I’m inventing the things we need. I’m half asleep and reaching for the paper to write it down so when I wake up I can remember. Like something that makes the north star light up when I thought of you and needed you to help me find my way home, even when I’m sitting in my own bed. All the constellations would point to you and you’d see it and I’d hear your voice and I’d know which way to go. Even if it was away from you..

Or a tunnel under our houses so I can walk to you when I need you most. Or a box filled with the way your clothes smell after you’ve slept in my bed. A manuscript of every word you’ve ever written into my skin and left here when you left me. Maybe a pillow filled with all the dreams you had when we fall asleep next to each other so I can lay my head on it and dream your dreams while you’re away. 

And I hope you’d find me in the color of your walls and the smell in your clothes and the letters I left in the pockets you never keep anything in. And I wrote Em htiw ereh erew uoy hsiw I uoy ssim I uoy evol I on your back so you’d feel less backwards when I can’t be there to turn you in the right direction. 

You’d wake up in the late afternoon and wonder why you can still see the moon and you’d read every part of me over and over and over until you can spell me backwards. I can scribble it across the doorknobs so every time you leave you leave with new ideas. And I hope every state line you cross breaks in half and you think of how to stitch it back together so I can reach out your window and hold your hand when I wake up lonely at night and wonder where you are. 

I wonder if you think of me when I think of you. The way every road is writing itself into the back of your hand. Like when I cross the bridge and think of the night we drove away and thought about not coming back. When you felt so tall I thought I was getting smaller. 

I’m only good on paper and I’ll fall to the seats in your car and under winter dampened feet in december behind all the things you’ve hidden from me. Lucky for you I’ve written all of it on the walls that never see the sun. Inside the zippers of the sweater you wear when you’re with me and hidden under the sheets you fall asleep on and projected onto your eyelids so you have absolutely everything of me and I have nothing of you. 

I’d burn every single house down from me to you if it meant you’d box up the ashes and send them my way.