Keep Your Shoes On

 I hope someday

You grow yourself a better man.

Your voice hit me harder than hands ever can.

You'll never feel

how the earth under bare feet, is kind.

An open voice on a rolling hill, nowhere I step is out of line.

Carry your bones,

I'll cary mine. They're inside

my body, light. Keep your wings, they cannot swim with the tide.

Angels in the ocean,

are as meant to be as you and I,

You know I loved you, but you'd never swim with pride.

Keep your shoes on,

gardener. Your anemones and mine

are different. Hillside flowers won't bloom in the sand.

I don't need to grow

a garden beneath the sea. I take it

as it comes, as it sways beneath the waves and eats away at the rocks.

Yes my heart is full

of your memory and our sobbing. Yet

it's my space to mourn, I'll let the waves call loud, to wash away the dread.

The sealight sings me a lullaby, my spirit clinging to her tune.

Her voice speaks love, and her touch is mild.

I've been sleeping in her arms ever since I was a child.

Keep your bare feet covered, gardener.

 I will stroll away in mine.

Hollow Bones

 I went through all our pictures,

after two months where the glimpse of your face was traumatic.

They went by so fast,

the felt hundred years I scrolled through in two minutes, dramatic.

If you ask me "do you love me?",

my answer is a clear "I don't know". 

Not because I am cruel,

but because I'm so used to throwing my feelings away,

I don't know what they're supposed to mean or why it hurts,

if they linger will I find out? But it stings.

A hundred years of you,

in less than three months. In your house. 

In this small room where the outside world doesn't exist,

A hundred years of tears.

In all my memory only you

have made my head spin like that. Not even the moon,

for who I stayed awake until sunrise, just to talk.

If I see your face

and hear your voice, hold your hand,

Will you take my heart,

or will it set me free. I can only imagine, lest I see.

You're not Apollo and you're not Selene,

you're an angel, and I'm the one with hollow bones.

I can't dare to call you my angel anymore.

But that name is only for you.

You're an angel,

and I'm the one with hollow bones.

Anemone

 I don't know

If I want to keep you in my heart for you

or for myself

I don't know

Wether it's better for us to disappear

and move on to different lives

I don't know

How will I feel when I see 

your face again?

Do you want

what's best for me? Or will you use me 

to heal yourself instead

Do I miss

the touch of your heart and you voice,

or the vague memory of it?

Should I speak,

or wait for you to reply to my silence?

I meant it.

I won't grow your anemones.

I've enough of your screams in my lungs.

And there's limited space between my bones.

You're no longer the one I'm dancing with, in my mind.

Thunder Only Happens When It's Raining

I’ve only loved people privately and never had the opportunity to properly explore my feelings. You are the only person I’ve loved that I clung to, spoke my feelings to. And I tried desperately to not run away.

I am confident in myself, and I convince myself that I am, but I am insecure. I am insecure about my identity and how I want to be seen and who I want to love and how I want to be loved.

And I realized that that’s what I meant when I said that we were at different stages in out lives. I was not trying to make you feel guilty about your age, and I told you that, but I didn’t know exactly what I truly meant. I meant that you have experienced your sexuality and identity in your life. You’ve been with people of different genders and experienced what it is that you want and do not want and what has made you unhappy and figured out what you long for. And I haven’t, and I really want to. But by being with you I also negated a very recent part of my identity that I found comfort in, but have never had the chance to experience. 

I did not mind being your girlfriend even as I went by neutral pronouns, femininity didn’t bring me discomfort I relented my limited understanding of myself to please you. You wanted to be seen as a man with a girlfriend, and were understandably distraught that outsiders saw us as two female partners. However for me the thing that made me uncomfortable was to be seen as the girl to a man. I longed since childhood to love a woman, and loving a man felt to me like that opportunity was being taken away from me.

And I did not ever see you as a woman. I understood you as a boy, perhaps an androgynous entity on his way to becoming fully as he wished. A boy wanting to become a man. And I know you understood me as “they”, but I know too that you saw me and wanted me as “your girl”. And I do not mind the girl part as much as I mind the part where I am an item to be possessed. I never want to be possessed by a woman either, but the fact to be “mine” to a man is something I find terrifying. I feel like I had been playing a role. I was not myself, but I was playing a "girl", a "girlfriend". A pedestal you placed me on, and I liked the attention, but it ate away at my bones.

And sometimes I feel like I want to be with you again. I want to hug you and comfort you, and use the knowledge and courage I’ve gained after breaking it off with you, to make for a better relationship on my part. I think about you every day, and I know that I love you. I don’t love you as a boyfriend, perhaps not as a friend either, but I love you as a human being. I care for your existence.

But I also remember all the hurt and worry, the anxiety, the discomfort and the sadness and the wrenching of my heart inside my chest. The infection that repeated to my mind that I wanted to die, so that I could escape. The fact that I never yelled as hard as I did when I clutched onto your chest and cried. That my pain was so that the only way I knew how to get it out was to scream and wail, and hold you desperately until I fell asleep. And how afterwards I felt like all that was left to my body and soul was an exoskeleton, and the only thing moving me was the wind and promises I'd paid for and made. And I wonder, is it worth it? I cannot make it okay for you at the expense of my own wellbeing.

Would I be your beloved again, if you changed? Would I want you back? Would you? Can we be friends, or is it useless to cling to each other? I know the answer to none of these. Perhaps the corner of my mind where I hug you tenderly, where now when you ask “what to do” I play music and we dance to Rihannon as the rain falls down, is just me longing for something that you and I can never have. Something we can never have because of the people that we are. Because what I want is not what you want, is it? And what you want is not for me, either, is it? And as my dreams unwind, I’m still in the state of mind. And perhaps where I will find the tender hugs and the peaceful dances, is in the heart of someone else. Perhaps what I need is to train my mind, so what I see is not your face. Shall I just let the rain swallow this memory whole.

You don’t listen to these songs, anyway.  

Dreams Unwind, Lover's State of Mind

Do I want a love that makes me fall to pieces?

No matter how many poems it gives me, it's not nice.

Because I know what the love I had for you

did to crush and wring my heart, small and dry.

I want to know if you loved me as I loved you,

or if you just clung to me so desperately

because you feared to be alone, and then loved me some?

What words cross your mind when the image is who I am?

I want to love and hold desperately as I held you,

but this time with no hesitation. With no fear.

A love that makes me want to come home, instead

of run away and regurgitate my guts, heart in tow.

I want to know both that which is lighthearted and playful,

and that to which my veins and heart cling to and curl around.

I want to know a smile that's like sunflowers, 

I want someone that grows bright blooms instead of panic.

In another world, it could have been you.

But I will not mourn, for that concerns the us-others.

Did you ever kiss my forehead to say goodnight?

And from me, what did you want? 

Susan's Letters – To my first ever beloved

 I've only written to you once,

and the poems began long after you'd left.

But today I read of Emily's beloved,

and I wondered: "have I ever–

or will I ever–love as strongly?"

And the thought of you came to my mind.

I did not love you as strongly,

and did not love you for as long.

But you were there, ever-blooming summer,

before my letters to love had even begun.

And as I reminisce of a lover lost to summer,

or perhaps mourn a summer lost to love,

I remember you and I am grateful.

The glare of unruly salt, sweat, and laughter, 

to whom Apollo's shine could not ever compare.

I smile all the smiles you gave me, 

clean the cuts and scrapes of my knees you'd mend.

I'll disinfect the wound as you taught me,

and feel the sun on my skin through the clouds.

And the thought of you heals me as I move forward.

To my dearest, once-best-friend.

Your happiness is mine too.

You, who made love sunflowers.

To the Birds

Why do I still write to you?

It has not nearly been a while.

I need a place to put these feelings.

Are they even strong enough to leave?

The hardest cry I ever put into the sky,

is the one you wrestled from my chest.

How is it, that you ever held that power?

If I miss you again, tell me to not return.

If I love you again, I'll struggle to stay awake.

if I remain alone will my eyes stay open?

If I miss you again I'll tell myself, first,

feed my body to the birds.

Let me, before I reach for your hand,

Feed my body to the birds.