I move through time like a ghost.
You move through me like a house.
You want me to make you my home.
I wasn't made to own anyone.
Can you see past what I have made this skin into?
I'm not any prettier on the inside.
I am smoke.
I am coal.
I am what settles after a natural disaster.
And still, I grow.
I grow.
I grow.
Into nothing at all.
What will I become?
There is a garden in your lungs.
You breathe violets onto me.
You make me dream the way a blind man might-
no colors,
only sounds;
just words shaking apart in my chest.
I could be so lovely for you,
if only I was made another way.
I could follow you into the void.
I could follow you into oblivion.
Can you take me to the place angels go?
Can you make me feel the way the sky does when the moon is fresh and small?
Please,
paint me pretty,
and strong,
and whole.
I am not a graveyard.
Will you make a monument of me?
You make me feel bright blue,
like irises moving in the wind;
fragile;
beautiful;
so ready to fall apart.
I have put down roots in this shining countryside,
and I am clutching at dirt,
and grass,
and moving things,
and I am trying not to drift away.
I think this summer wants to take me.
Do you still weep for me?
The rain seems to stay away.
I have counted twenty-six clouds in the sky.
They have taken the shape of your hands on my skin.
I am shaking-
away,
apart.
My bones fall into one another.
I never ate my greens.
You used to ask me questions about the skin above my ankles.
Do you still think of me?
This summer wants to take me.
When we were sixteen I burned you with the brightly glowing cherry of a cigarette.
You kissed me like water,
like glass,
like breathing.
Can you take me to the place behind the sky?
I want to be a mountain.
I want to grow and grow.
The river used to speak to me.
It said, "Collapse."
It said, "It will only hurt a little."
But I am just a stone.
I still feel like I'm falling.
I was born in July.
Somewhere, people wept.
I came out of my mother kicking and screaming.
I took pieces of her with me.
I think she should have named me
Calamity,
or Chaos,
or Cancer.
Would you have loved me then?
I was not made a good thing.
My eyes are windows,
my mouth a door,
and my heart?
It is but dust.
But ash.
But embers hot on skin.
I burn. I burn. I burn.
I cannot belong to you,
or anyone.
The smell that follows lightening?
That is what I am.
I fade into black.
I fade into nothing.
This is the thing I want to be:
LIGHT.
I want to speak to God.
I want to give him back this anguish-
eighteen years worth.
Would he take this ******, beating thing?
I will ask him this:
Why are we so permanent?
The stuff we are made of-
its sticks to things;
to fingers and minds and memories.
You build me again in your head.
Let me be forgotten.
Let me be-
Let me be-
Let me be light.

Maybe I am a star that is constantly engaged in dances
with others, always to swirl around the cosmos
and use each others' gravity to fling further
maybe, because we are stars, we have to wait til the night
to know where we are- and maybe, because we are stars
it was never our destiny to stay.

"As the old catechisms used to say, knowledge is a prerequisite for love."

she’s the girl who will remember everything. from your birthday, to the story behind that scar on your left arm, to the number of freckles on your body.

she will love every inch of your body and your soul and even the heart you didn’t know you had.

she will take in everything you have to offer and give you back so much more. so much, that you won’t even know what to do with it.

she will open up the world for you. from books and music and film to things like culture and race and language.

she’s smarter and far more beautiful than she dares herself to show.

and you will love her.

you will love her like you’ve never loved anybody before.

she will level every winter your body has suffered with all the springs her bones have weathered.

and when you go, because you can no longer handle her, she will drown herself in alcohol and drugs and sorrow. and wonder why she wasn’t good enough.

she will refuse to be saved by any other hand because nobody can touch her quite like you.

she will **** herself with loneliness and then resurrect with her own scent.
and then she will do it again.

and again.

and again.

and again.

she will be weak and strong and bold and shy and mean and nice and everything in between.

she will grow. she will grow strong and tall.

and so will you.

and in ten years from now, when you run into her at the supermarket, she will ask about your marriage.

and while you’re there telling her about your wife, who is home with the kids, and your job, she will feel genuinely happy for you.

because she forgave you. she forgave you for walking away and she forgave herself for ever thinking she wasn’t good enough.

she will have realized by then that sometimes life will give you somebody just to watch you break when it takes them away from you.

and she will be okay with it.

and so will you.

but, she will walk away without telling you about her life because she doesn’t want you to hear it in her voice that she still remembers your birthday, and that birthmark on your right shoulder.

and that ten years ago, she had hoped you would run into somebody else and told them all about her being at home with the kids.