pretty little drafts

My sorrow is not a verdict,

just a wave I have to bear.

It rises, falls, and breaks apart,

but still, I learn to care.

With every breath, my beating heart

is choosing one more day.

I do not need to feel like hope

If you can’t sleep,

reach out to me.

Tell me nothing turned out the way you wanted.

Tell me it’s not so complicated,

you just need me in your life.

I’ll be dreaming,

your face two inches from mine, our noses brushing,

our laughter opening the sky like birds startled from the trees.

Your hands will surround me,

dawn climbing the branches.

The stars will loosen from the heavens and nest in the leaves.

The moon will forget it’s meant to keep its distance.

There, nothing pulls away.

Please,

tell me I won’t have to keep

One minute empowered,

the next a puddle.

What else is there

but to walk away

before I wither,

roots ripping

from reluctant earth,

proud as a pine

against the wind,

yet split

beneath the bark.

How cruel the craft,

to become

too much ghost

for the haunted house

that built you.

I carried

my own heart home,

its ribs

a birdcage

full of feathers

with no bird

left to blame.

One minute empowered,

the next a rainstorm

searching gutters

for the sky

I gather every small flame I can,

telling myself I have survived this season before,

my hands still trembling

around the light.

There are names I carry,

echoes still waiting

for a voice.

Where were your hands

when mine had forgotten how to hold?

Why did the rooms learn my weeping

better than the people I loved?

I’m expected

to braid daylight

from the loose ends

of dusk,

yet no one asks a flower

to bloom

without the sun.

I want

to lay down the armor,

be held instead of holding,

to believe

someone else

might keep watch

until morning,

for once, closing

my eyes

without fearing

still it lives

something buried deep

beneath the leaf fall of seasons

stirs

a root

remembering water

the old sorrow

unfurls its pale bloom

threading itself

through the dark soil of the body

until its bitter flower

opens in the throat

and every breath

carries its pollen deeper

the years fold closed

and all the grief

I thought the earth had taken

One day glass,

one day floodwater.

The river between us

swallows every word meant for you.

I kneel at its edge,

watching the current carry away

the compass from my chest,

the key to your voice,

every answer I thought I had.

The reeds bow and rise,

bow and rise,

as if practicing goodbye.

Above us,

the dusk gathers blue bruises

and paints them into the sky.

Still, if winter asks for one more leaf,

I would give it mine.

If the night asks for one more star,

I would loosen one from my ribs.

And if morning carries you

to some far shore beyond my seeing,

I will still thank the river

I am tired of surviving

my own thoughts.

They keep building rooms

inside my head,

and every room contains

a smaller room.

Somewhere at the center,

I find myself again,

curled around an old belief:

that I am a burden people carry

until they can set me down.

So I spend my days

taking up less space.

Guessing.

Apologizing.

Trying.

And every night,

the same fear returns,

whispering that

no matter how hard I try,

I am one mistake away

from giving everyone

You memorize the constellations

scattered across my shoulders;

name each one,

they belong to you.

A whispered thought,

barely louder than breath,

and suddenly

the whole sky tilts.

You cook,

I linger in the kitchen doorway,

pretending not to stare

at the gold flecks in your eyes,

gathering light.

A favorite show plays,

your head rests in my lap,

my hands wander through your hair,

and the evening suspends,

unwilling to end.

Outside, the stars keep turning.

If love came back now,

it would find the house abandoned.

It would knock softly. It would call my name.

It would stand in the garden long after dark,

listening to the leaves drag over stone.

But grief lives there now,

having changed the locks while I slept.

Every floorboard answers to its weight.

Sometimes I think one honest confession from you

could still unbar the windows.

Instead, dust drifts through the late afternoon,

soft as snowfall.

The mirrors forget their purpose,

Loss lingers longest in the blue hour wreckage,

when the house goes still

and every small sound seems sacred with meaning.

The mind turns slowly there, water

circling a darkened well, asking again

whether remorse can ripen into repair,

whether ruined things remember

the shape they held before the breaking.

Some nights, hope spills through rain-streaked glass,

silvering the edges of grief.

Some nights, the ache itself feels endless,

a thorn pressed deep beneath velvet ribbon.

Always, the heart keeps vigil in the dark,

wanting the wound to be worthy of mending,

wanting love to return not merely weeping,

but willing to kneel among the splinters

Scarcity is not the sorrow.

Selection is.

Outside, whole gardens climb toward summer.

Windows glow honey-warm at dusk.

Devotion moves toward me

without needing to be begged.

Open hands.

Easy laughter drifting close at midnight.

You’re quite charming.

Beautiful.

So much wanting in the world,

and none of it rare.

Yet none of it means enough.

The heart stays fixed

on the one closed window,

the one cold room,

where love turns its face away

I rehearse restraint

hold your name behind my teeth

let minutes wilt untouched beside your words

pretend I am the kind of woman

who does not wait at the window

counting headlights like prayer candles

but beneath all my practiced silence, I

want to want you ruinously

moon-drenched and longing

to crawl inside your open ribcage like ivy after rain

let the whole starving cathedral of me

ring its bells without shame

never made

The bench was damp with coming rain.

I tried to read Sylvia Plath,

though the morning kept slipping

from my hands.

A spider wandered over the words

one after another.

Always gentle with living things, I

lifted it away with my bookmark,

a small slip of Gustav Klimt gold

held out like a bridge

back into the world.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder

dragged its hem across the sky,

and all the while

another disappointment made its place in me

so quietly

I almost called it nothing.

That is the terrible thing,

the endless procession

of lesser sorrows

arriving soft-footed as spiders,

each one so slight

it would sound foolish spoken aloud,

until at last the heart is buried beneath them,

Air tore through me clean as a blade.

My mind, already fevered,

opened every locked room at once.

Panic has a talent for making eternity

out of a few ruined seconds.

I thought you would come after me.

Even then,

I thought you would come after me.

The water,

black blue, bridal, merciless,

gathering me in with both hands.

I struck it hard enough to come apart.

Hard enough to stop calling this fear

and call it reality.

Below the surface, acceptance was not peace.

It was only the body giving up its argument.

Only the lungs learning

what sorrow weighs.

Still, with the light thinning over me,

with the deep taking hold at my ankles,

I thought you would come after me.

Even then,