Because This Is Who I Am

I am late night book reads

i am a few tracks from an 80’s album

mixed with the smell of a bonfire

i am old news and good news whisked with

the excitement of a planned tomorrow that could

make for a memorable yesterday.

i am cooked meals at dinner tables and

none too many a home sewn together with

the lines drawn between friends on a map

of the world.

i am a child and a desperate lover combined

with the need to care and the cry to be cared for

i am a wishing well of secrets that pools into

advice when the time is right

i am a safe that guards all but can be opened

by many, and only when secrets conflict do i feel

the need to change the combination

I am a bookshelf filled with old favorites,

unread adventures and pages that have yet

to be filled, or are halfway there and desperate

for more

I am the pictures in my head, striving for a

perfect reality no one has heard me talk about

because I’m too afraid to say it will never come true

I am the observer in the world hoping tomorrow

someone will love me, will pick up my puzzled pieces

lay me down and put me back together again,

so I know what it feels like to be wholly loved
I am next day turkey and dark hot chocolate
the first rain of spring that brings me out of my 
deep frost and leads me to new hope
I am the summer that fills you with the feeling
that life will go on in bliss and the world you live in
will only hurt you so long as you let it. 
I am the letter you never expected to receive and 
the guest you'd love to see show up on your 
front porch, because who doesn't love 
surprises that make your eyes shine so much
you get bubbles in your stomach and feelings that
could warm the cruelest of nights
I am that feeling you get in the morning when you roll
over in bed and know you have a few more hours 
to sleep the static away, the crazy pictures in your head
that will clear for a vision of a better tomorrow
I am a Friday, a Saturday, and a Sunday brunch
I want you to hear me like you hear the waves whisper
to the dock or the rain sooths the roof at night
Breath me in like the first day of autumn where you 
see the leaves rotating through colors
breath me like coming up for air when you thought
the rapids would hold you under forever
See me like I see myself when I have those days
were I look in the mirror and think Damn, today is a
good day to be me, because today i am wonderful
Know me because I want you to know me, want to
be an open book with the best type of secrets
knowing not that there will be an ending, just
a series of new beginnings brought to life
Because this is who I am, and you should never
be denied the realization that I am forever