in the stillness of living rooms

And when the time came

We never really knew what to do with it

Let it fall through our fingers like sand to a beach where the waves are familiar

We saw them in a dream as kids

We never knew where they came from though

In the shifting seasons of it all I don’t think we knew how much love would hurt

How it was the dagger under the dinner table

One we were scared to show too intimately

And over time the conversation dries like a well in the yard of an abandoned home

The ghosts of water

They’re vicious

There is no mercy in the neglect of love on one's mind

To hide it in your mouth like an attic

The piles now rotting your teeth

Though the candy doesn’t taste sweet

I forget to write when the world gets loud

And I forget that I love it

Like I said,

My teeth rot

I didn't lie 

I think poetry is the only gravity I know

I forget this often

I abandon it like a kid with a colic 

A child desperate for me to hold it and sway in the living room in the glow of the light above the stove

Just enough to see the outline of its face

It listens to my heartbeat 

Drummers ear

But the beat is off and it’s dishonest

Because it beats itself like a drunken husband

It mauls itself

Leaves itself in bloody buckets and then searches the world for the killer

So it’s always lost

It’s always blaming its echo

And every time it mutters the same thing

‘Which way did the wind blow?’

In hopes to follow the blame 

Desperately trying to grab onto certainty like fireflies in the backyard 

But it just crushes it in its hand every time

And begs the world for light as it destroys it without notice

Finding a murderer in mirrors

When will it realize it holds the gun

It tightens the noose in its sleep and awakens 

Searching for the black cat

The culprit of rope burn in its palms 

Begs the wind to explain why it can never hold anything for long

And the simple answer is you won’t hold anything for long if you fear it

Even if the fear is buried deep and ancient like bones and fossils 

So how do we hold?

How do we learn to not break the gentleness of things we love?

It’s to love it like a songbird with hollow bones and trust in it

That’s the tricky part 

The certainty

Because the world balances on random objects stacked on top of each other

And it wobbles like a lightweight

It spits its confessions into the night like a dying star

And we never really know where they go

If they really die or they just hide

From love itself

From tenderness, we cannot name or grasp

And in this way, nothing ever truly ends

Nothing can be held either

Not for long

Even in love

Because love is not possessive

It’s free like dancers in kitchens 

It’s wasted like a fever dream

And it doesn’t ask for anything

Anything at all

It just becomes

Over and over and over again

It becomes itself

More of itself but never truly changing at its core

Just wearing different faces like seasons of the same stubborn world

And in this promise, I find solstice that I can’t ever lose what truly never began or ended 

It stands in the room with a sureness I’m learning to know 

It bounces me on its lap like a curious kid

It traces my lips and begs me to let the drawbridge down

To drain the moat 

And all that is left is a defenseless castle

It says there, child

Love owns no guns

No barriers no bridges 

Only presence always

There’s no way there or from

You just arrive

Like a bushy-tailed spring

Ready to recreate what winter-killed in her sleep

So like this 

The echos ring clear

Love never leaves

You kill it with your eyes closed

And the world seems too big for your head or your hands

But it’s only because you’re trying to hold it all

And it’s really just about the moment

The crumb

The sway in the living room at 2 am when your floorboards creek and remind you of the gentleness of a home

It’s vulnerability

Like us all

My heart has wandered a long way

And it still trembles at the challenge the world presents it

But when I’m still

I’m really still

There’s no challenge to be had

Just a surrender done with being resisted 

And so we move with the rhythm only a silent living room can bring

Like waves deep out in the ocean where no boat sees

Or stays for long 

It is here that sailors confess

And let the moonlight cleanse their profanities 

Their tongue know churches of their own

And their wives know when they return because their muscles relax in their arms

They allow their weight to press into her body

And there’s not much to think about anymore

Just to feel and devour