in congratulations on your recent nuptials

i have spent the past three nights shaking and
thinking about how many poems i would write if i knew
where to send them. don’t think that i’ve forgotten you,
please, because i promise i haven’t. i still remember how you
take your eggs on saturday and how you make yourself
fall asleep when it’s four a.m. and you don’t want to leave yet.

it’s more than that too, okay, i remember your body,
firm against my body, your voice in my car,
your hair ties around my wrists, your chest rising
and falling with every one of my heartbeats.

you were
all my poems. you were everything significant.
you were my late night tuesdays and the only thing that
got me out of bed on wednesdays.
you were too risky to let go of, you were always
too much to hold.

i’m sorry i don’t know your new address.
but i still have the old one on me somewhere, pressed
into the soles of my feet and the gaps between my teeth.
i remember who we were there, hiding behind
your garden shed and picking blackberries to stain our fingers.
i remember thinking that if i kissed you then, you’d taste how
purple looked, tart and cold against the roof of my mouth.
i remember thinking that i would never grow out
of the butterflies you gave me when you held my hand still
to read my future. i remember thinking that
i wanted to write the world down on a sheet of paper
and give it to you.

i remember thinking that i wanted to
kiss you then, purple lips and all.

so when i tell strangers that you helped me write my first poem,
i mean that you gave me the first secret i was too afraid
to tell anyone else about.
i didn’t know how tight i was holding the memory of you
until i realized it was time to let you go.

i got your letter the other day, and i wondered if
you still only drink champagne with your eyes closed—
i’m sorry,

i do not think i will be able
to make it to your wedding, but
i have the invitation pinned on my fridge.
you look happy and beautiful and dizzy in love,
and i can’t believe i missed that.

make a toast for me, if you notice my absence,
if you remember the length of my heart line,
if you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night
and taste blackberries at the tip of your tongue,
and if you don’t—
then i think that is, probably, for the better.