your words
are written like ribbons,
tied in a bow
laced with scarlet and garnered in stone
you place your gold-plated locket on the table
to leave your writing for another day
now you go outside to outshine the sun
despite your scars and tears and all the things that you've done
you make the moon jealous, and every star too
god, i wish i was beautiful like you

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i haven't let you go.
mere words are tripwires.
(how can i call you a piece of my past when you are still so very present?).
i am no longer as eloquent as i used to be.

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i still stand at your door.
it has been four months, and just as soon, twelve.
(each morning i wake with hopes that your grip will have loosened).
i am no longer as strong as i used to be.

but perhaps it does take a strange type of strength to be so hopeful,
to think that someday,
even after all this,
you might see in me even a fraction of what i see in you.

truthfully, that is all i ever wanted.

but often, the things we want require change we cannot bring.

i have spent so long trying to make my valleys into mountains,
but sometimes the earth does not want to be moved.

//

i have given up on excuses;
i will drag you along and wait.
someday i will tire of holding your hand so tightly.

(a.m.)

one day i will stop writing
dead poems to dead lovers
but my feelings
have a tendency to hold on-
i read over memories of you
like scripture
because if i forget the pain,
the sentiment, too, is gone

we were never anything,
but, oh, you were my everything:
my hazel-eyed addiction,
my heaven and my hell.
we sat hidden in the tunnels of a playground
pretending we were children
playing make-believe
to the tune of cicada sound.
i've recalled too many times, now,
the sunlight in your lashes,
but maybe one day it won't be true
if i say it again:
when i spent last summer
next to you at the poolside
i wished
(i wish)
it would (have) never (had to) end

meet me at the corner like we're naïve again
before we were afraid of the dark and would rule night, again
let me climb over your wall and tap on your window
let's go run our kingdom
when the town is sleeping, we own them
the two of us, princes:
reckless and brave,
too mischievous and star-eyed
to be told to behave