I Can't Hold These Horizons

Same sky. Same blue. Same clouds, heavy-backed and weighted with the tears of the world. Same gray. Same rise, same set. Same open and close – half-lidded, wide-eyed. Sitting on top of a meeting that always shakes hands on unique, new, I-have-met-another-piece-of-you, is this seam lined with heavy and light, ridges, breaks, and consumings that tries to navigate the introduction.

Can I stretch this newness out, reduce its jagged edges and standing towers to a heartbeat flat-lining these worlds so that for a single inhale we meet. I know I know I know I won’t be able to stop it for long, to keep it still and silent and straight in all the ways that bends space so that your point and my point have a chance to greet each other.

But for the moments that I can withstand not breathing, I will drink you in, trace every star and constellation and galaxy that makes up the beauty of your being and paint my findings with a fine flaw across the gray matter of my mind. I’ll pluck one of your sharp pieces and mar my skin with the brilliance of your soul. I will take your name into my veins, absorb your voice into my lungs in a long draw of breath, and lay your presence like a map of our brief history in silver lines across my skin. When my breath runs out, my strength gives and I can no longer hold this impasse between the heaven that you are and the marred, damaged earth that I am, I will give you all the brittle smiles I have saved, all the bottled hopes and breaths, wishes and dreams, and let you go. And as I watch the tension disperse, as you slip from the curl of my fingers, I will tilt my head back every night and watch the sky crash over my head.

Though my heart screams stay, I will smile and retrace you.