All I have to give are Words.

I think about werewolves

the being foreign in my own body unforgivably

always sensing my rising doom

unable to stop what is and has always been me

what inescapably follows for it is in me wherever I go

for the unnatural innate to everything I am

you have always been the worst of me, every impulse unimpeded, cycling endlessly towards my own destruction, from the moment I knew you I knew.

you have always been the most of me, every thought I cannot say, spilled effortless from lips pursed, like the shock of a gun. from the moment you found me you knew.

you have always been the lost of me, the childhoods unlived, the palms unloved unread unheld, curled fruitlessly against the gape of the world and me. from the moment they caught us they knew.

You have always been the heart of me, the best of my childhood impulses, secrets traced by fingertips, illuminated by breaths as easily as existing.

what people forget when they sing songs and write poems of victims falling for victors of war torn lovers divided by society

self hatred can take many forms what better way to destroy yourself than to fall for someone who wishes you didn't exist?

I am sitting in a pew between my grandmother and my wife, a soft spring breeze blowing through the tall open windows next to us. The ceiling yawns far beyond the finger tips of the tallest child on tiptoes, and the choir softly sings of renewal and goodbyes as we rise and face each other. The sun is bright and softness surrounds us like the lightest blanket wrapped tenderly around the newest life.

You're gone, I say to my grandmother, standing straighter than she ever did in life, hand twined tenderly around my elbow like the embrace I never want to end.

I know, Love. This is goodbye.

She wraps her arms around me as I close my eyes and breath in deeply. I can smell her perfume and hairspray, the scent of happy childhood weekends and cool spring nights. The nursing home didn't allow perfume these last few years.

She wraps her arms around me and gives me the last hug I will ever receive from my grandmother. It is bony and soft and baby powder and starch and it is perfect. She is perfect and I am perfect, without anxiety or shame or duty for one shining moment. Just a girl who is loved, saying goodbye.

I stole from my own future, when I was just sixteen. Prayed the interest rate would spare me, would not be too obscene. I took apart my candor, my courage, and my trust, built myself a golden armor, that would one day turned to rust.

Then I was twenty six, and wasn't fine at all. I lost all my composure in both love and alcohol. Kept feeling like a child, but I couldn't understand that my future had come back to me, from once a child's hand.

I mourn the years she lived before she knew what she had done. The survival of the fittest, that had stolen every plum. Bargained for a future that was less than I deserved, but was infinitely better than what she thought was hers.

once upon a time who I was was utterly a little girl wholy and completely not merely made of survival.

I was a little girl but I was not made to survive was not sheltered like a rose or rooted like a tree.

Not safe enough to bloom, not strong enough to stand, Not big enough to fall, not small enough to disappear.

I am what was left when she was too little to keep going. she is still there somewhere frozen in her last moments of vitality still not understanding of what happened only relieved of the pressure of choosing.

I carry the scant heft of her in the corners of my eyes buy her dresses she cannot see but somehow understands.

Honor her in what she must think is a walled garden protected from the world. Rather than a mausoleum in which she will never grow old.

I do not know if it would have been better to let her die but I cannot bear to be left alone.

I carry her with me, always tender in my arms, and she is left unhurting as I go on.

Sometimes a bullet can look like the period at the end of a sentence.

Something that ends the conversation almost as soon as it begins, leaving no room for uncertainty after.

Sometimes I can look like the bullet at the end of a sentence.

Someone who cannot bear to leave the room for the uncertainty of you in the space before me.

Sometimes I look for a bullet at the end of a sentence that only I can see.

Somehow reminding myself that grammar has never been my strong suit.

Sometimes victory can be found in just not knowing where to look for a fight in the first place.

I carried the weight of you in my bones when I was soft and so ungrown, the impressions left behind so young. you split me open and made me home.

I grew up stranger to myself, a guest in these bones of endless doubt. Pressed to the side in a body not mine, no claim laid no path tread carelessly.

I grew up drifting from tendon to joint, finding space in my liver the small of my back, to stay, even if only a few weeks.