Seven Confessions

For my best friend and true love

One. Sometimes I wonder if you ever think about that night, when we stayed up late repairing the torn stitches in the embroidery of each other’s constellations with thread made out of whispers. With the phone held to the side of my face it was easy to pretend that I could feel your cheek pressed against mine. I think about that all the time.

Two. Some nights I wake up in a panicked sweat, my face suffocating in a pillow drenched with doubts spilling from my traitorous eyes, and the only thing that returns my boiling pulse to a soft whisper beneath my skin is the thought of you, sleeping peacefully somewhere not too far away, and my lungs open up again. If I could, I would gently loop a string between my pinky finger and yours. Tying it with a double knot, tight so a gentle tug could serve as reassurance of your continued existence.

Three. Sometimes I get tired of wearing my heart on my sleeve. So tired I begin picking at the thread that has begun to unravel on the cuff of my favorite blouse, as though I am trying to remove the affection that seeps from my skin, drying in dark stains on the fabric. I scrub and scrub at them with bleach but all I get is a headache and this increasing nagging of my intuition that there are no erasers magic enough to remove all traces of you even if I tried.

Four. I think I have remembered how to appreciate the childhood feeling of swingsets in the summer. Of dusty bare feet swinging in the warm wind as legs pump higher and higher, and how gripping the chain leaves pink indents in the palm of each hand by the time the day is done. When you smile, my stomach turns itself inside outs and clings to my bones, and it is like that precise moment in time when the swing jolts and I can’t be certain whether or not I’ve gone too high, and I swear I’m about to flip upside down. And the thing is, all it does is make me want to swing higher.

Five. I have too many unfinished poetry notebooks littering my desk but I keep buying new ones. I can’t stop avoiding finishing the verses that are biting their way from underneath my fingernails and between my clenched teeth where I have trapped them. Words are fickle friends. They only serve to describe so much. You, my dear, are too tangible for the ink shrouded image of you I am attempting to craft. Each word I write grows wings and flies away, too fleeting to capture your overwhelming reality. I guess I am afraid that if I start a story I will have to end it one day. We aren’t even properly together yet and I already dread writing our breakup poem. So I keep collecting half full notebooks.

Six. What I really wish is for you to be writing this with me. Maybe the other half of the story is one we are supposed to write together. Gifts to one another. Scribbled in pen on restaurant napkins, tucked between the pages of each other’s favorite novels, whether given gift wrapped or slipped into pockets on crumpled grocery receipts. I want these poems to find a home on your bedside table. Spill things on them. Crumple the edges. Staple them together and dog ear the pages. Read them at night when your eyes are heavy and the words blur into black and white smears. Write me pieces of your own heart. You could write me a mundane list of your favorite things and I would pin it to my wall and treat it like gospel.

Seven. I still don’t know how to define love, much less write good love poetry. The closest I come are the words that slip past my lips when I breathe out. The words that I find tucked behind your ear and clinging to our clothes as we sit close together. The words that burn in my eyes and climb up through my windpipe, all the suppressed words, the ones I wish I could send you in a pretty little envelope all organized and practical. Instead they spiral around my chest like a whirlpool pulling me apart from the inside. I catch those that leak out with paper and frame them, so I will always remember how good it can feel to fall.