revolution

i long to travel
to everywhere you've been
and learn the reasons for
the sparkle in your eye,
the scent on your skin,
the depth of your laugh.
i love these places all
despite knowing none,
for they held you
nurtured you
changed you
while i could not
and moved you back
toward me
once the earth
finished
spinning.

Coming Home

I want to apologize for how frantic and perhaps even desperate I have seemed the past few days. I realize to you my behavior might just appear clingy--maybe even pathetic to a degree. Here's what you don't see: the depth of my love for you, that came on suddenly after lying dormant in my belly for so long. A need for your body and soul, for your touch and your voice and your warmth and your everything. A desire to feel safe, which after seeing you was fulfilled for the first time in years. A longing to give all of myself to somebody deserving of me, and who knows me better in all of my states of being than you? Here's what you don't see, and can't: an eternity of ache threatening to define me if I have to spend a day without you.

In three short months, you have grown for me from a memory I tried desperately to suppress and forget into a reality better than anything I could have expected. You are as you once were, but also so new. I wish nothing more than to explore who you have become, to come to know with intimate familiarity the spaces between your fingers, the freckles on your back, the curve of your spine as you stretch in the early morning light. It has been so long since I felt for someone such intensity that tears well in my eyes and flow freely. They are happy tears, tears of disbelief that you have come around again, tears of gratitude for your presence, tears that exhilarate my blood and set my bones shaking.

Do you remember the first time we talked about forever? Five years ago now, lying in your bed, a tangle of sheets and skin and energy. You looked into my eyes and I think without even realizing the words forming in your mouth, you asked me to marry you. And I, with the same disregard for the weight of my response, said yes. Did we mean it at the time? In our naivety, perhaps. I could not see much beyond the months ahead, could not see how I would change, how you would grow and shift. Nor could you. But surely the passion that we felt in that moment lent some truth to our words.

You told me last weekend that you would not--could not--live your life without me by your side. I smiled and laughed, unsure if you were serious and unwilling to believe that someone could care so much for me as to think about a world absent my being, and reject it. What I should have said was this: I won't let you. Younger versions of ourselves willingly let each other go, convinced we would find something, someone better. Fate shook its head and sighed, knowing we would discover in time the faults in our logic. Have we ever learned a lesson so painful, so wonderful? You cannot live without me. I tell you now, with the same sincerity you showed me, that I cannot live without you.

Our history is marked as much by pain as it is by love. Years ago, we hurt each other callously, thinking our youthful skin would heal the wounds we inflicted. There is ache in our hearts we have not yet named, blisters still forming and scars not yet dissolved.

We are learning how to heal. It has not been easy, of course, but then again a love as wild as ours cannot help but be tumultuous. At times it feels as though the distance between us, the literal miles that separate us, have conspired against our reunion. But as I told you today, in words unable to communicate the weight of their truth, it will get easier. The space between us is an obstacle, yes, but one we can surmount. What are a few months apart when compared with a lifetime together?

You told me today that neither of us should have to work for a relationship. It should come naturally, you said. I cannot deny that the last week has been bumpy, the most unnatural our joint presence has felt since we ripped ourselves from each other four years ago. But I refuse to discount the overwhelming joy and freneticism that fills the air when we are together. These fissures in the road are disruptive, but they can be fixed. I will take the asphalt of my remorse and fill each pothole with love, tenderly pave over our sorrows with the promise of forever.

I told you today never to let me go. You told me to relax. Everything's fine. But "fine" is too commonplace to describe us, darling. It always has been. Our story is defined by the immensity of our passion, by the enormity of our need for one another. "Fine" is infinitesimal in comparison to who we are together, to us.

Here, love, is my hand. I offer you my world, I give you my everything.
Join your palm with mine.
We have always been one.

intentions

The last time you did this, you called me exactly two weeks after you broke all contact. We've hit that mark again. I'm trying really hard not to wait for the phone to ring. Lately, though, I've discovered that my willpower doesn't stand a chance against my heart.

insomnia

Fuck.
I miss you so much.

You are still in my dreams
(which haven't quite caught up to reality,
since there we are in love) --
but lately
I fear closing my eyes
to find you've disappeared.

I don't want to
be alone
awake
and
asleep.

Being without you,
my eyes open,
is hard
enough.


Today the air smelled like
that first August night
when you leaned in
unexpectedly
and changed my life.

They say smell
is the strongest form of memory,
but I'm so afraid
you've forgotten.


I would give anything
to feel your warm skin
as it promises me
everything will be
okay.

loss: a checklist

God I miss dancing with you.

I miss touching your skin and feeling your lips kiss mine.

I miss your laugh. I still hear it sometimes, but I miss the way it sounded when it happened because of me.

I miss the way we would look at each other, having entire conversations through our eyes. (You have such beautiful brown eyes.)

I miss your soft snore and your complaints about my hair getting in your face as you slept.

I miss the comfort of having someone who knows everything about me.

I miss talking about our future, imagining our lives becoming one life together, no matter the obstacle.

I miss running my hands through your hair and rubbing your back for hours on end, even when you'd fall asleep before returning the favor.

I miss your intellect. You are so inquisitive and I think maybe I fell in love with you because of that. But then I fell in love with every other bit of you; there was (and still is) so much to love.

I miss going out with you and holding hands as we passed by strangers, wondering if they looked at us and saw beauty in our love.

I miss driving on the highway singing Avril Lavigne at the top of our lungs.

I miss our intimacy. Nothing else could or ever will compare.

I even miss those times you'd run towards me full force to envelop me in a hug (even though I was usually terrified you'd knock me over).

Mostly, though, I just miss my best friend.

evolutionary theory

does it matter who looked first?

the point is
we were both
looking

dystopia

Today I accidentally rediscovered one of our favorite spots to escape everything and just exist. It was a kind of haven, and we were pretty sure nobody else knew about it.

Someone else was there today.

snapshots

After a summer apart, you pedaling toward Gorse as fast as your legs allowed, dropping your bike to the ground, and running over to me to scoop me up in your arms and kiss me hello.

Sitting on a bench watching the winds sweep across Lower Lake as sunshine kissed our shoulders, then the sound of your laughter as a heron flew directly at my face and landed a foot away from me and refused to stop looking at me or move away from the bench.

Waking up to find our hands the way we left them when we fell asleep, together with fingers intertwined.

Dancing to "What Does the Fox Say" at my friend's wedding and being so unabashedly our ridiculous selves in front of the 40+ crowd. That was two weeks ago.

Midnight walks around campus with only fireflies to keep us company.

eden

regeneration is so difficult
when you've forgotten how to
grow

my body stretches
toward the sun
but my roots dig themselves
deeper

somewhere there is soil
flush with all the nutrients
they tell you you need

but
i don't remember
the last time
i felt nourished

today's truth

Last week you put loving you on my to-do list.

What you didn't know is that it's second nature to me, not a menial task.

I never needed a reminder of how important you are to me.

I still don't.

transformations

How does one go from
lifeline
to
enemy
in a matter of days?

Metamorphosis has always eluded me.

muscle memory

i don't know how
to be me
without you.

my bones crackle
and my blood pulses
but i have no reason
to move
and anyway
i don't know how
anymore.

will you think about me
when the first snow falls?

i'll imagine your face
outside my window,
begging me to be
your snow angel
and maybe
then
i won't feel so cold.

Rain

the bump on your
left pointer
indicates to me
little more
than your attention
to detail

one might call it
unsightly
but you see
more than anyone should


cigarette smoke,
while diaphanous,
leaves even
black-eyed susans
dirtier than before

filament

she left the light on
she said
because
she'd watched him
in the dark
one too many times

there's only so much
eyes can adjust to

sometimes
in the early morning
the only thing to be seen
is yourself

I am your most precious natural resource.

I am your most precious natural resource.

Were your hands
those of a topographer's,
you would not hesitate
to map every inch
of this landscape -
pools of green iris
sheltered
by ambered strands and
pockets of speckled ground,
dual sloped mountains with gentle blush peaks,
flat plains that give way to
flesh alabaster valleys,
a fault line
sinfully
divided.

Rest yourself
and instead explore
this expanse.

Do not be afraid to take from me -
you've memorized my body
and I've plenty to give.
I pulse through your veins.

Cartography,
after all,
is in your blood.

Little One

This is only to say that I
apologize
whole heartedly
for my earlier
)indiscretion(
and furthermore
request the presence of
the soft
palms
and smooth
skin
of your hands  
                        [within] 
        my own.


Do pardon my
forwardness,
but subtleties evade me
and
I cannot (contain)
my innate
desire
to align   
  myself
once more
with  
                        you.

descent, decline, desertion.

My heart drops
a little lower in my stomach
each time
I see the spark in your eyes
because
more often
than not
it flickers only
when you recall
a moment you spent
with her.

This I Know

All I want is to feel love and share love and find that same love returned to me with overwhelming truth.

I am absolutely terrified that this will never happen. Six years into my own history of spreading the contents of my heart, I have found that the scars left behind far outweigh most of the infectious energy and beautiful, simplistic affection with which my best relationships were filled.

As soon as each pair of me and him breaks, I lose another tiny sliver of myself, bits and pieces of me that take far longer to heal than they do to splinter. I am in a constant process of recovery, one that I worry will never cease. Every time I near a mended version of myself - as close to my original, innocent, and blissfully naïve self as I can reasonably expect to return - I am somehow swept back into this ever-deepening whirlpool of romance and risk and (or so my fears convince me) eventual pain.

At the same time, I believe adamantly that not every person's experience is so excruciating. I have friends in relationships with staggering constancy and commitment. I know that kind of unconditional, devoted love is possible.

I just do not know why some people have a much more difficult time tracking it down. What makes one person easier to cheat on than another? Surely having the unfortunate ability to claim oneself as a victim of infidelity is not uncommon, though if the sanctity of the word "love" meant to everyone anything at all, affairs would never occur. Still, I cannot help but wonder what it is about me that has allowed three men, on four different occasions, to so surreptitiously seek the company of another while still promising sweet, despicable nothings to their blind, all too trusting girlfriend.

It is a weakness to trust too easily but still more of a weakness to withhold trust completely. Where is the middle ground? Would adjusting my level of faith in others achieve anything, or would nothing at all change?

I have said "I love you" to more than one person, and the triad of words is not one that I use loosely. I live and breathe each and every syllable:
"I," me, the broken girl with an injured spirit
"love," so totally and with abandon
"you," whoever that wonderful boy may be.

I have said "I love you" multiple times and despite reciprocity of the phrase - despite seeming reciprocity through actions and feelings and intrinsic connections - I am always the last to love. His love has always expired, has always run dry well before my own has even begun to plateau.

I leave every relationship, or, more correctly, am left at the end of every relationship, with love to spare, more and more and more to give, and no one willing to receive my gift genuinely.

Even now I am bursting with love, so very much of it that sometimes I do honestly feel like I might explode. Over the years, bruises have piled themselves on top of each other, my body becoming simultaneously immune to the shock yet more sensitive with each additional blow.

Now I love silently. I allow my love to pulse within me, through my veins, through my arteries, leaving my heart and returning once more, always, to my heart and only mine. The hardest truth I know right now is that my greatest love, my most beautiful, my most painful, my most honest, is also the most hopeless love I have ever harbored.

I love and love and love. For years now I have held this love quietly within me. Every fiber of my being wishes to scream out exactly how I feel, and yet every time the opportunity finds me, something convinces me otherwise.

I know he knows and while an unspoken understanding might and should make this heavy burden easier to bear, there exists a distinct unwillingness to even approach the love floating, more so straining, to find equilibrium between me and him.

I love you. Will you ever let me tell you?

ninety-eight percent

My blood is warm
in two very different ways.

Rationalize this:
why I should not
tell you
I love you.

progression

A green formica counter
flush with the fingerprints
of hundreds of moments
stands guard
as the divide
between have and have not.

I have old emotions
rattling my brain and
pulsing through my bloodstream
and you have not a clue.

You brush your fingers through your hair
but instead of recommitting
your strands to memory
I notice your fingernails
are longer than mine.

Later we face the aquamarine fresco
of the pool.
We already know the water
is freezing
but I jump anyway
and with a smile
you plunge after me into its icy depths,
displacement of liquid
in action.

1:31 AM - 6/9/11