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  “A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”

  —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

  There is nothing quite

  so pure in love

  as a boy

  and a girl

  building castles

  in the clouds.

  As he took her hand

  he gave her

  all she had been

  waiting for—

  a shiver

  down her spine.

  When it comes to love

  we are primates breaking sticks

  while pointing to our hearts.

  Love

  is diving headfirst

  into someone else’s confusion

  and finding

  that it all makes sense.

  I’ll let you into my heart

  but wipe your feet at the door.

  I think it’s beautiful

  the way you sparkle

  when you talk about

  the things you love.

  We let our lives

  mix with our dreams

  like two colored paints

  until we didn’t know

  which was what

  and we didn’t care.

  I want to be with someone

  who dreams of doing everything in life,

  and nothing

  on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

  MY

  ATOMS

  LOVE

  YOUR

  ATOMS,

  IT’S

  CHEMISTRY.

  The beautiful thing

  about young love

  is the truth

  in our hearts that it will last forever.

  “There’s too much risk in loving,”

  the young boy said.

  “No,”

  said the old man,

  “there’s too much risk in not.”

  I promise

  to live a life

  so rich of love

  that at the end

  I will not be

  so shy of death.

  Love is

  throwing yourself into a stormy sea

  hoping there are arms to catch you

  knowing that without the leap

  there is only the safe

  and lonely shore.

  Put a girl in

  moonlight

  and tell only truths

  and every man

  becomes a poet.

  Love

  could

  be

  labeled

  poison

  and we’d

  drink

  it

  anyways.

  Poetry

  to me

  is stumbling in the dark

  searching for

  the right words

  to describe

  the feeling

  I get

  when she smiles

  while she sleeps.

  I JUST NEED

  YOU

  AND

  SOME

  SUNSETS.

  When I look at you

  I find it hard to believe

  that the whole universe had not conspired

  to bring you to life.

  I can’t think of a more beautiful reason

  for it all to exist

  than for you in this day.

  Don’t worry—

  you see,

  to some you are

  magic.

  “If I had all the treasure in the world,

  I would follow my dreams,

  play with my children,

  and spend time with my wife.”

  “No,”

  said the old man.

  “If you followed your dreams,

  played with your children,

  and spent time with your wife,

  you would have all the treasure in the world.”

  My sweet darling,

  all these tears,

  this hurt,

  the pain in your heart,

  do not fight it anymore,

  it is a gift, you see, to feel this much

  and even though it’s hard

  it means you’re alive

  with each of these tearful breaths gasped

  your soul awakens,

  more alive in the pain

  than you were in the numb,

  you are coming back to me now, my love,

  lucid in this darkness—

  so cry aloud,

  yell,

  and fall,

  and I will be here waiting

  to catch you

  when the waking up is done.

  It took me a long time to realize

  that I am happiest

  not at the parties

  or the dinners

  or the shows

  but at home with you

  and just our books

  our movies

  and our tea.

  And wherever we go

  for now and forever

  we will bring this happy with us

  for home lives

  inside us now

  wherever

  together

  we go.

  True love comes

  when you lose

  where you end

  and they begin

  and the atoms

  in your souls

  forget where they belong

  and slowly you become

  pieces of each other

  too close now

  to ever be apart.

  Daughter of mine—

  for your smiles,

  for your tears,

  for your skinned knees,

  and your broken hearts,

  for the love you give,

  and the love you find.

  For whatever you become,

  or don’t,

  it is far too late,

  I love you already,

  long before

  we ever meet.

  I looked at my mother

  and smiled—

  she does

  so happily exist

  in that moment

  of one too many

  glasses of wine.

  Watch carefully

  the magic that occurs

  when you give a person

  enough comfort

  to just be themselves.

  Does the sun promise to shine?

  No, but it will—

  even behind the darkest clouds,

  and no promise

  will make it shine longer or brighter

  for that is its fate,

  to burn until it can burn no more.

  To love you is not my promise

  but my fate—

  to burn for you

  until I can burn no more.

  And as I sat and looked at her

  and the rolling hills she sat upon

  I thought, what amazing luck I have

  that the world had created

  such beautiful things

  and given me the eyes to see them.

  The words never meant much

  that’s not how I loved,

  it was when she stroked my hair

  when she thou
ght I was asleep

  that I knew she really did.

  I will follow you,

  my love,

  to the edge of all our days,

  to our very last

  tomorrows.

  When I saw you first, it took

  every ounce of me not to kiss you.

  When I saw you laugh, it took

  every ounce of me not to love you.

  And when I saw your soul, it took every ounce of me.

  We drowned out the voices in our hearts

  that our love had run its course,

  for this night at least

  the old music played louder

  than the truth that beat beneath our shirts,

  and as the stars melted into morning

  we smiled at the old stories

  and left our love hanging in the air

  as we embarked alone

  on our tomorrows.

  You and I

  will be

  lost and found

  a thousand times

  along this

  cobbled

  road of us.

  And the boy told the girl

  that he would love her forever—

  and she smiled and said,

  “but one day we both will die”—

  “maybe”

  said the boy—

  “but I want to

  still try.”

  IT’S A

  LONELY

  THING,

  PROTECTING

  A BREAKABLE

  HEART.

  It’s not the fear of losing them

  that scares us,

  it’s that we have given them

  so many of our pieces

  that we fear losing

  ourselves

  when they are gone.

  We were strange in love

  her and I

  too wild to last,

  too rare to die.

  Do not fall in love with me

  for I will break your heart

  long before you realize

  you were going to break mine.

  I let her go

  because I knew she could do better

  and now she’s gone

  I wonder

  if I should’ve

  just been better.

  Love

  is a strange magic,

  where death

  can only make it stronger

  while the softest kiss

  in the wrong direction,

  can steal it away forever.

  We so often want

  love to work

  but we are

  fighting currents

  of our hearts

  that flow

  a different way.

  WORDS

  WILL

  SCRATCH

  MORE

  HEARTS

  THAN

  SWORDS.

  Obsession is not love,

  infatuation is not love,

  when someone ignores you

  or treats you poorly, carelessly,

  or with indifference

  that’s not love—

  that’s a lack of love,

  for yourself, for trying to fill

  your missing pieces with theirs

  but when someone is whole

  and you are whole

  and you act in kindness and benevolence, vulnerability

  through strength,

  love becomes an exchange

  with another person—

  and that is

  its truest form.

  Even those we love the most

  can be a poison to our souls.

  Break my heart

  and you will find yourself inside.

  Tell me,

  she said,

  about our house

  our children

  our garden

  about the lives we will have—

  but he never could

  and it wasn’t until she was gone

  that he understood

  that she never needed the house

  she only needed the dream.

  What an impossible thing,

  breaking up,

  whispering promises

  to ourselves

  that other shores exist

  and then blindly

  wading out to sea.

  WE LEFT

  OUR LOVE

  IN ASH

  WHERE A

  MIGHTY FIRE

  ONCE

  HAD

  ROARED.

  New love is the best cure

  for old love gone bad.

  I aspire to be

  an old man

  with an old wife

  laughing at old jokes

  from a wild youth.

  I have seen your

  darkest nights

  and brightest days

  and I want you to know

  that I will be here

  forever

  loving you

  in dusk.

  Come, my darling,

  it is never too late

  to begin

  our love again.

  “I don’t believe in magic,”

  the young boy said,

  and the old man smiled,

  “You will, when you see her.”

  SHE LIVED IN ME

  LIKE THE FIRST FEW DAYS

  OF SUMMER:

  WARM

  AND NEW

  AND

  INFINITELY

  POSSIBLE.

  From

  the moment

  I saw her

  I knew

  this one

  was worth

  the

  broken

  heart.

  I took her hand,

  and my heart beat fast

  as her warmth swallowed me up.

  A thousand times I’d run this trail

  but not with her.

  Her eyes were all that young love should be,

  and they lit me up

  in every look.

  We lay in shooting skies

  and freckled stars, and

  promised our love would last forever—

  and so in our forever

  it would

  there in a castle atop of Blueberry Hill,

  with silver moon rivers

  and sailing ships.

  Every girl,

  if you leave her alone

  long enough,

  will

  eventually

  sing

  and dance.

  She was incandescently beautiful

  and beauty was the least of her.

  She wore nothing

  but the moonlight,

  I wore nothing

  but a smile.

  And the stars blinked

  as they watched her carefully

  jealous of the way she shone.

  She was love at first sight to the

  blind man in the dark cave.

  A few drinks and the world was hers—

  she wore her whiskey like a loaded gun.

  She wanted to be rich

  and she looked good on a yacht

  but I wanted a girl

  that looked good by a campfire

  with freckles like sparks

  to stain

  the ashy sky.

  I SIPPED

  THE MOONLIGHT

  FROM HER LIPS

  AND STUMBLED

  HOME DRUNK

  OFF

  THE

  TASTE OF

  HER.

  A storm was coming

  but that’s not what she felt.

  It was adventure on the wind

  and it shivered down her spine.

  She walked

  through her life

  tired

  from the

  mighty wings

  upon her back.

  She flirted with life

  and life flirted right back with
her,

  as if all the universe

  came more alive

  just for her

  and everything felt her glow.

  It was

  in the dew

  in the stars

  and the colors of the sky—

  they all shone

  bright as they could

  in the hopes

  to catch her eye.

  There was a whole magnificent soul

  burning brightly behind her “shy.”

  It was never the way she looked

  always the way she was

  I would have fallen in love with her

  with my eyes closed.

  I fought

  my eyes to stay awake

  no dream was prettier

  than the way she slept.

  She was afraid of heights

  but she was

  much more afraid

  of never flying.

  I promised

  to kiss her

  a million times

  before I died,

  fifty a day

  for the rest of my life—

  so when I was gone

  she could smile

  knowing

  there wasn’t a place

  on her I missed.

  All of the light

  all of the trees

  all of time