blue mornings, and keeping you in mind.

I am a blue morning ripe and tired. The universe caught itself in the tangles of my hair and I know not how to get it out, so we struggle with one another. I am a cigarette, half-smoked, discarded early on—before I could blacken a lung or mutate a cell. In my dreams I am stretch armstrong with arms so long I can reach you. Oh, the Rockies are blocking my ears with built up clouds, but I can still feel you pulling there at the center of my chest. Coffeehouse crybaby, backyard saint, midnight warrior, barely joyous broken thing. We share the same troubled hopes, the same winking sky. Once, I wrote a poem on my tongue so you couldn’t see it, because I wanted you to taste it. Foolish me, I suppose I should have known that your lips would never meet mine. I’ve made so many promises that I’ll come find you—get to you—that I worry I might spend the rest of my life in transit. Not an obligation, but a voluntary movement. I am a heart. I am a cloudy head for thinking. Brick wall, waterfall, backlot demon calling my name. You said you hated the way that everything always feels so melancholy and I shot a silent prayer to my darkened ceiling that you would find your smile.

I was never taught to keep things at arms length, so when I see a spark, a flame, a flash, a silent moon glowing in the midnight sky, I am always trying to wrap my arms around it or swallow it whole. I’m either falling in love with strangers and daydreaming about running away or crying my pillowcases black and giving up. I would throw out my back if it meant carrying your troubles—eternal optimist with her feet dipped in something resembling the realistic. I want the best for everyone I’ve ever met and cry over broken hearts that aren’t my own. She told me that it was just an excuse to forget about my own problems, and hell, you know, she was probably right but I don’t think I can stop wanting to try and make you smile. I was taught to love with everything I’ve got, to bear the troubles of the people whose names I hold in my heart. I do not know any better—I only know that you are worth my creaking knees and aching back. It’s a preoccupation or perhaps a long-standing romance with the entire Universe. Always falling for underdogs and stars right on the brink of burning out because there’s something attractive in their glow. There’s just something so attractive in their glow. I wrote this keeping you in mind, I hope you know.

--jenna2step