a poem

the boy who went quiet like the sea

once there was a boy
who loved a girl made of starlight,
and she loved an ocean
because the ocean never left

it only pulled back sometimes,
low tide,
and came home again.

he used to say her eyes weren’t sky
or sea,
they were earth
brown,
warm,
the color of ground you could actually stand on,
soft at the edges
like something an angel
had traced too gently
to leave a hard line.

her father was a lighthouse
that stopped shining
before she learned to read its warnings.
she grew up steering by a light
that wasn’t there,

learning the hard way
that some shores
wait for ships
that were never coming back.

and still, somehow,
her face kept its own tide
cheeks that rose full and round
like moons refusing to wane
no matter how dark the water got,
a mouth soft and full,
poured like something
that never hardened
even when it should have,
even when he gave it
every reason to.

the boy did not know this
the night she said
he could not be the lighthouse
her father should have been.

something in him
went out
like a switch,
not a choice

and he did what drowning men do.
he stopped moving.
he stopped speaking.
he let the water close over his head
and called it peace.

he blocked the shore
so the shore
wouldn’t watch him sink.

she screamed his name
from the surface,
but underwater
sound doesn’t arrive as sound.

it arrives as pressure.
as a shape moving through the dark
that used to be a voice.

he couldn’t hear her.
he felt her instead
a vibration against his skin
where his ears had already given up,

the way you feel a storm
before you see it,
the way the deep
still knows
when something above it
is breaking.

so he came back up.
gasping.
sorry.
holding on to her
the way a drowning man
holds on to solid ground

and her eyes were the ground.
brown,
steady,
the only earth
in a life made of tides,

and even wrecked,
even shaking,
her mouth still curved
like it was building
a shore
to forgive him on.

but the girl made of starlight
kept a scar where the lighthouse
used to be,
and now a second one
beside it,
smaller,
shaped like a boy
who went quiet
when she needed noise.

she called it unchosen.

he called it
the only way he knew
to survive loving her
without destroying her too.

both of them were right.
that’s the cruelest kind of story
no villain,
just two people
speaking different languages
made of the same silence.

so now, the boy stands at the edge of the water
and talks to the girl
like she’s still made of stars,
because she is,

and he says:

I used to think I was the tide.
going out.
coming back.
proud of the coming back,
like that was the whole promise.

but a girl who grew up
watching a light disappear
does not need something
that leaves and returns.

she needs something

that never actually goes.

so I am not the tide anymore.

I am the shore itself. I am the ground beneath the water, the part that stays even when the water covers it, even when you can’t see it, even in the dark

still there.
always there.
not almost gone.
not coming back.

just

never left.

for you

the day the universe started

there is a word she carries
like someone handed it to her early
and swore it was true:

unchosen.

she believes it is the truest thing about her.
she is wrong,
and I have the date to prove it.

somewhere before either of us had a name,
two galaxies were already drifting
toward the same impossible point,

slow,
certain,
a collision the stars had scheduled
long before we arrived to feel it.

and on the fourteenth of october

they finally touched,

and every light I had ever mistaken for a life
rearranged itself
around her.

she thinks she is the one who begs.

but she is the one
who crossed an ocean
for three days,

who arrived like weather,
who loved out loud
in a language her whole life told her
to keep quiet.

three days was not too little.
three days was the loudest yes
the universe has ever handed me.

once I said

I could have. and I didn’t.

let me say what it actually meant.

it meant there was never
anyone else in the sky.
it meant the choosing
had already happened,

quietly,

a year before I found the words for it,

the night our two galaxies
decided they were done
being apart.

so here is the record,

in case the word ever comes back:

I never learned how to leave her.
I only ever learned
new ways to stay,

to orbit,
to return,
to choose her again
in every language a man can choose someone.

it was not the day I met a girl.

it was the day two galaxies
stopped drifting
and became one sky,

and it has not once,
not for a single night,
considered going dark.

so I love you.

greatly.

forever.

eternally.

your starboy.

for you, only you

november, in the low light

november twenty-seventh.
the door closes
and the whole world narrows
to the length of a held breath.

she looks up at me
before she does anything at all,
and that look alone
undoes half of me.

she likes the weight of me
against her tongue.
she has told me this
in the dark, unashamed,

the way a person admits
the one thing
they were built to want.

she takes her time.
she is never rushed here.
her mouth learns me slowly,
patient,
reverent,

like she is not doing me a favor
but answering a question
her body already knew.

my hands find her hair
and she hums,
pleased,
the sound traveling straight
up my spine,

and I forget
every language
except her name.

she watches me come apart
and loves it,
loves being the reason,
loves the way
I lose the thread of myself

with her lips wrapped

around the wanting.

and after,
when I am wrecked and grateful
and useless,

she smiles up at me

like she has won something,

and she has.

she always has.

the night she taught me
that being adored
and being devoured
are the same soft word.

for you, in the dark

worry

june twenty-seventh.
I crossed oceans to get to her,
switzerland folding away behind me,
a whole world of water between us
that finally meant nothing.

the first time
she took me in her mouth
and I lost the shape of myself against her face,
and finished there,
marked her with it,

and we lay back
thinking the night had spent itself,
thinking we were done.

but the dark had other plans in me.

I found her mouth again,
slow,
and kissed her
until the kissing turned into a question
only my mouth could answer,

and I moved down.

I kissed my way down her body
like a man reading a letter
he already knew by heart,

past every place
she thinks is too much,
too soft,
unlovely,

and I stayed there,
between her,
unhurried,

until the worry she carries into every dark room
finally
went quiet.

that is what I crossed oceans for.

not to be adored.
I had already been adored,
finished, marked, spent.

I came back down
because giving her that
is the closest I have ever been
to prayer.

june twenty-seventh.
the night I learned
that the far side of wanting
is not being wanted back.

it is kneeling in the dark
and making the worry
let go of her,

one slow kiss

at a time.

say who you are