the songs these hands will sing

In this dream, you touch your bible and lose your hand. You open your mouth to deceive, and all your teeth fall out. You raise your voice at her, and God removes your tongue. Didn’t you always believe in a vengeful God? One who takes and takes and takes just as you do?

In backseats where i trace the equator of your face, memorizing every valley in the dark. Where you sing and i laugh and we hold each other and i wonder how anyone could ever stop loving you. In my bed with our limbs like tangled vines. Where i’m glad that i waited for you and you smell so familiar and we catch our breath and lose it again and it’s not what i imagined but somehow better. In your arms, where i tried not to tell you too much too soon. Where i bit my tongue and the word “love” bled into my mouth. In my arms, where you can take all the time you need. Where i’ll hold you as long as you stay and affection is not a bargaining chip. Where you can hear the thud in my chest chanting, “let me be home for you, let me be crashing wave and victory dance and sounding board and sidekick and every sunrise.”

I think Franz Kafka was right when he wrote, “what I really intended to say in the end remains unsaid.” I can feel that “thing in my throat that wants to get out” just as Margaret Atwood described. I can feel the reason for being here still, and I know I won’t go until I’ve let out every word and shaken out every thought. When I think about people leaving on purpose, the most immense grief is for all the beautiful words they took with them. I wanted to sit at that fireplace forever and feel the warmth of your stories, drift in the rise and fall of your voice, and memorize your jokes like scripture. I wanted to sift out your worries, gold pan your muddied confessions until all that was left were specks of hope for your future, specks you could string together on a necklace. I am a connoisseur of all that’s been said to me, the heart melting and the heart wrenching, all of it bleeding together to serve as a reminder that I’m alive and carrying more than just myself. I wanted to know you forever. And now I carry you. I carry the ghosts of who we were, on my shoulders who you could have been, and in my pocket a bank of your laughter, in the crook of my arm your question, “everything will be okay, right?” And some days I don’t believe my answer, but I still answer. Because even if you can’t, someone’s around to hear. My words could keep someone here. My words keep me here. Poets and lovers and scholars and strangers talk me into staying everyday. And I can’t leave until I’ve talked someone into staying.

We’re driving under a denim sky, following a constellation of tail lights and all i can think about is what our home will smell like someday. All i ever wait for now is an unearthed song that will soften my heart back to where it was before. i want my hands to be the same ones that pinned an atlas to my bedroom wall and traced it with a shaky poem. i want these legs to be the same ones that stomped up creaking steps to shout brave words. i want lavender nights with a choir of friends in the backseat and lyrics that taste like anthems, where what we say at midnight drips like drunken ballads and all we can think about is telling someone how much we love them. But i imagine what our home will smell like, and if there are anymore lavender nights to come, and i imagine you there finally filling in the space that was always saved for you.

i bought a candle yesterday, with a blue stripe stretched around its tin lid. It smells exactly like stepping into the entryway of your home. i press flame to its thread center, and you’re rushing down the stairs. i inhale deeply, and once again we’re sprawled out on the floor of your living room, supergluing driftwood into the shape of a Christmas tree, or laughing with your mom, holding mammoth sized bowls of Caldo de pollo, or crying over a rom com because your heart was just broken for the first time. The candle flickers, and i can smell a hundred versions of who we were. The candle burns, and i remember the last time you sat on my bed and told me the world felt too heavy. “but you,” i insisted, “make it a little bit lighter.”

i know you would fall for a drum beat. Something empty in the middle. Something you could pound your overdue rage against. i have loved many hollow people, pressed an ear to their birch shells and convinced myself i heard music, or maybe it was the sound of my own pulse racing. You can drape sunlight over anything and label it glorious. Summer is a state of mind, and you can find me smelling of sunscreen and chlorine in November. But even this is an attempt to drown out mourning.

i’m sitting at the table while you wash dishes from the meal you just made. as your hands dance over the sink, i study the outline of you, wondering how we got here. amazed at how it could be this simple. these tiny moments that make up love. your fingers brush the small of my back and it’s all i need. you laugh, and i feel full. you rest your head on my chest as we catch our breath, and it is what i dream about. you take my plate and kiss my face, and i melt.

Today, you became something more like a sunbathed memory. Today, i found a hundred ways to paint you golden, to remember your roaring laugh and kindness that demanded the room feel deeply known. Today, your most treasured anthems were blasted through car windows. Your Prosecco soaked hiccups and caramel voice stumbling down stairs to soothe a sticky moment. Our year of bold choices and lanky limbs as we would strut under city lights. Your wild, tangled dreams that stretched out in every direction. Today, you stopped being the thing i can’t change and became the thing that changed me most.