I have hung everything I have
on this city.
I push pins in a pattern
write my own heart
on the map.
The minutes I can’t remember
for choking on nothing and laughter.
The nights the wind is so vicious
I breathe in brave and our bodies lift a little.
The change and the waterfalls
and the hearts
I resent for being
so worthy.
The cards I toss on the table
like silent truths that sit on my shelves,
I don’t have any other way to give them.
The kisses that can sing on their own,
I want you to hear you speak without words.
The quiet nights holding this pen,
hoping I can tell someone about everything and you.
You know
you are my favorite city
and the first place
I remember really waking up in.
Something about this
makes me want to
fall into the sky,
dream with the same head
that can be drowning.
I am carrying my weight
in gold and little gifts
but I can’t bring happy
to some places.
And I breathe in a little every day
but there is only so much air
that will fit
before I leave a little behind.
And I will love you
but there are days I build bridges
and there are days I set fires.
On the days I feel more lost
than memories in the darkness,
than my thoughts in your sleep,
than a century,
I can call on
every time you’ve held me
and paint the ground open with purity.
you don’t want me because I spend
too much time
crying in elevators.
I am a slave to the not-enoughs
hibernating in my throat
and when no one comes to save me
I don’t tell you because I am caving
and I don’t want you to crawl where I’ve been.
you don’t want me because I don’t know what I’m doing.
admit it
and you can’t make me anything
I have always wanted to be for you
so all I have is a pebble with your name hacked into it on impulse
I have nothing else lasting to give you.
you don’t want me because my voice carries like bad news.
I like to think I tell you everything
but there are things I don’t ever want to hear come from my own lips
or the dam will break and I will never stop shaking.
and sometimes I write things
not because they are true
but because they sound like a waterfall
and I think you want to be drenched.
I am not honest,
trust me.
What are we going to do with all this love?
I ought to call it mine.
But honestly I ought to scratch the sky open
and dream something worth writing down
and work a miracle rather than pleading for one
and listen to the song that breaks my own heart
and feel so much something in me explodes
and do a lot of things
I might never do.
I’m left seeing blue in half a world,
I am not here to beat as loud as she does,
she breathes in a window and blows out a supernova.
as she pulls from me I feel the lifeline stretch.
We turn to dust, to gold,
she glitters the same.
I’ll buy this place
even when I know it’s already catching fire,
see it burn so I can say
for once
I haven’t wasted my time.
I’ll buy this place full of future ash,
breathe it in just to say
for once
I’ve made something a beautiful part of me.
I can’t seem to command this heart
so once again I find myself
putting you back in poetry.
Trust me,
you are not
stronger than me
you are just stronger
than who I thought I was.
I am on the giant’s ladder
inside this house
and I didn’t know how much of a reach it was
until I found you and grew three sizes too perfect.
Remember that place?
It made a gorgeous sky-high fire,
we made a gorgeous sky-high fire,
they could see it
for miles around.
They whispered it
as the flames went down.
They spoke it like a drug
into every pool and valley,
every footstep when
they ran into each other.
They wove it into the colorful lips
of the world’s best storytellers.
They called it
something they had never seen before.
Maybe if we weren’t
so damn quick
to call ourselves each other’s burdens.
I am sorry
you get
caught
on my
corners
escape
on my
edges
I am sorry
you have
nothing
to be jealous about
everything
to lose
The blades
on my
shoulders
will not
take sandpaper
The sounds
in my
head
will not
take no
for an answer
All the truth
I could tell
spells out for you
I can’t stand anything
I can’t change
so quiet is
the only place
I know how
to be sorry
I will try to
shout it to the sky
for you.
I am addicted to saltwater,
I got sober alone.
I wear my thoughts like saltwater,
soak them in too much of the day,
held down to the rhythm of my footsteps, getting here
and passing everyone I will never know.
I am addicted to saltwater,
I got sober wishing I would stop crying
over things I will regret wasting tears over.
From this twelfth step
you should know how hard I wrap myself around you,
how I embrace the saltwater it takes to slip through your door,
how hard I hold my breath
when I take a level to my messy
like I think I can figure it out
with logic.
We last like a horizon,
I can’t sketch
exactly where the sand meets the sea,
and sometimes it storms and I think I will never be able to pull anything out of this whirlwind
I’m just trying to make angels.
I am addicted to gravity,
but I keep trying to wake up in the clouds.
I wear my thoughts like gravity
when I’m around you,
used to
being held so tightly to the ground
and still feeling weightless.
I am addicted to gravity,
I got sober right on the ground
with your hand in mine.
When I am a shipwreck
you find the right pieces
that haven’t been torn up
and tossed around too long.
Your hands keep me grounded,
I collapse like a raindrop
something trapped in the empty I leave behind
I want it to be something worth seeing.
I give my shaking sins a name
in your desire to pin my soul,
I know how to let myself go
trust some of my blueprint with you.
When I am crumbling
you remind me I am not even complete,
we shatter then we solve,
we break then we build.
I thought I would make it to dry land
but when I found myself here instead
I am in the storm,
I am laughing in the lifeboat.
Your hands hold me together,
I swear sometimes I can hear them saying
we are not finished building you yet.
When I lie with you so long
I trip over the stumbling stars in your eyes
and you don’t even know how hard you try,
but when my cracks show
your eyes reflect things that don’t work.
I am a tourist in my own skin on the verge of breaking down
I melt into puddles and
I turn sticky saltwater into lonely and lonely into aimless and aimless into uselessly busy,
I turn lonely into a lifestyle.
And I know I built this tower around you
but you’re a terrible altar,
an amazing cliff.
I will fall with my valuables but won’t give them to you.
I will set the cracks in my own arms and lean on you.