I want to write about what hurts because I think it will
Stop me from hurting. If I put these words on
A page then they will be easier to digest.
Poetry isn't curative by creation, it is
Just confession. Still, these remedial
Lines are what I turn to when I am holding
Too much in my hands. Right now, I feel
Like I am overflowing onto the ground below me.
For the first time,
I don't want to write about what hurts. I want
To keep it inside of me and let it burn me. I want
To carry it in my palms for as long as I can.
I should write
About how we've said goodbye so
Many times that it turned into a threat, a weapon
We made with our tongues.
I should write
About how I lied and got away with it,
How you got caught with
Your hands tied and no one to blame.
I should write
About how it was over before we waved the white
Flag, and I know what it means now
To hold onto a sinking ship.
I've never had anything to die for.
I should write about how I've never wanted
Something so much that I devastated it completely.
We loved in harsh conditions, under sun and darkness and
I don't know how to write about how
The love didn't save us.
I don't write about letting go as much as I write about
Holding on, and I want
That to change.
I don't want to write hurt just to feel it.
The next poem I write about you will be
About me. About how I held on and how I let go.
It won't be about your love, it will be about
Mine. It won't stop me from hurting, but
It is how I make it out
Of my love alive.

longing
1. noun; a yearning desire
- i never used to be uncomfortable in my own bed. i knew your name before my rib cage started to sing it in my sleep. every night that has passed crosses itself off of a pocket-calendar that is stuck in the drawers of my chest. you move your favorite things into the empty spaces, you hang your worst fears up like clothes that are waiting to dry, you scratch how you love into the bedpost and put your handprints all over the walls. i can't take a deep breath without
hearing your voice in the refrain of my lungs.

yearnining
2. noun; a feeling of strong want or need
- the first time i heard your voice, it sounded exactly like what
your voice should sound like. soft, barely above a whisper, low
and confident and eager. when you spoke, i wanted
to cancel the outside noise of my breathing to listen to you. i wanted
to close my eyes and imagine that voice next to my ear, barely
above a whisper, low and confident and eager and right there
with both of our breathing suspended by its echo.

desire
3. noun; a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
- every day it is something different. your eyes and how they
almost close when you smile. how your whole family has brown
eyes but you have bright blue ones that turn to gray as the
seasons wear on. your hands and how they look like you
should play an instrument, im saying put those hands to
good use and find something to strum. and we laugh because
you know what i mean. your laugh. it sounds like an answer
to a question i've been asking the silence.
give me someone to love like that. give me someone to love like that. give me-
like a call back from the
darkness. like, here he is in all of his glory and you
still can't have him.

You don't have to remind me to listen to three AM school-night words that come out in the soft whispers you've been waiting to share with me in an attempt to shield it from the rest of the world
I'll remember the things you didn't say like engraved textbook lessons
when my skin starts to dampen and stick to my body like a raincoat
my head hits the wood desk so loud everyone stops pretending to pay attention
and i have to write
"he doesn't love me anymore" one hundred times on the chalkboard
and bang the parts of my past i wake up forgetting together
watching the chalk dust from the day my mother told me; they almost lost you fall to the floor
Every negative hallway interaction bubbles over in an abandonment issue chemical reaction
and I had to drop chemistry because I found none of the connections and formulas could fix the imbalance I carry around with me like i shouldn't be failing Psychology 101.
Maybe I'm clueless because I can't tell you why weather changes or square roots of negatives
But I can recite the lisence plate of the car my dad has never visited me in
and my sisters contact information for the 4 minute and 57 second call i can pay $6.43 to make to sit on the floor and learn about juvenile detention while history notes offer me cold faux-sympathy
Maybe I'm clueless because id rather memorize the way your hand moves down my back than the quadratic formula
and give up on poetry mid sentence
and change "moves" to "moved" because it's all in past-tense and the difference between present and present perfect and banging erasers and not sleeping and
forgetting how to function off of autopilot mode
and
there are lessons I will remember that won't come from staring at a projector screen
when to stop talking
how to look like you weren't just sobbing in the bathroom
the unwritten "give a stranger a ****** if they ask" rule
I'll remember every word you tell me like the test is next period and I'll study every syllable and drown in iambic pentameter
and I'll still fail

its taken me too long to unstitch my hands and free every thought you shuffled and stuck inside of my head

one. i think you lost me somewhere between wanting to cross miles to get to me and forgetting i exist because at some moments it feels like you worked overtime to fix the abandon architectural artwork inside of me like i was community service

two. after you came and knocked down trees and shifted the tides, every ounce of clarity was able to mirror
your whimsical efforts of drowning me out with pretty girl phrases and only calling me when you were too high to choke out my name

three. i had something inside of me that was kept under glass and i let you behind closed doors and watched you destroy it
i let you build me up with toy blocks just how you wanted me, and i let you lose interest when you decided it was more fun to knock me down and listen to the noise i made when i hit the concrete

four. the Worlds Most Fragile museum was being catered to in the holes in my chest and if i was an armoire and you opened me up your name in red pen ink would spill out of me over thousands of artifacts and priceless memories that you've bubbled over and consumed

five. even as i write this, you'd think i would find a home in an elementary classroom by the way i can barely remember how to speak
and ive got no doubt that you went out with your usual bang
and when you left you took a goodbye that never quite delivered and all of my words with you

six. my grandmother told me insects sing, for months, the same song in hopes that they will attract a mate with their repetitive soliloquies and maybe that's my hope when i tell you i love you even when you hurt me, hope that maybe one day you will pick up the phone and echo my ache with a clear, sober melody that sounds like home.

im sure the insects will find someone who enjoys their neurotic patterns and im sure i will sleep alone in an uncomfortable bed only shushing the silence as the mailcart comes by my front lawn and pauses for a second as if it empathizes with the way i stand at the door.

seven. im always waiting for a manilla package addressed to me
containing every night i spent trying to be anxiously clever and overlooking your bad judgement and the flickers across your sentences where you were forcing yourself to care

eight. every night all i receive is the crickets and a reminder that the letters that spell out your name had become my own personal hamartia before i started whispering it in my sleep

nine. ever since we met you've infected my veins like you were a deadly back alley drug and there's something so addicting about wanting to fix someone and figure them out and work for their love

ten.  if you steal my expressions and bury them in your ground and stick a wooden stake through my last words in order to make sure i only resurface when your sobriety is fully compromised, i will, as writers do, create myself a new dictionary

the act of your name will become a verb: forcing time to scrub the inside of every part of me you touched like im a sold off garage sale item and you're trying to expurgate any emotional damage that might have been done to lower my price

the way the bugs echo will become an adjective for when i am too tired to go out and pretend that my feet arent sinking into the floor

the drilled-for-oil glass museum in my heart will become a noun;  the eighth wonder of the world, and i will continue to let people destroy it and piece it back together for the sake of art

the way you left me and the ferocity of how you stole every part of me i showed you will join adverbs and Aristotle's tragedy principles among people who created their own cloudbursts.

the way i wrap everything i've wanted to say to the back of your head as you walk away into a bulletpoint essay will become my new definition for poetry and i will build myself up from the ashes i will create from your destruction, i will sing my own songs and showcase my own museums and mail my own letters and i will **continue.

I've tried to record
The way your name falls out of my mouth
When I drop glass onto the floor
Like my mothers list of forbidden words
In spreadsheets
Counting with fingers and letters
Every time I pass a red pushpin in a map
Of where you told me
"You're so young and immature"
Like a compliment traced with
Sobriety and melatonin
I've picked up pencils
That end up in pieces
After scrawling your dialogues
Onto "it's your own fault" paper
I've scrubbed myself raw
With people who wont
Look me in the eyes anymore
With your goodbye words
With the flashbacks of
Your hands manifesting
The uncharted areas
Of my brittle hips
How my ****** syllables were
Dinner party jokes
There's nothing that can hurt
A god of power
And business suits
Someone who's never told no
Holds a child
In a way that erases the thought of comfort
And now
I lack the maturity to refuse requests
And you tell me
I'd make a good corpse
At a funeral catered towards
Twenty-nine year old men
Who never learned the difference
Between property and personality
And my promises
Tighten around my throat
Gratefully
Like your hands
Fostering the
Aurora Borealis of love
In a way that
Makes me choke on
The things you've shown me
The things you've ruined for me
The words I will never get back
And I sit
With you surrounding me
In and out of every crevice of my body
You've claimed for yourself
Helpless
And defeated
Like a child
Just how you like me

i've spent hours cramped over thesaurus pages and days ignoring warnings to write about the people who make me feel the things i am supposed to feel

i've spent sentences and words and enough knowledge to fill volumes like a life-time credit debt, pouring sentiments and metaphors over people who won't even bother to read how i venerate their actions, their touch, their reactions

how i analyze each detail like ive got a four year degree and student loans to last me until im ninety in How to Make Yourself Sick With Overthinking

i've spent so much time deflecting like a broken pinball machine in the back of an old restaurant, telling anyone who listens that people make me feel human, give me emotions, make me feel real

i've never spent enough time away from instant gratification, reaction, attention, to know who i am without the people that fill gaps in my lungs and ribs, who stitch me up and send me into a field of disconcerted intentions and bad messes

i can't wite much about who i am, how i react, my actions, my touch, my reactions. my soul is based off of the fragments of other souls that have touched me.

and still, i want the words and syllables and poetry.
i want the actions and touches and reactions
i want to mean something to the people that mean so much to me
i want someone to raise me to this compulsory apotheosis
it's impossible i am the only one with emotions bursting inside of them like nightlights and meteor showers

i suppose
i haven't spent enough time thinking how
there is a vain narcissism that encompasses a person who, without people, would not be a person at all.

my therapist says, it's time you write about your psychosis
I show her a journal full of names, and some dreams
That I may or may not have had.
Inside my journal, there are pieces of my body and flowers,
There is a to-do list with nothing crossed off,
There is a hidden script for a medication I never got filled;
There are pictures over every word, disguised in a metaphor
I can't remember the language to describe.
Expression makes the most sense when you are
Expressing the bad.
This is eruption, compulsion that is combusting from my pencil and into black ink.
I point to the bugs that crawl over the page and say,
I don't have to. My psychosis is in every line.
It is in my eyes darting back and forth.
I write so much the page turns black and I have to erase it.
My psychosis is the shadow trail behind every letter.
It is the blood coming out of my mouth when I say I'll Do Better,
The scratches on my hands and feet are from holding on too tight
To demons that know how to fight back.
It is my teeth, and the holes inside of them, spit onto the page.
Spit onto the floor of my therapists wooden office.
I wince. I turn the page.
I try to say it so many times it becomes meaningless.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
I spit again.
My mind looks like a ******* minefield and these words are just the smoke.

i have survived
storms.
i have survived a father's voice like thunder;
handprint lightning flowers petal over my skin
like i am a garden to sinners-
adam and eve call my grassroots their home and hum lullabies-
i have survived
anger.
pros and cons of
clock-ticking therapy sessions where money is thrown at my gaze,
fixed on the wall,
dollar-a-second drumming fingers
screaming so loud that heaven shuts the blinds and hangs a "closed" sign on the door.
pros and cons of
stumbling home,
under a murky peerless crowd of smoke,
slurring words trail around and behind me like moths to a porchlight.
morning headaches,
angry adults
damaging drywall and breaking family portraits
exhausting search for answers
exhausting search in a silence that lengthens the disconnect from child to mother
where your mind goes red and the honest truth that stays stuck to the roof of your mouth falls out
where you become an overflowing mailbox and your hands shake
the absence of parents who never taught you to hold your tongue
i have survived
hurt.
i have survived the specific type of loss that you feel in the pit of your stomach
the one that lies next to you
when you stare at the ceiling and your face hurts from crying
tears scrub your eyelids raw and you promise,
"if i ever make it through this,
i will never be here again."
i have survived giving up,
taking it all back, throwing it all away,
parallel structures of contemplation and decision
i have survived
lonely.
angry storms of abandonment, melodies of the lonely and the hurt
i reprise to the ones that add injury to insult,
you are not the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
i echo choruses to the people that force me to grow up at sixteen
i have destruction embedded into my neurotransmitters
i have shooting post-traumatic pain in my memories
i have survived
a hell that your hands are not stained enough to touch.
i assure you,
my love,
i will survive
you as well

I am not testifying my emotion with the poetry, I am
atoning to it.
I write about God like a friend but we
Haven't been speaking.  
I confess my sins to
Whoever will play the part.
When I write about how quiet the moon has been,
I am saying I'm sorry.

My lack of honesty is writers-block.
I crave all of the hurt. I
Torture myself into unhappiness.
I have this habit of starting things I don't
Finish and they're usually letters
Bursting with nameless blame.
I shut down in the middle of
My emotions because they are too loud, I substitute
all of my connections for a painless quiet.
I am cold because it is easier than being warm,
Than getting burned, than being honest. I am cold
because it is easier than saying that
I am selfish in love. I drain, consume
devour everything that touches me and I
Don't know how to stop taking.

When I write about how I am scared that
Love and violence sound the same from an empty bed, I am saying I'm sorry.
I am not presenting my pain with the poetry,
I am conceding to it.
I can't take a pen to paper without punishing myself with the ink.

When I write about a fence with vines encasing the wood,
About neglect, about a garden full of overgrown weeds and
A cold house, I am saying
Forgive me.

and i am sorry, oh
god i am so sorry that
i cannot apologize for the
things that have made my love
hard. i cannot take blame for
the way other fingertips have burned
my skin, i cannot atone for the bite-marks
on my wrists, or the start and
finish lines, the races that have been run
down my thighs and to my ankles.
i cannot pardon the graveyard of past
love that vandalizes my body like an oil portrait,
i have always looked like a museum exhibit
for the art of leaving. i am carved out by
the stained glass of all of my goodbyes
and it has taken my love by the throat,
it has rubbed my mouth raw, it has made
gasps of air between the breaks of kisses
hurt my teeth. i am sorry that i cannot
excuse the people that have
made me flinch, made me distrust, made me
carry myself gentler when it rains. all i can do is
give you a paintbrush and tell you that
i will still be art when you are finished with me.

i sit in a boat
and im so far from shore i have forgotten which direction the horizon follows me
i am so far from home the word sounds foreign and construed as an apology
i am so out of reach the seagulls will never dive deep enough
or swoop shallow and barely disturb the oceans sequence of tides and rhythms
to pick me up

i sit in a boat
the waves steady flow acts as a clock to keep me sane
it rocks me
it rocks my boat
back and forth in its tick tock motion
the fact that i haven't seen any fish glide by
and wrap themselves in the warmth of the crystals dancing on the top of the water
creates a feeling more violently lonely in the pit of my stomach
than the fact that i sit in a boat all alone

i sit in a boat
in the middle of the ocean
in the middle of nowhere
its easy to comprehend that there is nothing above me
the sky is a blank sheet of paper
the horizon falls all around me an encompasses me
looking up makes me lose time with the waves

its harder to comprehend the likelihood of nothing below me
when i fall in the water
and when i wave my arms towards the diamonds above me
when i blow air though my nose
and keep my eyes shut tight
when the water begins to get cold around my feet
towards my chest and on my shoulders
when the light green water that has comforted me like a mother
that has taught me like a father
the waves that have kept me in sane like a teacher
disintegrates into a dark murky black
so quickly i have no time to notice
where the pressure is too loud to hear any lessons
where the touch is so ice cold every hug feels like a constrictive hand around my throat

i sit in a boat
its easy to understand i am alone up above
no one calls dinnertime
no waves rock me to sleep
no birds call their mates
no bugs fall in and out of their reflections
its harder to fathom that
under the peak of the water
under the tired lazy strokes
i look intently and see nothing
i look intently and all i see is how
in an ocean that stretches forever
and falls off of the horizon
i was alone before i realized it
i was alone when the sun reached down
and bounced off of its blue playground
i was alone when it comforted me and i was alone when it choked me
all i have ever been
is completely alone

my whole life, i have ascribed my identity to feelings
rather than concrete items and ideas.
i have been made up on abstract whim-thoughts
this presents, as you may believe, unstable ground
i would like, more than anything else, to have an idea as to the person i am.
i pick people apart like a vulture and steal their personality traits
to badly pass them off as my own.
i have no confidence that the person i am in this moment
typing this anything-but poem,
will be the person i am next year, when i forget about writing down my words and letting the world in on my secrets.
i have assigned my many fleeting names to colors, videos, a collection of short stories
but never a permanent solution
and now, i sit at a crossroad
and beg to be hit by a passing vehicle
i am a student who tries, i am an artist and a writer, i am a best friend, a girlfriend, a human being who is present in every day life.
i am not the color yellow, or the myth of the angel, i am a small girl with very tired eyes and even more tired ideas
its typical to lose sight of who you are
but i have never once had a clue as to who this soul is
i have spent most of my life pretending to be other things
feeling "real" is just as foreign as any other emotion
when theres no "real" to fall back on.
i, unfortunately, am trapped in a mind of someone who has woken from a long nap
i wander disillusioned, answering to the description of hopelessness like a nickname.
this adapted persona,
if it is, indeed, a persona,
is different in a dissociated sense.
my fear and inability to take action and base my personality off of someone else
gives me implications that,
halfway through high school,
i may finally be on a path to understanding who it is i am.
i was told that you start developing a concrete personality
at the age when you're old enough to understand words and make coherent sentences.
who would have guessed that,
at sixteen,
i am just opening my eyes and understanding words i would have previously thought so common?
if this person is who i am stuck with,
and it has taken me so long to figure it out
based on a time slowing personality disorder
i will continue to learn that i am not made up of feelings and thoughts
but up of the art of continually creating myself
and isn't a life of not knowing,
of guessing,
of trial-and-error and discovering unheard of mysteries
better than a dinner-plate life planned out in front of you?
i guess i will never know
or, maybe i will.

i know there have been moments where you pulled yourself down the stairs just to collapse onto the kitchen floor
i know there have been moments where you repeated,
"i will most certainly not make it out of this alive"
and you wake up the next morning and make it an inch further
my dear dramatic girl
there is no fault in loving with all of your heart
you will grow up and know what each word he presses to your chest means
you will have an Oxfords Dictionary for every time he tells you he was just out late
but if you keep putting pieces of you into everyone who runs their finger over your lips
or tells you "forever" as if it hasn't already lost its meaning
you will lose yourself
do not let the world desensitize you to its contents
theres nothing more tragic than watching a romantic become a cynic
you are full of a quality you cannot let every boy that stops loving you when it's convenient take from you
you are truthful and forgiving
you are trusting
and whats left of your heart is safety-pinned onto your sleeve
your heart belongs to you alone and i know its been a while since you heard this, but
you are full without people miles away telling you that they think you'd look pretty without your clothes on
dust it off,
lie on the kitchen floor and remember what it felt like when you said
"i will most certainly not make it out of this alive"
for when you wake up one morning and forget how it sounds
to be despondent in love
do not let the world take you and spread you over people who push you to fill pieces of them they have lost in others
you are prevailing every time you whisper
"i love you, too"

1.) I never liked how I always felt like I was suffocating under the conviction that you were counting down the days to leaving an equation of your life that included me in the numbers and I never liked how I brushed it off under the false pretense that you were terrible at math.

2.) Every word you said was so lucid and real it felt like putting out a cigarette on my skin after asking for an ashtray a hundred times you're the one who pulled me out of my poetic dream-state so hard that I choked on condensation ice crystals from the clouds below me and now I am tied to the ground like a dog and I miss flying like that.

3.) I tasted her in the way you kissed me since the moment we met and I wanted to lock down every word I told you and erase everything that's been written for you but I didn't say anything because I was scared that I would float away without you.

4.) You came back and expected me to be fourteen and looking for someone to love me so hard that they fix me. Since your absence I had learned the hard way I don't need to be fixed. And even if I did, you would have never made a merciful god.

5.) I could sense the way you wanted control over me like a lion to its prey and feeling like I was being stalked by someone I tried to convince myself I loved was almost as exhausting as pretending I didn't notice.

6.) I was only beautiful on days you were drunk and wanted to outline the shape of my hips and I tried so hard to leave my consciousness in the other room while you never showed the decency to stay after you were finished with me because being used is better than being replaced.

7.) I shared the small things that brightened my heavy rain days with you. You made me feel like I was trying to plug in a nightlight in the middle of the dark.

8.) You devastated me and told me that's what love feels like; I still have moments of panic at sincerity and kind words seem foreign against the misery soaked syllables you broke me down and replaced me with.

9.) You did all of it because you were bored of watching the clock tick and you figured passing the time by ruining me was easier than repenting on the ways you've ruined other sad girls with cold hands.

10.) I was so used to throwing coins in the air hoping they would give me a heads or tail answer if dying would be easier than missing you forever that I didn't even notice when I ran out of money.

i have no tragic epic to force out of my palms for you
i gave you a blank page and
you chose not to be a part of my narrative
i will spend the rest of my life trying not to blame myself
for my bad editing skills
and red pen i miss you marks
maybe these letters would feel more natural
if my writing was neater,
my words were easier to read
or they sounded nicer falling off of my tongue

i write and recall and revise
and try to come up with a story about
how i could’ve made you stay
if i gave you a pencil
and some paper
would you put me out of my sonnet-style misery,
take the blame out of my cramping hands
and tell me there was nothing we could’ve done?
let me stop searching for words that are
synonymous to the way you looked at me when
i told you 
i loved you for the first time
take these cliches off of my fingertips
let the writer in me learn to
grieve its muse
instead of immortalizing the pain of loss 
and tell me
we never even had a chance

seven months ago:

i. i will fall asleep and let it infect me like a virus and if i die before i wake up my obituary will explain to you how i felt tonight so i never have to

ii. it’s cosmic, i’m telling you. you’d miss me if i wasn’t here.

iii. it’s all quiet. i am here but no one can see me. they can feel me. it’s easy and unpleasant. i just exist, past their realms and in their blind spots.

iv. i want to go back in time and pick you instead

six months ago:

i. i have a lot of pent up resentment towards people i used to love that are successfully existing without me in their lives while i am struggling without them

ii. cant stand you. cant stand being away from you. thank you for calling me beautiful, even if you didnt mean it. i don't feel that anymore, but i did. even for a moment, it was there. we were there.

iii. of all the things you did to me, the worst was making me believe they were in my best interest.

iv. if i could sit in a puddle of nostalgia and let every memory with you hit me like a rain shower id probably contract pneumonia or something.

five months ago:

i. it’s comforting for me to know that you can miss someone and love them without wanting them in your life.

ii. ive spent too much time treating myself as if my love is not sacred, as if it can’t stop time and heal people and create magic. everyone i love is lucky to have me, whether they know it or not.

iii. i’ve always had vivid dreams but last night made me feel something very weird and unexpected.

iv. it’s exhausting falling in love with and getting your heart broken by every soul you meet but i am strong

four months ago:

i. i surround myself with nice and beautiful people and in turn feel disgusting and destructive and ******.

ii. i know people can see me but i feel entirely translucent and invisible

iii. i can’t wait to be 18 so i can check myself into a psych ward

iv. i have stood where you stand and felt what you feel and it’s tortuous and inhumane but you exist outside of the boundaries it sets for you

three months ago:

i. i feel like my life is balanced between the moment where you realize you are falling and you are going to hit the ground and the second after you feel it beneath you

ii. i am not a savior, i am not an angel. my words will not heal you. don’t put the pressure of your will to live on my shoulders, i am tired and i have a lot to balance.

iii. today i am a raincloud and not even just a raincloud i am a cloud that is full and dark and waiting and it won’t rain it will pour it will storm there will be sirens and lightning bolts and thunder and people will cower in safety and i will stay here and be destructive

iv. i woke up safe yesterday, today none of it is real and i hurt when people touch me

two months ago:

i. i think i am in love and it’s inconvenient it’s pestering, i am trying i am trying i am trying.

ii. i want to feel love but i feel so unattainable like i am so out of touch with my genuine emotions that i wouldn’t even know how to feel it (if i even could?)

iii. you have no ties to the people you have been. every day you grow- every day you leave your mistakes behind you and shed all of your previous versions. keep going.

iv. nothing has changed. dont mistake my compliance for forgiveness.


one month ago:

i. i wish the things i care about in my life were concrete instead of the distorted abstract i deal with everyday like a chore

ii. i think about what being dead would feel like a lot and every time i am done i feel like i have to apologize to my mother.

iii. you are not an antidote, i do not need you to survive, you are not sunlight, i do not need you to grow

iv. i am afraid i will never get better.

v. i have always had a hard time with holding grudges but today i climbed onto the other side of the railroad bridge and sat above the water, in line with the trees, and i felt so high and real i whispered into my own palms “i forgive you.”

isnt it sweet?
how much the human heart is able to bare,
the lines between support and manipulations that
past-lovers have drawn for you,
isnt it sweet? how much you will
carry for the people who arent quite yet
past-lovers, how you will draw boundaries
and cross lines just to touch, just to feel, just to
create some sort of tangible memory for when you
sit with only their names left in your mouth, isnt the
line between sweet and naive based on experience?
isnt it naive? how far you will go to love people into
boxes, how you will let yourself fall apart and
you will watch them spit you out onto the floor and still
you have so much faith in every single rushed kiss and
almost-memory that one of these people you let touch you
with the lights off, one of these people you will drink
into your poetry will be more than just a past-lover?

there is a bed that you haven't slept in twice. i should have asked you who taught you to
lace up your shoes in an instinct
that feels just like a memory,
your luggage is always packed.
you love out of a suitcase, always
ready to pick up and move. your hands are stained with their last
names you have boarding flights tattooed
on your palms because you're so used to
leaving, there is never a good-bye it is
always departure gates and terminals, and i'm writing this in on connecting flight over the ocean because close to nowhere is
the closest we've been in months
just to tell your passport that i understand
how you cannot love me. i could
taste it in your gas-station coffee breath i could
feel it in the hesitance of your fingertips
you are always close to the highway you are always waiting to hitch a ride with a new girl who will write poetry about how badly you feel like permanence and i
am always trying to unpack you, begging
you to stay one more night.
i understand how you cannot love me, i stay on the ground and you buy plane tickets with spare cash, with a turbulence that makes me
want to fasten my seatbelt.
there is a bed that you haven't slept in twice and i whisper to the sheets
"i thought i could've made you stay."
your face is always towards the
humming of the window and
i like to imagine you can hear
me if you can hear me, you can leave all you
want. you can travel across the world and exchange your
heart for currency, you can walk through
security and stuff your belongings into the closets of cheap
hotels. i understand how you cannot stay because you're always too busy leaving,
but there will always be a place for you to
unpack in my chest.
there is a home that remains unoccupied.
there is a bed that
you haven't slept in twice, i keep it unmade in case you
ever feel like coming back.

i try not to write poetry with your name in mind
because maybe im afraid of getting optimistic
maybe hopeful is too much of a burden to carry around
and staying angry is more safe than
all of the colors i feel when i look you in the eyes
and believe me baby-
sorry-
believe me,
i avert your gaze with probable cause
its easier to hate you than to hate our odds
and the comfort i feel when you say my name
like a whisper
like a prayer
like a moment for me alone
its easier to keep this pessimistic mindset
because i think, even as a raincloud, i can admit
if i describe the way my hands shake
when you touch me
i will never be able to silence myself
its easier to keep all of this bottled up
and sent out to sea
with no recipient
than to reach across the table
and break the silent rules we never put into permanence
believe me,
it's easier to avert your gaze
than to confront my feelings
because you know how i feel about confrontation
i can sleep surrounded by white noise
and i'll still have said too much
because every time you slip up
i feel it in my chest
and maybe i can admit that i dream about the eye contact i avoid
without destroying the way we both hold our breath around eachother
i dream about you hating these urges the same way i do
i dream about you wanting me and your sacrilegious mindset
and maybe if i fall asleep sober enough
in that dream
i can find a way to reach across the table
and write optimistic poetry about
how it feels to break the rules

share your favorite things with the temporary people in your life
staple your favorite songs to the foreheads of people you've known for two weeks
dance around in artificial lightning and touch them for as long as you can
take pictures with disposable cameras, pin them to cork-boards and write down their dates
scrawl their names in sharpie ink on your wall, ignore when your mother gets mad at you for it
watch your favorite movies with them
kiss them during your favorite part
write down the taste
write down what you hear
fill notebooks with their sentences
take their hand and lead them to your favorite places
count the blades of grass under you
record the rocks
the tree leaves
the sand
the hardwood floor
read them your favorite books
tell them your theories
match them to main characters and laugh when they try to imitate their dialect
read them your poetry
whisper your favorite words in their ear
pass them notes with your favorite lyrics
give them tastes of your favorite ice cream flavor
promise yourself not to forget their disgusted face
at your favorite weird food
smear the color yellow into their palms
because it has always been your favorite
trace the lines that crack the paint
give them your favorite sweatshirt
let them make it their home
smell them on you the next time you wear it
let them enter your world and include them in your list of favorites
and
then

when they break your heart,
you will be forced to conform to the sadness you feel
you will have to turn off the radio when that song comes on and you see their smile in the melody
you will have to pay for a new camera
burn pictures and blame the smoke for your teary eyes
stock up on white-out and erase those dates
when they pass the next year you will stay inside all day and your hands will shake
you will have to paint a new color on your wall just to quit staring at their name while you try to fall asleep
you will paint three, four, five coats atop their handwriting and
at night you will still be able to see it
you will have to go to the movies and categorize new favorite scenes
when that movie plays on sunday morning you will taste them and it will taste like cold coffee and
eventually you will be strong enough to change the channel
you will tear pages out,
buy new notebooks
drive by your favorite places and don't stop
you will have to read new pages
find new characters
its okay if you catch yourself running over the spine of the book you woke them up to read at four AM
buy a dictionary and find new favorite words
make up new favorite words and drop them into casual conversation
eat new icecream,
try more weird foods at restaurants you can't pronounce
look at colors more closely and determine a new favorite
buy new clothes
ones that smell like mass production and the local mall
you will leave the world you gave to them
and you will create a new world
with new favorites
with new songs, words, memories, places, books, movies, foods
with new pieces of you
and you will let someone new enter that world
they will tear chips of paint off of your wall
and ask you what your favorite color is
its okay to hesitate
say blue.

the last time i saw you, you told me that there is a string connecting us. that you tug on it and hope it is still holding onto my end. that some days you feel like you have to stretch it far, so far you can pluck a eulogy out of the thread.
you wonder where i go, when you spend all day with your arms stretched out to me because you just can't quite feel me there.
the truth is, there are days where my love feels like lace around my wrists. i carry the weight evenly in both of my hands, secure by my side when i walk.
there are days where my love is tethered to the end of a kite. it circles the sky under the breath of something magical. it puts on a show, soaring and floating carelessly through empty space. these are the days we go up and down, i can't predict how the breeze will shift us, how far we will go, where we will get stuck.
there are days where my love is a spiderweb, and it curls up in dusty places and covers what is rotting in the dark. it is a trap, it is like glue, it encases all of the bad memories we've gotten stuck on until it is a grave site for what i haven't been able to forgive.
there are days where my love is a strand on your sweater that i can't stop pulling. i unravel the sleeve until i'm too embarrassed to give it back to you when you ask. these are the days where i take it too far, i want to fix things but i keep making them worse. these days, we are a pile of fiber on the floor, and i don't know where it started and where it ends. i don't know how to put us back together.
i imagine us connected by our fingers now. pulling at each other when we feel sick, or when we're far away. i realize that all of these days, i am using your string to fulfill my creative fantasies. there is only so much space between us, and i am sorry for making you
give so much line just to watch me tangle myself up in it. i am full
of knots, of nonsensical anxieties and depressive fits.
when i need it, you tie kisses in a necklace around me to make me feel safe.
some days, we give more than we take and this poem is a way of saying that
when you tug on that string, i will always be there.
whether it is up in the clouds, or in the corner of my past, or drowning in myself, i am entwined in all of this endless love.

GIRLS LIKE ME
are made up of pieces,
shaky legs and furrowed
eyebrows constant questions and
cutting off sentences we are existing
in every direction we are never quite
exactly one thing we are
everything all at once and we buzz
like a hive of nervous tics and anxious stutters
this energy cannot be created or destroyed
it is transferred from soft songs
to reminding GIRLS LIKE ME that you still
love us when our mouths cannot form words when
we are not entirely existing in the same place as you when
we get scared and write poetry about how GIRLS LIKE ME
fall in love with boys like you and we never really
tell them we wrap our hands around our own throats we
were never taught to be cruel, we were never taught to
be kind we are exactly everything and always nothing and we
never know what to say so we fall in love with boys like you and
we wait and wait and wait and cannot be created or destroyed

i have wasted so much paper for you
i have told strangers things i haven't thought about telling you
i have written poetry like
its a cheap substitute for therapy
and i've held the pencil so hard the lead breaks
when my hands shake too much to keep going
i have gone to all of these great lengths
i have written epics about the way you left me
i have written sonnets about how you came back
ive never shown you any of this in fear you will see how my handwriting slowly deteriorates into shaky lines and abstract complaints
in fear that you will make the connection that i havent spent one day free of you since we met
i feel like i have so much to say
and maybe im an expert on beating around the bush
or maybe you're just too self absorbed to hear me
i have tried every way to encrypt my words and say them without letting their meaning sink into your skin
ive got enough for a novel but i havent made my point
i love you
stop hurting me

it is about you.
no lovesickness to rock your empty body.
no guilt to beat like a drum in your chest.
no anger, no hurt,
it is about your skin.
about the light that you drink with morning coffee.
how it reflects off of your curves.
about the corners of your mouth.
about your cold feet,
your gentle hands.
it is about the grass in your toes.
the air around you, above you, below you.
the water that you drink from.
the earth will take care of your wild roots,
your wild hair,
your wild smile. the earth will take
care of your lovesickness,
all of your pain.
all of your guilt.
you touch the world with your gentle hands and
it always touches you back.
you are composed of what touches you back,
what you can sit still and listen to.
what buzzes inside of you,
what you contain and
what you allow to escape.
it is about you,
it has always been about you. not
your hurt, not what callouses your palms or
haunts your clasped prayers.
it is just about your body,
every part of your body,
from the bottoms of your feet
to your fingertips, your
nose, the ends of your hair,
it is about listening when the
earth tells you, this body is
okay. this body is enough. it is
about how everything you touch
always touches back.

you feel like bursting through hospital doors.
repeating names, rushed hands all over my body looking for signs of distress.
you feel like dialated pupils,
like throwing tequila back and standing gutter-in-the-street still until you feel every drop of poison fall down your throat and into your stomach.

you feel like waking up the neighbors,
like throwing wedding shower vases,
like turning on neighborhood streetlights and calling for backup.
you feel like the anguish that sticks onto places you cant reach in the shower;
how im not sure i will ever get your smell off of me.
you feel like chaos, like burden, like a level of wretchedness that takes two hands to control.
you feel like showing up unannounced,
heart racing so hard i feel it bounce along to a chorus of ringing in my ears.

and maybe that's why i can't get rid of you.
because you have replaced impulsivity with spontaneity,
you have taken the fear out of failure and you have made the way danger sounds so easy off of your lips
you feel like the "speak now" instead of the "forever hold your peace."
you feel like the selfish "wait," the last desperate pleading case;
you feel like the passion infecting my lungs in breaths of smoke and dancing dandelion seeds in my ridbcage like a magic show.

like an age-old story, some different form of you all strong women must endure,

you feel like the irresistible situational irony they whisper about when they say "it is not love if it is not torture."

sometimes, it feels like the bath filling up with water,
you lie there and try to relax as it
slowly inches up your thighs and past your slumped shoulders.
or like watching the clock move, watching the day turn on and off-
incoherent, stunned, you try to drown your incapability in apathy
like being strapped to a bed
like being force fed, out of your control in a way that forces you to feel it.

sometimes, it feels like breaking your bones,
a sharp snap you can hear for years when you fall asleep
shooting pain up your spine and straight to your fight-or-flight response
it feels like choking,
it is not slipping in and out, it is violent crashing waves
the tide came in while your eyes were closed
and you're being thrown headfirst against the rocks

sometimes, it feels like keeping a secret,
like holding your tongue, like shy muffled smiles
and pulling misguided threads on your years-old sweaters.
it tastes just like guilt but also a little bit like copper,
almost familiar but with a difference that keeps you up drenched in sweat
it feels like "you did this to yourself" and all you can hear is "it is your fault"

it feels like nothing, sometimes, too.
it feels like emptiness, it feels like 'scared-to-be-touched'
it feels like absolutely hollow,
like knee-**** reactions when people put their hands on you
like your fight-or-flight lever is broken and you're trapped inside of a burning building with flight on your mind against painted-shut windows
it feels a whole lot
like they took the exact definition away from you that day
like you have a bunch of "almost"s
like a puzzle that has been worn through generations, sticky fingers and gluing together corner and middle pieces

it feels like something is missing,
it feels like you do a manual reset of every feeling to try and sew yourself back together,
it feels like someone bent your needle and frayed your thread and you are trying but they took all of your chances away from you

a little bit vague, inexplicable, 'you-had-to-be-there', like everything, like nothing,

like helpless, if you had to give it a title.

I'd like to be your space between starting a new sentence and picking the words up from behind dusty knocked over shelves

I'd like to be abstract in the way that you can cut me apart precisely and place me in misunderstood misplaced directions and give me the power to be able to yell at the top of my lungs and call myself art

I'd like to be a thousand miles right of where I am standing because home is the breath where you gather yourself up and home is when you have to stop dancing because your laughing interferes with your drinking and home is this song over and over and over

I'd like to kiss you a thousand miles right of where I am standing but what I am boxing up and categorizing as pain is not unique

it is just pain

I'd like to erase you from me and reach inside my head to free my brain from your rose thorn words like what I need to hear is the only airsource wonder of your distorted reality

I can't tell if I want nothing to do with you or I want everything at once because love is this song and that space and the way I stop from laughing and drinking and dancing love is this homemade pain and love is this art love is every mile

love is all of these indistinguishable thoughts my pain is not profound but I will yell whether the people who have cut me apart view
me as art or not

i will write every time i miss you
i will choke out words and mix this feeling into permanence
i will listen to the blackness of the sky when it speaks to me
like it always has
before you,
after you,
this time, do not forget what he has done to you.
it is not your fault that you mistake pain for love
but untangle the wires
do not forget how this feels.

i will write every time i miss you
i will tell the world how i am feeling
i will tell them which i fear is worse-
the emptiness you have carved out of me,
feeling every bone in my ribcage expand and contract with my breathsounds,
versus the way i let you
the way i laid in place and pretended it did not hurt

i will write every time i miss you
i will exist openly and let the world understand how much i am feeling
because if i don't have a course of action every time
a wave of you washes over me
i will fall into the comfort it reminds me of
i will manipulate the skies until the stars spell out i forgive you

i will write every time i miss you
so you can read the damage you have done
and understand that with every word i write
with every second i do not come back
i almost do

it is light
it is how i write and write but that's the only word worthy of describing
it is waking up in the middle of summer on your own time
it is closing your eyes with the sun on your face
comfort in blankets when safety is thousands of miles away
free thinking and blushing and taking day-naps
one thousand questions with repeated answers
it is smiling so hard your face hurts
clean sheets and sitting in empty fields
it is car rides with the windows down
the way the moon reflects across water when the sky is deep purple
it is dancing in the refrigerator light
with no socks on
at three am
to a quiet song we hum the next day
it is coffee in the morning
alcohol that stains your brain and makes you feel like you're underwater
it is the first time we touch
with enough electricity to power a city for a week
it is the weightlessness of your laugh
and messy bedhead
it is the way distance disintegrates like poetry
and your promises in prose
always on my mind
in my words
it is that thing people are writing about when they say,
"when you break my heart, it will hurt like hell"

I. I am so angry it burns my lips to speak, lava drips from my tongue and chars my skin and fries my hair and melts my clothes. I am so angry it consumes me it hurts me and it burns me and i do not get to feel any of it.

II. I wish I was a tape recorder. I wish I could remember things better, I wish I could spin myself around the words and play them back in my head later and never forget them. The only thing I can't press pause, or rewind, or erase, is exactly how you sounded when you left.

III. Sometimes I miss you so much I feel like I am running a race dead last and I have anchor weights on my ankles, I never think I'm going to make it.

IV. I think this is for the best but oh god I’m sorry my heart feels like it’s going to fall out of my mouth and onto the pavement

V. Last night someone took advantage of me and today I woke up feeling like it was my fault, it is nostalgic in the most terrifying way. I don't know how I'm doing this without you anymore.

VI. If this is love I want nothing to do with it.

VII. I am forced to become exactly what I need. I have spent too much time nailed to the floorboards right where you left me. I am right where you left me.

VIII. I think about how you have touched me and I feel sick, I think about your hands on me and I want to take showers and scrub my skin and I can’t breathe. I wish no one would ever touch me or kiss me or put their hands on me ever again.

IX. I don’t want to feel anything anymore. I told you I was going to be close to you in two months and you waited until four AM to tell me that seeing me would make you remember what you have done to me. I was awake. I told you to never forget it.

X. Get out of my head, I will not let you turn me hard. I felt soft, I still fall asleep wondering if your hands are cold. I do not want to let you convince me that love is bad.

XI. Yesterday, you told me you missed me. Yesterday, I couldn't force myself to look at you. Yesterday, I said, "I miss you too, but there is empty space where you told me you did not love me. There is nothing here for you anymore." Yesterday, I lied but I will repeat that mantra into my head until I undo whatever damage you have done to me. I will not let you convince me that love is bad.

in the forefront of the cataclysm that is
begged to be overcome you have
scratched yourself raw and abandoned the blueprints
of your body. deformed
into a vision of someone that is easy to touch,
simpler of mind,
yes please, no thank you,
it's okay, i forgive you, no really,
i forgive you.
and they are foreign words that are spit out
in your own tongue regardless of how they taste
with the intent of contorting yourself into a
girl that is easy to love,
every hand is a shock to the system even
comfort finds a dishonest undertone.
in a last-minute effort to convince him to stay,
you have sewn tragedy into your skin and hidden it
with magic tricks, with makeup, with
yes please, no thank you, i forgive you.
bite the hand that feeds the girl who
puts her entity into edges who
makes herself small and ready to touch who
is glass-eyed, hung like a hunted deer and shelved
like a trophy bite the hand that feeds the girl who is a
bird, circling all day from
one end of a metal trap to another and
the brief delusion of freedom in flight is
just enough to knock the wind
from your lungs, from under your wings, the second
your eyes open and you remember
that no matter which direction you take of from
you are still banging on the bars of a cage

love is patient
love is kind.
it does not envy
it does not boast
love is virtuous and accepting
and whole
it is not angry
nor malicious
nor ill tempered or weak
loving someone
however you hear these words
is not written in textbook
it takes forces far greater than those printed on paper
it takes forces far greater than love alone
human progression is not overshadowed
or exempt of love
it is not absent
nor negligent to its person
love is recovery
love is healing
love is not a cure to the ones who experience it
ask them,
they will tell you.
their love has bursts of anger
moments of temptation
it has ill temperament
it has anger
it is boastful and envious
it has weakness
love is expansion
it is movement and growth
it is acceptance of envy
acceptance of weakness
loving someone is a full time job
it is not pure in nature
it is not the romantic era poets
it is full of lust
and anger
it is selfish
it is not a cure
it is an extension, not a necessity
it is not exclusive or inclusive to growth
it is something no book can teach you;
you must learn through experience
that love takes far more complicated emotions
than just love

and if we happen to
explode like a star that has
held it's breath for just a bit
too long, an exhale of
the memories we press into each other,
i will acknowledge it as less of a cheap shot to
my stomach and more like a tender tide
between the skin and the bed.
i have come this far on the back of
every single mistake,
i had caved into your mouth the second
it collided against mine and
i have let all of this love leak from the
cracks in my skin.
if our feverish and hungry hands
soften into gentle fingertips and
quiet, distracted touches, i will
lull into the way it still feels like you are
coming home every time. when we
get old and we collapse into the safety
of our own walls after one of the long days that
never end, i will take the silence as less of a bitter
absolution and more like a shift into the refuge of
each evening. i have spent my time
wanting, i have spent my time craving and
devouring all of the you that i could get my hands
on. if we kiss each other until our deprived shoulders
slump into acceptance, i will kiss you again and
we can carry each
other through phases like the moon. if we happen to
love each other so much that we do little else, i will
cherish every second that we spend doing nothing.

where do you go when you think of me?
do you go to lying on the wood floor with my head in your lap;
do you go to driving with the windows down and the cold air running past us;
do you go to the songs i wrote down and hummed for you through hour-long car rides;
tell me what you think when someone says my name.
tell me where you go when you miss me,
where do you go?
do you try to drown out evenings where we smoke too much and stumble around grocery-store parking lots
with all the streetlights shut off behind us;
do you try to erase the way my thumb moves over your hand, like reflex, like my hand in my hair, like unconditioned and honest;
do you bite your lip when you hear terrible radio songs and your passenger seat is empty;
tell me,
where do you go when you hear my name?
where do you go when you think,
oh my god,
i lost her,
i lost her

in·ti·ma·cy
i. the catch they refuse to put down in books forgotten in church pews is as follows; heaven only exists in your memories. you create heaven in moments that have already happened, without the pearly gates or judgement. it is why you always reminded me that i am not aware of what i'm missing until i've immortalized it into something i will never be able to experience again.
ii. you do not, cannot, exist in the emptiness of one person. the brutal truth is that no one is worth it. everyone lies on their back and sees the same world in different shades, everyone is making mistakes that keep them up at night, they have no room to contain your multitudes.
iii. you are only subjected to understanding how selfish this notion is when you become too much for yourself, when you wish more than anything to stuff your runoff emotions and times you've stayed up singing to the sunrise into the cracks of someone who'd rather get drunk late and leave the bed cold in the morning than tell you that you are not as important as you like to think you are
iv. i am not as important as i like to think i am

ab·sence
i. i can't bring myself to say sorry for leaving, i am chasing sunsets and even though i hope you are sitting in one dimension or another, i refuse to be tethered to these actions. i love the noise of your boots on the asphalt but i will keep you in a moment that has now already happened and make you heaven after i stop hearing that sound like my favorite song when i wake up at three AM and forget that i am alone
ii. i have always had intense eyes and you used to tell me that the way my hair falls in front of my face was your favorite thing in the whole universe but you stopped brushing it away to see all of me and i can't help but be worried that maybe i stuffed all of my anger into the parts of you that were still grasping for air and i smothered your flames like a child holding onto a bird so tight it dies in her palms
iii. i remember waking you up in the middle of the night and saying, "do you think that love is just timing how long it takes you to get the other person to hate you?" i don't remember your exact reply but you started sleeping in a different bed after that

in·sol·u·ble
i. one time my mom told me that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result so even though there is no medicine that will numb my senses and make it hard to wake up early but keep you foggy in my memory, we should stop trying to mean it when we mumble out "i love you" all the times we are both bored and too lazy to find someone new
ii. like most people who choose writing over therapy, i am a liar. i have always been a self-centered liar that only cares about myself  but for the sake of inspiration on my fingertips i can pretend we were in love at one point or another.
iii. i talk too fast and you told me that you hated that about me before i threw something in your direction aiming to miss and hitting your shoulder (i'm sorry) that was our worst fight and you stopped looking me in the eyes until i packed up all of my things and tiptoed around your temper and out of the house
iv. i didnt exactly keep count but i think it took around seven months and twelve days for me to make you hate me and you've never said it but the whole world feels like it has shut me out and gone cold and if recounting all of this is what heaven is supposed to be like, i would rather fall backwards into hell because at least it is warm there

rep·e·ti·tion
i. i've exhausted all of my apologies because i have been conditioned to feel bad about not fulfilling peoples expectations and you made the word sorry sound sharp, i am far away from my ambitions and if you were still here youd call me lazy but youd kiss me after
ii. when it is very late, i start to believe that maybe i have the capacity of multitudes inside of me and thats why all i do is feel sorry for myself, because i am the only one in the world capable of carrying the hearts of the people that don't love me anymore
iii. when morning comes, i am always able to convince myself that i am not as important as i like to think that i am.

What a rotten time to fall in love.
When I'm on the brink of tragedy,
On the edge of something so insurmountable that
I can't even contain it in both outstretched, weak, aching arms.
When I'm so close to the capstone of calamity that I can taste
The wreck on my tongue as it rains down my face.
I'm a goner.
The cataclysm that all good poetry is known for-
I am drowning on the words before they reach you-
I asphyxiate on the dark after you fall asleep.
Steady, lulled into a composition of notes and gasps.
I wonder if you know what I'm thinking about
When you wrap your hand around my throat.
I want to be the kind of person that your love deserves.
I just want to be the kind of person who isn't dripping with
Grief.
I'll find a sermon in every word you speak,
I'll chant it like prayer,
With my hands clasped to my chest in some
Frenzied, violent attempt to swear to God.
There is no reply.
Just your hand on my skin-
Less like touch and more like collision.
Please, stay. I'm begging now. I'm on my knees.
How do I look?
Do I look as pathetic as I feel?
I sink into the sadness but you're still holding my hand.
I don't speak, I overflow.
I don't love, I anesthetize.
I am destroying myself and you won't turn your head away.
Like a car crash. Like a collision. Like your hand around my throat.
I am paralyzed with a fear that God can't hear me.
"I love you" and I suffocate on the silence.
"I love you" and I choke on the apology that follows.
"I love you" and I am so sorry.
“I love you, too.” and I take my first breath.

i think that you are lost
your hands shake and you try to make yourself small
your hands shake and you try to make yourself very big,
like a bird that sticks out all of his feathers at once
you are desperate,
you are, "tell me you see me."
you are, "tell me i exist to you."
i think that you flinch when i touch you because
youre not sure where you stand
or which version of you must take place in my palms
when its dark outside and we sit in a miserable room to be happy together
your eyes wander like a lost kid in a grocery store
untouched terrain surrounds you
and you are terrified to take your first step.
your voice drops when you are honest,
your eyes get cloudy when you mention your parents
there are things i have written in a notebook of you
people i have seen you turn into to hide yourself
and you'll tell me,
"you are crazy,
for writing poetry about a boy who can't speak."
and i will tell you,
"i am crazy,
for falling in love with the words i hear in the silence that belongs to him."

there are girls who exist just like the
ocean, she is in love with the
moon she lets stars run through the
gaps of her gentle fingers like
sand she will say that she has
been in a love that burns and all she will
tell you is that it keeps her humble
and you look at her, all sad and
made up and empty space and you see
something you need to fix, some tide
you need to find a rhythm to while she
brushes her hair with the sunlight and she
fills her mouth with seashells maybe she
is not entirely beautiful because she
is not entirely here because she
would rather float around tied down to the
world like a balloon on a string and you see
this girl, all tired eyes and pouty mouths,
cheeks like wine and movements that
drip honey from her legs and you think that maybe
if you say the right words, you can keep her
close to the ground you can cover her
mouth as she wishes to be a part of the earth
a part of the trees, a part of the flowers that
grow around her feet when she walks you think
for one second, you can take all of her
not-entirely-beautiful and tame it like a
wild horse like a rose you pick the thorns off of
but you cannot love something that
cannot be restrained i am telling you, there are
girls who are made up of other people's words
and their handprints tattoo her body, she has been
hurt but she remains kind
and warm like no one has
done her wrong, and her hair is always messy and you
cannot have her because you do not know how to
love tender, you do not know how to be humble like
she does you are not soft enough to
keep her in your hands without breaking her.
she is in love with the moon because she knows she is
made up of something else entirely, she does not
need your love to keep her contained.
she does not need to be contained.

i have spent sentences like
cheap trade-offs,
decreasing their worth
in the currency-exchange where your lips meet.
it is not my fault you cannot afford
a single letter.

i have spent time like
hour-hands are suggestions,
as if pride made the minutes move faster
so i pushed it in the drawers of my chest
and threw away the key
pretending my love does not move mountains.
it is not my fault
you cannot stop counting seconds,
it is not my fault you are always waiting,
and i am always watching you get ready to leave.

i have wasted parts of myself,
thrown them entirely into your puzzle
your fix-and-repair
all sad-faced and
taped up with glue and apologies
i have sacrificed my sunlight,
my clouds,
my hurricanes and shifting plates
in an attempt to make you whole.

i have always been ashamed of the destruction,
i know
my love moves mountains,
it is not cruel.
that does not mean it is kind.

i cannot fix you
no matter how much i give,
time, words, sunlight, clouds,
i have given you my breath but
i cannot put air in your lungs.
it is not my fault that
in all of its destructive glory,
my love moves mountains and
you can't even climb
a foothill.

i never really understood what
"it comes and goes in waves" meant
but now i can see
no matter how stationed i am to the floor
imagining my feet are tree roots extending into the earth
i have always felt myself
falter with the tides heavy motions
stumbling along in a dance i dont know the steps to
falling face first behind the crowd of people who have got it figured out
jealousy hitting the palms of my hands before the asphalt
missing you is a constant heartrate
but these memories, feeling you so vividly it shakes me down
it comes and goes in waves

i never understood what
"time heals all wounds" meant
because my skin is painted with bruises that share no connotation with love
even when they fade i can recount the ache theyve left
like a worn out map
of every time i have pretended not to hear the exhaustion drip from your words
i used to hear your voice in my favorite melodies
and share my songs with you like lullabies
but now music is just noise to erase your voice
i dont think that time will ever take you away from me
i dont think i'd want it to

i wish on every flash of light and every makeshift airplane shooting star that i could leave the piece of me that can't stop thinking of you on one of these one-time roadtrips with no destination
no cliche seems to cover how quickly the word love disintegrates or how mixing up being happy with being scared is coincidentally more common than anyone would have expected.
i will forget this trainwreck you put me in
this half angry poetry you made me write
because even if it holds no meaning,
time heals all wounds, it comes in goes in waves

There is a part of me
In the middle of my chest
Surrounding my center of gravity
That wants to write you out of my palms
For the hundredth time
And
Tell everyone in the world but you
In a collection of sentiments and drug induced nightfalls
My exact and precise emotions

There is a part of me
In the back of my head
Next to all of my memories
That begs for the erasure of your name
For the thousandth time
That pushes me to write down how I feel for the times
I forget that I loved everything poisonous about you

That I make art and I do it for you
And I can't sleep anymore and I do it for you
That every word I drip onto paper I say it for you

There is a part of me
In my fingertips,
In my stomach
That hurts to be natural
That hurts to go this distance
That hurts to write one poem about you
Where I dont come up on the losing end
That waits for your touch
The words I know you dont say for me

There is a part of me
In the front of my brain
Behind my eyelids
That remembers your apathy
That soaks in your words and
Refuses to settle within me in fear that
This repression will spring to life
And I will spend my nights in the echo of your words
Letting it scratch into my skin
Letting you scar me

It balances
With the part of me in my ribcage
That opens and closes for you like
A white picket fence
That does everything for you
That watches me listen to you
And fade in and out of consciousness
That remembers your antidote like a phone number
That silences the rest of my ******* body
In the hum of the drunk times you've told me
This time will be different
This time I will love you

There is a part of me
That wants to eradicate the existence of you in notebooks
In sentence structures and walls of words

And it strains against something that is not a part of me at all
But surrounds my body and pushes against me like gravity
That keeps you trapped in the center my palms
Against my skin with no puncture wounds
It flashes your face every time I blink
And I havent figured out how to free myself of this heart crushing weight
Than to write that

My body agrees
Loving you is not worth
All of this pressure

he said i was all blurred lines and
soft edges he said baby
you are sweet like honey you
are soft like the quiet summer
and i couldn't open my mouth
i cough up blood i couldn't say
i am the snapping jaws of a wild animal i
have poison in my veins and i break
things on purpose i break hearts
on purpose i am angry hash marks
and biting words i am choking back
bile he said baby you
are innocent and lyrical and sunlight and i said
i am still cold in the
middle of july

she owns stars  
they are hung in place of humming butterflies in her stomach
she does not get nervous, she gets enkindled;
set aflame within seconds
she is ultraviolet fearless,
feeling her penitence only where it is absolutely due
her name is attributed to shameless like a title
she does not make herself small
or fold neatly into borders and build refuge in corners
not smooth like a statue
she is rough around the fringe;
you can tell by looking at her
she is the definition of wear-and-tear, she is whirlwind
kicked around,
hung-out-to-dry,
her mouth has messy margins;
she possesses no absolutes
she is extraordinary,
boundless,
she embodies intensity and fills every word she speaks with volume
she cannot just touch the ones she loves,
she must wreak havoc in their lives.
the stars beg for forgiveness as
she ignites fury and forces conformity to her accompanying chaos.
the slightest hitch of breathing is suffocating
comfort is mistaken for smothering, extinguished vitality drives
an exit in ballerina form tornado
it is so carefully constructed,
a technique so practiced
it confounds the lines between art and destruction,
bitterness seeps from her tear ducts
acidic, every dance looks like an escape method around her wrists
she whispers;
"you cannot love
the constellations.
i contain multitudes,
i exist past your competence and occupy negative space;
i am made of what people wish they were bold enough to apperceive ."
and the stars translate in echo,
"you cannot love
what is scared to be touched.
oh,
what a lonely, impermanent space
frightened arrogance must occupy."

maybe its because it hurts somewhere in the pit of my stomach to think about how far away you are and how close we used to be and thats why i try to stay moving all of the time because i'm trying to distract myself from how long it would take for me to get there and how long id have to hold my breath in order for you to admit you wanted me where you are.

maybe its because i never got over the first time you told me you wanted to kiss me or the first time you told me you were tired of me because they felt so similar that sometimes i get the syllables twisted and i felt like too much work and detail on an abandoned project so i let you place me somewhere between your old memories and your new ambitions because whats the difference between compliance and being too exhausted to argue?

maybe its because it hurts to think about all that you've done and all that i've done and it hurts to lace them together in a spiderweb of why we didn't work out and maybe its because we didn't try hard enough or maybe its because we have always been written as a tragic story where we are both victims of self sabotage with emotional damage that keeps us up at night and our own demons that could never learn to love eachother

maybe it hurts because its not our fault or maybe it hurts because it is and we are both too stubborn to admit it

in a different world i am waking up from a nap when you walk down the stairs with your work clothes on. you pull your shirt over your head and lean in to kiss me on the cheek. i am curled up in your blankets and you lay down next to me. you whisper something against my skin and i fall back asleep.
in a different world i don't savor every second i have with you, i let them pass by lazily. there will be more and more and more. more you walking down the stairs and pulling your shirt over your head. more leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. more blankets and more your skin on mine.
in a different world we eat dinner together, we split one meal like we always do. we eat off the same plate like we always do. we fight over the best bits of the dish like we always do. i win, like you always let me, because you like seeing me eat. we do dishes, we take turns. sometimes you cook and sometimes we walk to the store and sometimes we go out and sit in the same booth. your hand is on my leg the entire time. we make fun of the conversations around us, you mess with the waiter and i drop my silverware. when we get outside you wrap your arms around me and kiss my cheek for no reason.
in a different world you wake up from a nightmare, you rarely have them anymore but every once in a while i can feel your chest rise and fall in a mismatched syncopation. you **** up and mumble something, sometimes its my name and sometimes its not. in a different world i sit up with you and put my hand right by your collarbone. we sit in the darkness for a while. we fall back asleep and your grip is tighter on the space between my hips and my ribcage.
in a different world you read your book and i sit next to you and draw. you start speaking aloud, a passage i've heard a hundred times before. i listen anyway. in a different world i underline excerpts of poetry and read them to you while you fall asleep. i read you what i write. i show you what i draw. in a different world you watch my eyes fill with passion and you nod along to my nonsensical fits of expression. when i'm done, you smile.
in a different world there is a house. there is a ring. there is a dog, a cat, a garden. there is a garden. we give each other everything we promised. there is a garden that we can sit in, there is a mess in the kitchen from a girl trying to make strawberry jam. there is a house, a ring, a dog, a cat, a garden, a girl, a boy, a life.
in a different world there is a life waiting to be built. in a different world it works, we sleep and wake up and think of each other all day and we love each other so much that it almost kills us. in a different world that love is enough.

If I had a better memory
I would let those conversations lull me to sleep
And play that vocabulary in my mind like
A handwritten song
And there are a lot of things that make up a human mind
Components that reach all the way down into your ribcage
Through trembling hands and empty stomaches
But I intend to feel them all
One time,
A long time ago,
Someone used the word "frightening"
To describe the uncertainty
And burden
That comes with having complex emotions
That word is used as a scapegoat
To expunge yourself of the shadow of vulnerability
It takes hours to reach the tips of my fingers
With everything I feel
And maybe I write so much
Because I never remember exactly what people say
Or maybe it's because
I would like to remember it through rose tinted glasses
Either way
It stretches across miles
And I would use that scapegoat word
To describe what it feels like to be vulnerable
When you realize all of these pretend walls you've put in place
Can be destroyed with the right knock
And I think poetry
Isn't about that frightening feeling
It is about
Feeling it
Being frightened
Having emotion
And continuing
Where others would not

you keep leaving,
chained to exit signs and
one foot out every half-open
grocery store door
chalk it up to curiosity,
to wanting new things,
to blooming in nature with no roots,
you keep leaving.
and i keep staying,
growing on the side of the childhood
home you told me you loved me in,
stable and wrapped around a tire swing
where you kissed me for the first time.
chalk it up to memories,
to sentimentality,
to the comfort that surrounds safety,
i keep staying.
and every summer, you leave and you
drag your feet through the dirt from
my porch to yours,
past every cricket-chirping dusty town
and i wait,
letters pinned to a mailbox and
welcome home mats on the floor,
i am taking my keys with me this time.
i will always stay here, i can't
imagine my body living any other way,
but i lock the doors at night.
you keep leaving,
you keep running away and i just
can't force myself to chase you anymore.

i fall asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
and wake under a dying tree.
red tears fall around me and land next to fingertips
ladybugs crawl over my knees and find a home in the straw.

what once was filled with life has become quiet,
the sky sends apathy in place of the sun,
i wish that the wind would
speak softly and say you are safe in the pace the earth has set up;
push away my pieces gently
in the way it taught the sea so many years ago.

while we were trying to see who could hurt worse,
the world spun in circles like a child on a playground.
the seasons changed without us,
and the wind pushes and pulls you away like the tide,
it gathers your pieces and tells you you are safe without me.

the equinox spins backwards and
i am cultivated to the place where we decided that enough was enough.
my roots spread and break through the painful words we
planted in each others ribcages

i fell asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
the flashlight flickers of tiny bugs
long, dazed evenings where the sun falls in slow motion;
and woke permanent to the comatose forests.
you left,
you took the vitality of the cosmos with you,
the wind pushes past me,
scatters me,
tells me,
*look around you
it is slow; it is rusting, flushed
it is flaming.
he set the world on fire when he left you,
do what he has taught you.
create from the ashes he has left you,
and you will make yourself safe.