Miss You

The majority of my life I never loved you outloud.

It all happened inside me, like a trainwreck.
Like the first moment a newborn baby is unswaddled
and wondered at. It was like

that.
Both menacing, tragic--

and miraculously precious.

I always save the nicest part for last, have you noticed?
I do that because I think somewhere deep and resounding inside me I know,
without a doubt, that it is going to be okay. One day I will love you in peace,
not

in p
i
  e
c
   e
s

.

With a grand, retreating sadness I confess that today is not that day.

It washes over me,
or perhaps floats, maybe, yes--it floats over me like a feather or a
breeze and settles on my shoulders.

It isn't unwelcome, or hated, or lost. It is the smell of burnt wet wood.
It is the taste of 7 up and saltine crackers during a stomach
ache. It is the sound of waves hushing and unhushing in the summer.
It is the feel of a stiff but comfortable rocking chair. I tried to fight it
before I knew how; I tried to unbraid my heart, I think. Something.
I tried to brush you out. I tried to straighten the kinks from my locks.
You were my golden headband,  did you know that?

You were the only time I ever slept good.

You were every path in the woods, every sidewalk, every moment that dripped silver chocolate. You weren't a king and I loved you. You weren't lower,
and I loved you. I loved you. Is is that hard? Is it that unbearably true? That excruciatingly burningstinging easy?

I guess you are like--you are like when--like when you get a knee or elbow scrape as a child and your mom puts you in the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet and plucks out a white bottle with a spray nozzle and goes, "It's going to sting
for a second sweetie but after that
it'll make it not hurt so much"
and then you bite the inside of your lip
and act tough
like a sixth grader, a whole two years older!--and then she sprays
your knee

or your elbow
and heck, heck! it stings. Ow.
Then suddenly it ebbs and you are left with no sting,
no sting at all, not even from that huge skin scrape.

You are like that;
you are the sting and the ebb of the sting.
Always the culprit, always the bandaid.
I miss you in the pit of my stomach like a leech or a lemon,
or like...or like, please, god, just...nevermind, I can't even describe it...

anyways miss you

miss you like the frayed end of an unfinished sentence
miss you like that old lost pair
of perfectly fitting jeans that dissapeared during the move
miss you like a really awesome bruise, miss you like dessert,
miss you like a monday morning meeting miss you like the taste of lemonade
in winter miss you
like the smell of christmas cookies miss you
like the soft so-eager hands of a grandmother holding you with a sureness miss
you

like the swell of a violin, miss you, miss you,
miss you. I haven't said those words to myself in

well it's been so long I don't know the date

I just
yes
please
all the time
forever, ugh! Forever
I do
like the first time
like

whatever. Whatever it is

I miss you


that's all