I have seen inside myself and I know now what I am made of; it’s not the red blood and long threads of veins that spiral through these arms that reach for you, no, it’s not the tissue of tired muscles and worn out fingers from squeezing air where you hand should be. I have seen inside myself and I know now I am made of letters and those letters fall in love with others and they join together and coursing through me under this fragile skin is the product of their great love affair, the sentences they gave birth two and the long paragraphs that have become their family tree over the years that I have wandered. If we trace their lineage back, up I suppose because family trees always grow from the leaves to the roots and not the other way around, what would be the letters that started it all, that gave birth to the story that has become our lives? What leaves started it, what word is the seed that shot this tree into the sky and into earth proud and strong?
I used to wonder but now I know, I used to guess but now I scream it into the breeze that the only word I see at the top of my tree is You and it’s always been You. If you look close enough you can see and if you see you might know and if you think you know you might just stay long enough to read the words that flow through me and fill me up and overflow out of every place that I cannot seal off to the outside world. Take this knife and cut this skin and watch the adjectives spill down the sides of my hands. There are not tears that fall from my eyes but tiny love letters wrapped up in a shape they never intended and they, when find themselves wiped onto handkerchiefs and your unconditional shirt sleeve make new poetry without ever bothering to try.
It’s words inside me and I am overstuffed with all of the ones I’ve yet to say and all the others that have stuck when whispered or yelled into these ears that needed to hear them. What will they say when it is finally time for drastic measures, what will they spell when a grand gesture and only one will do? Will it be a long speech drawn from more than I think my body can spare or will it be one word, bold and in all capital letters urging me on? Will they carry the color of irony or will they be pure and hopeful and not leave their silhouette on all they touch? I have seen inside myself and the only question left worth asking is whether or not you will ever read them? Read the blood that isn’t blood at all and take the time to count the syllables that fall out of my eyes, taste the quotations and lyrics that wet my lips and will you believe me when I say that despite all the words that live where breath should call home, I am a haiku and you are a novel. I feel them, the weight in my legs and when an exhausted sigh finds its way out my lungs I can just see the evaporating lines of poems I’ve not yet written for you, desperate pleas I’ve not yet plead and secrets I am waiting to whisper into your sleepy ears before you find sleep again for the night. All I am is all for you and each and every time I Think I’m out of letters, more are born from the seeds you’ve planted and I cannot wait to watch the flowers bloom from the stalks that have become the veins in my arms, waiting to hold you. I will grow from the top down, from my dreams in the clouds to my feet that are ever anchored to the soil that loves the feeling of your bare feet upon it too. I am leaking letters and dripping verbs and bathing myself in the actions they long to take. I have so many inside me and I have seen them and know they are more and beautiful and haunting me like my body is an old house and they are the spirits that just cannot find the the light to leave. I have seen inside myself and I know now that I am made of words and that all of them are fighting their very hardest to get out. That the alphabet found a tornado inside me and has been scattered to the ends of all I am. From my fingertips to the tips of my eyelashes blinking slowly and closing in reverence and preparation for your lips touching mine. I am made of words and I can’t help wondering if you’ll read me.
Tyler Knott Gregson