I wonder if the first places I called “home” reminded me of you
Now I stand in this doorway, delicately tracing the frame
Everything before was your echo.
When Mister Rogers told us to "look for the helpers," I always wanted to be the one that somebody found. In some small way, then, I knew I'd never be lost.
Slip your boldest thrift shop dress over your shoulders and wonder at all the lives it may have already lived before.
Curl the corner of your mouth when you think of first kisses on porch steps, the drone of a drive-in while pinkies twine on the bumper of a rickety ride that's really more rust than baby blue.
Or maybe it was something more like today: the shy autumn breeze rowing your window on its hinge, an oar in the stream, sending gauzy ripples tangling through your hair. You sit in a slice of sunlight on a worn wooden floor, finding yourself by losing these words.
Put this away.
Ask if it knows what moments it might hold you in.
Ask your skin the same question.
Curl the corner of your mouth and carefully paint rouge between two laughing lips because that little girl loved everything bright. And, since soft smiles have never been what you're known for,
Always choose the red.
I switch on each lamplight to keep me company. Maybe I can find faith in some solitude. Maybe I can pray.
Do you suppose we’ve ever stood in the same storm?
And did you also count the spaces between light and sound?
I used to say “Mississippi” with molasses on the tip of my tongue
Slow enough to pull the rove of pouring close
That soak of summer would loll sweet down my cheeks
The sharp smell of static and some green fever of faith
I held hard to this small giddy wonder at the notion
That the longest river I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes
Let me keep time - to what maybe, just maybe,
Touched you, too.
When I started feeling growing pains I went to the greenhouse and bought a big basket of plants. When I water them now, I remember to sip my coffee a little slower in the mornings, to rise a little sooner, to also reach, with soft and strong and steadfast hands, for the light that makes me whole.
This is the solace of hands holding thread - the ones you thought were your last, that you’ll soon learn aren't here to break, but to mend.
Could you feel the weight of wondering then?
Coffee cups, kisses, and promises -
The things I press my lips to and ask to stay.
I make too much some days to make meaning, too.
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.