A poem I like

Yarn by Adrea Gibson

Yarn.

That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth.

You can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.

It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written.

I’m still working on my rhythm.

My tongue gets tied sometimes.

My throat gets dry.

My voice starts trembling,

Honestly, the only thing I’ve mastered is how to write a really good ending.

But I’m getting pretty tired of finish lines.

So this morning I bought a needle and a thread and started stitching you a sunrise.

And the seams are tattered and torn because I got the cloth from an old shirt I was wearing the first time the world started tearing me open,

and I’ve been choking for my breath since then.

Have you ever spent a whole year hoping the morning wouldn’t come?

I’ve had a band-aid in one hand and the other a gun.

Somethings been screaming “fire kid!” but somethings still screaming “live!”

So, Baby, write me a bridge away from the storm.

I don’t know the words to the song you were born to sing,

but I know your fingers will bleed when you play the cords

and maybe you’ll need me then like I need you now

when I say that I miss you I mean something more.

I mean I’ve been biding my time till you kiss me again.

I keep poems like secrets and then tell them when I’m tired of hiding who I am.

I am missing you most

in the silence between songs on my favorite record.

Sometimes it takes so long for the music to start.

Is there a shoreline where the seaweed holds the rocks so tight they soften into sand?

Is it too late to say that’s how my heart feels in your hands?

Like you could sift it through an hourglass and pass it off as time

never stood still, and neither did I.

But I will

if you let me.

in your arms I forget what the yarn knows of sweaters.

I forget how to hold myself together .

So if I unfold now like a love letter tell me you’ll write back soon.

Tell me you’ll still come untethered.

I saw the moon last night for the first time in months.

She reminded me of you, slouching, stubborn in the light.

I’d fight battles with the sun to rest against you tonight.

To feel feel your breath on my pillow,

those song birds outside your window are dropping feathers like I dropped words.

I’m cold from all that came out wrong.

I sleep alone now.

Even when I don’t,

I sleep backbone to floorboard because they’re softer than regret.

Don’t let me go,

don’t let me go yet.

I traced your silhouette on the skyline.

Your crooked spine bent meadows into mountains.

I climbed to watch the sunset.

The sky never looked so gorgeous.

All those falling stars, so sick and tired of being famous.

That man next door with his old violin.

I swore his song

could save us.