I am working on filling the hollow ache of myself, extracting the lonely with hands that do not belong to me. You are my constant reminder of time, my clockwork heartbeat ticking with your helpful reassurance that it is okay to have loose seams. You pull me tight like boot strings, placing my sole // soul by your bedside and never at your back door. I want to be where you place your feet in the morning, carry you through your day, never letting dirt get to your skin. And if I someday fail to keep you safe from filth, i will unclench my hands and wash you holy, baptize you clean from my sins, let me make a mess of only myself and pray for your renewal. Your sun kissed smile begs search of my happy, reminds me to breathe, tells me there is life in this oxygen. You are water, able to hold up my sinking ship but still can slip through my fingers if I am not careful. Your tide controlled by the moon, is it a thrilled howl or a scream when you see it // me? Either way my presence beckons quake from your throat and I can only hope that it will stay as sweet as the first time i met you. The small tremble of vocal chords as existence being born of your tongue; you make words an easy thing, can only threaten stutter dare it to try and damage your speech. You are smooth like tumbled sea glass, turning thing handled by hands into a pendant to wear around my neck; wanting the world to see you, never will I want to hide you in my back pocket. They will ask where I found you, such a beautiful treasure of body, and I will tell them that I did not have to go to the shore to find you, that the shore found me, and I was just lucky enough to witness the tide unravel you into my hands but it turns out that I was the one enveloped by you.