• The Day is Ready for You - Alison Malee
• no one ever told me

that love is the teeth that bite your lip without apology.

the blood that runs.

the first aid kit. the alcohol, the gauze, the sting.

the mouth that kisses, k i s s e s, kisses it better.

or the mouth that tells you there was never any wound at all.

- never

• in this way, the undertow

is only a metaphor for surviving. do you understand? the currents only exist to explain grief.

so when i tell you i am drowning, i mean that, today, the loss sits on my chest less like a paperweight and more like air turned carbon monoxide without warning.

- will be

• most days i write you into things that disappear.

sometimes i write you into concrete

- alone

• it did not stay like i thought it would.

not for me, anyway. never for me, anyway.

- right

• your voice leaves me quiet.

it echoes. (again and again.)

i want to tell you settle down. i want to tell you there is no need for all this loud.

//

my throat sees help and stands still.

every time.

- stand still

• because even when i stare at a door

with the knowledge that it should remain closed. with the knowledge that it most likely closed for a reason. even then, i am trying to work out the best way to pick the lock.

everything ends. everything ends. everything ends.

but my heart still whispers, does it have to?

- does it

• even if i remembered how forest fire bright

your eyes are, how flickering and wild, (which i don’t) i would not write about you.

- redlined

• if i love you it is not because

you have always been irreversibly mine,

it is because you have always been irreversibly drawn to light in a way i do not understand.

- insistent

• it is having a hard time

letting go / and i think / it looks a lot like us

- sometimes

• the living

we don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. i stopped when we met. when you discovered me like an answered prayer. one i had been palms together and knees bruised for.

i could never tell if it was yours or mine but i am not sure it ever really mattered.

we were both doing fine before. if fine is a concise way of saying we were dying just as slowly as everyone else.

getting by on the kind of love that disappears by dawn. and we did get by. just not in the way we wanted to.

we had not yet decided to stay here. hadn’t made up our minds about living yet.

hadn’t decided if the sweat and tears and breathing and breathing and breathing made us desire more or less.

but now? now, all i think about is your heartbeat. and your ten-miles-per-hour laugh.

and your mouth. how it opens on mine like something blooming.

how i so very much like being alive. and how it is nice. the staying. the living. the loving.

• maybe that is why

i was greeted by nothing but moon and a whole house that did not answer when i called your name.

- ghost town

• i will love you until

loving you becomes a memory. becomes a consequence. until loving you looks more like the exit sign of a local pub and a lot less like your eyes. until it sounds like talking back to old voice mails and not like your laughter at all.

//

now, i forget the difference between missing and loving.

maybe there isn’t one.

- missing or loving

• the world, with its loud microphone and shut tight ears,

keeps saying that nothing is broken. but how can that be if the only way to let the light in is to crack the walls a little more?

yes, i know we are only getting by to get by now. we have been for a while. we do nothing but attempt to survive and somehow call that living.

- hear me out

• you laughed about the magnitude of being this small

in the middle of something so much more infinite. i laughed, too. i tried. the noise was more strangled, like i was trying to find humor in my own funeral.

the truth or the secret was (is) that i love(d) you like an endless seattle rain. and i was daily certain that was the only kind of infinity that mattered.

- solid

• morning

you are the greatest secret.

if i could, i would hold you between my hands like morning.

or something like a whisper.

or something like lightning trapped in a glass bottle.

in other words, i want to be the one to keep you.

• do you have to leave

the lights on even when your eyes are shut? i have. i do.

//

i know it’s late. and my phone calls are more spilled blood and crooked teeth than reason, but i miss you.

- silver spoon

• drop them

but you can live without them, you know. the devils. the demons. the unsaid things. the heavy weights. the guilt. the regret. the bitterness. the copper tongue bite.

the boys who did not know how to love you. the years you did not know how to love yourself.

and the mistakes. the mistakes. oh, the mistakes.

the ones that make your chest tight. the ones you try to wash clean. the ones you’ve scrubbed and scrubbed beneath moonlight and bedsheets and showerheads.

you can live without them, you know.

look, your sweaty hands. look, your shaking bones. pry your fingers off the triggers. drop the guns.

• so if i were to lend you a listening ear,

know that i have heard it all. if i were to let you hold me, know i have been held by different arms.

and that is not to say that it will not be beautiful, but it will not be the same. everything leaves a mark.

- ask the wind

• most

perhaps, we are most courageous when we let go.