our wedding vows | a lifelong epitaph

other bits and pieces

i remember when poetry poured out of me like wine.
every single bit of me laid bare against the rough sandpaper of my soul's skin.
the only things made soft by my touch crumbled as soon as i told them how much i loved them.
i am no longer someone who can be trusted to peel back the skin of an orange without making it bleed.

sunshine on a front porch // shadows on a front porch

i remember when poetry poured out of me like wine.
every single bit of me laid bare against the rough sandpaper of my soul's skin.
the only things made soft by my touch crumbled as soon as i told them how much i loved them.

holding my handful of stardust, days after you left - forced to watch your constellations fall out the sky. Forced to watch them as they shattered, scattered.

i am no longer someone who can be trusted to peel back the skin of an orange without making it bleed.

Nine.

firsts

i fell in love with you under a star crusted sky.
hazy, lazy summer days that felt long but flashed past
lightning reflecting off neon lights in a frat basement
an oxymoron to fall in love with anybody in a place meant for anonymity
but we did.

i could swing from eyelash to eyelash, monkey bar style
for the rest of time. chocolate eyes, jet black hair, a laugh like a sunset
the biggest brain i've literally ever seen. unraveling the universe between your fingertips
to help me make sense of what it was i wanted out of life.

idk, i just think it's amazing that
i met you so young
as if fate couldn't wait to catch up, finally,
to all my dreams and dragons and desire.
an eternity of something i can't name reincarnated
what was once stuck between my ribs and pounding heart, no longer.

going back, it's easy to see what we had in those fleeting, weathered months
a path, a future, a way forward out of the forest. walk up to the bonfire and smile
sitting in wes' driveway with the smoke filling up your car
how could i have known i'd want to bottle those days like perfume?
how could i have known it would lead to such a beautiful life?

i couldn't. i just had to dive in and swim through your mississippi river
trust you would know to pull me to shore.

when you give something a name, you give it power


i am afraid to say your name.

I write it over and over to get your taste out of my mouth, hoping one day that you will no longer walk across my tongue

tempting me to finally let loose what has always held me captive

my own heart trapped in a cage of desire, a web woven through my skin

to confess is to skin myself alive