The universe resides
in constellations,
on your skin

and I’ll trace my fingertips
like brush strokes,
across your stars

I’ll lose my breath
in the galaxy
that is your heart

And all the words I cannot say
build up
caught in my throat

quiet rocks
at the bed of the stream

stubborn and unmoving
as the river carries on
without them

When I was younger there were parts of my world that bothered me. I wasn’t sure how to face them, and before I knew it I had built a room for myself in my head

It had windows but the shades were typically drawn. Sound didn’t carry in so well from the outside, but in it were all the words and books and songs that I loved, and possibly the world’s most comfortable couch

As I got older, it got easier and easier to slip in and out of that room. It became more and more reflexive, like blinking, or breathing. The way your heart beats without you ever asking it to

And I work hard most times to keep myself present. But every now and then, maybe I’m near the end of a stressful day or in heavy anticipation of something to come, and I’ll be in conversation with people I care very much about, and it will occur at some point to the both of us that I haven’t heard anything they’ve said at all

They get frustrated and offended and say this makes them feel like they’re unimportant to me, that I don’t care. But that’s not true at all. And I don’t know how to explain to them where it is I go when I can’t hear them, even though they’re standing right next to me.

It’s the lies we tell ourselves that are most pernicious.
They course, like poison
through our veins

When we think of our hearts, we often think of romance. We forget sometimes that love is other things too

That in the next chamber over, the sky
the mountains,
and the way the trees sway
in the space between them
is a part of us too

That these things can move us in a way that’s different from the way people can.
That both are love connections integral to our experience Here

And if you could sail the waters of your heart, one chamber to the next, what might you find there? What landscapes would rise up from the core of you, to greet you, as your boat touched upon their shore? Which places speak to so deep a part of you that without them, you wouldn’t be who you are

Make time in your life to visit these places like you would an old friend. Not just in your mind, but out here where new adventures wait to be unfolded too. Get out there and immerse yourself in the world, the familiar and the new. Get so lost in the scenery that for a moment, you forget you aren’t a part of it. And take a piece of it with you when you go

There are chasms between what I know and what I think I know.
There are rivers where the light divides me, body from soul

and there is fire that leads me from my own heart
to the heart of you