“I am almost home, in this body. Almost something holy.”

what do I do when it hurts? when everything is shock steaming me open and I only know how to run?          how do I stay           and survive?

To say “I’ve never loved anything the way I love you” would be a lie. Before we met, there were days I did not believe you existed. I had more love than this body could hold & Mama had always said, give what you don’t need. So I gave it away to dog park pitbulls & summer orchids & old books that smelled like promises. Handed it out like grocery store flyers to seashell whorls & boys with fist-shaped mouths aimed for the walls of my chest & girls who kissed with the desperate thrash of salmon on silver hooks and still I had so much love. For years I offered myself to scraped knees & nails bitten down to bone & lonely parking lots, & no matter what I did there was nothing I loved enough to feel it back. I was born an ocean and I emptied it into hearts too small for the overspill, evacuated and left me behind. Silly me. I mistook lighthouses for the moon, dressed up impermanence for decades. And then you. You, with arms the breadth of deep space, discovered the part of the eye that converts belief into light. You are not the sun or the moon, but the hand clasped in mine while we watch clouds shaped like starships trailing maps in the night sky. I have no use for luminaries. It is your voice in the dark that reminds me nothing need be seen that cannot be felt. I have no use for sight. It is your lips on my neck reminding me to keep one last thing for myself.

the first time i dissociated it was the most natural thing / like stepping out of my own skin into / something less me and therefore more comfortable