We were never written in stone.

We were written in letters of fire -
we burned bright and brilliant and we burned painful, and so painfully long.
I like to think we both loved hurting each other more than we could bear,
that it was only our bruises that made us beautiful,
and I know you remember me in blood and in belligerence.
We shot maelstroms through quiet skies,
and we let our lightning consume us.

We crumbled, anyway.

I never wanted to grow up.

I clung on to my nap times and my cotton candy and my scraped knees,
thinking my whole world could be made of stories that had crayon-drawn
the line between right and wrong, between good and evil.
But I found that there were worlds that waltzed upon that line,
and there were people who could wound me so much deeper than blood.

I am not a child anymore.

I did not cry for you.

I have never cried for anyone who has left me because
I have always believed that I am so much stronger than the hollow silence.
But you once said I was beautiful, and you once said I was brave.
You will never see me in a toga or a white dress or a maternity tee,
but I hold fast to the days when you were mine to love and to look up to,
and I will always remember you in hot chocolate and french braids.

I'm so sorry.

I want you
    to curl up on me,
nestle yourself snugly
between my arms and
move around until you find
the perfect places
for all your angles and creases,
your folds and ridges -

to let your eyes seek
the starbursts of the Dreaming,
to breathe in surrender and
breathe out all your demons -

to rest your shoulders
from the weight of the world
    and smoothen
the dents the sky has made upon your back
as your hands
remember how it feels
not to be climbing up cliffs
that placed themselves between
what you want and what you have -

I want you to slow down,
so maybe sleep
    can remind your smile
    how lovely it feels to be
         upon you.

There is this story
going 'round, that says
humans used to have two heads,
    four hands,
    four legs,
and we were separated
because we were too powerful together.

    I don't think so.

I think (or used to)
that we are most powerful
    when we are alone -
when there is nobody
to break down our walls,
when we are fortresses
barricaded with steadfast
bravery in the face of loneliness,
when we do not know
    how to need.

But maybe I only think so
because I am afraid of what
    needing someone
    means -

it means I cannot be
invincible
without you,
it means I cannot breathe
if your heart is not softly nestled
against mine,
it means I must cross out
the words I wrote for only me,
a b a n d o n
the paths I had paved
that made room for only one -
because now there was you,
and that means
b e l i e v i n g .

I believe in you,
and I believe in me,
and I believe you and I
are the stardust that happens
when dreams collide,
         and
I believe we are not simply
misfits, alternating
lines of poetry,
we are not just
the spaces in between fingers,
we are not only
heartbeats
falling into place.

I do not like to believe
that we were halves that each other
made whole -
I want to believe we were
more than jigsaw pieces that
found all the right places to fit -
I want to believe
that you and I were made alone,
but we discovered
that together means
intertwined veins,
means rib cages rising and falling as one,
means laughing at bad jokes
and knowing when
to be quiet -
that together means
sunflowers blooming in my soul,
and turning always to face you -
that together means
you and I
are the story we
have been waiting for so long to write.

I keep the pocket watch you gave me,
and it's still ticking,
ticking.

It's there beneath the pictures
with ripped edges and thumbprints on the gloss,
where I'm smiling straight into the flash
and you, you're just looking at me,
like you didn't know someone could be so happy
in a cramped booth that smelled like
asphalt and felt like 50's music.

It's there next to the pressed flowers
with missing petals and broken stems,
the ones you gave me the day before Valentine's,
because you wanted them to bloom but
they bloomed a day late, and you
waited for them til midnight because you refused
to believe that teenage romance
doesn't have to be punctual.

It's there in the old shoebox
with the missing cover and faded paint on the sides,
that I kept all the postcards in,
from all the times you went away and said
you missed me,
and I couldn't write back because
I remembered you said that my words are my heart
and I was scared
to write poems about forever.