you
crying in four hundred and
fifty-seven days.

I had not written
you a poem like this for four
hundred fifty-eight.

you are sitting next to the boy who drove you
to the fast food restaurant, who drove you to
prom, who drives you crazy,
the one tapping his fingers
down the swell of your forearm,
the one you love in pictures, in postcards,
in senior photographs with his tie askew.

you love him the only way you know how,
call him crying and ask for help
but desperation is not reciprocal,
and needing someone will not
make them need you.
it has taken you much of a lifetime to
learn this.

in the passenger seat,
in the plastic bucket chair,
in the doorway as you convince them to stay open.
you are sending dark globes flying down a polished lane,
all flashing lights and glossy surfaces,
stale breath and obscenities.
you bowl a gutter ball.
you bowl a strike.
this will be the night you realize
he fits you no better than the lurid shoes
cramping your toes.

at his house, at his kitchen table,
in the chair he eats breakfast in every morning,
you are staring down the fist-shaped
hole in his wall, jagged edges
and dark spaces,
it keeps showing up in your poems.

on the artificial green of the mini golf place
down the street,
on the metal bench with the arms
too cold to hold you,
on the luminescent dance floor as he says your name,
watching him heal from heart surgery
wondering what you’d have to do
to make him love you as much
as his body loves catastrophe.

in the backseat with the broken subwoofer.

under the fluorescent lights, your hands unintelligible,

you are crying but you don’t know it yet.

here I am leaving you warnings, here I am
singing you to sleep,
here I am bookmarking your memories
with the words you should have heard.

when he speaks, listen to his words but do not
picture him speaking, do not crinkle with the creases
beside his eyes. do not fall.

he will not catch you.
he will not care.

do not call him next week, on your birthday.
do not tell him about how your father made you cry
or how you feel alone at night.

he will not love you for it.

here you are reading the pages you’ve written about him. don’t cry.
wrap the ribbon from the bouquet he gave you
around the handle of your dresser.
do not think he’ll give you anything else.

on the sand glazed with seawater,
on the overstuffed couch with the cool kiss of a cell phone
against your ear,
in the arching concert hall with the chapped wooden seats,
you are saying his name.
he is there and there and there, laced through your life
like a child’s frayed ribbon, unraveled and imperfect and beloved.

he is beautiful and he is broken
and you love him for the scars he leaves
but you can’t will people back together.
you cannot fix this.

he is telling you he’s leaving and he means it.

he is not yours to miss.