for gentle hearts

When I let go of you, I started to believe in the impossible. Perhaps, even in myself again. That there was more to this set of bones, other than what history said. That my hands, small and always cold, could hold on to the moon if I tried to. I wanted to blame you for making me forget this. But the blame is mine, for letting you. Tonight, I met someone who looked at me as if they’d seen the sun set in my eyes and they were waiting for dawn to break at any moment. And just maybe, I might’ve believed them too.

Sadness is my neighbor. I hear it come home at 2am on weekdays, listen as it tries to open my front door with its keys. Some nights we have dinner together, it sits in the little chair by the window and smiles so big I almost forget it’s name. Sadness, holds the door open for me when we meet in the elevator. It tells me what it had for breakfast, reminds me to come by for a loaf of bread. Sadness looks happier than me some days, looks terrified on rainy days, sounds drowsy on Sundays, gets angry over the phone too. It forgets to pay rent at times, but always remembers to call flowers by their names. Sadness, probably hurts the most out of all my neighbors. But it always makes the point to teach me, that it’s much more than the pain it holds.

You waited for sunsets and people who packed to chase after stars, and always wondered why your mornings felt so empty.

I want love to be the motif of my life. In all its forms. Love for my job, my home, my family and friends. Love for the seasons, the skies, the in between moments. And if ever I can't find it, I want to have the courage to leave and keep searching for it.

Sometimes it happens, not right away, but you’ll look back and realize how far you’ve come. How the things that dragged you down are different now, not the same as they used to. Sometimes you make it out of the fire without remembering what it felt like to live in a burning home. You forget the taste of ash, your breath stops fogging up windows. And I’m glad for this. That no matter how much hurt you carry, when you join the lines on your palms these will never spell the word pain.

"Straighten your back," my mother says and for the sixth, maybe seventh time that week, I unfold out of this crumpled shape that has my name. The lines on my palms, my stretch marks, they're nothing but crease marks of all the times I had to origami myself to look the part.

You look like another word I could confuse with love.

When I said they never taught me about love at home, it wasn't poetry. It was a warning.