Another old poem. I wrote this in December of 2013 in a coffee shop when I should have been studying for finals.

I fell for you in fall,

but by the time winter came I felt you

slipping away

like snow melting in my clenched fist.

Maybe I shouldn’t have held on so tight,

but I was caught up

in the discovery of my fingers.

They had all the boldness that my mouth did not.

They wrote you poems

and reached out into the empty space

to touch your ears

and make feeble attempts at your heart.

But my voice,

it got in the way.

It turned words into walls

that I imagined unbreakable.

My voice was full of worry and the weather.

Every time my fingers reached for you

my voice dropped an anvil of “no”s,

which crushed my hands

and left me aching.

But my fingers won’t be stopped

in spite of their breaking.

I pray for the miracle

that will turn every message

into a mountain top

like the one I nearly begged you to climb,

and you were beside me.

I was out of breath from hiking up your steep heart.

The words we said were nothing new.

We sang the same song we always do.

My dusty heart was impatient

so I left you,

thinking you would chase me.

I raced towards the next mountain top

thinking that would be the one

where wildflowers

would inspire my voice

to be true to my heart.

But that mountain never came,

you did not chase me,

and my fingers are as tired as my mind

from trying to create love

out of pieces of paper.