That first kiss jolted me out of the strange haze I had been living in, made me forget what it was to cry on a bathroom floor. All I knew was that I wanted more of your lips, your incredible softness. You kissed like dawn, all hope and color. Everyone deserves to feel that at least once, to know the world is capable of breaking your heart but also slowly mending it.

I had never been kissed quite like that before.

the year of letting go, of retreating. of hearing ‘no’ over and over, and telling myself 'yes’ anyway. the year love left and timidly crept back in. i stopped writing because you gave me a hundred reasons to stop bleeding. the year 'good-bye’ also meant 'i love you.’ i started writing because breaking is not a sign of weakness. the year i reminded myself my mother doesn’t have all the answers anymore, and neither do you. i learned gratitude and that has been enough. the year i marveled at trees. i wonder if leaves ask forgiveness for leaving, when love settles softly without permission. the year i looked at my body and recognized home.

Someone recently asked me, ‘What are you pretending not to know today?’ I realized I have been hiding from myself lately. How, as a writer, I have been neglecting all the things I don’t want to acknowledge. I’ve kept dark the things that are easiest to keep there.

Like this:
My mother inspires and terrifies me. I want to be like her, but I don’t want to be her. I want her courage but not her anger. I want her tenacity but not her prejudices. I want her strength but not her inability to let go. I am scared that my children will hate the parts of me that have molded themselves in her name.

Like this:
I miss you. I love you. Your absence is heavy every day.

Like this:
Living alone is just an excuse to eat what I want and cry when I want. My pillow doesn’t judge me for falling asleep at 1 am with my glasses on.

Like this:
My birthday is next month. I’m not excited to celebrate it because I don’t know if you will call me.

Like this:
I still want to name her Charlotte with you.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I need to be touched. I just want to remember what skin worshipping skin feels like, hands seeking more altars on my body to pray to. You used to be here to do this, but not anymore. Now it’s always a countdown until the miles close, and I pull your scent from next to me instead of from memory. Baby, I’m sorry for being weak. I’m sorry I’m tempted by touch. I’m sorry I’m looking for it in places that aren’t you.

I hold our memories so closely not because I still love you but because the depth of our relationship surprises me even now. I put a battering ram to my own walls for you. And normally, I hate everything about walls in poetry, but here, I was both the fortress and the surrender. There were no remains left to scatter. Instead of raking new earth over raw ground, you ran. And this, perhaps, is what keeps me up: you left me open and wanting. You didn’t ask for this, you say. I didn’t want this either, I whisper.

It is impossible for me to ignore you. Your kindness is arresting in itself but your authenticity holds a stadium captive. I wonder how we found each other in this jarring mess of a world. You tell me that our skin doesn’t have to sing from the same key to understand each other’s language. Baby, love and I live on separate planets but here, in our whirlwind, you remind me that man landed on the moon and danced with Orion. You changed the game.

I thought I was getting through to you. You let me believe it when you told me that I was chipping away at those years you lived inside yourself. You let yourself believe it too. And you think it is strange that I still have so much to say to you, that I won’t bury us. But I’m here to finish what I started: I’ll keep chipping until you see the person you are, the gentle eyes that held me and the selfish hands that only recognized her. They are all you. This was all you.

We’re falling and tumbling and crashing down a cliffside that neither of us has any intention of climbing back up. We’re catching on debris and lovers and weaknesses that have ruined us before but this time, we swear it’ll be different. At the bottom, we look up with bloody hands, silence pooling at our feet. This dry earth smells familiar. I know you never intended for us both to end up here. Tell me, was gravity any kinder this time?

I think I have been away from writing for too long. I think poetry is punishing me for my absence. This must be why your scent lingers; I haven’t written you out of my body yet. So then, it falls to me to remind myself why I left. Why, in the middle of winter, we were the one thing burning up, letting embers catch on arms stiff with desperation. How I crawled back to you when you never asked me to. How you made way for him to be my spring and summer, a steady beat overriding your staccato promises. I’ll keep writing whatever it takes for my ribs to hold my own name, and no one else’s.