Snow Globe
Some people are going to treat you like a snow globe
and keep you on a shelf
and take you down only to shake you up
and watch what falls.
So break your glass
and let yourself pour out
and choose not to be so fragile.
Tip over the aquarium they keep you in
and seep into the ground
and grow flowers.
Evaporate into the clouds—
that high—
you’ll see more than a plastic house
where the snow is just paint
and the white-coated trees don’t grow or breathe—
let yourself fall in drops
and know you’ll be lifted up again.
I never knew any better.
I took off all of my skin
and unhinged the bones
in my chest to let my heart
out to breathe.
I tied rope around it
so it wouldn’t wander off,
but it never seemed to listen.
I’d have to pull it back in
and it resented me
for being so frightened.
It cut its own string one night
and it ran wild.
It chased all the wrong things,
the wrong people,
the wrong kind of love.
Eventually it came back,
tattered and worn
and full of holes,
but it was much stronger now.
If You Were An Ocean
I want to sink,
I want to drown
In the darkest
Parts of you.
I want to plunge into
The the hell pits
Of your sorrow
Only to return
To the surface,
Mending the break
In your tide.
I want to feel you—
Your heart beating
Heavily within my own;
Your thoughts twisting
Endlessly into my dreams.
I want to feel you
Within me, surrounding me,
Engulfing me wholeheartedly.
I’m an old toy at a
garage sale, sold
twenty-two times before
finding a home that keeps it.
I’m your second favorite
food, you settle for me when
they are all out of fettucine.
I’m the last sentence of
your thesis statement, necessary
to prove a point, but tedious to
write and hard to phrase correctly.
I’m a vagabond of various places
in people’s hearts and I do not know
if I will ever find a place to call home.
One Size Fits Most
We stood shielded by trumpet vines
with orange blossoms
facing the sunset behind the pine trees
of my childhood home—
and no scenery could be more romantic.
But you pull me in
and I pull away
and think of him
and realize I only know my love
by your love.
And he knows his lack of love
by my love.
So I draw on yours for now
and he draws on mine
and we are a chain of those
loved and
unloved.
A vine of flowers and pulled petals:
he loves me,
he loves me not.
We are not shoes with a perfect match—
we are not made in pairs
We are not looking for our other halves.
We wear each other like bracelets—
one size fits most
and carry each other in the links;
a little tighter doesn’t always cut circulation,
a little looser doesn’t always slip off.
