all these words are just a matter of time

This is our handmade hope. We brought it up from the dirt. Listen up tulip, this won’t be easy. Your hands will tremble when they’ve got nothing to hold. And all the things you love will find better ways to out run you. Do you want comfort or remorse? I can hear your ribs calling out, I can hear your voice getting caught between the bones - Our lips so close saying “I’m ready” - are you sure? You’ll never feel this young again, buttercup. No more coca cola, heat wave, bottle rocket, making out in the backseat of someone else’s truck past your curfew, no more loud and wild secrets to uproot you right where you’re standing. Can you see the storm brewing down the road?

This is what happens when the world doesn’t feel like flowers anymore.

Been building our moments into chandeliers out of shadows and glass beer bottles. Trying to bend the sound they make when they clang against one another. Trying to make it something like summers when we were younger and you could wake up without that ever dancing wonder of where you’ll be by tomorrow. That god awful gorgeous gleam of naivety. That milk pale place between one sound and another. You idiots, don’t you know we can’t just forget about these things one day? They think we’re scared when really we’re just experts at putting our hearts into things without people noticing. Home-grown experiences and chasing after the crooked parts of ourselves we see in strangers. We are broken and strange and wonderful. We are selfish and lonely. We are brave, we are sad, we are home-bound, closing our fists tight around one another and the words. God, the words never were enough, were they? Just keep saying my name, just keep telling yourself we’ll goddamn burn before we fade away. We will keep trying to dig ourselves into something that the memories and the feelings can’t drag us out of. The pine trees kissing the sky, the porch swing, the flowers, all our fears braided around them. Keep telling them “if you cross me, I’ll get you” keep saying “be kind, be strong, be true”

but that quiet corner of you always thinking about our collar bones missing loudly the way it used to feel when stars could fall into them if they wanted. I’m ready if you are.

--Ashli Wood