I am, before,
Your gaze, your look,
The fixation of your eyes
Rendered unto broken glass.

You shatter me, and
I must find a reassembling.
With your beauty you shatter me
With your words you shatter me
When you touch me, I come apart.

Know this: You are a fixed point in time,
You are the pause between the question and the answer.
You are the feeling before falling.
You are a borderland.
You are a liminal step-to-step.
You shatter me.
You alter me; utterly
You are change; you challenge me
You are a call.
What can I do, but respond?

I think of you often and often.
There is a place for you,
Here in my reassembling heart that I have made.
A missing piece of glass, a errant shard
That forms a safe dark place within
An absence that becomes a sanctuary by its treasuring.
Where you are, there I have lit a fire.
A beacon, a watchtower, a sacred furnace
Ember tongues in glass.
Reach out, touch it,
Touch the flames I burn for you.

You are light and I a gallery.
You are song and I an opera house.
You are the stars and I a meadow.
You are the voice that calls.
You are the blow that falls.
You are the wind; my branches ache for you.
You are the sea; I am the shoreline.
Come in, tide! Come rushing in.


Wrote this in late December 2019 for my partner N. We’re still going strong as of this writing.

Trans happiness is real. Love is real.

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