when I hear from you

I have a cage for grief. 

I built it in my heart. 

The cage is made of guilt and mischief. 

I formed it when I was two. 

At thirty-five, grief knows where to sit in the hollow branches of my heart. 

She swings her legs and calls out, 

"Are you listening?" 

I don't know how to abide by grief. 

I don't know what to tell her. 

I am a thousand suns bursting. 

I am none. 

 

here, now

I want to tell you a story

about kindness and bravery. 

Laying on the grass with you 

and counting the limbs of trees,

you act shocked 

when I tell you that I feel incomplete. 

You move like the sun. 

in small moments like little hallways

she stares up at ceilings 

covered in stars 

and wonders, 

an ache in her shoulder blade,

if another dimension holds 

her small heart in triplicate. 

never could I ever, she says, 

while holding the gaze 

of her heroes. 

will you find my bones in the dirt?

when the sun goes down,

the wind stills 

and I hold dirt in my hands 

and go over the evening 

as dusk slides into dawn. 

there is something in my heart 

that feels like I am a simmering boil

soon to scream from the heat. 

When I ask myself what I need,

like a good student of psychology 

and grief-washed time, 

I find answers in absolution

for even the thought 

of wanting you. 

sometimes I don't believe what they say 

when they say,

"the thing that scares you the most 

is the thing that has already happened." 

I am buried and bludgeoned 

and sore. 

But I am not sorry. 

this little existence between the houses of mount royal

here is the big dipper 

and fire burnt lips from

that time I showed up 

unexpected

and your family sang

in a language no one else 

remembered. 

You said to stop talking

about being understood,

when you felt broken

and ego bruised.

I spoke of white whales 

and you made the words 

into a game. 

I'm afraid I embarrassed you 

by showing up. 

I'm afraid we'll never 

get to walk together again

and point to the stars and say,

"look, there you are." 

the same phrase I've been licking off your lips since I was eighteen.

I don't know how to exist 

in a room with no air 

and you. 

It's like I've always been someone else's 

and never my own. 

I get off 

on the impulse. 

I get wet from implications,

timing,

and anonymity. 

Who takes control

when I surrender? 

Even here,

even now. 

If loneliness and lust had a baby, I would name it regret, sibling to loss.

roll the dice 

like a boy

who knows

how to play,

who knows 

how to lose,

to land in 

your arms 

like a fool, 

(whose fool?) 

at the end 

of a night

that didn't 

include you. 

i don't know 

how you became 

the relief i feel 

when i bite my bottom lip,

like a fool,

i become 

yours. 

there's a life

where i lose

endlessly 

because i want 

more

than the world can 

offer 

to a girl

who doesn't know 

what she has. 

There's this saying,

about women who want too much,

(do I want too much?) 

and I wonder,

what could I become

if I play the whore? 

Yes,

this wrongness 

is an undoing

and a longing

like grief uncaged. 

It's a splitting

of my body 

into all the parts 

that make me. 

It's my eyes rolling

into the back of my head

because I want you to tell me

how much you need me. 

I want you to touch me 

like you just want to feel

how soft my fingers are 

in dark closets 

where nothing exists. 

no one can tell me that friendship exists in open, bright spaces when my best friends kiss and tell in the dark.

I twice ended things with boys 

who texted me 

flirtatiously. 

I stayed up late to tell them things with my thumbs

that my lips would never taste. 

I carried myself like a vessel 

for their satisfaction. 

Late nights in closets 

and I thought I had friendship 

perfected. 

I wanted so badly 

to be wanted

that I would crash endlessly 

upon their shores. 

These boys,

who told me stories 

about what it was like 

to be wanted.