restless twenty year old nights call to mind
warm sixteen year old ones,
running barefoot in the driveway,
sitting silent on the porch,
resting my head
so
carefully
on the shoulder of a boy
i thought i could predict.
at sixteen, i thought the best thing about the world
was that i did not have to participate in it –
i thought to shut my mouth and close my ribs
was a certain kind of honor.
i am reaching, reaching, reaching back to that girl,
wondering why she chose to throw all her joy away,
wondering if she knows
how much she must
remember,
how important it is
to learn how to care again.

if i could say one thing to danielle circa 2012
i would tell her to
buckle her seatbelt,
i would tell her to
remember the boy in the hospital bed.
i would tell her that
learning to open her chest again is
entirely worth the night she will spend
sobbing on the highway at 1 am.
i would tell her
to stop putting people in boxes,
i would say
to write more poems
that aren’t about dying.

maybe someday
twenty four year old danielle
will write a poem to me,
and maybe she will say
there’s a big storm
coming; maybe
she’ll sing sonnets to
the love and loss
that will one day buckle my knees
and send me running
into doorframes.
and maybe it’s okay
that i don’t have a raincoat.
maybe that’s just
how it goes.