happy birthday to me, a love letter to you

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salted caramel and good morning calls/ another year of being loved by them all/ summer heat and clear skies above/ twenty-two years of life greets me as the sun rises tall

thousands of years have seen this day/ how lucky we are to be here together/ promise to sing me happy birthday each year?/ your love always brings me such great pleasure

twenty-two years of me and i’ve shared seven with you/ here’s to forever more of this life I’ve built/ a celebration of me is a reminder of you/ so here’s to another year around this earth’s tilt

I love you, I miss you

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like a homesick child, I run away/ to a land-locked place of trees and granite/ i spend the days doing gloriously nothing/ and relearn to love the things I take for granted

but through it all i miss him and long to return/ a lesson learned and a plane ticket home/ i’m ready to see my darling lover and our cats/ i feel this yearning in my very bones

I’d forgotten how to live in the present time/ I’d lingered too far away from my place/ But I’ve found my tether and he’s 800 miles away/ So bring me aboard and promise me no delays

I dream of my return to him each night/ a morning of excitement and nerves/ I never can be away from him for long/ For I love him and he is mine in every measure

i’m calling, you’re declining

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I didn’t know you growing up/ and you still don’t know me/ all of the parts of me that screw up our phone calls/ they stay up lonely each night while you dream

what secrets are you keeping?/ who’s holding onto them now?/ I don’t think I’ll ever have another secret/ I don’t have a keeper here anyhow.

The telephone lines have been silent these days/ who worse to keep me company than myself/ I find myself staring at the fan blades/ wondering where all my good thoughts dwell

I’m overly self-conscious and yet it’s not enough/ I have too many priorities and yet I do nothing/ I think about how alone I’ve become/ why am i not growing?

Driving my car down the road

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Each morning I tiptoe out as the sun peaks over the highway

I kiss each creature in my room goodbye and save the last for you

My car takes the route we’ve worn into the tires this summer

What will I remember of these days in a year or two?

A summer of early mornings and a frequent flyer at the coffee shop

A summer of moving and spending spare minutes in an empty room

A summer of a growing reading list and upcoming expectations

Or a summer where all of my friends have left by June

I count the days of the season by the miles on my car

Everyone asks me to use those miles to visit their new lives

The creatures in my room have always been content with me here

Maybe I’ll remember this summer by the lack of long drives

Our Aegean, my ancient friend

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Does the Aegean Sea know its age?

Each morning it greets me just the same 

Each evening it thrashes and it pulls 

Just to find its calm in the rising sun 

Does it know its audience has shifted?

The dances have multiplied

The festivals no longer honor old deities 

Can the sea tell it’s graced by a different god?

Yet we’re shaped by its waves just as so

We know the change in its mood 

Just by the shade it appears

Just by the white lace of its foam

Its salt and cool nature draw us in more

Fill my hair with your water and dry it out with your salt

I take pleasure in your cold reign 

Leave your lasting remarks upon my skin

A sea we’ve always and yet never understood 

The center of a city yet it waits at the edge

I say goodbye one last time and it kisses my skin

Cold and salty and everything I’ll ever miss 

It will guide me home for the final time this summer

I promise to come back to you, my ancient friend 

where did all of the time go?

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the last four years all end with a grand stage/ all of my beloved papers and books traded for a diploma/ all of my late nights and emptied coffee cups are now behind me/ life moves out of my grasp and onto to the next hurrah

a mantra of green and gold i just began to learn/ it slips through my fingers like sand in the wind/ a social sciences building filled with all of my favorite professors/ their rushing by and last minute grading sings to my ears like a hymn

seventy years of an institution marked by my graduation/ all of its accreditations culminates in a student such as me/ living proof of its reputation surrounds me in the form of my fellow peers/ we’re all saying goodbye to the place where we learned to disagree

the last four years have left my hands stained with ink/ i have learned to navigate the library of congress to DG blind/ ancient wars and maritime commerce wait for me to cross/ just a few more steps before i leave my undergraduate years behind

i’d rather split a bill

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the cold in this beach front south whips me around/ the car jockeys, my hair flies, and the ocean crashes/ i sit safely inside and watch out my window/ from a wooden coffee shop, where the day slowly passes

i sit inside, warm and full of pastry/ french vanilla to sweeten a bitter coffee/ the table piled high with stacks of homework to read/ music lulls in the air to make a dreary day more than it may seem

i sit and remember a different cafe with company/ a friend to share dessert with and make an afternoon lighter/ another with someone so close to me/ with constant coffee refills just to keep you there a bit longer

here i sit by myself with no one around for miles/ i lost one to the north and the other to distance/ i order baklava for one at a table for two/ a singular mug rests next to me with no bills to split

i long for noise despite the music and chatter/ the rain outside offers no companion I’d like/ there’s not much to be said for she who sits alone/ and everything for those with someone in whom to confide

My home away from home

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This place is everything that French vanilla smells like/ it’s sun streaming through the cranberry glass on the windowsill/ it’s the perfumed soaps I look for every visit/ it’s a place frozen in my memory that I know won’t always be still

The foothills that roll from each city to the one with your home/ I could map out this town without any direction/ I’m afraid for the day that I won’t need to navigate it anymore/ for the day that I no longer turn to you for my easy vacations

Childhood memories float from frames hung in the hall/ the postcard on the fridge I wrote to you from afar/ the stuffed animal we’ve been hiding from you for years/ the pool room we spent the last decade washing the dogs in seems so far

I see this place in every mug and it’s coffee grounds/ each antique store I enter I hear your words of advice/ never start a collection, though your china cabinets are filled/ and I see it especially in each roll of my Yahtzee dice

You warned me not to age though it’s inevitable/ I refuse to believe that this place will never not be yours/ for now it’s where I learned to swim and play cards/ a place where love is free and life is pure

here’s to the new year

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i step into the new year wearing the same clothes/ i hold onto the hands of my friends as i go/ i hold onto my love and look back to smile/ and finally i look forward to see how we’ll all grow

i wish you all a year of love and a year of life/ honest friendship and kindness to yourselves/ for me i wish for a seed of faith/ something to root and remain in good health

goodnight and good year to all who browse/ step through to this year with an open soul/ to be better is to change and to find acceptance/ to find a version that is kind and whole

New Yorker

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Each route we have fallen on together/ each step walked beside the river/ late night ice cream runs and firetrucks/ swapping cookie recipes during halloween thrillers

as winter comes, we all say our goodbyes/ the hardest ones come after so much hope/ all of the places we swore we would try/ all of the plans we made as December approached

is the future of friendship based on airport destinations?/ I’ll keep you on my calendar if you do the same/ a shared apartment in the middle of Hyde Park/ Until then, we’re not too far away by plane