A letter to myself.

Throw away the stuffed puppy that your first boyfriend gave you and
get rid of the letters from the boy you dated for ten days
before he went back to his girlfriend.

On your bookshelf you have conversations from thirteen-year-old you's 4AMs.
Gather them up and burn them.
The forgiveness they hold is ancient and just because you no longer have proof
doesn't mean it wasn't real.
Besides,
you never should have needed contrition for caring too much.

Delete the playlist you made for the boy you fucked last winter.
You never gave it to him
and listening to something that makes you cry doesn't make you stronger.
It just makes you sad.

Crop the man who took your virginity from the portrait you drew.
Keep yourself
and the way your hair turns to the ocean.

Put your ex's cologne in a drawer somewhere until you forget what it smells like.
Don't open it until the next time you have a date--
put it on to remind yourself how gentle hands can be
and that his were not the only ones.

Repeat after me:
You are not
defined by the trinkets you keep.
You are not defined
by the things they deemed worthy to give you,
nor the things you created because of them.
You
are defined by the way you loved them,
and not by the way you hoarded it.
as if it would turn to smoke and slip through your fingers.
You are defined by the way you smiled at them and
the nights you spent with them but you are not
a souvenir.
You are not
a museum for them, you
are not
defined by the way you loved them.

You are defined
by the way you let them
go.

I am the Tinman and you are Dorthy with an Oil Can

We have a list of things to do when we're within touching distance. It goes something like this:

1. Cuddle
2. Watch stupid movies
3. Tackle and be tackled
4. Enjoy beds
5. Fuck each other senseless

Late at night, it tends to be the bed I look forward to the most. Half-nights spent in humidity and bug-bites don't exactly end up rating high on the list for best afterglows. I have only slept one full night curled up next to you in the year we've known each other, but I remember it well: swimming out of sleep and muddled, half-remembered dreams only to realize that I was safe, not because the children I was dreaming of had all gone home or because the next morning I was flyign home, but because I was there and so were you. I could feel your skin, and you had never let anything hurt me.

It's a ten hour bus ride and a fair chunk of money to take a Greyhound to you, but it's not even a second thought to either of us at this point. (A car would make things easier, but a car means money, and money is something I don't have, at least for a while.) I'll gladly do it for a night or two with you and some daylight in between. I'll probably even end up doing it more than once before it gets any easier. To me, it's worth it. So far, it seems like you think so, too.

Still, there is an animal clawing at the walls inside my chest. It's one I've known for a long time, and one that has been fed more often than I wish. It lives on lies and mistrust, and perceptions that are both real and heavily denied. It exhales anxiety and doubt into my lungs when I'm not looking. Its claws are what-ifs and not-good-enoughs. It laughs at my hopes in the dark.

I want you to kill it. I want you to open up my chest like a birdcage. I want you to see its crooked teeth and glinting eyes, its hunger for fear and disappointment, and I want you to laugh at it. I want you to laugh until tears stream down your face, laugh so loudly it tries to cover its ears, and for so long that it can no longer stay and bolts, hissing, from its home behind my lungs. I want you to swing my ribs shut like a garden gate and padlock it with promises you'll actually keep. To watch the light shine through the cracks it made in my skin and tell me it reminds you of summer sun.

I hope you're the person the others were not, and that when my back is turned, you're not feeding the monster my scraps. And I hope your name never turns into a snarl the creature whispers to me in the dark when it tells me it's the only trustworthy lover I will ever have.

The part I'm trying to remember is that I think you are. I think you're all these things. I think you're August moonlight and morning fog, all-surrounding and impossible to lose. I think of you like old rock walls and oak trees, imperfect and strong, steadfast and beautiful. Sometimes you are a waterfall, washing my mind clean--others, you are a carpenter, mending things that you were not the one that broke. Always, you are safety--the untouched page, the unopened door, the unbroken string. Your hands are what I've been chasing. Your mind is the scent on the air I needed to breathe before I knew that I had made it.

And wherever this goes, I hope you know that. More than anything, I hope you know.