Promises

i love for the same reasons i write:

to see lightbulbs as stars rather than 

glass shells, to watch commuters walk by

without a sense of passing time, to drink

oil until my heart is slick enough to remove

and put on display.

he said i could be anything i wanted to be.

everyone i know writes in a straight line, while my

writing curves into infinite corners, circling around

its source. he makes me crooked—my

spine, my words, my grief for him.

he has brown eyes that run into shadowed hollows.

i believed him when he said he would protect

me. so far, no stranger has tried to hurt me. he

was the only one who hurt me.

i will always believe in his promises.

if only to watch the sunset a little longer—

if our ending was a sunset, it was bright

too abrupt. the earth wasn’t warm yet

he said i could be anything i wanted to be

no one’s ever said that to me and meant it.