star*crossed

i. when we first met
I was an owl-eyed dreamer,
surely, I was the moon;
lonely and surrounded by the
dark thick blanket
shivering in the arms of
an oxygen-deprived sky that
didn’t want me
and you,

I assumed that you,
the pretty Miami girl
with the loud, silent presence
were the sun; the half cracked
grin you gave me lit your eyes
and I felt warm, like I was
melting and I knew,

that around you,
I would be in danger
of falling from my numbing
velvet atmosphere, down
towards the flames that
curled around you

but the sun and the moon
will never have the slight
chance of gracing each other
because they are opposite
sides of the spectrum and I
couldn’t handle that so
I ran

ii. It took me so many
missed moments to
find out that I was
wrong, you are not the
sun, that I was not the
moon but that

you are the moon, I am the
sea, we aren't too different just
two different mysteries
because we are both
hidden in plain sight, from
others and within ourselves

iii. there is no hint of
the dark side of the moon,
only speculation and you
still manage to glow and
light the darkness that used
to consume me, that reaches for
you but you move across the sky,
leaving me over and over and
over again but I’ve come to
realize that your love
comes only in phases and I
will never know
all of it

it doesn’t matter,
I know all the craters you
have and every flaw you harbor
makes you beautiful

iv. no one knows the
exact depths of the sea,
and I tend to lose myself
in riptide memories,
crashing in skewed and slowing
heart-beat waves and i
break against the shores, skimming
only shallowly but I am not
controlled, only contained, feigning
calm despite my inner calamity
because I have realized that

I am

drowning

v. you were always just
out of reach, longed for by
other dreamers but even then
I knew that you were an
undeniable piece of me that I hadn’t
known before, I still
remember the nights when
I wanted to just
not be, to not breathe
then you appeared, moving me
with tides and gently kissing my
wide, salt-stained eyes but
the nights you are not there
are dark and I’ve always
had trouble seeing

I want to reach out and
touch you but I
cannot, you are suspended;
resting in the forever-midnight, star
speckled sky where your road is
clear and paved with silver and I
am grounded; too weighted
by dead mermaids and
sunken ships where treasures will
never be found and
all I have is your
reflection pressing against me

vi. most times I hope
that there will come a day when
the fates decide to stop being so
cruel, that they’ll find a way to
send pieces of me to you,
to let me just a little bit
closer to you but it will never
be enough until
we are together

but you say that
you do not want these
recycled pieces of me;
that you

know how to

swim