“I don’t know how to let you out without destroying us both.”

I want to be something to pray for but I don’t know how to be.

And what am I but the smallest of footnotes in the universe’s everlasting memoir?

This country collects too many tongues, until our only language is silence.

Seek refuge in the space between my bones.

Somewhere inside my throat lives your ache.

I like to trace the ghosts of your fingers on the back of my hand. They read- I don’t know how to hold without you.

I pocket grief and it beckons me like a lover.

My silhouette is an ocean, your lips a sailor.

There is a calmness in not knowing.

Every beauty mark, a country to roam. Every stretch mark, a river to cross.

I loved you in quiet because to hide is to pretend that it is okay.

Allow me to introduce myself, A warning and a welcoming all at once.

We are so much more than skin can hold.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a poem.

I have lived too many lives to be only one thing, and instead of attempting to mesh them into a form of a human being, I have decided to love every jagged edge of mine.

I don’t like how your embrace feels like comfort till the knife thrust.