i find this
inside the thought of my desire
where i reason with why
instead of asking for the truth
where i sit beside the ideas
i once left myself inside
and wonder how long
i called something fate
because i wanted it
to become one
i find my depth to be
exactly what i believed it was
my rain in the moment
the water i gave to things
before i knew
if they were meant to grow
the desire i gave to meanings
the meanings i gave to words
the words i gave to silence
the deepest
the darkest
the sentences that lived in me
before i ever had the courage
to let them become sound
and maybe that is what i do
i give things life
i take the smallest feeling
and let it breathe
i take a glance
a touch
a little warmth between hands
and build a room around it
not because i am foolish
but because i have always known
how to make something beautiful
from what i am given
i find this
with all of my life
the quiet
the wake of my morning
the way the light enters
before i am ready for it
how i turn with the grass
and the wind feels pleasant
beneath my feet
how the earth can hold me
without ever asking
who i used to be
and i fall into love
with myself at night
when the dark competes with my eyes
when there is nothing left
to distract me
from the person
still standing there
when everyone else
has gone home
i take you
for what you gave me
for what i believed you gave me
in the softness of night
in the hours where everything
felt more honest
because darkness has a way
of hiding the edges
and making almost
look enough like forever
but i wake
with my arms open
and i understand
what i gave
who i gave it to
how much of myself
i placed inside another person
and called it theirs
the love binds with my soul
because it came from there
because i have so much to give
that sometimes i forget
the hands receiving it
are not the hands
that created it
and maybe that is why
the windows stay open
i refuse to close them
because something left
because absence should not become
the architecture of my life
i let the curtains move
i let the morning enter
i let the rooms breathe
and sometimes
when i look outside
i still find you
down by the trees
blended by the sunlight
softened by distance
until i cannot tell
if i am looking at you
or at the shape
my memory gave you
and maybe memory
has always been a kind of authorship
we take what happened
and rewrite it in feeling
we remove certain sentences
we underline others
we make saints of moments
that may have only been human
and then wonder
why the past feels heavier
than the hands that made it
the flowers we plant
in time
they move with
what we desire to give them
but desire is strange
because sometimes we water
what was never ours
and call the growing
proof that it belonged to us
we press our fingers
into the soil
and believe in roots
we cannot see
because believing
has always been easier
than admitting
some things bloom
without promising
to stay
and i give my flowers
to places where the grass
needs watering
not because every place
deserves what i carry
but because tenderness
has never known
how to measure itself
it only knows
how to move
and the seasons
they need us too
or maybe
we need them
to remind us
that change is not betrayal
that becoming different
does not mean
we lied about who we were before
the leaf does not apologize
for leaving the branch
the winter does not explain
why it empties everything
and spring never asks
whether we are ready
before it returns
so maybe love
is not proven
by what remains
maybe permanence
was never the measure
maybe some things
become meaningful
because they end
before we learn
how to make them ordinary
like chapters
inside moments
like my love to give
i have plenty
more than i thought
more than i gave you
more than any one person
could ever carry
and maybe abundance
is its own kind of loneliness
when you spend too long
believing love only matters
if someone else
knows what to do with it
but love does not become smaller
because someone cannot hold it
meaning does not disappear
because it was not returned
the flower does not question
whether it was beautiful
because someone walked past
without looking
and rain does not ask
the ground
if it was worthy
before it falls
in time
we mend
we strive
we create time
to bare ourselves
of everything we leave
the names
the rooms
the futures we rehearsed
before reality ever agreed
to perform them
and the things that we believe
sometimes stay behind
but bind with our soul
not because they were true
but because believing them
changed us
and maybe that is the strangest part
a thing does not have to happen
the way we imagined
to become part of who we are
sometimes the possibility
does more to us
than the reality ever could
like these chapters
these paraphrases
the commas where i stopped
the periods i thought
would close something
and the semicolons
that kept moving
because a semicolon
does not deny
what came before it
it simply refuses
to let that be
the end
and maybe that is
what i have been learning
all this time
that moving forward
does not require me
to make the past smaller
that loving myself
does not mean
i have to regret
where i once placed love
that meaning can change
without becoming false
and that sometimes
the greatest mercy
we can give ourselves
is allowing something
to have mattered
without asking it
to matter forever
so when the wind moves
through the rooms
i no longer ask
who opened the window
i no longer mistake movement
for return
i let it touch me
i let it pass
i let the air become
what air has always been
something that moves
without belonging
to where it has been
and maybe i am learning
to do the same
the flowers still bend
the pages still hold
what was written
but neither of them
asks the hand
to return
and neither do i
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