goodbye love,
goodbye midnights and jars of sweet tea,
fairy lights, "overcoming" anything,
crooked fountains and oaks;
goodbye love,
goodbye to your mother and your sister,
to the mary in the rocks,
the knots in your forehead when you were at a loss.

I hold my own hand and I snuggle myself to sleep,
there is a hole in my heart if you get close enough to look,
goodbye love,
goodbye to these words you'll never notice,
to the moment I knew this was the autumn I wrote about before.

happy one year, love

listening, alive,
tracing my own shadows
but failing to disintegrate,
bleeding fingers hung up five hundred strips of canvas and what I didn't
paint on I carefully sliced my way through.
remember the day on a playground with a sunset
I carried on, even after the sheets and the day I felt my insides buckle

I think what was worse were the days I cried
to lose a sense of importance in a life other than my own,
I dreamt of her lungs collapsing and I think about driving around my father's driveway in the middle of the night
never sure what anything means but I like how you said "I miss having you around,"
I miss having me around too.

awake, sitting on pillows
thinking about "bluebirds with cancer" and
sometimes last summer laying between your sister's pink sheets in the afternoon.

you're a little festival of light,
that crackle in vhs tapes that makes you miss home,
a snarky crunch in a brand-new bowl of
cereal and milk.
sometimes I wish the battle scars left over from failed art projects
were enough to send me to the hospital in a panic
so I could sit on a metal table wringing my hands while I called you to calm me down.
maybe you would realize then that you're still very important
in my little world of crackles and
sunbursts.

I walk around each day endlessly reminding my toes to keep up
with the pavement so I don't fall down and stop short
to remember I am not quite the independent lady I aspire to be.
it's human, maybe; I want a warm body to tuck myself around
I don't know what kind of present I even am,
but when you call me talking of mushrooms
I always think that maybe I'm okay.

to three zero four turnstone, back right bedroom, one red wall,
one year ago.
things improve.
I remember how much you hurt.
I remember how badly your skin blistered inside those cinderblock walls,
the ticking clock, burning eyes, deadened.
I remember the way your voice wavered over the turf and into the pitch-black sky
pinching yourself, aching with the one pounding word pumping again and again:
finally finally finally finally finally finally
you had plans to fulfill and places to be and you knew what they were and that you were going to get them just as soon as you could crawl through the sludge of the months holding you back.
I liked to be free on a wednesday morning, just before lunch. there is always something about the allure of a store so many hours before you will arrive out of breath at the door just to watch the "open" sign flicker off.
I learned to enjoy that summer, I really did,
but lodged somewhere behind a kidney I remember a pair of teeth so tightly clenched that they were beginning to crack.

to three zero four turnstone, back right bedroom, one red wall,
two years ago.
things improve.
I can dive inside my memory and watch your face distend and bubble with tears as you painstakingly pace your way through every ******* college pamphlet you were ever mailed.
I don't like to remember; I still know how acutely you bled,
and how much I'd like to reach back to pull you from your misery and show you what we have done.
I know that you know things will sharpen and blossom and that's why you're crying so wholly;
perk up love, hold fast to your countdown,
fail to combust with ravenous envy as others cross the illustrious stage,
I'm waiting for you here and I promise it really is everything you've ever wanted.

to eight five zero jerry's lane, second floor, front right bedroom, lavender walls,
four years ago,
things improve.
I remember those dry eyes and that flawless exterior,
I remember the knot in your throat and the clamp on your heart that played games with your head.
for the love of god and your health
will you shake your own shoulders so hard you see stars?
no one you meet worth a dime of your time will judge you as hard as yourself,
and I have found even in darkness you will never face demons completely alone.
I want you to climb to your rooftop and fill your lungs with the air of the ashes that haunt you;
for every heart that is broken we also break ground.

to six two three zero north kenmore, fourth floor, southeastern side, western bedroom, perfect white walls,
present day,
things are whirling forward.
*finally finally finally finally finally finally

my ghost will haunt the space of that old cafe;
nestled into the air above the second booth to the left
or tucked into the corner above the fish tank,
delicately breathing memories of proms and first dates
to renovators and brightly fluttering couples.

molecules agitated, eternally lingering in pursuit
of love lost to time and particular circumstances
dancing in stasis and unable to drift away from that cafe
and pink sheets in the sunshine, of longhorns
and the feel of a waist

curled in a ball, breathing in damp pillowcases;
heaving gasps that search for time and air that is long gone.
I thought I'd buried this heart that searches out train windows at night,
thinking in what if and what else

paperback words of loss take my hand, paint
the silver trails back to lost love, to memory, to
remembering skin, and sunlight, the ache of
desire and imminent separation.

I lay sleepless on swollen eyes and wonder if you
ever think about that day, tucking our faces into our
damp collarbones; knowing that talk remains unchanged
but now, there will be that polite distance between our bodies when we embrace

pushing toward the things I dreamed as a seed:
a particulate of matter nestled under the blankets
of earth and potentiality.
I cried, I stretched my arms and felt the sand tucked around my shoulder
blades start to fade away with the miles covered in a greyhound bus.

I breathed, I blossomed;
I held the moon in my hands and used it to put shimmer in my step.
I tucked the unfinished pieces into my pocket and swore to return to them later,
I picked the brightest flowers from the field and wove them into the braid
that wrapped around my collarbones.
I wrapped my sweater tight around the life I made,
I watched it unravel with dwindling wonder.

I found the fragments in my pocket gathering dust:
some I set free into the fall air that smelled like my grandfather's garage,
some I melted back into the veins of my heart,
some I wrapped around the pigeons to keep them warm in the winter.

I am a sliver of mica retrieved by an eight year old girl from a lake
warm with the seaweed of summer.
I glimmer in the sunlight and flake away piece by piece,
floating to an atmosphere where I can reconstruct myself into the glossy
details on the edge of a wave.
I am all that I remember and all that I am becoming, constantly
part of a new wave, of the same ocean, from the same lake.
*aren't we all just runaways?