how much longer will I wait for butterflies bursting red at the wings, fiery orange curling their tips into flames

today is long and heavy like the space before a goodbye
i watch a moss-backed turtle float on clouds above the water and I think of you,
of coiled garter snakes and soft pink sunsets, of warm lentil soup and white zinfadel and fern forests and I know,
I would not be enough for you

settled in the space between sun and moon I am two parts water, one part fire,
I am boiling hot springs set on a river deep, bubbling and breaking and gasping for air,
I am summer thunderstorm, hot rain and violent life and love without control,
I am ocean fissure, the space between, red hot lava shifting slowly like a lover beneath the sheets
I am self-contradiction, all crab-shell and shape-shifter and the answerer of my own questions,
I am crystal cave heart and loose leaf mind, waterfall eyes and moonshine smile, you cannot tame me but you cannot let me go

Ferns for my soul
Echinaceas for my childhood
Is what I told my mother when
She cried looking at my arm
That I had so thoughtfully inked
Botanical permanence.

I miss
The parts of you
That made me, me
But i am Whole,
I am an entirety

music soft like honey
notes drops of nectar on the skin of your wrist
the bass is your heartbeat
and the warmth of my hands on your cheeks

could we stay here forever?
you and me and the ferns
sunlight drifting in
you and me and our greenhouse
this moment is a thousand years
or, i wish it was

i can see us in my mind
dancing to music
that's been stuck in my head
for years
you are my daydreams
and i am the whispers
exchanged between us,
two souls in a glass house

my fingers find yours
you fill the negative space of my body
i reach up to touch your face
you smile gently, and i feel it

the melody of our song is
the rush of blood in my veins
when i hold your hand
you press my hands to your chest
and i feel the bass of your heart