“find a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic”

she does, Frida
she does.
she looks at me like I am Galileo
and I have mapped the stars just for her;
she has never been more right.

I have spent countless hours
charting the constellations in her eyes,
in the way she drinks her coffee,
in the sound of her breathing when she’s fallen asleep beside me.

when the room grows still,
I kiss the night sky’s secrets into the palms of her hands,
and know that they are safe.

I am so lucky to love her, Frida.
I am so lucky she sees the light in all my dark
and chooses to stay.

My mom yells at me because I never finish my cup of coffee
and I’m like mom,
I never finish anything.
Everything feels incomplete, slowly growing cold like the coffee
she made just for me
and I want to apologize to her.
I’m sorry I never finish what I wanted so badly in the first place.
It seems like I can only finish the things I don’t really want.
That six pack of beer, the hole in the wall, those red lines across my skin.
I finish the things that hurt to get them over with
and leave the things I love unfinished so I can always come back to them.
Pick up where I left off, know they’ll still be there,
waiting to be completed for when I’m ready.
Greeted with open arms and a kiss on the forehead;

“Its okay that you left, I’ve remained here for you to return.
I have not moved an inch.”

Tell me how I sleep.
on your side, curled up like a small child
Tell me how I wake up.
slow, hazy blinks. A “good morning” and then back to bed
Tell me how I dream.
*in full color, vivid and too real. Too optimistic. I don’t think you ever really stop dreaming, even when your eyes are wide open.

You know that movie scene
The one where the girl unexpectedly
sees her lover in the distance
On a crowded street corner,
everything else losing focus

except for the hurried, automatic movement of legs and arms
knowing that she has to reach the end of the street
Before they disappear completely
Slipping through her imagination like
a fever dream

i can recognize the outline of your body
from a mile away
the way you stand with your feet pointed slightly apart
headphones dangling from the phone in your pocket
how you push your hair out of your face
the same way i do

i’m always afraid you’ll vanish before i reach you
not knowing that i was seconds away from grabbing your shirt sleeve
saying look,
here i am

i don’t know where you’re going but
can i come with you?

describe how you think the sky looks lately
how the leaves seem to fall in a certain pattern
what the silence says to you compared to what it says to me

sometimes the rain leaves love notes on my window
meet me by the river
the one you see in your dreams

i dream of the river kissing my eyelids
the cool water a warm blanket
tucking me in to sleep

i never sleep long enough
something tears me awake every time
the love note blown away

i find i’d been holding my breath
a gasp of air through aching lungs
almost as if i had been drowning

she has these eyes
these eyes like softened soil
like dreams could grow into reality

cartographer of my heart
there are days when I will not be easy to read
I will hold myself upside down and backwards
buried beneath bruised knuckles and cheap fear

and yet late at night I find you saying
“you still make sense to me”
leaving landmarks on my skin
signs that say “you are here"
and here
and here

trace the land lines in my palms
and know they will always guide you home