Does it hurt the small buds

Of spring to push up

Through the dirt

After a long cozy winter

Bedded down in the ground?

Do they feel shy

Blooming naked before

A bold sun?

Do leaves weep as

They lose their grasp

On trees and fall

Gracefully to be crushed

By so many passing feet?

Do they feel bitter

That trees cast them

Aside so easily?

You asked me

Why I don’t like hugs—

Was that rhetorical?

I can never tell between

The two and I skirted

The issue as I am apt

To do when put on a

Spot, twirling away

In my dress

Suddenly afraid of you

Of what you might

Learn of me 

But hopelessly hoping 

You might ask again

Because it’s not that

I don’t like hugs

It’s that I like you

Too much.

I spend my nights wishing

We were kissing

All those things you said

I’ve forgotten

If I ever heard them 

I was too distracted by the stars

In your eyes

By the waves beating the shore

Their pounding echoing my heartbeats

To hear your words

If only I could as easily forget

All the things I was too shy to say—

Why were we never more?

Is scar tissue stronger?

Because the wounds have

Healed but their marks

Remain, the tide goes

Out but the undertone

Still pulls me in.

Even when I’ve grown

Old and weary

I’ll still be dancing

In a photograph.

My mother likes to remind me

To eat more vegetables but also

To admire without possessing

How to love from a distance

Appreciation without touch

But when I catch a glimpse 

Of so many wonderful things

I want them for myself

I want them to myself

A peek at a foreign landscape

Has me packing my bags

Every pretty dress I want on my back

How am I supposed to look at you

Without claiming you for myself?

I still have a key

To the house we no longer own

If we ever did own it

But what is ownership if not posession?

Did someone paint over

The scribbles I made on the wall

Behind my bed (where Mom wouldn’t see)?

Does someone sit in that window

Where I spent so many hours

Quietly reading?

It was only one house in a string of many

But someone forgot to ask

For my key and so it waits

In the bottom of a jewelry box

With plastic bracelets and broken earrings

Pieces of a personal history

I’m not ready to throw away.

He said, she said

A classic case

Of miscommunication

It wasn’t that they weren’t listening

They just couldn’t hear

Over thundering hearts

It wasn’t that they weren’t looking

They just couldn’t see

Past darting glances

If only they would communicate

Through touch

With a kiss or a hug

Intention is hard to miss.

I hear you smiling

Through the phone lines

Intimate as tin cans

Bound on a string

Shared in childhood

Can you hear

Laughter in written lines?

Am I smiling now

At you?