I've been trying to find
1,000 ways
or reasons
or pieces of sun rays to
blast away my storms
- or even 100 things,
   or 10,

I'm not picky, but I'm fading fast

and I need to find

something,
anything
to
   live for.

Tonight, as the sun has waltzed
full circle, her dainty toes
unnoticed through the
sky

and the oven is hot from baking
and my hands are dry from
bleach and Arizona grey

I'm lighting the candles
and setting lights on the
largest window pane

It's Christmas Eve and
I'm waiting for you in
  four days straight of rain.

There's a place that I go
back to-
and it's a garden,
filled with flowers

  and it's somewhere in the Northwest
   where the forest moths and stretching firs
wait quietly for showers

it's there
where Monarchs
    gather in
       kaleidoscopes

and my densely swollen shadow
   next to piercing sun
   elopes

There's a place that I go
          back to
where the plague of
  dreams engulfs me

and it's at the end
of a nestled street
  I find a
    fever that exults
me.

I'm not going to stop loving you,
even though everything feels like it's
  glass

and I'm watching where my little
hands touch
and where I catch and lose
my breath

I'm not going to stop loving you-
even though I've never been angry
             like this

where you're transforming paths to
hope springs and pinnacles
and my bag's too weighted full of
envy to
carry to the top

I can't bear the weight.

I'm not going to stop loving you
  or staring into glass.

I haven't forgotten you,
when I am chopping meat on
the counter,
and my little hands house swelling
veins over
kitchen heat and stove top steam
and rosemary and
bay leaves

When my tiny arms are
reaching for a cup that I'd
forgotten in the
microwave, still hot to the
touch by the
handle
and I'm
pouring broth into the
pan that you cannot
eat from.

I have not forgotten.

You're beautiful and
ever-growing
into someone I could
love and
love and learn
to love
    again.