I want to love a woman

I want to be beholden to her

To eyes in the warmest shade of sky-bright blue

And a body pink and soft and kind

I want to love a woman

I want to delight in her smile

And make note of the lines on her face

To map the roads she has traveled

By the creases 'round her eyes

I want an unceasing desperation

A love deeper than limerence

To be a philocalist

And to experien...

There is a moment in time

Where I finally realize

I would not take it all back

All the bumps, bruises, scars, and marks

Have grown on me

Grown with me

Nostalgia is not a longing for the past

She is the child buried in my chest

Still smelling of creek water and woodland

I never outgrew her

She still stinks of sunscreen

She still licks her lips

And tastes salt

For her

I will still scrap...

Sunburned skin

Oh, how you blistered under such heat

As if the sun itself could not take its gaze away from our joy

Or perhaps it mocked us

For how we laughed outside

When we did not know there was a reason

we were sent to play

Will you remember how our bones did not ache?

Or how our pains were something so much more external?

How I explained away my heartbreak

As growing pains

Carrying the w...

One. All it takes is one.

One sideways glance, one self-inflicted doubt, one moment, and all of a sudden you’re there again. You’re standing at the fragile precipice between who you are and who you were and all the things you were capable of being. All the things you never could be.

You’ve got one foot on a future your mother wants for you, begging for the connection that seems to come so easil...