You leave so much red pen over the things I say when I’m trying to get a word in, the gaps when I hear the storm wash the earth outside your window, the quirk of my eyebrow when my eye twitches, all a secret face of mine, a message kept from you, a weapon wielded to hurt.

I could stay by your side
speak the worst things I never meant
or lay out in your backyard
let the lichen lay over me
till I am not a collection of wrong things
but a part of something so natural
it could never be wrong