Let's forget about the tongue-tied lightning, let's undress just like cross-eyed strangers

And all this time my hair's grown to brush my elbows, and my heart has expanded to include memorized verse.

I've grown to wash dishes and bake muffins.

I've grown to be clay.

I've grown to call myself beautiful on my most washed-out days, because you cut the darkness right out of me.

And in this crunched, chaotic time you've become a man, and with that I guess I helped. I've cut the construction paper of your soul into a perfect snowflake, symmetry consisting of compassion and honor. I made you out of a good man, a good man that sparkles now.

But I see the little snips I've made, I do. Holes. I've instilled in you fear you weren't able to comprehend before. Fear of loss. Fear that seems to well up under you and pull you deep into the Pacific. Fear that makes you scream. Fear created by me, by my snips, my careless aim with these blades I so clumsily tote around.

No sonnet could tell you of my passion, or my comfort here in your home, feeding your belly. And no stanza could alienate what doubt I've given you and I know. We can't tighten the loose screws that rattle in each of us and create that throbbing, panging, nagging voice that whispers. We can't fill in the holes we've dug out of each other. We can only lift one foot up and place it in front of the other and laugh at our foolishness, because this is what we've created, and here we will stay.