Home is here,

within the safety of arms that hold me tightly so that emptiness can no longer climb into my bones. You are the roof when it storms in my mind and the buckets overflowing with tears that seep through the cracks in the ceiling on the nights my skin forgets how to shelter. Your words exist in the whistling kettle on the stove steaming with gentle whispers that remind me that I must pour my doubt into a porcelain cup and swallow.

Sometimes the taste is worth the burnt tongue.

I adore you in the way you never think twice about parting your curtains to let the shy sunlight kiss my cheek on the mornings I worry that I'll only ever know the feeling of lonely shadows creeping down dusty mantles and floral wallpaper, tiptoeing down the ridges of my spine like something that has never dreamed of being loved.

Because now, there is no need to keep the television buzzing in the background to drown out the voices from under the sofa shouting for me to store my beating heart in the attic. Instead, the room is silent except for the melody of laughter echoing down the walls and in the pictures of us hanging upon them. There is only music left playing as your footsteps flutter down the stairs in a hurry to dance barefoot with me in the kitchen. The only voice left to hear is yours, lulling me to sleep better than counting reasons to stay alive ever could. Tomorrow, there will be no more numbers left to reach.

what is left with the poet
after her words have been silenced?

nothing but the static hum of passing time
crawling past every wilted heartache,
every kiss left out in the summer rain
to rot inside stained pages that have forgotten
the blistering sensation of abandonment

no matter how hard she craves
for them to return home,
the door remains propped open
with a crumpled love letter
stained with sweat and addressed simply
to a name she has not heard
since the last time
she listened.

Her--
whose translucent face I first met
within the irises of your attention,
vibrant in the fading photographs
where your figures once melted together
like wax dripping from a summer candelabra.

She—
is still found in every obliterated promise,
a lingering aftertaste of faint perfume
I can still smell on your skin
when I am wrapped in it, comfortably,
secured in your amber chrysalis of worry.

I watch your eyes scan rooms for her walk,
for the soft motion of her dress swaying
those pale legs reflecting shy moonlight,
the flicker of yesterday’s flame.

I hear the syllables of her name fill the air
like a word you have grown fearful of mispronouncing,
a favorite song stuck in your brain
distantly hummed under warm breath
when you run out of reasons
to remind me that she and I
do not share the same blood
nor the same bones.

For I am made of her ashes, her expiration,
carried by the winds of your embrace
whisking me away to distant kingdoms
where the language spoken is one
that only remembers her voice
and how effortlessly it interrupts mine
before I can even part my lips
to speak.

There exists an abundance of neglected apologies stuck lodged at the back of my throat that remind me of how much I have forgotten the sensation of breathing deeply since you have. Words, how flimsy and inadequate, form into lethargic shapes that sit helplessly in the stomach and desire only to matter to you. I have painted for you a golden sky that stretches beyond horizons that can no longer be noticed by the naked eye and I guess we have both grown tired of prowling the heavens for potential endings.

I have seen dandelions sprout freely within the dimple on your cheek and I wonder how you can go on so casually convincing yourself that you are not made of sunshine. I have felt lightning channel through your fingertips far too many times to believe it is just an illusion you have designed to make the dark clouds feel a little less intimidating.

There is a certain danger embedded within the comforting blanket of safety. I want to tell you I am sorry that the metaphors and lines of poetry I have crafted will never begin to describe even the smallest fraction of your limitless importance. I am sorry that my words cannot make you see the icicles that form in my bloodstream when your tears whisper that you are exhausted of being alive. I want to shout I love you, I love you, I love you, why can't YOU love you? until I run out of air in my lungs, the chords of my voice continuing to strum the same promise inside and out until it forgets the tune. But doing so is impossible, because your soul is an old song that cannot be removed from the brain once it is stuck and I am so sorry, my love, that yours has lost the memory of innocence.

I am a broken vinyl record spinning the same expired words over and over again, hoping your tomorrow will be void of pain so that there will be enough leftover space for you to listen.

I often daydream of the places my feet will graze, eyes still bright and hopes lifted boldly above my head in a handful of future years when I will finally understand who I am. Oftentimes, I envision myself gazing through the frigid glass of my apartment window overlooking an entire city of hungry souls. Paired with a glass of pink champagne, I will study the intricate patterns in the way they carry themselves from one place to another, an entire kingdom of strangers dressed in pale blues and yellows and tans.

Who are they? What are they searching for?

I stand—a figure in a sheer black dress miles above, pondering upon the sea of incomprehensible gray swarming a thousand forevers below my feet. There exists a starving fear, one that reminds me that if my heels happen to break through the balcony, I will become one of them.
I dream of you returning home to me after an abstract day of trial and error. Even after the musky dust of today’s freedom collects upon your shoulders, you still smell the same familiar way you did when you were seventeen and unsure, wondering if I will be around to love you next year or tomorrow or only this afternoon.

Below us, they continue to travel, approaching midnight with a cautious volume that grows more and more lost as the hours waltz by. Some are hunting for a friendship that slipped like soap bubbles through the valleys between their fingers. The youthful delicacy of unrequited love. Some search for the art of escaping from a life that shattered their bones numb. Others, for salvation. A reason to permit their hearts to keep beating.

We are no longer wandering; instead, fingers intertwined at the success of a future that would not have obeyed the stars if we had not been like them before, pursuing dreams like pixie dust before they had the chance to grow up and become a little too impossible.

You kiss my forehead goodnight, drawing curtains and racing hearts. For once, I sleep. There is nothing left to search for.

I am longing to get lost somewhere far, far away. Away from the routine hum of constantly pushing the snooze button. Away from the stress of misunderstanding and complication, the hunger of chaos and disorganization. I desire to grasp the entire world with my own eyes rather than with a microscope that can only be focused on untouched possibility. I want to view life in vibrant colors I've only ever been able to understand in my mind and to speak of my adventures in words that have never been written down. I want to drive down avenues that no longer exist and balance at the very top of a mountain that has forgotten the feel of footsteps. I am thirsty for the impossible. I am exhausted of falling asleep to the sound of my own heartbeat banging against my bedroom walls and breathing in air that has already been exhaled in past lives. I will never settle for contentment. I will never settle.

I am having trouble writing.
It is as if there is a wall of bulletproof glass separating me from the words that are dying to escape the metal cage they are kept in. I am the only one with a key sitting comfortably in the pockets of my jeans, but no matter how hard I pound my fists against the wall, I do not get any closer to quieting the agonizing screams emerging from the trap. They get louder, aching for liberation, tethering their syllables around the bars as they sit, confined within a reality I am desperate to free them from.

They are starving to live. I can see the outlines of their bones through the transparent letters that blanket their elastic limbs, each day growing more tired, forgetting the taste of hope every minute that passes. I can feel them collecting dust, shrinking down to fragile skeletons that have begun to lose meaning. What if one day I will no longer be able to see them? What if one day I have nothing left to save?

I am starving to live. I cannot feel love without a knife stuck wedged in the back of my throat reminding me that I have nothing to describe it with. I can give all of myself to the one who thankfully accepts it but my teeth chatter at the thought of having to apologize for stealing joy from the cookie jar. I am sorry for having no words to say sorry. They told me to tell you that they are sorry for their absence, but I do not know how to say this without them.

For now, I am waiting. The same way I do for Fridays, for your call, for my heartbeat to obey the speed limit, for time to run dry.

I will continue to wait
patiently, tiredly, averting my eyes to the hopes that maybe tomorrow, they will be small enough to squeeze through the bars and set me free.