I think I’ve loved you

since you were thirteen.

Tall and nervous

making skyscrapers of baby boy shoulders.

I turned you bright red.

.

And years later

we drank flat soda on my living room floor.

You said you could hear me singing

from outside the window.

I wonder if you waited before ringing the doorbell.

.

But lung loud days came later.

First there were tentative hugs

on church concrete,

as if you were using your arms

to measure how much I cared about you.

.

We hummed in hallways.

Laughed at things too heavy

to carry alone.

You walked a while in my heels

and never fell once.

.

I hope you don’t remember

the night you cried through.

You said you hadn’t planned

on being around the next day.

Or any day after that.

.

And I knew that darkness

from nights of my own.

So I held you without words.

We spoke in the way our fingers shook

in each other’s hair.

.

I almost lost you that night.

.

We almost lost you that night.

.

You almost lost you that night.

.

But the next year

you were teaching me which strings

made the sweetest noises.

And how to feel safe

when the voices outside were too loud.

.

We don’t talk about that night.

Instead we talk about kid’s shows

and which dress I’ll wear that afternoon.

We discuss the things we’ve lost

and the things we’ve let go.

.

I’ve loved you since you were thirteen.

Scared of your own voice.

Catching yourself in the shadows

made by lives

much older than yours.

.

And I will love you tomorrow

and in five years

when we drink cheap wine on a new living room floor.

Finding pauses between memories

to recall the childhood you almost didn’t have.