Paper Flowers Press

You say you don’t like metaphors< /br> because you prefer things simple< /br> and truthful< /br> but how else am I to describe< /br> the way you pull me from the shadows< /br> blinking and timid< /br> and show me I’m allowed< /br> to step into the light?

Spring is the bravest season daring to grow and reach for life never knowing if the snow has really gone for good.

I am just a fool asking for love when all I have to give are words.

Artists will be the last ones left. There will be songs streaming from the backs of broken churches poems will litter the ground written in the dust of battles lost and won

Give me the day-by-day leaders the ones who wake in the morning and do not think twice about the way they live, the way they love. The ones not thinking about the mismatched wanderers finding each other in fifty years, realizing their hearts have the same beat, ready to battle anyone who says they shouldn't. Give me the guides who did not set out to change the world, who wanted only what was right, only what was true. Sometimes the greatest act of resistance is holding hands.

This summer is nostalgic for the almosts. Do you remember how the waning moon watched us, close enough that I smelled of your cologne, but never quite touching? The humidity of these days feels like the weight of us the cloak of not knowing, of wanting, but being afraid to ask. Memories like these could create diamonds.

Every morning I wake up and dig my way out of the rubble. I am piecing together the shattered vases of nights I can't remember, trying to decipher the hieroglyphs that you left behind. I will retrace our steps, blinking through the ash, but nothing here will be fully whole again.

I left my heart in San Francisco New York Washington D.C. on the streets of every city where my sisters, aunts, grandmothers laced up their boots and moved forward. Let the sidewalks be littered with the trampled pasts we carried on our backs. We are writing the next chapter.

It sounds romantic wrapped up in a blanket with a cup of tea and open notebook; someone had to bring me the mug because I couldn't muster the energy to boil water the last six pages of the book have nothing but harsh strokes and outlines. I have written nothing of substance in months. Every day I am going going going but these days life feels more like a treadmill and I am exhausted.

Every morning when you leave, I take a look around the room and make sure you've left something behind. I worry, some days, that I am not enough of a reason for you to come back.

I have been trying for days to put these pains into words to make sense of what seems like an ever-growing hurricane. All I know is every time I watch the news I add a line to your obituary. It is no way to live; this waiting ties knots in nerves. I am holding my breath, in case you need it one day. Your key is in the lock. I exhale until morning.

I forgot I was a writer until someone reminded me. I forgot that I used to have these words tattooing the inside of my skin forever raw and stinging aching for a way out. I talk to you now, instead, but I've always been more of a listener. Sometimes I'm not sure if you created these words in me or if they created you.

The only way to fit through doors lately is to trim the branches of my anxiety. I am breaking and sawing and peeling, but it is always springtime in my head and they grow alarmingly flowerless, leafless, endlessly reaching out to keep everyone at an arm's length. I do not remember the last time I felt comfortable lying down.

All that's left on the polaroids of our year together are the dates and the names of every place we wanted to keep in our pockets. The colors have faded and swirled so that hands and mouths and waists all become one a little like we did, and I wish scribbles like 6/12 1:30pm Ohio didn't mean anything to me, but I know what every shade of green in that square used to be, like I used to know you, and I can see your hand marking the bottom reverently, every number a verse in a holy book we were writing ourselves. I still pray, sometimes, you know. I can still feel you here.

You say you love the way my pieces fit together, but I am afraid you have pocketed some that were not as beautiful. There are holes where my dreams used to be. I am never put back into the box complete.

I want to paint you pictures of how the world looks reflected in your eyes, but there is dust on my table, and dishes in the sink, and I cannot get off the couch, even when you say my name. You say patience isn't a virtue you ever put much stock in, but thank you for sewing me back together every time I begin to unravel.