There’s a river I mold with my hands. It’s made of a second or two, it’s made of dark blue hours, a thought I think I might not have had if I think hard enough, honestly if it was ever in my head I think it could have been a dream of you gone missing.

I chase down things I want to say to you but they can’t make sound, they chatter and don’t crystallize, they flee like wild things, they’ll never come out right, I’ll pull back and forth on this syllable instead and take it apart and put it together and take it apart and put it together and take it apart and

There’s a distinct possibility that your meaning, what I think you mean, is meaningless. I mean, I don’t think you tried very hard but that’s exactly it, you didn’t try very hard to try. But God. I want you to. Wanted. Past tense. I wanted you to.

Silently she cries, I hold her blood in my hands, I try to use it to rinse out my own hollow bones that have been smashed so many times into the dirt but I keep failing just like I do when we talk, like I’ll fail if I ever try to hold you.

Just because she cries doesn’t mean I’m in some wind tunnel laughing, dress feathers blowing up behind me, knowing my wishes are just what I’m living and what I said is exactly what I meant and I meant to say everything I said. I have too many thoughts I don’t say and too many words I don’t think. Just because she cries doesn’t mean I don’t, there’s more than enough dark blue hours in this world to go around.

I could run until I button up a skin of steel and shapeshift to a seagull and be so so so free, I could run until I can see the sky and I can’t see anything, I could run until I’m out of footsteps and ramblings, I could run until the waves crash against my ankles but you dug too deep under my skin and I’d rather not open up those sores again with salt.

There’s a distinct possibility that when she cries I somehow break too.