You told me you needed me,
more than I needed you.

I hadn’t heard words like that from you before.
It was your strength,
your impenetrable confidence
I had always leaned into.

It didn’t sound like you, and so,
I had no idea what you meant

And I wish there were some way
I could still reach you.
A way to tell you

that I would have moved mountains for you

I would have picked up every shattered piece
of who you were from the pavement,
as delicately as I could,
even if it cut me.

I would have held you tightly enough
to take your pain into my chest,
and lock it away from you,
for good.

I would have shown you
that you weren’t a one-man sailboat,
strangled in the spirals of a hurricane,
because together
we could’ve been an island
with a bomb shelter,
and someday, we’d come up,
and the storm would be gone.

We could have looked out at the ocean,
in awe, of how it can still be the ocean
even after a storm,

if only I had known what you meant