you drop your weapon and run
and they say: coward
but i say: brave
in all the ways that matter

i'm sorry for treating you like a secret
like you are only capable of being beautiful
when whispered in the dark
or tucked inside pockets
or buried under layers of
trying to be enough

i do not think we deserve each other just yet
but i am learning to love every part of you
even the ugly ones, even the ones i never wanted
even the parts that make me wish
i were somebody else

every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and yours begins with her: the girl with steel spine and sunshine smile and a hurricane heart. it begins when she says your name and it sounds like it was always meant for you. it unravels and unspools and suddenly the mark burns on the back of your hands: best friends.

a couple of weeks pass and you make a home out of a bay window. a couple of months pass and you make a home out of each other. a couple of years pass and she is every crevice, every corner of home you keep coming back to. a couple of years pass and her name and her soul and the soft lilt of her voice are stamped like a map on the back of your hand: sister.

they say it ends in middle school. they say that a friendship such as yours isn’t built to last. but the girl carved on the back of your hand never really knew how to listen to what other people say. so she stays.

every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. and this story is ours, she says, her fingers tracing the lines stretched across your knuckles, finding their way home. ours, ours, ours.

*and it begins and ends with us.

here’s to the average ones
here’s to those whose hands are much too small to cover
the markings on their skin saying, “never good enough”

here’s to the once-dreamers
the once-believers in potential and possibility
hearts and hands that used to cradle glasses half-full

god, i hope you know
how brave you are for being here
how minute your chances are to even exist

and yet

you do
again, & again, & steadily still,
you do

here’s to the average ones
i hope you know, there is beauty in being alive
and the tired parts of you are proof of that

and you: you with a ribcage forged to toughness
by the stress and strain and other forces of human hurt
you have earned every single heartbeat

own it

(here’s to the ones who are only ever good at failing
remember this: the world is kept alive
by people who try)

they say all that is soft breaks easy    
but oh, how you bend and endure.

is this what peace sounds like?
blood – on sidewalks and calloused skin and other
places that used to know grace like an anthem
is this what freedom sounds like?

is this what change sounds like?
people chanting die die die, brothers saying
here, i sharpened my freedom enough
to carve you lifeless

is this what nation sounds like?
silenced war songs and muted lullabies
go to sleep, go to sleep, there is no room here
for life or mercy, no room for heart

is this us? is it still us? when the lights are out
do our hymns still count? do our promises
still matter or have our ears turned deaf
from the very voices we fought for?

so this is how we love
all goodbyes and apologies
and lips mapping freckle to freckle
like a cartographer pinpointing
places that deserve to be named
and remembered

so this is how we hurt
carving scars onto scars and
diving headfirst into every space
in the universe that would take us,
that would welcome our pain with
open arms and say, there is more of that
here, come get your fill

so this is how we heal
in the strangest of places, like unfamiliar
suns and mattresses made of feathery
limbs, we find rest and each other
and we learn to say *no, that is enough,
this is where our hurt ends

darling,

lift that fingertip away from your scars
and trace these ragged map-lines instead
here, here are better roads to take
than loneliness

so maybe your knuckle feels much too bare
but know that our fingers are not made to sit waiting
for a ring –
they are built to hold

so hold – find another set of fingers
grasping for a stronger pair of hands
there is nothing more beautiful than two small limbs
making a home in each other

or better yet, when your bones feel
too big for his too-full arms and too brittle
for the weight of your sadness
hold yourself together, never let go

when the night is too full of night
to see the stars, take a mirror and try to
search for the starstuff in you

you. the point between history and tomorrow
the most graceful of reckonings
the steady hum of *more, more beneath cracking skin
you. the sum of all things soft and true  

and remember: those bones were never built to
shoulder the world
they were only ever meant
to carry you

this is not a heartbreak poem
this is not a poem about loss or yearning
or all the shattering that comes with it
this is not a poem about sadness

this is a poem about falling in love
and falling out of love
and falling, and falling, and falling
this is a poem about gravity

in this poem there is no measure
there is no rhyme, only longing and
a heart that keeps itself wide open
for things to beat and break for

in this poem there are sunsets
and oceans and moons and sweet, tangy
summers and hands, always hands
all maddening clichés about falling in love

this is not a heartbreak poem
but it is a poem about things that break
hearts and promises and prose
but never us - never us

physics says:
it is impossible for a single body
to have infinite mass or energy

and yet you do –
oh god, you do

i am not a scientist but i know that
even science cannot measure your heart
or your hope or your fight out in teaspoons

even numbers cannot contain how precisely
your limbs and the layers of your skin are
built for the singular purpose of being

and darling, if mass can neither be created nor
destroyed – then surely, surely, nothing can stop
all that infinity in you from fighting to survive

they warned me about people like you.
boys with the sea in their eyes
and hands that leave ripples in the wake
of everything they touch.

your tide is swelling
and it rolls through my tongue –
sweet and salty and
satisfyingly destructive.

i taste it and spit out the calm.

they warned me about people like you.
boys who love in waves and wash
themselves ashore
and settle beside the chaos.

they warned me of people who love.