this is not a poem, but if it were, it would be the craziest one i’ve ever written. some nights i hold you so tightly it’s like i’m afraid you will slip through my fingers. some nights i want to cry when i look at you, for good reasons. sometimes i think i love you so much it physically pains me, and i think maybe this will be what ruins me for the rest of my life. a lot of the time, i think that if you are not the one, it will be. i am going to spend a lifetime missing you if you are not by my side through it. i told myself i wouldn’t let love do this to me again, but you are extremely persuasive. one time, you bit my thigh, and i swear i astral-projected. i’ve spent hours thinking about how my fingers feel inside your mouth. you tell me, i just want to be skin-to-skin with you. i just want to feel close. you hold me like i am breakable, and i suppose when it comes to you, i am. i’m a glass sculpture and you are the hammer and i am waiting, palms stretched wide, for the shattering blow. i can feel the cracks forming even now, and i admire them in the mirror, how they run along my fragile skin. i think this is the most beautiful i have ever been. this is me coming undone in your hands. i hear alarm bells in my head when i look at you, because every time our eyes meet i wonder if yours will be more hazel or green on our wedding day, and i have to stop myself, have to ask myself what the fuck is wrong with you? but then i think, well, if it’s a fall wedding, they’d probably look more green, and i smile. i know i tell you all the time, but i think you’re the most beautiful person ever created. i think we are all lucky to get to be alive at the same time as you, but i am definitely the luckiest because i’m the one you curl into at night. i’m the one who kisses you awake, who keeps your secrets, who sees the entirety of you. nobody else gets to be so lucky. anyway, i am glass and you are the hammer, or maybe we are both hammers. maybe we are both glass. i like that—us, equal even in breaking. what a spectacular collision we are. i think this is the most beautiful i have ever been: yours.

i wonder:

if the 16-year-old me could see me now,

what would she say?

if she could see the love i’ve found

compared to the love she had,

if she knew about all the dreams she carried

that i’ve watched come true,

would she smile?

would she cry?

would she say thank you?

or maybe i’d thank her.

thank her for her resilience

and her ambition.

thank her for her kindness