Whenever you drink like the world’s going to end, I’ll buy you a kit
that protects anyone, human, cat, or alien, from the apocalypse.
When you’re wound up so tight that you can barely move,
I’ll take a pair of scissors and cut all your strings
but leave you just enough left to dangle at the end
so you can climb your way up.
When you want to swallow all the pills in the cupboard,
I’ll give you a box of raisins and make you swallow each one
instead, until you feel sick to your stomach
and you’d rather eat grapes instead.
Whenever you want to fill your pockets with stones and go wade
out into the lake, I’ll bring my life preserver and retrieve
you from the depths.
When you try to put that razor to your own skin, I’ll draw
a map of the world on your wrists
so that if you cut them, it’ll be like severing all those roads
you always wanted so badly to travel on.
Whenever you feel like calling your mother up and screaming at her
for abandoning you when you were three, I’ll take a trip to her house
and get on the other line instead, tell you I love you sixty-seven times
until you can’t hear anything else.
When you want to smash all the plates in the cabinet
I’ll give you all our shitty records that we never listened to in college
and you can shatter them all to pieces with the sledgehammer.
When you have the urge to loop a noose over the pecan tree
in the backyard and kick the chair out from under yourself,
I’ll build a tree house there instead and accidentally
cut off the one branch you could have looped it over.
Whenever you want to burn down your childhood home
just to rid yourself of all those memories,
I’ll light a match and you can use it to light up
the stick fort we built underneath the porch instead.
And when you hate yourself so much that you can barely move,
I’ll make a recording of your own heartbeat and replay it
over and over again until you can no longer
distinguish it from the real one.
When you want to drink and drive I’ll fill your glass with cranberry
lemonade and add a little ginger ale to give it that sharp tang
that you always admired in vodka, then sit in the passenger seat
beside you while we look at the scenery.
Whenever you want to stub out the cigarettes on your thighs,
I’ll build you an ash tray out of stained glass and set it on
the coffee table in full view.
When you want to slam the door to your room and stay in there
for hours without coming out, I’ll place one of those string & tin can
telephones that we always used to use when we were younger
against the door in case you ever want to talk.
And when you climb to the very top of the building and let yourself
out onto the roof, when you stand there at the edge
and hook your toes around the tiny ledge,
I’ll be right there next to you, and
if you jump, I’ll jump too.