I will leave us a mistake unmade.

You were my first taste of dawns met with playful banter,
and I was your first shot at being left in the cold.
I broke your heart for all the wrong reasons, darling,
and I can never tell you the truth of why I put the light in your eyes
and left you gutted, raw.
You will always be an asymptote I will slip dangerously close to,
but the heartstrings binding us weave no tapestry of a future in romance.

I cannot love you.

I am a creature of violence.

My fists are tired of fighting the deluge of rationalities and
my eyes have stared daggers too sharp for me to feel the scars.
But the blood flows ever on, and it rages and it burns and it screams.
I cannot let my anger paint my life in red and in wrath,
and I cannot let my wrongs be the reason I feel I am right.
So I promise, I will not let the fire burn through me anymore.

I had to lay down my arms one day.

There is no blood between us.

We were not fire and we were not fireworks.
We were not whirlwinds or hurricanes,
we were not storms or lightning or free falling through thunder.
You were a lesson I needed to learn, and I was a dream you needed to leave behind.
Well, I have lived our lies long enough and you have learned to swallow my stark realities
and neither of us really wanted to hold on to prayers of pretend.

And this means goodbye.

I never stood tall at five foot two
but I was proud and I was pretty enough
that I didn't think I'd have to try.

One day I fell
bruised and bleeding words
metaphors and metonymys and
"i love you too"s.

I was never one for running, but I
I could glide on the back of starbursts
and I sailed on the north winds
like they were all I had for a home.

I was never one for running, but I
I realized how much I needed to move
how freedom meant I had to leave
the footprints I'd embedded beside my sandcastles
meant I had to run into the water
and swim through storms.

My legs were broken one day
and my wings were ripped apart;
I could no longer hold sunsets in my eyes -
they leaked far too often and too much.

I decided you deserved somebody
who could dance
like mermaids in the old world
so I stood and I smiled and I
I let the skies be my music -
but I'm still healing,
so forgive me my baby steps -
I am walking to you.

I'd always wanted to go to Paris.
Pah-ree, some people say.

You smelled like dust and honey,
like you'd been shot down and shelved
one winter afternoon and forgotten,
but we all knew you'd stay
golden, waiting
and waiting for the next summer
to come along

- and you said you'd never
leave me up there
like a book unloved.

You sounded like a sleepy cello,
like the sky when it's tired from
painting, painting
fire and gold behind clouds and
tall iron towers, and I
could hear jazz music and
bluejays twittering
to the thump bump of our
unsynchronized pulses

- you laughed when I laughed
and asked what time
I wanted to fall in love with you.

You were the promise of
talking quietly in little back-alley cafes
on the wrong side of the river,
wearing black berets like we knew
what we were doing, you sipping ***** and me
drinking hot chocolate
because I thought coffee meant
I'd meet the dawn without dreaming

- but you told me my eyes
were bright enough to dream
while open. *

Some people say they
believe in love at first sight and I,
well, I,
I suppose I fell in love
when I saw Paris in your smile.

I don't think I'll ever tire
of writing out my heartbeats
in letters and poems to you.

but sometimes the days demand of us
that we must pack up our things
and surrender to sleep.

and so I leave you with this -
a quiet reminder
that you cannot always see the stars,
but they are your soul.

so close your eyes,
breathe, listen
to the supernova
thumping in your chest.

dream.

sometimes it feels as if
I have too many milk teeth,
too many parts of me that belong
to a time when I climbed trees to touch the sky
and I swam in sunflowers
and fireflies -
to a time I have long since
painted in sepia tones,
long since pushed
to the back of my mind
with hands so tired
of being filled with splinters
- too many seeds
and not enough light.

there are too many parts of me
that I have placed underneath pillows,
that I have kept behind closed lashes,
that I have slept upon, waiting
for the morning to arrive and them
to be g o n e ,
replaced with coins that I could place
underneath the tongues of the dreams
that I could not ferry to my
frail realities.
but in the morning, they return -
one by one into my mouth,
daring me to speak them,
daring me to sing,
daring me to find someone who will listen.
         listen.

it feels as if
I have too many stories,
too many secrets,
too many sins and not enough space
for the words to fly out of my mouth
and into the world -
I have too many milk teeth
that I cannot remove.

and sometimes I think maybe that's why
I don't understand
    permanence.
I don't understand
    change.
I don't understand
    growing up,
    growing out,
    growing apart -
I don't know what it means
to stare at the sun
while your feet are moving forward,
only forward, never back.
because I have spent all my life
climbing on the shoulders
of mountaintops and moonstones,
and standing tall
was never an option.

sometimes climbing is tough
when my mouth gets too heavy
with overgrown memories
and I can almost feel myself cry out
"save me," can hear myself whisper
    "listen."
but pride and false bravery sew me shut
and I'm left to watch my bones
taken over by page-pressed petals
and old phosphorescence -
and it's in moments like these
that I stop climbing and think
maybe it's time for me to grow now,
on my own:
hands and legs
and lungs and heart,
spine and ribs and
collarbones, cranium,
and with baby teeth bared I am
blooming fire and gold and
facing the sun -

    smiling.