i traded unanswered questions and hushed laughter
for our bodies in the moonlight and your silence above me
the feel of you inside me was enough for me but your lips
never met mine and though your fingers had held mine so sweetly before,
when you rose and left me alone I could only feel the ghost
of your hands

I showered twice and still i can smell you on my skin
the smell of hope and *** and youth and endings
and for some reason the lack of you
bothers me more than all the boys i followed home last year
strangers and cigarettes and empty ***** were good enough
until you held me through the new year and i found my voice
too little too late
i don’t have a say in whether or not you stay

too soon i will be gone to the mountains
and i guess
your arms around me and
your voice before the sunrise
are the only memories i need to carry with me

white afternoons and sunlit leaves were lost to
gray days and the sharp cut of mountains against the horizon

the mess of my life met the worry in your heart
and all the long walks in the world cannot dull my love for you

senseless words with sacred meaning fill every space,
the margin of each and every page is a work of art

the strength of your presence is enough to keep me content with
a voiceless love that will haunt me on even the sunniest mornings

there is an entire world within me that you will never explore
and i am sad to say you are an ocean in which i will never swim

i can fill my mind with endless distraction and empty substance,
but the truth of you is never far behind

even now i can hear your voice and see the bright of your eyes,
the set of your shoulders and the grace of your fingers

you haunt me like my shadow.

i love the way you dance through life
reckless, beautiful
falling into the turns
always reaching with eager hands
head thrown back, eyes closed tight, touching empty air and hearing the music that escapes me
i see myself
falling in a clumsy waltz
letting gravity pull me down
clenching my fists and tensing my shoulders
always afraid to let myself feel

but now i’ve found my chance,
i’ve found music in the sound of your voice
and the strength of your shoulders
and i don’t even need to meet your eyes to know that everything is different

you give me rhythm
and grace
and courage to finally
let go and
dance

it’s so hard to feel like the beautiful person you say i am
when it’s 3 am and i’m alone with myself
and this is what i need to do
crying in the dark can’t be so bad
when it means i’m coming clean so someday
i can come home to you
and the 4 am train offers up its tracks

it’s so hard to be alone

and i am brilliant and i am strong and i am
beautiful
but you don’t have to live with me

i want to crawl inside you,
kiss your ribs and cradle your heart,
make friends with your spine.
i want to see what you see in me
through your eyes.
you are the beautiful person

my reflection is tired and these eyes i see each day are only getting duller
i’ll repeat this sad song for the last time
and think of the night you tried to love me
and hope i can make a change and make a way for me to smile again

you make me want to write
you make me want to dance
you give me a place to go when i’m stuck inside my mind
and maybe it’s not for the best
but my love for you is here

this life i’m living doesn’t taste the same
it tastes like sleeping pills and a light that never goes out
and i can still see the curve of your fingers and the look in your eyes
and i’m sick but so are you and maybe we could heal together
but life is short and messy and too soon I can feel you are already gone
maybe we had our moment and that was that

when you walk away will you feel my thoughts?
i thought i saw myself the other day
but it was only an echo of the sound of your voice
it rang in my head and i glanced toward the mirror
i saw us there in light, gilded and framed and content
i’m sick

in the convoluted mess of my depression i am always reaching for you
i look for you in everyone
but i see myself in us and i would never want that for any love
so there will be no us and there will only be you, and me, alive in the same stream of existence, two small threads of the universe touching momentarily, slipping away too soon

but that does not exclude my selfishness, the insistence of my heart
the senselessness of love and lust
i want to kiss each of your knuckles
i want to taste your shoulder every morning and feel your hand about my thigh every night
i want your poetry in my ears and your mouth on my neck
i want our love, half of you and half of me, the sound of eager feet on wood floors
i want new sad songs, new happy songs, another reason to dance
you are my reason to dance
i want us writing side by side, i want to hear you singing under your breath always
i want to show you this without shame, turmoil, judgment
i want to wake up to your dimple and your voice full of sleep
instead of knowing for the rest of my life that you are the ocean i always wanted to swim in
that you are the tree i never climbed

crying alone in bed is a production of love that i never thought to act upon
and now i feel low and insignificant
in that place of rain and green i know you are so happy
and that makes me happy
that’s all love is
i am happy because you are happy
and for the rest of my life i will be happy knowing i loved you fiercely, quickly, and without thought, without voice
you are the great love of my life and you have no clue
your kindness and your fight against the clinging sadness that pulls upon you,
the proof that you are here in the world, breathing, getting out of bed in the morning
is enough to make me smile
and know that the days you struggle to find yourself to love are the days i love you most
and someday i will find the strength to get out of bed
and maybe then we can greet the mornings together

i am drowning and heaving through the mess of my life

I am laughing too loudly and silent at all the wrong moments

i’m sick of causing casualties

i don’t need a small white cross on the side of the road

i need hungover afternoons and darjeeling tea

i need the dust of your attic and the sound of footsteps on the warped wood floors

i need the river and the solitude of the cathedral

i need beauty on the sandbars and sunburns on the dock

i need laughter and tears and poetry

i need soft hands and warm lips and

i need to sleep

i need to eat

i need to run run run

i looked to the moon but all I could see,
all I could see was the light in your eyes and the set of your jaw
as your hands cupped the flame and you inhaled, eagerly, your lungs working, your blood pumping, the beauty of you alive next to me, and me, alive next to you.

i am all awe and happy and humbled

a shock of dark hair fell across your forehead and i didn’t notice the bricks against my back or the chill of the dark
and when i look in the mirror i can see myself again
and on nights like these i want to pull you into the fog
and run
and when i look at you now i feel something becoming

i want your kindness,
your gentle hands
the soft of your words
the passion in your movements, carrying you to the sea, toward God, across continents, and hopefully closer to me

i can see so much in you
the things i cannot see in myself, that you swear you see in me...
there’s an echo in my heart when i hear the sound of your voice
everything accelerates when i hear you whistling down the hall

it’s a movement, a feeling, a dance between patience and expectancy
my spirit called for help and you spoke to me
he told me my spirit was dying and
you found me in the mess of my life and
now

the miracle of breath and life and love
the miracle of becoming
i am young and tired and fearful
but hopeful and humbled and healing
and there is so much left in life and so much left in me and so much left in you

and i know that the future will come and carry us away
and there may come a time when our eyes no longer meet,
a time when our voices and laughter no longer overlap
but i hope you understand that for me this is true,
i have never met someone before that i am so clearly meant to love and adore
it runs through my veins and my heart and my mind
and although you will never know,
i can only hope that you remember what you have done for me
and how suddenly one day i looked at you and realized
you are the sun between the trees
and the smell of the ocean
you are kindness and wisdom and
something i never expected to find

and i know i know i know we are all working toward something,
we are all heaving through the mess of ourselves
as though since birth we are born fighting
but sometimes we have the chance to live in the beauty of the moment
every breath is a transformation
every dawn is a possibility
and for the rest of my life i will probably be alive with the thought of you