I so desperately wanted to be liked that I became versions of myself So unlikeable So inconsistent People couldn’t understand couldn’t come to terms with who I even was At almost 30 I've decided that trying so hard to change the parts of me that are me is like asking a car to drive with no engine So I stopped trying to be likable I started to become Just that - nothing more and nothing less. I became. And when I stopped resisting all that I am I noticed how likable I became
Royale (clarity)
you consistently took pictures of me and of us and I'd smile and you'd lean your head towards my own I look at the ones from the Cove and the summer before your eyes are the clearest blue I always thought they would reveal, open I thought they'd let me in Opaque we are together and not in every photograph and I held on waiting for the clear imagining the moment you'd love me enough The clarity was never in the blue of your eyes or in our tent on the Isle it was always here in my knowing that we were temporary fleeting it's why i worked tirelessly to resist it to make us permanent but this wasn't some challenge or journey of worth this was simply two people intertwined in timing and love you were satisfied, content and I couldn't handle the truth in the opaqueness the reality that was right in front of me
quiet
I like him best while he plays his strings kisses my neck existing quietly, together Is that fair when so much of his energy is loud and bold sometimes I think the quiet of the last two years changed me even when I resented it.
enough
I am always somewhere else not in one place on to the next back there and even further on. Tell me, when will the waxing crescent above the setting sun be enough
smothered
Up until that point I had seen no clearer skies or stars as abundant I remember you in images of the fire on the shore sounds of the dark waves, the blanket on the sand- I read my book instead of looking at you under those stars. And tonight across the blackest of clouds a lighting storm a cascade of lines and energy of matter and change You were both there and not there Just the same as under the Milky Way at the shores of the Great Lakes on the edge of the fire that we smothered with sand and water.
Hands
I left you in July, started again in August. I’ll spend September wondering how you are. You sat there holding my hands, “I don’t want to let you go,” You implored, as if you could not see that I no longer knew the hands in my own. I knew you no more or no less than I had the July before or the one before that. “I miss that special bond,” He said to me, a week after. What bond is silent, I wanted to ask. What bond exists only in two laptop screens and a tv monitor a late night cuddle, a quick- paced walk. Perhaps you did know me more than I knew you. Maybe I let you know me. The me that left and rose from your bedroom floor knows not of how or why two years from the day I asked for promises changed everything I thought I wanted.
Special (full moon)
My father has always looked through a wide frame lens He sees the flaws and the work wrapped delicately in regrets and pride He watches as the sun rises and falls from the center of my chest He sees ocean waves in the irises of the eyes he passed to me (he takes me driving to see the super moon in the fall) there is no facade or performance with and for him He sees it all and offers no wavering, conditional affection. “If anything happened to you, my world would shatter.” My father gave me the experience of feeling precious. My father taught me attachment. and as I grew and moved, I looked back to witness the ways and times I’ve loved and been loved and despite the depth and authenticity, nothing stuck or lasted longer then what was enough. And here I am again at the precipice of a new moon, a waxing crescent a love that is tangible yet fragile but to him, it comes and goes and he fears its illusive state and i fear its capacity to crumble - it isn't consistent yet he isn't consistent, yet. Maybe I'm not, either. This process and indecision changes the ways I feel held. I don't feel special. Not in his eyes, yet. I don’t want the waning and waxing with anything related to the love he has to offer. Give me the wide lens frame, the sunrise and sunset, the ocean waves. Synchronize with your head and heart. give me the full moon or nothing at all.
picture
I walked the stairs to your place using the key i let myself in like nothing had changed. I dropped some things off in what feels like a final exchange I walked through the rooms and saw the picture of us taken off the wall A part of me knew that would happen, eventually and I'm not sure how I would have felt if you'd left it hanging I moved to your cupboard noticed a card I had given you 7 months in I read the promise I made that at the time you could not return I turned around and noticed the picture of us on the floor. The same floor that held us the night we ended It feels more final, now solidified here in this image on the floor and the empty wall I now know that my first time in Amsterdam with you will be my last the picture is the last piece of the puzzle that we never finished because I didn't have all of the pieces and neither did you - at least, not ones that fit my own but we tried. I know we did. Those two people in that picture did their best and grew apart loved deeply and tried again I hope you take the picture off the floor, store it in a place where one day you can look back and smile and know that on that balcony we laughed we had hope we loved.
Light change
I don’t know
if it’s from
feeling lightheaded
or grief’s release
But everything
looks different,
now.
“Should I come to you?”
He asks, concerned.
“Not tonight,”
I reassure.
Tonight
I’ll
sleep with his
poems.
Tonight,
I mourn.
Fireworks
I wanted to
write
in biting
verse
Asking about
your party
and my friends
in attendance
I’d make some
metaphor about
Independence Day
I wanted to
lash out
and ask
how the space
felt as you
hosted.
I’m still angry -
I’m still grateful.
I’m not going
to maneuver my
schedule around
your’s, anymore.
And I won’t
reach for you
in drunken texts
or in venomous
poems.
In the end
all it is
is missing you
and us
and the summer
before
And if I can’t
let go
I hope you can.
I hope you find
better
I hope it’s
more than
fireworks.
Oh,
didn’t I tell you?
I repel
the explosions
and the smoke
Sometimes
I hate them.
The empty sky
and hidden stars
once the show
ends.
But you’re
not them
and you’re
no performance
You’re sun
in February
and lightning
in June.
You are joy.
“How was your party?”
I’ll ask, pointedly.
“Did you see fireworks?”
And if you ask if I
saw them, too,
I’ll nod and smile
in the same
restrained way
you smile at me, now.
“Sure, I saw them,”
knowing damn well
I didn’t even look.
The Restless Crescent 