one day i will find the right words and they will be simple

It begins and ends with and without it. he wrote that sprawled out on the floor of my room. I convinced myself that new places would stave off old ghosts. I was wrong. I run and they follow. I hide and they find me. I speak slow and carefully hoping they won’t catch me. they can hear me whispering. I leave and a part of you comes after me. chases me. holds me in the palm of the darkest parts of you where i don’t dare try to look. knows me in places where words cannot go. don’t forget this yet. it’s still midnight and the feelings are young, new born and helpless. don’t forget that morning when all our moments snuck between us, found us soft and whole in all the wrong places. found our wide open spaces where nothing else could reach. but i’ll love you until my hands bleed. I will love you in ways that only the crumbling streets of your country would understand. as willing and openly. as brokenly and goddamned hopelessly. i write these poems about abandoned moments we tried our damnedest to share. i write about warm and sad souls that thread together when no one else is looking. I write about things I have known and things I still don’t. I write about people I have burned holes through hoping I’ll always have a place to hide my hands when they start to shake – when I can’t shake this fever, when I can’t shake these ghosts, when I can’t escape these words so I hide them in the notches of your spine. i keep them tucked beneath your voice box so every word you say is said with a piece of me. i keep carrying these secret things we all try to save for someone who’s hands are strong enough. are your hands strong enough for me? sometimes i stay up late at night making knots on strings. i make one knot for you and one knot for me. people do the strangest things when they’re lonely. and i know that these goddamn knots will never reach each other. i know there will always be these great gaps between us, rivers and winds between us, bitter roads and disconnected moments between us. i know. but i like to think that at least we’re both apart of the same string, right? so one knot for you, one knot for me, and i don’t mind if there are other knots between us sometimes. as long as we’re apart of the same string.

--Ashli Wood