Answer me this:

Do black holes mourn the nebulas they once were?

Does the ocean long for the simplicity of rain?

Does the desert wish it could return

to a single grain of sand?

I miss you. I miss all the things you did not yet know, 

and all the things you had not yet learned to see.

You did not understand the secrets of numbness, of nothing.

You did not understand how to make your body into a cage to contain

everything that was wrong with you. 

You did not know how to hide. You did not know how to lie. 

I love you. I despise you. I envy you.

And still, I miss you. Come back. Please, come back. 

But you are a breathing tide, in and out, close and far,

and when I reach to find you, you are already gone. 

You never belonged here. You were too loud, too messy,

too strange, too much of everything you were never supposed to be. 

You weren’t meant to live, to last, because how could 

someone like you survive in a world like this?

But you were beautiful. I see it, even if no one else did. 

You were fierce, feral colors and endless screams.

You were thorns and wildfires and frantic stars.

You were perfect and forthright.

You were free. 

You are history and prophecy. 

You are my armor. You are my art.

You are the oceans in my bones, the galaxies in my blood.

You are dreaming and decay. You are dead and alive. 

Both here and gone, like the beat of a breathing tide.