Read for free
The first time you crumpled and chucked a corner of your life it landed on the floorboards that noticed when your shoe size changed. I’ve watched you shout sentences out of your pockets, the chapters you wished away tucked under boxes in the attic
You forgot that I write sonnets even in the moments when you wish the words were different
Baked into the silence of an unchanging commute, between the lines of a receipt, stolen from the heaviness of a light beer
To praise the job of your sigh and the metrics of your laugh. The chip laid on your shoulder is self-inflicted and superficial, unfairly designing the angle of your flinch when smoothing the lines of your blazer
I’m aware that each time knowledge shakes your hand, more hesitation steals its way beneath the confidence of your brow
But I hear the words, the paragraphs, and the footnotes
They're the flush in your cheeks when you thought you found a lifetime of pinky promises. The sound of change you accidentally drop and the way your hands hug your knees in the shower
Plot points noiselessly idle in the etchings of your sheets, in the breadth of your smile and the wanting of your pace.
I listen to your worry in the unchecked list hidden by the stack of papers settled on your dresser
Yet, even when you temporize, I continue to cite moments
So that you remember how hospital beds and birthday cards and feeling last in line could not separate you from your darkest strand of hair
I’m in the room when you lose time contemplating time lost
Do you notice how I number the pages?
I hold a ruler to the glow of your irises when you hum under the little dipper. I’m there, studying the value of each thank you.
Integers of convention straighten your spine like the phone calls you miss, and you dither under the pressure of opportunity
I’m a witness to the metronome of your bedside lamp and how it keeps you afraid of the dark
The next sentence is always blank until it isn’t
Some day soon the gnawing of your aspirations will outweigh the chapters you believed weren't worthwhile
Intermittent joys will steady your footsteps in new spaces, but burn crescendos brighter than sunsets when you realize great things don’t always come in threes
I’ll remind you that the relief of finding will hold you like a lover when you thought there was no chair for you
And you’ll write for you, for me, too,