Poem Series: WHIM

WHIM

Liz Fink-Davenport

You are the closest thing I ever felt to home.
A welcome mat smile with a fireplace laugh,
Knowing I could collapse into you when the gravity of everything else
turned my bones to shackles.
When life held me down against my own will,
Shoved my face in gravel, gasps for breath between mouthfuls of dirt.
I could kick off my shoes and rest in you.
Rest in a place that I was always meant to be.
Because it was always supposed to be us.
At least, that’s what I tell me.
And I never feel more safe than when I can look up at your constellations.
Slip off Orion’s Belt,
And you can slip into me.
Every song that’s ever given me tingles.
Every hug that reminded me why humans need to touch.
Every moonlit secret that traveled from my lips to yours.
Every broken promise to myself.
Every sleepless night trying to figure out when the path to your door became so hard to find.
Every attempt to cling to us.
My heart broken and mended and rebroken infinite times an hour.
I think you need,
Happiness that lingers over your days and stabs joy into dark recesses.
You want play. And light. And no mess.
And I'm mess. And I'm undoing. And I'm chaos.



My heart is strung to you by a tiny red thread that is tied at your wrist.
Like a child's balloon. Tethered. And I wait. Poised between heaven and sky
And your wrist,
That tugs. To home. At its own whim.