Some days it all
seems easier to
just walk away
because pride is
a hard pill
to swallow and
love is only
a game for two
because one
person has
to have someone
to beat before
they can win.
The thing is,
the heart
only knows
how to beat.

And it does so everyday,
not just some days.

I tell them about the way you laugh
when you're being tickled–with you chin
tucked in and to the left.
They have no idea that my tricuspid
stalled out the second your fingers danced
up my right leg by the water.
You renamed my aorta home
when you whispered your secrets
into my ear and the damnedest thing happened:

you spoke as if you weren't a
miracle in disguise.

It seems like the entire world knows
how to dance except for me.

There must be a metronome
that ticks the tempo
right out of the torso
of Mother Nature herself
but I cannot seem to tune in.
Everywhere around me
I can see a rhythm that refuses
to run through me like it somehow knows
that I am always going to be that one kid
left standing with my back against
the gym wall and the beat is just another club
that cannot afford to let any losers in.

I see the leaves—crisp hues of
yellow-bleeding-into-orange,
orange-bleeding-into-brown—
being directed by the air that they cut
as they learn to dance the American Waltz
left box, right box,
underarm turn,
hesitation step
spinning to the ground
and swell approaches the shore
carrying forward a small roar,
energy circling from deep to shallow,
waves shoaling, rising up,
moving along to the Foxtrot
feather step, three step,
natural turn,
hover cross
uncurling onto the shore.

But still, after all of these years,
I am here with shoulder blades pressed to cinderblocks
trying to tap into the meter while I tap my toe
inside of my shoe so the mountains will not shed rocks
like tears that come along with steady laughter.

The stars, the ones
hanging in the night
behind your irises,
they dance for you
every time that
you smile
and they teach me
over and over again
that I shouldn't
be scared of
the dark.

Romantically speaking,
I am not very romantic at all.

My spine curves and
sprouts forth a
humerus that holds
to a radius and an ulna
with metacarpal bones
dangling
downward
reaching for something to
anchor themselves to.

I am not very romantic at all,
it's just that my bones have flourished
curling around you.

If I lay back on the sand today, I know I will just disintegrate–

        degenerate, deteriorate.
        The wind, coming in strong
        from the south sweeps
        grains of me and grains
        of sand through the air
        and, somewhere along the way,
        we pick up grains of salt
        spraying off of breaking waves
        collapsing toward more grains
        that get churned up in the surf.
        Everything gets mixed together.
        The spin of the Earth mixes molecules
        and we are all really just atoms any ways.

        But some of us, well,
        some of us are just atoms trying
        to find our way
        to you.

tips of my toes
pressed own
to the chill of
ceramic, i sit,
        shoulders barely
        peaking out
        from the thin film
        of what hours ago
        were bubbles,
scared to drain
the tub because
right now,
i feel so ******* small–

small enough to
circle the drain
and slip right through
the holes
in the grate