Honeybee

I promised no more poetry and I’d rather think of this as a confession: you are still the first person I want to share new things with.

Some people are born flight risks. It is no shortcoming of yours that they cannot keep their feet on the ground. It is not your fault that they cannot seem to stand in place. They are not leaving you; they are just leaving.

I still have a lot of growing to do and I know there is more room for it in your absence.

For everyone I meet with your name I'm sorry.

You had to stand there saying: I love you, I love you, I love you we're soul mates, you and I, but that doesn't mean it works that doesn't mean it works that means my soul can't bear to be without yours but that doesn't mean it works

You said: “most days, I pity you more than I love you”.   I just love you.

I’ve gotten so good about not flinching at the sound of your name that people don’t know I’d still throw myself mouth-open into the ocean for the chance to drown somewhere you might see it.

I still carry you on the insides of me: cave paintings on rib-caging. If I were a peach, you would be the pit that holds me all together. When I met you, I was something small and whole; I do not know how to get back there. You have the warmest heart I have ever set up camp in. I still carry you on the insides of me: the contents of my suitcase heart. I will lug you around until it breaks my back and then some. I feel sometimes like I have scattered my pieces everywhere, but you are the piece I do not know how to leave at the foot of a stranger’s bed or between the lines of a free-verse poem. I want you to know that loving you is freeing; that loving you is like holding my head under water and coming up new again and again. I still carry you on the insides of me. This will not always make sense to you

loved a man for years who said her eyes looked like the ocean, because she always wanted to be somebody’s poem, somebody’s simile, somebody’s lackluster metaphor.

I still wake up with things to tell you.

You came into this life with a starving heart. I know better than anyone that you cannot fill it with fence posts or china patterns. You cannot fill it with paper bodies, people whose skin rips in your palms. For some people, you will be too hard: an unmanageable puzzle, all sharp edges, and snarls. For others, you will be too soft: always looking to set up camp somewhere safe and warm where the wind won’t knock you down. You cannot build your home like a house of cards in the mouth of a lover who breathes too hard at night.

You came and you left and I’m just looking to quick dry cement it, press and bend it, fold it up and tuck it away for safe keeping. I know that it’s reaching but I just want to leave your name on a page somewhere and never need to come back to it.

You are not defined by the people you walk away from, and you are not defined by the people who walk away from you.

I wanted a reminder that things can still grow out of emptiness. I wanted a reminder that things can still grow in this small, yellow room even though you’re not in it. And I keep buying books even though nothing holds my attention anymore. I have them stacked up to the ceiling. I have them stacked up to the moon. I broke a bottle of red nail polish all over the kitchen floor, but it almost all came up with just a little remover. It looked like cleaning up after a crime scene. It felt like cleaning up after you left me. Just takes a little elbow grease. Just takes a little time.

No one will ever be able to knock the wind out of me again. Not like that. Not like you.

Losing you is a poem I still haven’t written yet. I never thought I’d have to. Every time I pick up a pen, I’m not saying what I need to say. Maybe I should have spent the last seven years stacking up metaphors instead of making promises.

If we both look at the same moon and you still want to call to say goodnight then maybe we're not looking at the same moon anymore.

I am different more often than I am the same. I don't know how anybody falls in love with me. I don't know how anybody keeps up.

She does not remind me of anything; everything reminds me of her.

I thought I could walk away from love and it would let me.

I think maybe parts of me are stuck to her, dug into her side like tree roots: ruthlessly. But just because you grow together doesn’t mean you’re meant to stay.

Just bad sex, just poor relationships, just missed opportunities and flowers someone never gave you. Everybody thinks it’s just spoiled romance that breaks your heart. They never consider the bad days and the kitchen scissors and the way rain looks smashed up against a window pane, the way people mill about in train stations, the way it feels when you walk down to the mailbox and always find it empty.

I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking for the last three months. I am sick of the length of my hair and the reasons I have to keep my nails short. I keep forgetting how to breathe. I keep forgetting how to be kind to myself. I need to remember to berate myself with my inside voice, to pick myself apart quietly instead of making such a big fuss about breaking. Last year when I went to see the doctor about wanting to bloom the skin on my wrists, she told me that I just needed to make changes. "Everybody feels like this at some point. You are not special; this is normal; everything will be okay.

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO TALK TO YOU WITHOUT FEELING LIKE NOTHING I HAVE TO SAY IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH OR WISE ENOUGH OR GOOD ENOUGH. I DON’T FEEL GOOD ENOUGH ANYMORE. YOU DON’T MAKE ME FEEL GOOD ANYMORE. I DON’T MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD ANYMORE.

Some people will leave you. It will have everything to do with you and nothing to do with outside circumstances. You cannot sugarcoat it. You cannot dress it up and make it feel sweet or soft or warm. And it’s going to hurt you. I know your instinct will be to beg them to stay, to unpack their bags for them, to curl up by their wandering feet—but people are going to leave you. That is okay too.

Now I am keeping windowsill plants just to prove to myself that things can still grow out of neglect. And I understand the reasons she left. It is hard to keep trying to fix something convinced it is not broken. It is hard to love a heart that is not always open.

I am the one physically removing myself from this place and yet it feels like you are the one leaving me. I will never understand how this works

Imagine somewhere there is a poem that tastes like our goodbye felt. Biting down on foil, swallowing an unexpected mouthful of ocean water. Too much of a good thing: cotton candy, soda pop, licking chocolate icing from the jar. Acidic throat. A stomach ache. I have given up trying to write it. I don’t need to hold onto it anymore

It took me too long to realize it was not romantic(, tender, or healthy) to love someone else more than I loved myself.

Love was a museum where we took down the art that was there before us and played masterpiece with all the empty space.