Missing you

 I romanticize flowers.

Their trembling petals,

their stubborn, 

clumsy kind of serenity,

their accidental serendipity,

the way I once romanticized love,

when I still believed love could outgrow the damage.

I don’t write much these days.

I feel everything, all at once,

like waves kissing the shore soft, 

then devastating.

It’s the same with words

they rise up in me when I'm awake till morning

and sometimes when I'm walking with my headphones on,

press against my throat gentle yet brutal and then vanish as if it never rained.

Last evening, I wandered into this little crumbling shop

the kind that smells like old wood, dust, and older regrets.

I bought myself some vases.

though, not really vases

Just empty wine bottles,

bruised and beautiful,

the way lost things sometimes are.

Each one could maybe hold three, four flowers, not more than that, if given all in one they could suffocate,

if you pour enough warmth into them,

if you pretend they were made to carry something delicate,

something reckless enough to bloom.

They’re sitting on my bookshelf now, 

Where my favorite poetry books used to be,

I traded my little happiness last night,

they are a little crooked, 

a little tired yet glow gently.

Maybe that’s what we were.

A collection of cracked vessels,

barely enough to bloom,

barely enough to break,

barely enough to stay.

Still, somehow enough to survive.

I don’t know why I’m writing all this.

Maybe because it’s raining tonight,

and everything softens in the rain,

 so will my pain!?

Maybe because some part of me still thinks I’d understand love is not expectations.

Maybe because some flowers still bloom in broken bottles,

Maybe because some hands still remember how to hold.

Maybe because

I miss how love feels in hand,

quietly,

Always,

quietly.

By,

Shaina...