BeneathTheStars

Like folding laundry with you

silver lines claw at my summer fires

I'm not very good at mathematics

but I've done what's needed to draw up every possible batch of schematics

I know the cost of a fracture

a sudden flight to the west

an accidental dream of the ocean clearing my chest

I know the long road of cash to the east

the price of a bus into the mouth of the beast

I know who would be on the other side of the phone line

If I didn't want the fate that's mine

and I do, honestly

I plan to state it at the alter we talk about

but I alter and rewrite it subconsciously

and guilt is the ash after a storm

then god, I am buried head to toe in grey

from trying to chase the rain away

and now I can't see the difference

can we try again? are we doomed to brush the sun and fall like Icarus?

how do I find the honest truth

and how do I soften its deliverance

because I do love you

but I don't love myself these days when I do

maybe I'm the storm, a broken window

I try to believe it

that it's my fault something has shifted

our foundations, once perfect?

poisoned by soley my resentment?

maybe I am the storm, really

I refuse to demand a spark to our fire

from someone content in the dark

after the death of every pleading prior

to beg now, would kill any desire

for the warmth of the love I thought we had

you've gone cold, and I've gone mad

and now.. I have no idea what we have

but one bed, split by an invisible wall

I feel you but neither of us is here at all

I try to talk but our voices fall

Sometimes I take off my ring to cook

the one we picked out at the mall

the one you "proposed" in the most un romantic unlike proposal way of all

the hollow space turns my eyes to the door

the one I'll never walk away through again

but the question asks itself until meaning grows thin

and the guilt sits in my throat all day

Sometimes I miss the chase

you finally caught up, and I stopped running

it felt unfair, so I settled into who we're becoming

but can I miss us before this roommate routine?

when you'd lay out old blankets on new clovers

decorate my windowsill and tables with orchids

sometimes your bird misses the skies

sometimes I miss when we used to fly

and Sometimes I wish I could scream what's too heavy for my tongue to state

too fickle for my heart to stand in or deflate

a title's weight I never planned in (mother)

I admit this only to myself and lion's sickle

that I never built a room for this aspect

and I fear it's one I'll neglect.. standing in

the weight of something I never wanted

sits uncomfortably large in the throat of all I've ever wanted

Sometimes I call just to hear your voice

after sliding diamonds back

I love you and it's all I'm sure of

don't ask me any other questions

so I can hold onto the one thing I cannot lose

amazing day to have disorganized attachment style

eyes meeting mine

I watch your breathing quiet and volume grow

we unwrite things as they're said

and you try to guess why I'm on the floor this time

why you can't win this war

while I guess why neither of us have reached the door

love is not a doctor and yours is not a ghost

I was running from coast to coast

to and from what life sentences I'm diagnosed

when you caught my tendency to devote

into rough, but loving, hands

to unravel my plans

and love, dragged my begging knees

right into the gravel

begging please

that we should know

and maybe never

like fire, igniting tongue and throat

I brush my hair out and laugh with you

I can't believe I used to love the smoke in my lungs

drunk off kerosene and addicted to the match

pretending to be clueless until I'm in the ashes

but that's not what I'm doing now, promise

I laugh to fill the space between my doubts and yours

I hate the taste, I hate the feeling

I'm just holding the bottle, it's not appealing

I'm just testing the weight

seeing how slippery the slope really is

between switching ropes

I promise I'm stable

and I feel no relief in finally having a reason

it's not within the capability of this leaden body

not unless it's Interlaced into melancholy

because I was born a temple to grief and decay

into a broken home, a sickness in the floorboards

but you still decided to stay

to tear down scoreboards on crumbling walls

and repaint them, art hung high and laughter splattered in every room

stomach, cupboard, and heart full

you turned this place into one I can believe I belong

an empty table to a banquet

still, I don't know how to write about love

aching is the first language I was given

and so I leave your best self, our best moments, almost entirely unwritten

tucked away from my clumsy lines that only know the blue ink of a bruise

I don't have the right words to tell of you

although I was raised on scripture

I can recite the words of selfish gods

and sing beautiful hymns I used to believe

name the stars they supposedly designed

but I cannot perceive

a language, a set of words for this light of mine

by which I feel revived

in the glint in your eyes

or peeking through makeshift quilt curtains

leading kitchen sermons and diversions

I cannot perceive a word for a love I cannot believe is meant for me

I stand tongue tied, pen stuck between teeth, In the temple of what you are to me

so much of us I consistently leave unwritten

afraid to further blight the love & grace I've been given

but trust I cannot wait for the day I attempt to capture it

I'll find the words before "I do"

I'm healed

I have healed greatly

but not in the way that you talk about me

as if I've arrived at a great new destination

a new home, bags unpacked, lights off

past worrying about the costs

but after I kicked off my shoes, I've spent hours staring at the ceiling

and tracing fragments of meaning

to let it go I had to gain a whole lot

filling in the capacious gaps left by the rot

and knowing because I don't slip up on a regular basis

and what I can't fill is so small

you don't see me

*recovering*

you see a fully *recovered* body

when I walk and I talk

my physical and mental growth

the way I dance past the mirrors on our doors

but not how much I secretly hate the ways I've grown

the skin and time that had to unfold

I hate that my shoulders are wide enough to carry the girl that I was

I hate the lines she drew and the expenditure of a new bust size

I hate throwing out what used to be mine

I hate the days I feel like a machine, mindlessly following old, or new, routine

I hate making up excuses, the jeans went through the dryer five too many times

I ate so much yesterday that today's choice is mine

and I hate how visible it all is, in the passage of time

I hate that I constantly look all right

because I am

maybe my mind will find flowers to bloom

a better garden to tend to

alongside my love for you

the air will be sticky soon

like memories to skin

it'll fuck with my hair

and for all of the above, I'm utterly unprepared

I will pull a lie into a smile

because it's unfair, to you, not to be mesmerized

and I am, even by your fingers grazing mine

I love more than anything to be with you, In every day

distracted from years old blue waves

and skin set ablaze

I will stay in the grass beside you, always

piling up from stomach to floating eyes

whispering "you are everything you despise"

I blink until I can focus again, or put it to pen

devotion changed but the blood in my veins remained the same

you plan to break my fall

but it's all that I am

my edges should've been softened down by now

by the warmth of laughter and by your love

by the day that was everything I asked

and the sunlight I prayed to bask in

I should be the softness you have wrapped me in

the problem being that I'm partly convinced

it's something I was never meant to last in

it's hard enough to accept I'm meant an existence

how can I be given a slice of heaven and still defile it

a need, at times an eagerness, climbs up like bile

unpalatable and yet my favorite way to break a fall

and even in perfect runs, ineradicable

the moon pulls at my heart strings

or maybe my identity, maybe pride

whatever it is, I'm enticed

fool me once, I fall in love

fool me twice, and never again

I'm convinced I deserve it some days

what I crave

but I listen with stillness

watching the washing machine rinse cycle

It would be so thrillingly cold to jump in

from bridal to disciple

19 was a trial run, a recital

how thrilling it would be to throw out love

for spiralled veins and final planes

I would never go that far

but god please why can't I bear just one more scar

and god fucking damnit why do I still need this release

why can't I just blow smoke into a cigar, or guitar

or jump from bar to bar

It's always the same curse in my stars

you're laced into my being

a feeling like the perfect warmth of late spring

but I'm just as terrified as excited to call off the changing of seasons

for it to be solidified, that it's all I can ever be

not that I need to be free of it, of you

but what if we look back one day and hate the flowers we grew

I'm terrified that we need each other more than we know each other

that our sleep talks are more honest than up sober or drunk

maybe it's the past talking, maybe it's the medicine

I know I'm not settling

but what if my sunshine turns into sin

what if I live the play I watched my mothers act in over and over again

your heart pulled mine thousands of miles up a mountain

downwards, I would never climb

but my lungs are still trying to align with the air up here

your life pushed mine five years ahead

and I would never hit rewind

but I fear the passing of time

what if we just froze it?

are you sure we can't avoid it?

the chance of a day I could see anything but love in your gorgeous brown eyes?

I know but so did she and her and him and her.. before.......