petal

i want to call you by a name more perfect than the one your parents gave you.
something that reminds me of the sky,
or the sharp reality that you belong to someone else so that i can feel nothing.

i used to want to be nothing but now i think i want to be a painting.
i want to be a work of art.
something that exists only to remind you that you are the softest thing that i have ever touched. 

you are softer than the clouds above a city that needed rest from the light.
you are softer than the air trapped in the eye of the storm.
you are softer than a bed of flowers that still belong to the earth.
you are my favorite flower.

you don’t know what your favorite flower is because all your other boyfriends said they were glad you were too punk to want stupid gifts and you’d bite your tongue to silence the little girl in you that wanted to be treated like a princess.

sometimes it’s the things that feel wrong that make us better.
my therapist calls that a paradox.

but i want to be a flower.
i want to be reincarnated into a flower that you think is beautiful so when you call me ‘petal’ it’s like you knew you’d hold me again. 

take care of me.
start me off in a thimble and grow me on your window sill.
fill me with life and watch the roots sprout from under my skin.
make sure i’m drinking enough water and feed me.
i want you to feed me. 
i want you to feed me the last bit of food that i’ve been leaving on my plate for years.
put it in your hands and feed it to me.

if my obsessions kick in
and my brain tells me i did something wrong
i want you to hold my body
and tell me that i did something right. 

i want to be something else.
i want to be rain. 
i want to be the coldness that brushes against your cheek.
i want to be the hollow spaces in the footsteps you left on mountains that i don’t think i can climb.
i want to hear planes outside and not have to close my eyes because i can’t stop thinking about them crashing into my house.

i want to be something big
because sometimes i get so tired
and i don’t want to be tired.

and more than anything,
i don’t want you to wake up one day
and look at me and feel
tired.