Ocean.

 I stare at the past like I stare at myself in this mug of tea

You hurt me.

And there are times now when I can't square with that because I look back and I thought we were building something

I thought that something would be built...

And it is, yeah? It is now and so I should be happy.

Past is past and means less than nothing

And yet I know that you did the things you did to me and I still want you: why?

The new me, the emerging me, the one crying inside the cocoon wants free of it.

"I wish I met you now. I wish that person back then was someone different. Someone not me."

I still mean that.

Because if it hadn't been me I wouldn't feel like something was endlessly wrong with me for wanting you.

I'd like to turn it all over like a pretty river rock

I'd like to look back at the me from then and laugh at her and call her foolish because it would be an easy thing, wouldn't it? And yet.

She wasn't. 

She was just... tired.

A child throwing rocks into the ocean trying to skip them and sometimes, sometimes they did skip, and that made all those other wasted stones worth it.

I see you now and you're endless skipping so far out onto the horizon it's like I'll never see the end of it

And yet there's this part of me scared I will. See the end. But it'll just be so much deeper.

Tearful Partnering.

I listen to songs on the radio
About long love
And about men who see their women
Who they have known for years
Walking down the stairs in a pretty dress
and it brings a tear to their eye
And my whole soul is flooded with gratitude for you
And all the years
And things
And mistakes
And promises
And pretty dresses I haven't always worn with you in mind

And yet...

You gasp
And you say you'll still be there

And you help me pick out high heels and endure my anxiety at the store

And you make the meals and you bathe the children
And I...

Sometimes I don't know who I am
Or where I'm going

But I know where home is.
I know who is home.

Possible Puddles

Seems like sunlight
Just over the horizon -
Connection
snapping like firecrackers;
I curl into a small ball:
Snail-like,
The wires around my heart
Still barbed from the last time
Someone hurt me...
[Don't want to mess it up but]
Still fragile
A snow globe of emotion
Swirling flakes atop a gorgeous shoddily painted city-scape,
Wind it up: pretty music...
Please don't drop it.