and the canaries sing no more

then suddenly, without warning, without me knowing– you became the best thing. it used to be my morning coffee, now it’s you on the first hours of the day with your sleepy eyes that make me want to witness every sunrise if it means i could have you this way, under the morning light, for all my life. it used to be the soft sheets i run to when it’s been 3 days since i last saw the sun, now it’s you, your warmth, and those arms that welcome me home every time. it used to be just the smallest things i tried to find for my own on days that i needed something to convince myself that there is happiness in the mundane, and then now it’s you– the unexpected reward, the other half of my heart, the best friend of my soul, my only.

These arms aren’t chains around your waist when my fingers clutch to cling to hang on,            without a doubt in my bone                          that we belong.     Can I pull you closer than this?     Can I pull you inside of me?     Can’t we disappear in one another?     You make me feel like we could.     There is a state of oneness I have no recollection of that now throbs inside my heart, throat, loins, and diaphragm;     my complete corporeality longing to be product of a merger between every fiber.     It’s you.     It’s you and I’ve found you.     There will be stars happily dying in the knowledge there is a shine that lasts forever.

Here is what I know: You drink your coffee black and we are afraid of each other. Once you kissed my neck in front of your friends and it made me very shy. Once you kissed my stomach and I started crying. I see the tender way you touch things and want to kiss your nose but I keep my mouth to myself. Your collarbones are craters big enough to fit my fist into. You are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in months. I was not good to the last person I loved so I punished my heart (I let it break and bleed out then roughly sewed it back together) It is hard to write poems when I only know how to fuck you. I am always trying. I am thinking of Somedays. I am saying goodbye. You asked why I never write anything honest so I am writing you this.

He loved you like he was five years old and he’d just discovered fire. He loved you with both of his hands, with his eyes, with his mouth, like he didn’t always know what he was doing but it was all coming naturally anyway. He loved you like he was watching sunsets and sunrises in your smile, like every time you laughed his day got a little brighter, like when he held you, he was holding the sun in his arms. It felt so simple and right. And even though, sometimes, there were fights that removed the sunshine, you always found a way to get it back. And even though there were tears, from both of you, in a back cupboard somewhere, there were always tissues too. And even though there were moments when you doubted, he was always there to make the doubts go away. And for this you loved him. For all of this, you loved him. He loved you like he was five years old again and discovering fire. And you loved him back.

Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but ‘Mom’s’ probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.

i. you were like poison and when you held my heart in your hands you claimed that you were good honest and pure ii. but when you handed me back my heart, it was laced with pain and your name carved so deep inside of it that there was no way of scratching it out iii. so now you’re gone and i am here and his lips doesn’t feel as warm as yours but it makes me feel something and at least he comes back iv. i wish you didn’t wrap your arm around me that night because now that i know what real warmth feels like i can’t stop searching for it and it’s starting to drive me insane v. i still tremble at the sound of your name and with a heart so heavy, i still leave a cup of coffee out for you but you never liked it cold so i stopped doing it vi. the thought of you still breaks my heart.

I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.

Therefore, dark past, I’m about to do it. I’m about to forgive you for everything.

I want a tattoo of the first morning we woke up together. I want the memory to hurt.

How dare you linger on my lips and then kiss me like a stuttering apology with excuses stapled to the roof of your mouth. I still remember you like a dream tattooed to the inner walls of a long term memory but some days I wonder if you existed at all.

I will remember your small room, the feel of you, the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons, our nights, our bodies spilled together, sleeping, the tiny flowing currents, immediate and forever, your leg my leg, your arm my arm, your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.

The sun does not touch the moon, but, oh, how he loves her. He lights this world so that she may see his heart burn for her on the other side.