i carved a hole in my heart and stuffed it with the things you love.

what would it mean to be in love with you

when you are almost thirty-five... 

like falling again into breathlessness

and an ache that feels like the home 

you made when you were twenty-three. 

how does a world form? 

what magic is left in the spaces you filled? 

where do you sleep?

what do you dream? 

when you learned how to be a mirror 

at thirteen, 

I wonder if you stopped to think about where

your interests would live. 

if you were to find yourself in the backyard, 

I wonder if she would have them. 

She is nine, and five, and four. 

She likes dirt and writing and 

feeling safe... 

whatever that means. 

At almost thirty-five, 

I become you. 

I forget what it's like to feel safe

inside. 

stopping my heart means something like a love song played in reverse (an ache in prelude)

Tell me I'm loved 

as if mapping out

the figure of a swan. 

Within her parts, 

there are daggers 

and ellipses;

the kind that linger,

and hunger,

and hunt. 

What would it be like to be a bird, 

I wonder. 

At the end of the day, 

I'm a thousand miles away 

and a breath apart. 

the watchful

I never think about her. 

She is an introduction to a fairytale 

that no one reads

except, at one time, 

her devoted mother. 

I never choose to think about her. 

Eighteen and older than the world. 

Eighteen and a heart made to break. 

She loved joy 

and hated when others disappointed her. 

Now I wonder what she would think 

of me, of this, of the little moments 

that make a life. 

Her eyes would shine, maybe, 

watchful for a time when she might dissect how her world became so small. 

This girl, scrutiny her bedmate, 

she would think she knows me, 

but my secrets are my own. 

I could invite her in

but I'm scared she'd break me

with her joy.

if this means war

What if I don't know how to heal you? 

Will the pit in my stomach turn into expectations that tear me apart? 

And I want your eyes on me 

so that I can feel seen

even when you are trembling,

even when I am an earthquake. 

I thought I could hide my heart 

in the folds of science, 

like art and jealousy;

like laughing at nothing. 

Am I allowed to find myself pathetic? 

Sometimes I think it would be nice

to know fear's name, 

to address her by it, 

so she knows not to borrow mine.