I have been uncomfortable in my innocence

Uncomfortable in my intimacy

And uncomfortable in anything but full disclosure

So here is who I am

A strategist I have never been easy to break just easy to bend

And wrung out I drip tears from a place near the surface

Not truly bothered or broken, just pinched

And always uncomfortable

You see I have become strong boned with a million marrow transplants from promisers

Compliments rain down, increasing my vanity and my strength in turn

But suddenly their words slip off the windowpanes and mean nothing

The audience has left for intermission and they came back changed

Watching me shed, their gifts become more important and I stop caring bit by bit what they have to say

A wretched school girl giggling and staring I am for the first time

Lucid

Hallow boned

And lost in her eyes framed in black a picture walled up at the art museums we dream of

I have lived a passionless life never giving or taking much

I wallowed in my losses but never excited in my possibilities until her legs like roads took me somewhere I never though I needed to go

With the passing of time it seems so obvious that I was uncomfortable

Fit into a box I thought was the whole universe

If poetry is authentically feeling then I have never written poetry until today

I like to be right, stemming from the bones and the vanity and the deep pools of me I fight when I’m wrong

But this cannot be that fight

I am uncomfortable in any role but that of the archivist keeping score and using any piece of parchment I can to back my lies and my truth

But I am done being uncomfortable

And this does not need anyone’s validation

Not even my own.

I must be allowed to go back on my decision, to go forward, to fluxuate

Do not make me fight with the lies I find in cabinets long gathering dust I must curve back and forth in this murk

This is not Yes or No but Maybe

Always Grey, Black and White are irrelevant

I feel weak now that everything I thought I knew is grey

Weak but I am comfortable for once in forever

I am comfortable in my grey area and you must let me live here

I have never been more comfortable, then I am here in the grey of biesxuality

All my strength is gone, every bit of vanity is lost

But I am so comfortable

When he met me I was having a crisis of faith.

My miracle was years behind me, fading into too many sunsets

Overflowing with the good luck that constitutes knocking on wood

In case it was all make believe

*Knock knock*

When he came to me I was swept away by all the light around him

I had learned to search for a light bulb

*Who is there?*

His destiny is a sad one, he abandoned me

And maybe it’s the codependency talking but I think all discrepancies in teenage love are forgivable

Because after countless nights wasting minutes and time listening to him breathe over the crackling phone lines

He told me about God.

*God*

*God who?*

Wrapped up in dominations I had forgotten faith brings us all together

So he reintroduced me to my God

Taking the place of a father at a wedding he held my hand until the last moment

Gripping tightly as he placed it in God’s palm

*God*

*But God who?*

Time had sanded down how my thanks, my memories

But carvings this deep do not go away easy

And God saved my life

And it turns out this same God had saved his life too.

Countless times in cars and blizzards and crashes and snow God had lit his way

*God who?*

He spoke vows as he reminded me of God

Vows I had once memorized

God saved my life, as a foreshadowing to something important.

*God who?*

Life is a gift, given for a reason

We spent months wondering what is we were being saved for

Once love was wasted there was nothing left to keep us together

As we walked our separate ways I thought I saw God go with him

Fingers intertwined as he searched for his importance, he was covered in a blanket of welcoming faith and I was cold

When I met you I was having a crisis of faith, a small one.

I don’t tell people about my God.

I never whisper to you about my religion on cold nights, because I want you to think I am smart and pretty and awesome.

But I am pulling my God closer to me, realizing there is enough love to cover many of us, and I don’t have to love him to feel grace.

So I would like to tell you about God.

I owe my life to God.

And if you will not help me to find my importance

Then you don’t understand the riddle

*God who?*

It is a question, and the answer is the end of my crisis.

When he met me I was having a crisis of faith.

For when we are far away from miracles they seem all too unimportant, all too average. My miracle was years behind me, and full of the kind of good luck that constitutes knocking on wood just because it was that unbelievable. When he came to me I was swept away by all the light around him, because I had learned to search for a light bulb in these cases.

I know the facts now. That he was destined to hurt me and abandon me and maybe it’s the codependency talking but I think all discrepancies in teenage love are forgivable. Or at least the crimes he committed are forgivable, because after countless nights wasting minutes and time listening to him breathe over the crackling phone lines he told me about God.

Not about Judaism, I never heard much about his worship of choice; instead he reintroduced me to my God. He acted as my guardian at a wedding ceremony, holding my hand until it came time to set it into God’s almighty one, a lot warmer then I had remembered.

“AnnaMarie, this is God. You used to know each other I think.”

Time had sanded down how thankful I was. I had forgotten much about the God who had saved my sisters life, but mostly I had forgotten that more than one life had been saved that day. I was given life when God gave courage and grace to my little sister.

And it turns out this same God had saved his life too, countless times in cars and blizzards God had lit his way. To my never ending surprise this cynic saw being saved the same way I had seen miracles when life was rose-colored and clear.

As a foreshadowing to something important.

“Why would I live?” He whispered, as I pressed the cold glass of a smart phone up against my cheek, aching for human contact. “What am I supposed to do with this life?”

I spent months sitting on this thought, seeing God in every opportunity for good. We had both been saved, and I silently promised myself as I watched him, so content with the hand he had been dealt, that there was something worth doing out there in the world. Something I had been saved for.

But like all stories, once love was wasted there was nothing left to keep us together. So we went our separate ways, and he took God with him. Fingers intertwined as he searched for his importance, he was covered in a blanket of welcoming faith and I was cold.

When I met you I was having a crisis of faith, a small one.

I don’t tell people about my God. I never whisper to you about my religion on cold nights, because I want you to think I am smart and pretty and awesome.

But I am pulling my God closer to me, realizing there is enough love to cover many of us, and I don’t have to love him to feel grace.

So I would like to tell you about God. My life was saved by God, once with the saving of my sister’s life, and once when I met my savior.

And I think it means something to be saved, especially in the middle of a crisis.

Believe it or not there are days when I don’t feel like a worn pair of socks

There are days when the happy song of birds is the first noise I hear, and I don’t scoff at the snow white cliché

Days where blue light floods in through my window overtaking the grim

Crisp air slips into my lungs despite the allergy-caused inflammation

And I touch my face to find a misplaced smile I don’t remember leaving there

These are the days my slate is whipped clean

Every part of me I want to hide away in comforters and thrift store sweaters is shiny and brand new 

Each mistake is understandable, affordable; my life doesn’t feel like a spectacle on these days

You are one of those days

Hands greasy from bike chains and my stains you make me feel like the birds are singing

And with you, it is a cliché

It’s holding hands in the park and not checking over my shoulder for girls with tongues pointed like sniper riffles

It’s pulling back the curtains of curls I use as a security blanket to reveal the toothy smile the condemned aren’t allowed to wear

Skipping and singing and dancing in the rain, or falling in the rain while you dance I am untouchable every day since you let me start over

I believe I was at some point sane

But it took no time at all to realize I had lost my mind in his two step

The poetry his simple feet create, tip toeing on the earth as delicate as fingers scampering away on a keyboard

Morse code resides in his spins slipping around and into each other making music I long to hear

His inner monologue so much more tasteful than mine I tear at my hair trying to wheel into his head

I will go crazy forever trying to bow every muscle the way only he does just to glide into his abstract shapes

Yearning with extended fingers I try to feel the emotions he is constantly inventing

There is no stretch in his laugh lines or his pliable spine only smooth silk, running this way and that

Is it confidence that lifts my Peter Pan inches off the ground?

All air swings to let him through and there is no resistance where he sets his weight

I stumble clumsily alongside thinking myself talentless but realizing it is the eyes peering out from the bushes that hinder me

He is fluidity and calm and music in my grey bleak universe

Because it is not just the air that moves for him but the world, obstacles soaring out of his way in time with that hidden melody

Every leap is so public, open arms keeping fingers reaching for the soft at the tops of the trees

His rib cage breaching to let air in and out freely, I feel my airways constricting 

And with the bit of brain capacity still in my control I consider his dance is not what is impressive

Though his body touches buoyantly to the earth in a manor to be revered is it not the music I admire,

But the magnanimity

He would let so many daggers spike him, the golden blood of the gods would pour out into his circle of gravity

But so innocent and open, no one shoots their arrows at a dove and so he is protected

I slip my hand in his, sanity returning as he lands heavy on the cracked dirt

His graceful step gathers an admiring glance or two, and I wonder do they know they are about to lose their minds wishing to be as free as my dancer

I think he might not understand what apologies are.
He can take hold of my face with steady hands big enough to keep the Earth from shaking, much less my small world from breaking.
He can look into my eyes with a fire so intense I don’t know how he keeps it lit in the misty grey wilderness he calls his soul.
And he can say the right things, the words I didnt mean to teach him but you can’t take back an education, the feeling he’s rehearsed in the mirror is already perfected.
But coming back to someone? After you hurt them and broke them and tossed their fading crumpled form away? That’s not something you do in a fifteen word sentence, even with the eyes and the rumbling voice that could break my feminist high horse.
I have been walking against wind for weeks, pushing against currents until my muscles grew weak to find my way back to you, and you take one step, and fancy yourself a traveler?
My effort does not lead to your results, no amount of love can change this rule so drastically.
Get down on your knees
Plead
Cry
And if you must, then take my face in your warm hands, look far into the windows to my soul, and instead of spewing copy written words could you please just say something?
All of these noises and there is no content, something I have found you have plenty of.
I think maybe, you don’t understand what apologies are.
Maybe you don’t understand when you feel for something, feel it in the pit of your stomachs the way we do about each other, you have to try as hard as you can to keeping that feeling and that something close enough to touch.
I know you understand so much, and with the memory that takes screen captures you could tell me what “apology” means.
But in your own words please; how do you intend to fight for me?
And how many times are you going to say “I’m sorry”?