“Take my hand.”

Take my lips, my clothes, my body; take all the confidence we got off on
dancing across the kerosene-doused floor in the heat of each other’s skin,
slowly learning what it truly meant to love and to have someone to love,
as the flames of romance consumed us faster than we could consume each other.

Take this unusually large water bottle and this board game you’ve always wanted
as if our brutal game of trial and error wasn’t painful enough,
immaturity dripping from eager eyes, and expiration dates on gift receipts,
when I should have been giving you all the things fire cannot burn.

So here, allow me try again:

Take my words.

Take every grain of honesty I’m on my knees picking up one by one
after carelessly falling from the train of thought making its way to you,
spending all those years helplessly lost in translation under rusty railways
because our tongues were only fluent in the language of each other’s touch.

Take the vulnerability my mother always warned me not to wear on my sleeves,
as I sloppily weave out raw poetry at the ends of my skirt while she’s not looking,
loosely tucking fervent yearnings between cotton pleats for you to thumb through,
and hoping that my verses are worth more stares than the thighs they cover.

Take my growth.

Take all the pieces of my heart that fell the day I cracked it open in front of you,
foolishly thinking it was fortune cookie I could somehow draw a lesson from,
and that the acidity of acceptance was a taste I had to acquire until I no longer gag
at every I should’ve and I could’ve that comes with saying your name out loud.

Take every crease and every tear searing across my fragile, unripe skin
from having the cost of loving forcefully rip apart my soul from this child’s body,
as I sift through what little is left and cut all my fingers trying to piece together
the woman you need me to be, and the woman I need myself to be.

Take my hope.

Take every star left illuminating across the cold and empty galaxies of my eyes,
where the only constellations I can seem to trace are those that point to you,
spilling incandescence over all the spaces that stretched too far between us,
and finally shedding light into the hungry mouths of apologies and hello agains.

Take every tomorrow and every someday I tuck under my pillow at night
with an optimism kept burning by nothing more than just the warmth of your smile,
as loving you from afar teaches me what it truly means to have a religion:
faithfully holding on to a promise I never heard, a hand I can no longer hold.

Take my time.

Take the patience bleeding out of me like sand from a broken hourglass,
as I slowly begin to unravel my mistakes from the unforgiving hands of a clock,
knowing well that the yesterdays of the last three years are not enough for me,
so I save all my everydays and my evermores in a box with your name on it.

Take my heart and every fraction of a second it takes for it to beat,
as it longs for the warmth of the home it once found on the palm of your hand,
withstanding all the flames that engulfed the paradise precariously built around it,
and out of the ashes, still rising to beat for you: but still, but still, but still.

I am slowly learning to use my words—

allowing the ink to besmirch these immaculate fingers
as I weave out my sloppy cursives around feint rules
like hydrangeas climbing lattices in the early summer;

spelling out vulnerability with every bit of hope
left glistening in these swollen, tear-stained eyes,
and unfaltering love with all five letters of his name.

I am slowly learning to use my voice—

heaving out the dust that’s settled over things left unsaid,
and rolling out my tongue to intimately slip off naked truths
my throat has been choking on in the silence of fear;

drawing constellations between the kisses of my lips
to faithfully concede to the phonetics of needs and wants,
and articulate every syllable with the intonation of desire.

So read between the lines, and listen closely—

pick apart my words and unravel the candor in my stutter,
unzip and unbutton every unsent letter I’ve ever written,
and watch me strip down on these pages in poetry-laced lingerie.

I am no longer that bashful submissive sprawled across the bed,
softly moaning for the pleasure of attention and the pain of neglect
under the crippling fear of loss firmly taped over my mouth.

I am slowly learning to ask for what I still and have always wanted—
I'm sorry it took me so long.

i.

If I could, I would tie promises around
each and every one of your fingertips, so that
the next time you scale the side of a mountain,
and begin to feel your grip slowly melting away
from between the cracks of the earth, as gravity
nudges you to take the long way down,

you would remember that there are hands
waiting to catch you if you do take that fall,
and realize that the strongest ropes are those
with kerns wreathed in the heartstrings of first love,
and a mantle webbed in the colors of daybreak
and the hopes carried by new tomorrows.

ii.

If I could, I would write love letters
across your arms, so that the next time
you feel as if the world is taking so much
more than you could give, and your hands
have nothing left to hold but pieces crumbled
under the weight of pain and frustration,

you would see the words carefully pulled out
one by one from the splintered chest of a girl
who once held you in her arms, and remember
that someone’s heart still beats to the syllables
of your name, and that the ink never dries out
as long as the writer never stops writing.

iii.

If I could, I would tuck metaphors
behind your ears, so that the next time
you try to swallow your sorrows, and end up
locking yourself away in a lonely silence
trapped with the words you want to say
and deprived of those you need to hear,

you would slowly make out the tides of life
crashing against the shore in cadence with
the ebb and flow of ‘I’m okay’ and ‘I’m not’,
and allow your burning reality to be painted over by
the full spectrum of love and loss, give and take —
finding beauty even in the fault in our stars.

iv.

If I could, I would wrap your heart in a blanket
woven with raw poetry and tender lullabies,
so that the next time you come home late
from a long day at work, and collapse on a mattress
as cold as the words ‘good’ and ‘night’ gone stale
after being left to dry on the empty side of the bed,

you would drift into a dream sweeter
than laughter and stardust drizzled all over
our fondest memories, and wake up to the sunlight
spilling meaning back into ‘good’ and ‘morning’,
as you start the day taking in all the warmth
of being loved and of always being loved.

You are so much more
than a drunk writer's anthology
of rough verses and mismatched rhymes
of broken sonnets and unsent letters

You are so much more
than the woes of a hopeless romantic
strewn across papers against Juliet's walls
and heavy locks weighing over the Seine

You are so much more
than the regrets pushed back and forth
between the empty gazes of our swollen eyes
as you pull back tears in time for dinner

You are so much more
than the seams unraveling from that sweater
you wear to hide the scars covering your empty arms
and to somehow feel the warmth of being held again

Darling, you are so much more
than you could ever see right now

You are a ballad
boldly written with songs played by angels
and the graceful sorrows of unsung heroes
quietly tugging heartstrings at the break of dawn

You are the moss
tracing cracks along forgotten walls
and worn-out sidewalks reminding us how to bloom
in places we never thought we could

You are the light
spilling through half smiles and broken laughs
stippling agonizing voids with luminous diamonds
that draw constellations of faith and hope

You are the shooting star
stumbling across this dark and infinite sky
as I close my eyes and desperately wish
that you finally see yourself the way I do

there are days when I feel
as if I am a lonely interlude

squeezed between
the verses of your life

a mere intermission
lacking depth and tone

drawing out perfection
into a careless medley

i struggle to be heard
over the nymphs and sirens

who gloriously sing
the sweet melody of your name

but the harder I try
the deeper my voice cracks

twisting lyrics into
desperate cries for attention