I am never going to forgive you.
But that’s okay.
Because now that I know, I can forgive myself.
—
Forever and Always,
A Liar
My path disturbed a flurrying galaxy of tiny white moths
Their upwards loft shifted my vision of resemblances
All at once bounding from the starstruck hush of snowstorms to something I can only describe as keenly akin to falling in love
Their giddy hopeful flourish enveloped and entranced me
But with my next step,
They were gone.
You would love who I have become
But I had to leave you to be anything at all
Bittersweet, those bits
So much of me you never knew,
So much more you’ll never know.
You hung a hole in the drywall just to see your own strength
When you finally showed me that fist, I scattered seeds where you left me empty
They still root and reach for both soil and sun
True fortitude needs only to be known, to be seen.
Somewhere between the silent beads of sweat shivering along my wearily wanting pulse
And the cool cooing miracle of a mourning dove rousing these days at dawn
I heard the switching swish of your footfalls finding their place in a promise
Knew the orbit of your most dazzling dreams and how they hung about your Sunday slumber like a mobile of tomorrows to be
The first time something broke, I begged worlds to turn their twirl and place pieces back together
The last time something broke, I learned that some things are never meant to be whole
I saw your light howling in a sea of healing halves before I was ready to believe
But, a wise woman in the woods once said to save some space in your soul for what you least expect to find
So now, what shall we call a beginning that's always been before?
The absolute entirety of a revolving resolution?
Our name is the slow-grown embrace of paper birch bodies
Their boughs ripe with rich nectar of never-ending stories finally found
These wonder-warm windows are a wild welcome home.
I was in your backseat watching city lights curve along the car. You brought your guitar to the beach that night. I sat on the rocks and set seashells aside while the sea heard you sing. Even the things that never sleep need a lullaby sometimes.
I wondered if I was falling in love with you, but,
I know that would be untrue, because there is nothing left on earth that I could begin to care to hold onto - I’ve absolutely and unabashedly already let go
I wondered then if you can still call it falling if there’s no ground to find your feet this time?
I know that I should feel fear in the unending azure of this atmosphere - but oh darling, the breeze beneath my flight is bright blessed breath
I wondered if sinking into this sweet certainty is how you can be sure you’ve found it, and,
I know.
The end of a thousand years saw our bodies become
We were always born to begin
I have been certain before
Of only a few solitary things
That the choice to believe is brave
And calloused hands are her favorite warriors
That discomfort is a gateway to guidance
Lean over its lip and you can touch your truths scattered scarlet in the sand
That bathing in the autumn blaze of birch groves
Will wash the world till all that remains is your soul - standing strong, sacred, and blessedly unbroken
I have known how to hope and hold what’s heavy and heal
But I have never before known you.
This library lies somewhere in the spaces between pretty paper pages and the holiest heart of the woods where they grew.
All I want is to be the ladder you grow on.
My heart has a seam-ripper I’m longing to lose.
Whenever I worry what might come next
I take my heart for a walk in these woods
The order here unfolds without conjectured concern or questions of being
Relentless rhythms born only of trust in tomorrow’s transience
There is a voice in my chest that, too, knows such truths
She speaks her spells aloud in song, their melodies washed in the still-water silence of starlight
I can’t say if another sun will rise, or what those hours may hold, but,
With unwavering wonder at what light has already found me this day,
I will do all I can to grow, all according to purpose; not plan.
I’ll meet you in the dark tonight
Patiently pour over the shelves of my sanctuary, all honey-kissed parchment and gathered earth
Which treasure might best guide your way through these saturnine shadows?
With reverence resounding, my fingers will come to cradle what I could not sooner give
I remember you, I’ll say with a smile to its sentient shine
Are you ready to rise?
Auroral and alabaster as an everlasting ember
I’ll let that light loose to your sight
Do you know what I know now?
My neighbor planted flowers by his mailbox until the day his heart stopped. In August, his widow hands my father a pair of shearling snow boots, size 10.
They sit on the back porch, patiently baking in the sun of a couple seasons too soon. My dog wonders who they belong to. I tell her he’s somebody someplace waiting on winter.
Wherever he’s gone, I'd bet my last dollar it smells like daffodils.
Every 7 years they say your cellular composition will be entirely renewed
I have 1356 days left until you've never touched my skin
But this heart?
This heart was never yours.
When the day comes where I find you,
I’ll lead you to the back porch where we can sigh with the stars.
I’ll dip my fingers in their milky haze until the galaxies cling to my fingers with unrelenting attachment - art class glitter and glue.
I’ll unfold our clenched palms like the tattered, dog-eared, so-loved collection of glovebox atlases that they are.
I’ll hold my sparkling skin against yours to repair a rift and light our way -
Until we both know the road home by heart.
Summertime sifts its reedy songs - sure, sweet, and certain - untangling light lost in morning meadows, all viridescence and tang
Blush brushstrokes bloom from skies, soft and sparkling as spun sugar
Citrus staccatos glitter their gold, bright as the moment I first found that the doorway dust moat becomes a miracle in just the right light
I watch the daybreak percolate promise through pleading pine boughs’ sapphire veins
Their rich bark bases are oars, steering strong across the stillness of inky violet velvet seas
See how the surface ripples where, shaking and slippered, fawns first find their feet
Holy is this haven, folded like line-dried linens sewn through with love, as fearless as forever, here in the dark before dawn.
Take me to where warm windows glowing golden on summer-soft nighttime drives
Are a wild and rooted bouquet of humanity's heart in its becoming
Little freckled, exquisitely ordinary, peculiar and petalled vignettes
Orbiting hungrily around some central beating body, or, perhaps stronger still,
That hardwood, foundational, yet inescapably ephemeral belief
In something better, and beautiful, and blindingly bright.
There is a home on a hill
Honey sunlight warms mahogany bones
The floorboards there are moons
Wax and wane with warmth and wind
Windows cast starlight in the daytime
Their panes coupling under weight of years
Open doors by toppled boots
Hold willow golden shadow-shine
Muddied paws and aching feet
Voyage home woodland memories
Come lie with me in empty rooms
We’ll fill them up with baited breath