Kærasti

i count the scars on your shoulder and lose track because i am greedy. i want to collect every piece of you and press them into the small spaces of me that never learned patience.
 
you give me warmth with your sigh and i keep it like a stray spool in my pocket. something small and lucky and entirely mine. i press it into my palm when no one is looking, i press it into the hollow of my throat when i run out of words.
 
i hold this love in my sternum. it rattles against my ribs and leaks out sometimes when i laugh too hard. i never learned how to carry something beautiful without bruising it a little. never learned how to love without trembling hands and too much anger slipping through the cracks.
 
there are mornings i wake up so full of you i have to sit still, or i might spill all over the floor. all over the sun. all over anyone lucky enough to be flooded by this. some days i am all hands. all mouth. all trying. all reaching. all weaving small shaky threads back to you with whatever clumsy tools i have left.
 
some days i am just a chest splitting open. i hope you'll catch whatever falls out. i hope you'll gather up the mess and tuck it behind your ear like something worth keeping. you look at me and everything inside me rearranges itself without asking. shifts into softer shapes. spills into open hands. grows bigger than my body can hold.
 
i am better this way. better ruined and rebuilt and blooming under the weight of it. carrying this love not because i have to but because i was always going to.