12/52

This isn't finished, but it's midnight here and I told myself I'd throw it up no matter what shape it's in, just to get going again. I'll definitely be working on this so I can move it from "sketch" to "draft". 

I thought about you when I started this

about sitting across from you in the midnight bar

hidden in shadow of the art gallery

Of how the light carved your cheeks like a fire licking porcelain

How you were so beautiful, I couldn’t stand to look at you

         my least favorite habit

I watched your reflection in the window

which made me think how it would snow when I was a kid

and then the next day it would be warm enough to melt the top layer

and then at night

the cold would come with the dark like a salve

to sooth everything wet back over to ice

on my way to school I knew it was ok to be late

if it meant I had spent extra time

watching the sun roll slow orange mornings down the lonely country side’s hills

slick as glazed pottery, the ice,

glittering beneath a thin gauze

the color of the hibiscus, the dahlia, the chrysanthemum

residents of my mother’s garden

my mother’s garden: that summer song trembling into heaven now

playing its own remix in the winter

Obviously, this started as a love letter

but some time in between then and now

I lost sight of your reflection

It wandered into someone else’s smile

and I never wanted to  play the part of the anchor

I’d never try to block the wind you been

tryna catch in your sails so

I left or I pretended you were a ghost

and I’ve never been good with spooky stuff

so instead, I drank so much the room

became a black moss

lathered across the soft dark forest of night

I drank till I couldn’t feel my hand banging itself

against aluminum doors or

my knees shaking apart on the bathroom floor

I was a childish shipwreck and it’s OK to laugh at this.

        

                    at my least favorite habit

This constant coming apart at such a stupid little sadness

I cried when we lost one friend to the chemo, yeah

and one more to the pills

and another to the belt around the throat

Telling yourself not to be sad is like being a boat

with an anchor you’re constantly dragging behind you

Or maybe you’re a whale

So now sadness is a harpoon someone lodged under your lung while you were coming up for air

You’re a marathon runner with a limp

this sort of endurance

to live like this is as brutal as it is beautiful

but I don’t think we deserve that

Telling yourself you deserve to be happy is like being an airplane

and knowing that there is a runway all lit up for you

waiting for you to come home