This is what it is to fall
for a boy with blurry edges.
He will be unfinished but you will trust
him anyway. This is how you learn
how tenderness can be the texture
of a hand in the darkness, the chill
kiss of wind on your cheek, something
you never saw coming.

This is how not to write a sad
story. Say something a little
sweeter. Smile like that night he locked
his keys in his car and you spent
four hours learning how to break
into something
you had no right to be in.

Forgive him for being one more door
your hands shook too hard
to open.

This is how your song goes.
You bring the lyrics and he brings
the tempo, you choreograph the dance
and he forgets the steps but you
forgive him.

You had a dream once where you got
married, you never told him that,
the wedding was in your study
and he showed up half
an hour late. You cried. You hugged him.
You were in love.
Even your dreams
taste like disappointment.

This is how melancholy marks you,
hopeful and hurting,  
how you make stained glass
windows out of the shards inside your chest.
This is how you bleed and make
it something beautiful.

You went to his party and you swam
in the pool. You ate his ice cream and you
took his love. His refrigerator looks
like a love letter to your face but he won’t
speak to you in person, you wonder
when you stopped
being two people in the same picture
and started smelling like
wet paint.

Your life like a song you sing to yourself,
an old one, the kind where
the words come easy.
His name like a tattoo you shouldn’t
have gotten, a memory you can’t give back.
How did you end up here.

This is where the music stops,
the band packs up, your family kisses
you and walks out the door.
This is when the party’s over
and no one wants your sadness
anymore. Vibrating
and waiting. You have lived all
your life to hit this note.

Heart like a washing machine. Heart like
a peanut butter sandwich. Heart cracked open
on the surgery table, hopeful and broken.
Haggard and raw. They tell you when
you use a muscle too much
you can hurt it.

It is beautiful to be the architect of your
own injuries, to choose who will
do you harm. To understand that healing
is just another way of getting stronger.

This is how you look out the window
every night and forgive him.

His face like a mistake you could
have made and always did,
like there could still be something more
than this.

This is what it is to love
in a world where people can be broken.
To believe they can be fixed.