Urge For Going

I am getting cabin fever, again.

It was long ago when I learned to pack carry-on,

learned to live light and ready,

habits of goodbyes born of repetition.

This wandering is an heirloom

a legacy I can't shake, 

the reason I find safety in an exit strategy,

(claustrophobic heart).

But there is something so beautiful

in belonging.

I am trying to convince myself not to run,

to find the beauty in thread-like roots, this time.

Yet I am more in love

with the way the wind feels in my hair, 

the way the trees blur and beckon

than I could ever be

with you. 

Bethlehem

You said loving her was like discovering the moon

when you thought you'd learned the heavens by heart.

And I smiled, but I wanted to tell you

that you and I 

would have been a planetary conjunction,
would have lit the heavens, 

we would have burnt out hot and dark

something so rare, so unimaginable

They would would still see our fire

ten million years after we'd been lit.

The moon is just a reflection of old light, 

words you know how to recite, poems that have

already been written, loving her is easy.

I would give you unnamed stars,

I would take your hand and lead you out of the
overcrowded auditorium of astronomy 101,
into the moonless, inky dark. 

So when you tire
of trying to turn lonely midnights into meaning,
when your heart is a black hole
and the stardust in your sheets has turned to sand,

You'll find me under the ancient sky,

this girl with eyes like burning stars 

when every constellation in the heavens looks like you.

Tide in, tide out

I have never been here before. Never held on to a grief like this, let it sit into my bones, weigh down the muscles, the tissue fibers. I am not yet accustomed to the extra weight that has settled despite the hole you left.

I wouldn't presume to call us best friends. But I guess it takes a person's absence to realize all the places in your life that they inhabited. You were always there. Wing nights, christmas parties, math help, pumpkin patch visits, late night bus rides. With those intense eyes, stares held too long, big smile and arms ready to enfold. Even when you were in terrible moods, you controlled a room, impossible to ignore.

I used to think about you everyday. Because I sill had your sweater, product of a late night, wine-fueled adventure up a mountain. I got cold, and you were always the perfect gentleman. Bundled me up, checked I would get home safe, smoothed my hair before I stumbled home. Your sweater dyed all my socks red in the wash. You brought it up every time you saw me. And so I hung it in my room, and everyday I saw it and thought "I really need to give that back to Andy".

On New Years Eve, you came to pick me up, a bunch of oversized boys crowded into my front doorway. You reached out to hug me, and I suddenly remembered, ran upstairs and grabbed the sweater. You laughed so hard, and then left it in your car. I don't think you ever even put it on. And the night filled up with beer pong games, fire building, you dancing on the table in those stupid shoes, so prepared for hiking the next day. When midnight came, you insisted I open the champagne, put your hands over mine as you showed me how to do it. We blew the cork over the neighbour's fence, you poured glasses for everyone, your laugh was lit up by sparklers.

That was 11 days ago. No time at all. I can't reconcile the image of your laughter with the grief filling the cathedral on Thursday. You left us all searching the shoreline for answers we will never find.

What happens now? I have never been here before. You were full of laughter, more charm than you had any right to, so much life and a smile that made people fall in love with you, everytime. I hope these memories stay, that their sweetness outlasts the sting that barbs them now. And most of all, Andy, I hope you recognized the love that always wrapped you, and that you're somewhere laughing still.

Bruises

We used to meet at the empty brown warehouses
because their boarded in windows smelled like secrets,
kept the cold grey boredom of winter
from our throats.
The soil around them was, like the rest, forgotten
and filled with dry glass, rusted iron,
and daffodils.
Growing every Spring, around the ghosts,
sunshine in a minefield. Miracles.
One winter day we took rocks
and dug up the soil, pulled each perennial bulb
from the gravel, and,
with shards of glass we cut them apart.
Hundreds of precise surgeries, searching
for organs shaped like the heart.
Leaving next Spring's blooms
in bruised strips on the broken pavement.
Maybe it was everything we knew of promise,
all we understood of hope.

Badlands

You asked me what I was most afraid of in the world
But with you beside me, I couldn't think of one thing

Then, trust

And sometimes it is easy to dismiss the world. To say, it is too hard here and too cutting. To lock up your heart in a concrete box in the hope it will survive an earthquake or a hurricane. Lock up your most valuable treasures, your impossible dreams, your soft shelled ideals, your trust and vulnerability, out of fear of how the world might break them.

But the world is tricky. It has soft green spring shoots that will curl through the cracks in your walls. It has autumn winds that will whistle at you until you cannot help but answer. And it takes only a moment, when the sun comes spilling from the horizon for your walls to keep the world at bay to crumble. Let them fall. You were never meant to be kept behind closed doors. You were meant to shine. You were meant to shout. You were meant to live.
Oh, wild one, you were born for this.

Anthem

Ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in

-Leonard Cohen