​I held you in a delicate embrace.

I was blessed to be the first on Earth to see your perfect face.

I knew you were the reason for everything that ever happened.

You offered me smiles, you chased away the taste of sadness.

You slept on my chest, some nights I had with you.

Scratching me up, and spitting up on my tattoos.

To think of it now, gone forever,

I’ll never get through.

But I have to get through.

Some days I’d tell you stories as they formed inside my head. 

I would paint for you a desert garden, in tones of brown and red. We’d plant it in some ancient and forgotten riverbed, fighting to find the perfect words, even knowing you couldn’t understand me yet. 

I sang you to sleep and I told you about the wolf called Nasoba. Whose only dream in life was to be like his brothers.

I told you the story of the sweet Amitabha, and Samcha, her desperate lover.

I tried to show you my hope for the world, that the innocent scuttle under.

In only the shortest of time, I held you close. In my heart, and with both hands.

I want you to know who you are, and I have to know too.

Your every favorite thing and your every stumble. I want to be the Sun and the Rain as you grow.

And when there is thunder, I want to sway your fears.

I’d teach you to sing to the storm in it’s rage, “I am here.”

You are the whisper I need to shout, and the cuss to the wind that blows me out.

Like a candle, melting down into a puddle of its own universe… And I’m struggling to stay above the ocean of sand, with both hands. 

As I rise and sink below the tumbling waves, I can only imagine your life, and all the ways we’re becoming like strangers. And all I can see when my head breaks the surface, are the ruins of our desolate desert garden.

And like the dry riverbed, my heart of clay slowly hardens.