I don’t want to write poems about breaking anymore.
I’m so sick of my words weaving knots into the fiber
of a noose and polishing the clip of
the anchor it’s tied to
in a dull sleep,
a heavy, hibernation light-years deep
in a cold, black lake,
tangled in seaweed.

Reeling it in,
(sweating, grunting, bellowing)
it doesn’t budge.
I’m figuring out how to
stand my ground too.
I’m done putting my books down
for people who don’t need me,
(people who like me but not enough.)
I’m done with rope burn.

I’ve been wearing my stringy hurt
as a badge all winter and it grosses me out.
I keep mistaking eyes for hands,
smiles and laughs for a net to land in;
this free-fall for an optical illusion.

Awake, my mind is vigilant.
It’s quick and fierce to bat away
any thought that might land,
wheels down onto bits of you,
but I can’t guard my sleeping brain.

In dreams my mind circles back to
quiet-night, November coasting.
Back to my fingers carving out shapes
in the steam fog of your windshield,
back to each dizzy morning where
I searched my phone for a ‘Good Morning’ text
that I never found-
(you never sent one, I never asked.
We were both without precedent.)

How do I exist if not in varying forms of unravel?
What’s the point of collecting the words pumping through
and out of me if not to cover, shield,
and serve as armor when I have no skin?
There’s so much more than you and your fingerprints
or me and my kaleidoscope mind.
Sometimes the best part is no part at all:

I want to write a poem about the silence:
the thick, metal tangle of wires that coil in my head-
they swear they’re waterproof but I’m still terrified to sweat.

I want to write a poem about the before:
before the envelopes were opened,
before the kisses felt cautionary,
before I threw myself in the kiln-
when I was shaped but not permanent,
when I could still make corrections.

Summer has been rolling in and
getting closer to my tanning shoulders
with each sunset and each curtain call.
By the time its here for good
I’ll be writing poems you can’t find yourself in at all.
I’ll be writing poems that
don’t begin broken.
They’ll be poems that are whole
from the very first line and stream words
growing stronger
instead of
growing apart.