#caitwrites

if you had studied biochemistry

and your arms were free of scars

if your mood was a flat line, and I

never sat across from you, on a therapist’s couch

would I know the joy of waking up

to your soft and sleeping face?

would I know the way you called me a hurricane

with a pretty, pretty face

would you know that I’ve never been called such things

make me blush like the sun in the summer

when the wildfires get real thick?

would I know, would I know

the sweetness with which you say

that I am the lovely dawn of all your days?

maybe we meet, in those universes

and I hope we meet, in those universes

but

we would be different people, with different flaws

for no universe thrives unchallenged

and nobody lives without cracks in their porcelain finish

I hope our crooked pieces fit together there

like they do here, when we are curled

together in the darkness of our room, breathing in sequence

trying to remember that one day, we will feel less powerless

it is not easy- it is never easy

but it was easy falling in love with you

and it’s easy to stay in love with you

we can change your hair, and change my crooked posture

change your driver’s license, and get me my nurse’s license

get you those silver lines on your chest you always wanted

and I’ll throw away your binders with a fox’s grin

we can make you stronger, and we can see you through it

and you can be their handsome firstborn

we can be the people

not that we wanted, really

but that we were always meant to be

because this universe is not the one where we

look in the mirror, and love what we see on contact

and god, if it could be easier for you

as easy as it is to wake up next to you

as easy as it is to see the future with you

I would make it so

no, I-

I don’t think it’s divine providence to suffer, baby

I don’t think the higher powers want us lonely

but here, in this way, we found one another

and so I have to love something about us, lovers

it’s hard, hard, hard

but I have the amber moment of you, across the table tonight

drinking a mai tai with Somewhere

Over the Rainbow

playing in the background, the couple next to us

keeps looking at us funny, but it’s just-

funny, well, because you fill me up so warm

my chest is swimming and you have me caught

where the waterline barely runs under my lungs

I could drown in you, I could drown in the way

that you make me feel

and I wouldn’t have that, if I hadn’t met you when we were

sat out on a summer’s day, in a gazebo, drinking iced teas

talked about the way I don’t feel solid in my body

and the way you wish you didn’t feel so solid in yours

no, I get to have the way you hold me when I cry

I get to have you reaching for me in your sleep

Oh, the moments of you unguarded, when you paint

or your love for soft things, sweet things, round things

here, I am holding this moment of you doing dishes

while I study for a test, passing me a cup of tea

I didn’t know I needed, or how you knew my shoulder hurt before I did

lover, here, I am holding the sweetness of you fitting in

to the chaos of my family and our tight knit

I have lost a lot of things, in this life

and I have grieved a lot of things, in this universe

I have lost my body and my bones, broken my own heart

and then some, set myself on fire

just to keep the house warm, when I

couldn’t find anyone else in it, when I

forgot how to speak, how to breathe, how to swim

I drowned, coughed the sea water back up, and then

kept going

because I lost a lot of things, but darling, I will

take this universe

as flawed, as broken, as leaden as it is

because in this universe,

---

it has been seven nights, watching

the way I can feel the Fair Folk’s eyes on me

when I go too close to the edge of the brush

the way the fog has eyes when you are down

by the midnight beaches

it has been one week watching them bleed

one week watching them gasp

one week watching them burn

and I burn with them

but I never

burn

out

---

because when I wake they are cold coals

they are soot on marble statues

they are still there at the breakfast table

but I am still a fire burning in my bed of stone

---

Saturday night, I sat in the circle of judges

and one by one, they bled my mother’s wrists

my father’s neck

my brother’s ribs

bones are not white when you wrest them

from the cage

they are not white until long after

the dead

have been

forgiven

but still

snow and white gold claws wrapped around my throat

until I choked myself awake

in the three a.m. downpour

I was alive, and I was not

until I knew they were still breathing too

---

Friday night, the waves had taken them

no, my mistake-

taken only you

the ocean so vast that I am nothing but

a single pebble on the shore

and it swept you out, beyond my reach

until the land buried me deep

and the sea sank you deeper

and when I woke, all I knew

was a fifteen pound weight upon my veins

and a year of pain inside my lungs

the water gave me nothing

but its salt

---

Thursday night, I was a witch

and witches burn

and so I did

---

Wednesday night, your stone face left me

on the highest mountain of the range

the flat stone top, with snow gently falling

you turned towards the base, and

drew your hand across my cheek

“You are a poison,” your bones whispered

to me-

when I woke,

I agreed

---

Tuesday night, I do not remember

anything

but nine hours, where I woke

upon the hour, like a clock

doomed to toll her bell

waiting for the hammer to fall

nine dreams of how the cosmos

might rip me from my cells

and set me free

---

sometimes, freedom

is a curse

---

Monday night, the ground rent beneath me

I slept in a cavern of gold

for gold is soft, you see

but the blades beneath it were not so soft

and the blood I bled was not so golden

and the disappointment

the betrayal

when I let go of you

when I let go of them

was not worth all the gold

on this frozen earth

---

in the morning, my mother gives me

her eyes, a January day

and hands, a scarf

I am reborn again when the sun rises

I will be buried again when she leaves

---

I know my pain is needles in your eyes

the way it is an apian buzz beneath my skin

as Atlas delivers another continent upon my shoulder

I can see tar spread

from my skin

to your hands

to your heart

I have never been very good at getting

sap stains out of clothing

and I worry I will never be able to destain

the type of hurts I leave on your skin

---

I try, and I try, and I try

to reach you

one of these days I know my fingers will catch yours

the way the knitter’s needle catches yarn

the way my ribs become a cage

a cradle

I am still new at finding soft places to land

I am still new at knowing

I deserve them

I am still new at recognizing

which fires burn, and which ones

protect

I am still new at you

---

this time, I enter the water

this time, I enter the woods

and I eat not of their food

I want not of their hand

when the pomegranate lands on the moss

before me, I know

---

I can turn towards you,

the sun

the moon

the stars,