I remember you tracing my palm lines like tree rings to measure

all my years, the weeks and months that wove together

to make up “me being alive.” How your body trembled

like a wrong note played by the most broken violin

when I said life was the opposite of where I wanted to be.

But this is what I know: we are both breathing out of lungs

filled with scar tissue and moon craters that will always be empty.

I am miles of self-inflicted birthmarks and you are acres

of aching. But I am tired of wearing thimbles on my fingers

just so I can rip myself apart and watch you try to sew me back together.

We are trying too hard to be one another’s life rafts

when we both end up sinking in even the best weather.

Years ago, my mother told me the story of Isaac Newton

and how he thought of the Universal Law of Gravitation

when an apple fell from the tree he was sitting under

and hit him on the head.

And I know that this may be a myth

but the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree for us.

We are both unsaveable but trying to save one another,

and there’s no one else I’d rather drown with.