cameo

I can’t hear anyone talk about love without thinking plane crash. locked door. snapped matchsticks.

a choir of heartache. Every face, a costume of loss. Trumpet voices in the second line marching band out of my funeral home heart.

What I know about grief, I learned in a winter in New Orleans. Nights I would drive the city, end up by some massive body of water. Sob at the shoreline. Stare the beast in its face,  and it didn’t give a shit how loud I screamed. It roared back louder. It never stopped. Not even when I did. If there is anything that breaking like a wave has taught me. That grief has curb stomped into my teeth, it is that

When love leaves, it doesn’t always shut the shotgun door on its way out. 

The last time I left my heart wide open, the hurricane in me got so bad the slamming of the stupid screen door kept me up for months. I couldn’t stop pouring out my insides. I couldn’t see the shoreline until I pealed my skin out of bed, looked straight at it and said “Stupid door. You’re so fucking loud. Would you quit it already?”

I didn’t know the carpenters in my heart until I needed ‘em. For 3 months, my best friend called me every single morning just to make sure I was still alive. Because sometimes that is the hardest thing to do- just stay alive.

On this planet full of zombie hearts. People walking around pretending to exist. It looks so god damned easy to play along.

Listen for the people with the upturned palms whispering “Here, take my sweater. It’s fucking freezing out there.” You deserve to make it home. You compass. Waterfall smile. Umbrella chest. Grand canyon elbows. Ignore the radio static lost signal hearts when all you want are directions back to the lighthouse where your own love lives through this god damned sea storm.

Keep swimming. The lighthouse. It’s there. And it’s worth it. That kind of love only stays when it has to. And it stays. Every time.

My Mama folded laundry in the hospital that I was born in so that I wouldn’t first see the world as some back road barn in Oregon. I come from a heart made from sturdy hands. A heart made to set sail. Ride the waves.

The storm is always thick. It’s always loud. The road home. It’s quiet. Small. A warm you have to get used to. It’s a ship made from everyone that ever said they loved you and stayed when your heart slammed shut so loud you could not say it back.

Sometimes, I am so spilling over with feelings that I have to sit in my room with the lights off. blankets pulled up over my head so I don’t explode out all of my insides. I am full. I am boiling over. I am fragile. I am terrified to say that. To say that I am fragile. I break like a bad habit. Like a fever. a windshield. I break like a wave.

Sometimes love doesn’t stay, but mother fuck when it does. It is worth every fire extinguisher mouth that told you that you were not enough. It’s worth all the people that tried to put your loves honest flame out. That confused your birthday candle kiss. Firecracker mouth. For some blazing forest. torched chapel.