When they finally cut you open they found butterflies crawling on your ribcage and flowers where your lungs were supposed to be
An eternal spring in your chest that everyone could feel when you drew near, the kind of green that people craved and needed to breathe
Where your heart was charted lay the biggest, most beautiful gemstone that anyone had ever seen.
They found everything that you tore yourself to pieces looking for, all of the splendor and beauty and precious things that somehow eluded you no matter how hard you searched or how many times you cut yourself open to find. It was all right there, right before their eyes, as dazzling as a thousand suns and majestic as the stars
When they closed your eyes, the starlight had already left them. Galaxies ripped from existence because you would never laugh again, never think of one you loved, never see the first bloom or hear the first bird of spring.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if anything really happened. there is still a hole in my chest the size of you that no fresh spring day or starry night can fill up there is no earthly thing that can replace you because you cannot be replaced, you were part of the leaves on the trees and the air that I long for and now you are gone

You started on a conquest for your soul and it led you to a dark forest of branches that twisted to hurt you and wind that whispered lies just loud enough for you to hear that poisoned your spring and closed your eyes forever to the beauty that was inside of you that bloomed out of your wrists when their whispers came back to haunt you crouching, dark, pulsing with your blood not good enough not good enough not good enough
But they were wrong. You were enough. You were more than enough; you were everything that springtime should be.
You walked in as a lioness and out as a lamb
Now it’s winter and I can’t see you in the trees or the sky because everything is silent and cold and dying and the spring inside you is fading because
When they finally cut you open they released your beauty into the world
and it will be a brighter place because of you.

sometimes the seams split and vines spill out, tender tendrils searching so soft and green and f r a g i l e

blooms open petal to petal sepals stretching stems extended something so precious and kind, so close

the color of moonlight sliding across cool sheets, sighing on bare skin, softly holding your hand in the lonely dark; you smile in your sleep and your dreams lull to quiet,
      soft,
   intangible moonlight as infallible protector; sometimes she puts flowers in your hair

veins overrun with petals, roots entwined with stems, stems sprouting and growing and moving with each breath, everything full and soft and fragile;
vulnerability, willingly: safe fragility--
      letting the flowers grow freely
    and trusting the wind
not to blow them away

A swirling of sounds, color, movement, page marked vivace: meaning lively, vivid
Our eyes meet and the music starts; from the first beat I realize
You don't need theory to know what keys pluck at my heartstrings
Simpler than intervals and your smile, a crescendo into the forte of your embrace
The curl of your lips as your laughter resonates a harmony with my own we breathe
and even the silence is as beautiful as the noise
I am so thankful for those repeats, a skip up the step to your front door and the creak as it swings open and I spin into your arms
a different ending to each beginning, always going back to the same butterfly melody flitting wings parading color and light around the room as we sit,
pinkies entwined like vines on a garden wall, and we are both blooming in the golden summer sun, hearts pounding blood rushing, lush and alive
Your smile, your words, our hands together:
A world of colors and sounds all our own
the tonic note of my favorite  tune and the pick up to a whole new melody
Thank you.