To create good art
we are tasked with removing our masks,
with allowing ourselves to become vulnerable
to everything that surrounds us.
Everything we may have otherwise
been protecting ourselves from
so that we,
in these fleeting moments,
can allow ourselves to feel enough
to be moved

We become exposed,
everything once muted shifted raw.
You let down your walls as you take up
that pen
that brush,
whatever tool it is that’s capable
of carving you out of yourself,
and a weight you otherwise never notice
becomes pressing.
The awe and wonder of being Here at all
suddenly, almost too much,
flooding into you, through you
like liquid light.
All of it visceral, every second surreal.
You catch your breath and try to bear it,
to not burn up in the white hot heat of it
as you channel it,
this feeling of living, out of you
onto the canvas or the page,
as a song into the air,
or a debut across the stage

and when you are Here,
everything is beautiful.

And everything hurts

There is always the subtle sensation that something is missing
Even when I distract myself, it persists
A nagging question
Like there is something important and I can’t find it, and I need it,
Like misplaced keys or sunglasses
except I never know exactly what it is that I feel I’ve misplaced,
because it’s not a thing that I can flip the couch cushions and find, it’s you

Lean into me
and I can show you
how I move while standing still

How I fall into the sky,
feet firm against the ground
but flying high,
among the clouds

just by looking in your eyes

I want to be fleeting,
like the light between the tree tops
I’ll change
with each stroke of wind through the branches
No.
I want to be still,
quiet like the blue of twilight as it rests its veil
along the stones that line the shore
No.
I want to fly,
unstoppable and leaping,
the way that lightening glides its way
into the Earth

No,
no

no.

I want
only to be,
somewhere with you.
Rain falling,
eyes closed and
listening
to the thunder
beneath your skin

You taught me how to ride a bike,
you hoisted us onto your shoulders
so we could try to reach the fireworks in July,
and something in the way
you always had ice cream ready at the end of hot days
made it easy to look the other way

When you’d scream

When the anger would mold
your smile
into something swollen,
tongue scorching,
body molten
with glazed eyes
and a cracking, kiln blasted heart

It made it easy
the mornings after,
to sit in silence as you made pancakes
and not see the singed edges of the room,
or the flecks of ash that nestled
still smoking
in our hair

It made it hard,
when your words bloomed
into purple blossoms on our skin,
to see, even from a distance,
the brokenness lying all around us
in the wake of you

And the bruises that have faded
are not the ones that keep me up some nights.
It’s the charred, hardened pieces
baked deep
well beyond the reach of sight
that I fear may never heal

How odd it is
to teeter on the brink
of caring too much,
and not caring about anything at all