I always pondered her ocean eyes
Her future, I saw, beyond them lies
Vast, encompassing an open world
And past the limits of the shore, her brave waves curled

My love washes away all my worries
Drowns out my misery
And now as she sets sail to sea
I worry how far she'll sail from me

So I whisper to the winds, "Go easy"
I barter with the tides
I beg the skies to open up
And let the stars align

Lend her light when shadows casted
Obscure the deep unknown
My love, she directs with the sun in her chest
Rooted down to the core of her soul

And I know she doesn't give up easy
Sometimes she may put up a fight
But to see her blue eyes shine like diamonds–
There's nothing like that sight

So follow each adventure
I don't doubt'll yield victory
Watch her learn and grow and grow and thrive
Please, ensure her lasting safety

As she travels to distant destinations
Shine on and when she's ready
Construct a map of constellations
And lead her home to me

I thought I strived for black and white

Until my brown eyes met blue

And then there was a second world

In the space between me and you

I stood beside you like an omen
Always one step behind
I thought if you turned, you'd catch it
The glint inside my eye

A silent glance in my direction
My finger to my lips
Beckons every thrumming heartbeat
To cater to the trip

I said, "I know what it looks like
When the world all crumbles down"
I thought maybe you'd seen it
The worry in my brow

Happiness hides the fear
So well that you might miss
I laughed, "I know what it looks like–
It's an awful lot like this."

I must have begun writing at some point
But by now, I’ve lost track of my own wayward thoughts
And I’m starting to lose the point of my words
As my pencil’s dulls down
Like it knows that we are simply
Speeding up time
And dragging it out
With the lead on the paper
And maybe a period would be good here
So even if I can’t continue,
“Should I end it now?”
“Should I end it now?”
I ask but I
Find myself mesmerized
Or desperate
At the thought that I might find what I’m looking for
Somewhere in these scribbles–
That if I carry on,
These lines will make a picture
And tell me what to do–
That all of this will mean something
And not just augment the confusion
In every passing line,
I play editor in my mind,
And to avoid that final point,
I place some commas in my life

There is a god at the bottom of the swimming pool. Whirring, he wakes me from my sleep. He scuttles like a crab across vinyl. Some nights, I stay up to listen to the song he scratches into the tile.

It’s a somber sound, settling unearthily on concrete. It wasn’t meant to be enjoyed, I know. But I do.

I close my eyes and imagine it’s the sound of the earth turning on its axis. I imagine it’s the sound of time moving, year after year. It turns and turns and I follow suit, casting shadows behind me.

I imagine the god is lonely and far away from home. I imagine he is just as lost as we are, piecing together maps from soggy, fallen leaves and clumps of hair from the filter.

He cried himself into his containment. He misstepped once and fell into this hole. I hope he curses himself for being created without wings and arms and hands that could climb out of this.

I hope he catches his reflection in bubbles every now and then, and stops to consider how his face grew so hard.

He cries out and causes waves to rise and fall, splashes around, drags the moon close and pushes it away.

I hope he knows he can do anything, believes he can do anything, except help himself.

Each morning, I clean the pool. I dissect his well-laid plans with a skimmer and make his world clear and beautiful again. All for him, of course.

I imagine he is building character, struggling in a world that was not meant for him to live in, a world meant for someone else to enjoy. We built him in our image, to do the job we don’t want to do.

I hope he wonders at the unprompted responsibility and grows frustrated each time I insist that I would not give him a challenge he couldn’t overcome. I hope he’s beginning to learn.

There is a god at the bottom of the swimming pool, learning how to grow old and tired of swimming.

I let my heart get the best of me
Again, this time
I laid my lips on risk
And found how sweet it tasted...

And I crumbled down in this destruction
Grasping for another hit
And I sat up from where you played me
Gasping, just to breathe a bit

But it all went into you, my dear
It all went into you
And I'll be lying, feeling hollow
Before this night is through

For I hugged close to all your edges
Like the thread upon a spool
And each time you spun and turned me
I unraveled to a pool

Well if I am to drown in this,
Would you mourn me in the rain?
Could I drip into your thoughts the way
You're flowing through my veins?

And if I whisper in the darkness,
Could I then become your ghost?
Haunting, knowing that I loved you
And I'd loved you more than most

My skin still knows your touch
It shivers in the cold
The goosebumps chase an endless path
I think
They're reaching out for you

There came a point when I realized you couldn't hold me up anymore
And it was when you were holding on far too tight
I wish that I could tell you all of this with my eyes
Because nothing I say could ever be enough
And I know you wanted to see me prosper
Wanted me to show you all I could be
If it's any consolation, I tried
With all of me, but
All of me
Turned out to be
Nothing but
What I could do
For you
Well Mama,
I tried to be a fire
You were my gasoline
But I'd sooner turn to ash
Than let you empty yourself for me

Lay me down
In your loving arms
And I'll trail my fingers across your skin
Counting your freckles like the stars
And if you ask me why I love you
It's how you are, how you are
So I trace your neck with addicted lips
Stop me before I get too far
But at this point, my darling
I think I'm too far gone
Couldn't find such pure perfection
In any picture drawn
You could lose me to your heartbeat
You could drown me with your eyes
Send me floating with your touch
And anchor me with sighs

Everything hurts and you're not here to heal it
You're not here to rub my back
Kiss my head
Hold my hand
You're not here to wrap your arm around my waist
And pull me close
The thing that hurts the most
Is that you could be
And I just...
I never thought you wouldn't want to

I have a museum of you in my camera roll
I sneak in every day after close
And I whisper words of love, of safety
To every one of our smiling photos

I smile for the stars in your eyes
While the tears roll down my face
I say a prayer for every memory
That you've already erased

Because, my baby,

I loved for every rose-filled photo shoot
And for heart-shaped York chocolate candies
For candle-lit outdoor porches
And constant kisses in the movies

For infatuated poetry and stupid car-ride singing
For lazy, sunlit, cinnamon rolls & cuddles types of mornings

For play-filled cooking in the kitchen and food truck, hopeful dreams
For the warmth and light within you, I've seen bursting at the seams

For together, but apart, late-night binge TV shows
For texting games and picture frames and learning how to grow

For bears, bunnies, sheep, and elephants, and the way you say my name
For the butterflies left wandering a recently vacant plane

I think...

They got lost inside your laughter
Caught on the edges of your smile
Danced along to your steady heartbeat
And closed their eyes for a little while

They opened from a nap on the beach
And as the waves began to unfurl,
They curled closer in and smiled
For the most beautiful girl in the world

If I reach out, I can touch it–of this, I'm pretty sure
The infinite ways I've tried to express it, all the reasons I love you for

It shudders at my fingers, the pain still trembling at the door
But if I try, I can't regret it, all the things I love you for

I want love where love is due
Do you know how much I found in you?
Do you know how painful it is to lose
The one you'd a million times choose?
The spot you left vacant is a gaping wound
I search for water in sandy dunes
My heart, too shallow, will be buried soon
Alongside the love I thought I knew
I thought I held it close, kept hope alive
Could fill an ocean with tears before I dive
Searching aimlessly for life below the tides
I knew the truth when I ran out of time
That the hand encircled around my wrist
The lips that healed with a steady kiss
Laid my worries, my fears, my head amiss
In favor of a heart that basks in this
This light, this warmth, I'm safe to adore
Settled my blood, strengthened my core
Opened me up, brought me to shore
Then love welcomed me home through an open door

Something at the end of this rope
                       has it burning at both ends
But I'd light a thousand fires
                       to meet you here again...

She doesn’t like to hear “I need you”
It’s difficult for her to say “I miss you”
She’s afraid that “I miss you” means that one of us
Can’t be without the other and she’s nothing if not independent

She says, “you should be okay alone.”
She says,  “you shouldn’t be afraid to lose me.”

I want to say “You shouldn’t be afraid to have me”
Love, when I’m holding you close, running my fingers across the soft curve of your arm
I feel the warmth blossom in me and my lips pour a waterfall of details and compliments
I want to make you feel as if you’re like nothing else in this entire universe

I don’t say
We are all the same

I spent my childhood being alone
I know how to count the cracks in my bedroom floor
The way you count up ways to improve and strengthen
Your steadfast mind
Build a wall that you can always go back to jump behind
I admire you

I learned when I was about nine years old that I don’t need to be alive

When I’m sad, I don’t try to fix myself
I was born onto a snow graced mountaintop on the verge of avalanche
I’m not afraid to shed a tear or two

You say, “Challenge yourself. How can you escape the dark parts of your mind?”
I want to say, “these days, it doesn’t feel so dark. Lately, they feel like thoughts. Lately, the only thing that differentiates sticks and stones from words is how other people perceive them.”

The dark that you see is a blanket
I wove it from the tatters of my ripped up sleeves, rubbed thin from nervous habit
I spun the hair that unplanted itself from my head like wilted flowers into rows of golden thread
I presented my heart, still beating, in two of my hands
And I laid it onto the heap, it doesn’t care if it’s scarred and neither do I
My darkness
Is the warmest thing I know

When I tell you I love you and point out every detail of you that makes me swoon
That makes my heart beat faster
That makes me smile
When I tell you I love you, I cry
And you always say that you love that
You say you love that I’m so attached to my emotions
That I’m not afraid to show it

When I tell you I love you,
I tap into the dark recesses of my mind
That you are afraid to look too closely at

And sometimes
The tears flood out like a leaky faucet
And I know that if you knew
You’d likely call it broken
Broken walls that I was supposed to be building like you do
Broken windows I should’ve been boarding up
I don’t tell you
When I tell you I love you,
I think of the fading scars stretched across my arms
Like cross outs and deletions in poems I’ve written
That don’t make sense anymore
I think of angry shouts and toppled chairs
Broken glass and locked slammed doors
I think of the whole world turning
For no one in particular
I think about how nothing matters
Nothing matters
Nothing matters
And it doesn’t matter
Because we matter

Because when your smile hits the sparkle in your crystal blue eyes
I know that over a million places I could’ve been at this point
This was the lucky one
And I’m here
To smile
To laugh
To cry
And sometimes I feel like I was built to be nothing
And then all the sudden, I don’t care
Because even the smallest nothing
Could have always been the world to me

I’m not afraid to want you
I’m not afraid to miss you
I’m not afraid to love you
I’m not afraid to love you

I’m proud
After everything
I have a blanket
And not a wall