#y.z.

"I almost thanked you for teaching me something about survival back there, but then I remembered that the ocean never handed me the gift of swimming. I gave it to myself."

"Scientists, somewhere, are still looking for stillness. They don't know the silence of your ghosts. This is the love they were trying to tell us about. At night I listen to my dead heart and name it after a dead country. The birds in my blood stop mid-flight. When I think of you, a war ends. You tell me about the time your world went quiet. How you howled at love like a moon. You warn me of your dark, and I stay. I stay, and I swallow your shadows whole."

There are poems inside of you that paper can’t handle.

I almost thanked you for teaching me something about survival back there, but then I remembered that the ocean never handed me the gift of swimming. I gave it to myself.

I hope she kisses you with the entire universe in her mouth so that you wake up with stars on your lips and a smile that drips constellations.

I promise not to call you again if you promise to notice. Anything to make you miss me.