complications of you

aanika,

I.

today i sat in the shadows and read your voice until my soul had all but dried up and my eyes had run out of tears. I imagined that you were sitting on a hill in the rain, in a cool summer rain, and your face was stained with nine kisses, and you held seven hands in your lap as you watched the sun set wetly.

orange and navy slid down from the clouds that had gathered there, and you wished that you still had the boy who knew where they had come from, but he disappeared a long time ago, didn't he? To a place somewhere behind your right lung, to listen to you breathe unevenly.

how many times had you sat on that hill in your dreams? Can you count them, can you even dream any more....

aanika,

II.

living has made me realize that there is truth hiding in the most forgotten places. in swing sets, and gunshots, in little kids' smiles. In rain.

aanika,

III.

i never told you how it broke my heart when you wanted to be a comet. they fall, my dear broken bird, my butterfly with wings that just won't unfold. they fall, and no one stays to catch them. Maybe you wanted to dance with them because your tiny wrists couldn't hold you when you stood on your hands and stared at the stars backwards and upsidedown, pretending you were falling in love. Maybe it was when he left, that you became so, because you wanted to follow him, and comets are the fastest things you know.

supernova,

IV.

Someone lied to you the other day. It might have been me, in another body; it could have been him.

truth: you are beautiful.

and that word to you means nothing, so i will tell you in other, more certain terms.
You are the raspberries, you are the ice of lithium, the clouds and peter pan. You hold fireworks in your hipbones and in your eyes and in your words. You hurt more than he does.

this is beautiful.

defluo,

V.

i need to put this word somewhere no one will ever think to look for it. It'll be in plain view, in an apple tree maybe, and in the spring, people will search for it and you, and you'll be in the apples.

paper crane,

VI.

you will fly one day. you just haven't found your wings.

ashgirl,

VII.

this name you didn't give yourself, so you will have no problem remembering it. it will stay will you, under the skin of your arm, whether you write it there or not. i hand it over to you and sprinkle it with light silver into your honeyed eyes. you are burned, as you never said, but listen quietly. Fire still loves you, and so do the jack pine trees. they are ready to drop themselves into you, because they know you love broken things.

they feel you can save them.

aanika,

VIII.

today i love you.

it's not enough. not enough at all, but maybe it will save you for a midnight and a morning after. maybe it will show you yourself, in a mirror. or a piece of the ocean in autumn.

you are real. you are untangible, but more real than anything.

and you have broken my heart.




thank you.




aanika,

IX.

this letter is for you, to hide wherever you choose. I press it into your palms like strawberries, and chemists' concoctions. I give it to you in exchange for one thing, a wish. I want to wish on you, because wishes on broken stars are always the most magical.


they always come true.