and-this-is-water

[and-this-is-water]

In the space between one perfect moment and the next, we discovered how easily our whole world can come to a stop. All at once, the strings we’d tied around our waists tethering us to Real Life snapped at their bases, leaving us to navigate this place with no gravity.

When dazy days passed us by in no hurry, we’d still yet to float away as we found strength in being grounded in each other. Awfully close for six feet apart, we found unity in loneliness - profundity in dichotomy. Together, we became acquainted with all we couldn’t hear from underneath the sound of our own footsteps. Earth’s steady breath emanating life into the wind’s pulsating whisper, the trees’ hollow wisdom, the grass’ taunting giggles, and all else that had been pushed into the edges of our own perception. In the face of tragedy, we tuned into our ever-present heartbeat still tapping out a rhythm just to remind us that we were still alive. Goodness, we were still alive! - a privilege only afforded some. How lucky we then were to care about such things as beauty and boredom. This is not romance - this is survival.

In the name of survival, it was all we had to wear hope over eyes as we stitched up the chasm between that perfect moment and the next with all the strings snapped at their bases. When the world began turning again, it wasn’t because we made it. We were simply foolish enough to wait for that day together.

#quarantine #spilled poetry #coronavirus #my writing #posted

[and-this-is-water]

We became acquainted with all we couldn’t hear from underneath the sounds of our own footsteps. The rhythm we’d ignored coming tirelessly from a heart clanging away just to remind us that we are alive.

#quarantine #spilled poetry #my writing

[and-this-is-water]

Awfully close for six feet apart

[and-this-is-water]

Dry, brittle pages brace themselves against familiar echoes of a pen uncapped, only to find that where ink meets parchment, a meadow erupts. The tip of his fountain pen floods green as daisies painted every shade of vim sprout from their paper roots. Pages bloated from rolling tides of divine serendipity strain against fragile binding. How could I curse the author? How could I be anything but grateful to the ink forging enough happenstance for us to fall together. He has written me an idyll in the irises of the loveliest boy I may ever meet. How could I complain?

#foreverboi #love #spilled writing

[and-this-is-water]

These days, I fall asleep to longing lullabies falling from his sleepy lips. We lay there entangled in each other as night drips into morning with lazy smiles protesting against sleep. I spend every waking moment with him.

So, then, why do I dream of you? Why do I dream of that goofy grin spreading across your face in half time? You come back to me, and we are whole again. Your hands melt into mine, and I am home. My head in your shoulder, we laugh and we laugh into the sunlight burning compromise into the miles we built between us.

I wake up to the better reality, though I don’t know what makes it so. He exists before me, though you exist in the back of my mind.

#foreverboi #cuteboi #love

[and-this-is-water]

My throat tightens around a sob I’ve grown familiar with recently. It falls to my stomach where I’m foolish enough to believe it will settle, until it crawls its way back up my throat the second it can get me alone. My shoulders tense as I swallow it like a dry pill. It puts up a fight. At least it’s beats the numbness. It’s heavy like the backpack you left at home and warm like the coat your mother told you to bring. Tomorrow will be better. Nothing was wrong with today.

[and-this-is-water]

Worries spill out from my shallow basin mouth onto the concrete stained with sap. Leaves carve a pattern in the light filtered through the sycamores standing guard against the invading sunlight. Entangled in you, I become disoriented. East and West are no more discernible than my heartbeat from yours, so I can’t tell from which direction the golden glimmer in your eyes comes. I can’t tell whether it is a setting or rising sun.

The steady stream of percussive ramblings clatter at your feet as interest drains from your eyes. Before I can appreciate the way the shadows dance across your skin, your lips meet mine and the dam is built. No more tameless, rushing waters left to extinguish your desire.

At the back of my throat - where your tongue cannot reach - the end of my sentence is stranded. But that’s no matter, because this moment is just like the movies. It’s beautiful, and passionate, and perfect, and yet. My gut as a compass, I can now discern East from West. I pull away long enough to notice how lovely your complexion shimmers under setting sunlight.

#cuteboi #love #spilled writing #spilled poetry #spilled love #mushy #sappy #romantic #romance #heartbreak

[and-this-is-water]

I miss kissing so badly. I want to kiss! I want to kiss!!!

[and-this-is-water]

“A beautiful feeling, when someone tells you “I wish I knew you earlier”.”

— (via nizariat)

[and-this-is-water]

Ten years ago, I’m sitting on the big old recliner in the den. I lay across it in the way dad tells me not to because it wears out the arms. All of my memories of conversations with you are set between destinations. You are always getting ready to leave. Laying across the recliner, I hardly lift my head when you speak to me. You tuck in your shirt or fasten your studded belt or run gelled fingers through your hair - I don’t remember the specifics - as you note the imminent new year and the new decade.

“Woah,” I breathe out. This gets enough of my nine-year-old attention for me to disrupt my TV-watching angle of repose as I sit up. “We’re going into a whole new decade. 2010 - that’s - that’s, like, a thing! That’s a big deal!” I can’t quite catch up to my own enthusiasm cerebrally.

“Yeah! It is a big deal. And get this, Reese. I have now lived through four. Whole. Decades.” You make a show of this fact, leaning into each word.

I sit with this for a moment, piecing together this puzzle that doesn’t make sense to the ear’s first encounter. “But you’re only twenty,” I say, allowing space for your explanation.

You do the math on your fingers, explaining the decades between 1989 and 2010. We talk a little more about the decade sitting before us and what we hope it brings us before you go.

Ten years later, 2020 is washed up right before my toes and only ebbs closer by the hour. It’s a beautiful thing to be granted another decade, and I don’t take that privilege lightly. I wish for nothing more than to look up at you from the couch I sit on right now and discuss what a trip it is that you’re going into a fifth decade. All I can guess is that you didn’t need a fifth. You lived through four decades, but loved through many, many more.

#brother #sibling loss #2020

[and-this-is-water]

Even if I swam to the edge of the universe, found where it ended, and sunk a toothpick through the pitch black wrapping paper; I’d still only be known as the one who poked a hole in the universe. It will never be enough. It will never matter.

#poetry #existential poetry #depression

[and-this-is-water]

I don’t care what anyone says, I am glad that I honored my fear. I am proud. Your hand burned too hot in mine, and I let go. I will not be ashamed of what I did in the name of self preservation. There is nothing virtuous about self-sacrifice when what you are sacrificing is safety. They always told me I was supposed to feel safe, but your arm felt like barbed wire wrapped around my shoulder while every neon red sign flashing “danger” illuminated the back of my mind. Warning whistles howling in my ears - I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that last part; what did you say? You ask, “what are we?” and I should’ve told you the truth. What are we? Wrong. In every way. I don’t know why, but I retain every right to trust myself when every inch of myself screams that this is wrong.

#cuteboi

[and-this-is-water]

After all these years, I still crawl into bed, and nothing has changed. I am the same scared little girl hiding alone from the world under a pile of blankets. Layer after layer until I feel safe. Like they won’t be able to get me.

[and-this-is-water]

Goodbye, Almost. The farthest I’ve ever traveled. The edge of the world where sky meets land, yes, but also where reality meets hope. Where fact meets maybe. Where today meets someday. Someday I will visit you again and I will look up at that starry, starry sky finger painted with the lights of souls between destination and departure. I will remember the woman who brought me here with all the words she left unsaid. She needed a voice to let them go, so I lent her mine.

I found my voice for you, Glory. I found the vibrations in the pit of my stomach still aching for forgiveness and sculpted them into an apology Wes would hear and I know he forgives you. Love and forgiveness rely on each other existentially, and you deserve to love again just as you deserve to forgive yourself. Your heart is worth fixing, Glory. Your heart is worth forgiving. I traveled to the end of the world with you, and what I found was forgiveness

#theatre #almost maine

[and-this-is-water]

I am not only grateful to have these folks in my life; I am grateful that these folks are my life. Everything I have - everything I am - is because of them. They are my home, a soft place to land where love has been so carefully cultivated that you never have to look for it. It is always there. It is there in the chocolate chip cookies mom has made us after a long day and in the joke dad told for the thousandth time because he knows it still makes us laugh. I am a patchwork quilt made of parts I’ve inherited from the people who’ve loved me. Anthony’s wit, Aaron’s heart, Andrew’s drive, and a weird mishmash of irreverent and nonsensical sense of humor for which they are all partially responsible. I am a collection of hand-me-down idiosyncrasies that I can’t help but love because they are gifts given to me by the most wonderful people I will ever know. I love these folks. Today, and everyday, I am grateful for them.

#love #family #thanksgiving #writing

[and-this-is-water]

Thank you, Almost. Thank you to the end of the world with nowhere to go. In my life, I’ve thought I’ve been at the end of the world with nowhere to go many times, but each time I followed the horizon to find that it was merely the edge of the next world. Thank you, Almost, for taking me to the edge of a beautiful world where my heart is worth fixing. Where my heart glows vibrant red even when it’s broken because even the impact of sanitized hospital linoleum can’t dim that light. Where ghosts fingerpaint the sky with colors so breathtaking it can make even the most cynical believe in something so devine as forgiveness. Where I can say goodbye to shame in the same breath I say hello to forgiveness as well as love, because in this world, they rely on each other existentially. Thank you, Almost. You were worth the hike.

#almost maine #glory

[and-this-is-water]

I wonder what it’s like to live your life with your spindly, electric fingers always within reach of whatever beautiful thing catches your eye. Your fingertips are slick and graceful as they glide from one thing to the next, never pressing too hard or lingering too softly. They must possess magic, because how else would they attract everything you desire into their palms?

I am sure, then, that I come as a canonball to your comfort. You aren’t used to being challenged, just as you aren’t used to being understood. A history without a past. A connection without an attraction. This isn’t the story you’ve grown used to telling, and I feel you may regret growing tired of that tale.

It scares you. I see that fear rising in your chest as you sharpen your tongue against your chattering teeth, and I see a little boy standing at the edge of the water afraid of falling in. You don’t have to worry, though. I’m not like you. My fingers contain no magic. I am not the kind of water that draws people in; you need not fear my tide. You may stand at the shore’s edge and get lost in my depth if only you allow me to gaze into those eyes that read so familiarly that I may already have a copy on my shelf.

You can say it from your chest: you enjoy my company and your fingers won’t prune. You will not lose your magnetism simply by standing next to me, but I know convincing you is a lost cause. The ocean may assure you it won’t hurt you, but what lurks inside it keeps no promises. Never agrees to not pull you down into the pitch black bits that don’t even recognize themselves. You don’t want to give me that chance.

So, instead, I sit in the passenger seat of your car listening to the heaviness in your lungs strain against your vocal chords. And I know I will never be your favorite girl. You will never drown long enough inside me to shout for a buoy like you do in the seat beside me. But I’ll still be here, reading you like a book and you’ll still fear my ability to do so. I don’t know what to call this game, but I’d like to think of it as a kind of love.

#perfectboi #love