there are poems from years ago when i loved you most
shaky hand thoughts
where i couldnt focus on anything but your mouth
where i couldnt sleep because i wasnt sure if you were loving me correctly
i sleep soundly now,
i write about more than your words in my head,
swirling around and making themselves comfortable
you were not loving me correctly.
my hands have stopped shaking.

just let that girl be wild, let her
convince herself not to miss you, let
her stay headstrong and fearless,
standing in her own rain soaking wet,
let her dry herself off. let her run through
the woods all muddy and face-first to the
treetops. let her swing into rivers and scrape
her knees, let her break her wrist and cut her
hair, let her erase who she was when you touched
her last. just let that girl watch the deluge and
thunderstorms in the spring, let her wash away
who she was when you last said her name,
let her point to the sky and tell you *that came from
my chest, that came from my fingertips, that came
from everything you left, and it doesn't need you to
be real

so maybe i fell, and fell and
fell apart
and yeah maybe i was never quite
enough and you were always
looking for pieces of someone else in
me and i tried to pretend i didn't notice when
you choked her name out into my palms
all sticky and red with blood and i used
the time your hands cramped from missing her
fingertips to glue myself together before you
started to pull me apart again
so maybe i was made entirely of she misses me, she misses me not
flowers with thorn-filled stems you could
pluck for your
own entertainment to distract
yourself with the blood blooming on your thumb
so maybe i was a temporary home while she
screened your calls and i wrote poetry about
sinking ships and how i felt every butterfly wing you picked like you were cracking the
bones in my ribcage like
you kept your hands on my thighs like a trademark
so maybe i knew you were just using me to make yourself
feel like you were not all alone and i was
quiet and simple and good and i let you ruin
the good things around you because
if the darkness and emptiness was all
encompassing and i was never quite enough then
at least you would not be
all alone

it's
something out of a movie scene it's
something in its own language like
art or maybe something just a little
bit better, a bit more tangible than
words on paper or paint on canvas.
i want to keep you all to myself. i
would write a hundred letters and
mail them out to sea if it meant that
i could let your heartbeat hum me to
sleep every night. if it meant i could
tell you i love you without choking,
it if meant i could sing your name into
every bad place and let it coil around
my head and stick to me like glue.
one time, someone told me that even
when people leave, art remains and it
will never break your heart as hard as
mean boys with switchblades for mouths
and claws instead of hands. and i repeat
into the silence of your bedroom,
id do it all over again, id do it all
over again, every heart break and hurt
on my tongue, every evil hand on my
body and every single tragedy that sent
me packing and running outside barefoot
into the storm, id do it all over again
if it meant that the wind would send me to you at the end of each tornado. i used to
think that i loved art more than anything
in the whole world until i saw the
smile you kept for me after i kiss you
in the dark. i used
to write about the things i saw, museum
walls and blown glass that holds
heat and traps light under fingernails. i
used to love a world that didn't love
me back and i would write about
man-made beauty that sent artists
running for the hills and off of buildings
just for some inspiration.
now i
can't help but write sonnets about how
i am proud to love someone who is
more beautiful than any
god made, god ******
masterpiece i've ever seen.

the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it had been barreling towards me for miles.
falling in and out of holes of communication,
we dont talk anymore but i still love you,
you wont say goodnight but i still love you,
im not even sure you remember im alive but i still love you,
because i didn't know any better.
because i was never taught whats enough and whats too much
the line between compliance and forgiveness is a lack of strength
and im not sure which direction it points to.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it was seven in the morning, it was dreary bright like
all early summer mornings are. i kept repeating,
i know you dont want to hear this but i still love you,
i know its late but i still love you,
i dont know what im doing but i still love you,
because i never learned how to stop. i never
knew what i could give and what i could take back,
which parts of me were okay to lose and which parts
i would stay awake until seven in the morning wishing i still had
all to myself.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it
was to shut myself up. to tell myself enough. to teach myself to stop.
a simple compliance without forgiveness, separating the pieces
of my body i wanted to stack in suitcases and send across the country
with the pieces of my body i wanted to hold in my hands and
apologize to.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it rolled off of my lips like honey and it fell onto the floor in scraps, all shaky and rehearsed.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore he didnt even
have to say it. he leaned in close and he picked up all the pieces that
belonged to him and told me:
*you beautiful, terrible, stupid thing. you couldnt stop; even if you tried.

I type and erase, and go back, and start over
I repeat this until I can write some shaky confession that resembles poetry
About something that is not how your lips taste
And how you pull me on top of you
Grab me by the waist and lace your fingers with mine
Something that is not how I quiet my terrifying fear of intimacy
Just for a moment, just for this second, just to type and erase,
and go back, and start over
And they tell me, "write what you know"
So my pages are empty and I scream back, "I've forgotten everything else but you."

i want to fix myself with more
than just glue and tape i want
to calm down i don't want
to be so much i want to let the
water wash the broken parts of me
away but i always get caught in the
tides, in the waves, in the stream
they keep saying
"if you do this,
what will be left?
what will be left?"
i keep my feet out of the water.
i don't have an answer.

they tell me
write me a love poem.
but i don't know who i'm writing from,
which version of me to sign it as,
authorized by the words
that make me seem believable.
a love poem about
eating even when you are full and
craving what you can't get your hands on.
a love poem about
two people pressed up against a tree,
how to get lost and
taking the easiest way out.
a love poem about
choking on
gripping fingers on
things i can't put into a love poem.
a love poem about
being afraid of getting caught, the
thrill of not knowing
what was
right and what was wrong.
a love poem about
what never comes. what is almost there.
how do you write about what it should've been without
sounding like an *******?
i could've written a better love story than this.
a love poem about
being stuck, about learning the curve of a body and
memorizing the sounds it makes, the
security of the first who can cover your heart with
their hands.
i can't address these poems.
signed, who?
the girl that i was molded into?
signed,

I want to call.
I want love to be less violent.
I want you to say something nice just so
I can hear it come out of your mouth.
I want your voice, and I want
You to tell me you love me, and I want you
To tell me I'm beautiful and
Calm me down. I want
You to talk me down from the ledge and
I really want to be next to you but I'd settle for a phone call
And I want you to tell me that everything is okay I don't know
What to do because you're the only person I want to
Talk to and I don't have anyone else to call with all of this hurt.

i called to tell you that
i don't love you as much as i thought i did.
i want someone to heal me
in the permanent way
i have never been able to stick a band-aid over.
i want someone to make me real
in the way that pinching my forearm has never
accomplished.
mostly,
i want someone to teach me
that man is not inherently evil
that the good in the world sticks to your lips
after goodnight kisses
i want someone to restore
whatever childlike wonder i let go of,
to pick out the resentment in me like shards of broken glass
and make me a whole person.
i have tried to tie my loose ends together,
i come apart like a fitted bed-sheet,
like trying over and over again,
like falling just short.
i called to tell you that,
if i think hard enough,
if i make my head less cloudy,
if i stop pretending,
i do not love you.
but i want so badly, so selfishly for you to love me,
to fix me,
and i called to tell you that it's just because
i don't think i can do it all by myself.

Your lips-
The first disaster.
A strange sea of intense blue,
Dangerous and horrifying like love.
Our bodies walk untouched by the light,
Shadows supreme and arrogant.
My love is not cruel-
That does not mean it is kind.
That look is breaking the ground underneath me,
The way an earthquake does when two strangers meet.
The roots spread and break through every goodbye planted
Inside of me.
We are trying to see who can hurt worse.
The tide came in while my eyes were closed,
I am thrown headfirst against the rocks.
All this time,
The world was spinning in circles.
The wind pushes and pulls us away.
All of the places I can't dream of going  
Have my name taped to the mailbox.
You love out of a suitcase, always
Ready to pack up and leave.
Holding faith that one of these people
You let touch you with the lights off
Will be more than just a past-lover.
And the phone rings,
Like a call back from the darkness,
"I love even the parts of you that have to go home."

I am unsatisfied in a way that feels violent, that rips through flesh and punctures lungs and coughs up blood. I am unhappy in a way that makes my hands shake and i create new letters out of the pencil marks i draw. I cannot breathe in a way that makes my lungs black with tar and my mouth hurt, i choke on spit and take four deep breaths where girls need one. I want something in a way that makes me want to occupy my time, I write needless poetry just to get it out of my skin and into someplace more permanent, it falls out of me and when I move it trails behind me. It repeats itself in my head like a mantra, I torture myself in the knowing way that things can never be as good as they are when I close my eyes and I am touching you and every rule we have is broken or did not exist in the first place, there is no good or bad space there is no mess ups or fumbling hands there is no regretting it I am absolutely desperate because I am out of options and I know you warned me not to get attached not to get conflicted not to mess it up but I am out of my mind in a way that is so over my head that I cannot even hear you I am absolutely drowning in my bad decisions I am so crazy about you I don't care how many deep breaths I take just to keep going I am not even counting anymore

it has become less like poetry and
more like a confession,
more like if i dont get these words out
of my palms i will burn up under all
of my anger.
how do i talk about not loving you
in a way that contorts my words into
honesty?
how do i immortalize this pain
into writing to remove it from
my heart?
i come apart, i am
undone, there is nothing i can
say that will erase how you
felt,
starry eyed and drunk in the
drivers seat.
be careful, slow down, don't
stop
there is no pity.
i cannot force myself to forget.
all i do is remember.
all i do is not-forget.

girl rages war on the world after it breaks her heart* the
headlines read on a lazy sunday morning and it is used as
a coffee coaster or padding for packaging old antiques
that came from a shop that smells like the sheets your mom
uses (but only for the guests that don't come anymore.) girl
rages war on the world after it tears her to pieces, after
she walks around with glue in her hair and dirt under
her fingernails, collecting fragments of the people that used
to love her and the places she used to go to. girl rages war
on the cracks in the sidewalk, on the cracks against her mouth
by her fathers hand, every wall has cracks in it to signify how
all grows crooked. all grows upwards, forwards, east, west,
never downwards but never quite all the way straight.
girl rages war
on the world and screams to the sky, she shoots holes into the
blackness and creates constellations in the exit wounds and
melodies out of the echoes. girl makes her own thunder and
her own sequence for the midnight. she tells people who touch
her that they are in the crossfire for bloodshed, that every crack in
the sidewalk they step on is a battlefield, that every diplomatic
exchange between the moon and the tides is a reprise of her
strife.
girl rages war on the world after it breaks her heart and the
newspaper is flipped over to the home improvement ads, the
tv schedule for this week, there is a gunshot but no one flinches
or looks out their window.
after all, what does it matter what she destroys
in the crooked tantrum that all must grow towards?
she and her bullets are no match for the dirt and the
sky and the buildings that waver over her, she is no
match for the people that tower her and the places she will
never go back to.
no need to be alarmed, no need to collect the children and look for safety in empty
basements.
after all, she is just one girl.

IT IS A TESTAMENT TO THE OBEDIENCE OF YOUR HISTORY.
YOU ARE BORN. YOU WILL LOVE SOMETHING NATURAL
UNTIL IT ROTS
AND YOU WILL DIE WHEN IT WITHERS
LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER KNOWN THE SPRINGTIME.
IT IS WHAT YOU DO.
A TRIBUTE TO YOUR ****** HEART,
YOU TAKE WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL
YOU WILL EAT IT UNTIL IT IS JUST THE BONES OF
SOMETHING RAW–
YOU WILL ACHE WITH SOLITUDE
AND SHATTER EMPTY DINNER PLATES.
A EULOGY TO ALL
THE GIRLS THAT BLOOMED FOR YOU
IN THE WINTER,
IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ECHO OF THE BITTERNESS YOU KNOW TOO WELL.
TEACH A MAN TO FEED AND HE WILL
DEVOUR WHAT IS IN SIGHT.
TEACH A MAN TO LOVE AND HE WILL
BREAK HIS KNUCKLES
DIGGING GRAVES INTO THE DIRT.

it has been
five days
since we had that big fight,
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore it has been
five nights of me dialing your
number but not pressing call
listening to songs that i did not share
with you to send me to sleep
it has been
five days
since you told me that i was unrealistic,
a dreamer in the worst way possible,
all hung up and angry at what i cant change
and i have spent
four of those days chasing away my sobriety
once because my friends told me that
i needed you out of my head
once because i sat in the middle of the grass
and closed my eyes and took what was
handed to me because i told myself i
needed you out of my head
once because it was late and i didn't
want to keep dialing your number without
pressing call
once because i wanted to drown you in
the poetry but my hands still shook
too hard to make sense of the words i had
left it has been
five days
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore and i'm not checking up
on you, i'm not asking how you're doing no
matter how much i wonder and if you ever
asked i'm sure the words would come
spilling out of me no
matter how many days have passed
or how many times i reason with my chest
i am not sure
i am really ready to do this the rest of my life

i fell in love and it curled its hand into a fist and hit me right in the mouth.
i got up and it hit me right in the mouth again.
and i got up again.
i got knocked down into kind words, i threw love into the empty
space between them thinking that it was a drawer to store my belongings in and not just
a black hole with no edges for containment.
i fell in love and it was a dragon that breathed fire all over my clothes
and in my hair, the smoke swirling up into my mouth and nose and eyes.
when you are young, you forget that what is warm can also burn.
i get my head bitten off and lay still on the glass floor until it grows back,
and then i go back to the dragon with my sword bent
and i yell that i am strong enough to keep fighting.
keep knocking me out. keep breathing fire. i will spit my teeth
onto the floor until i am nothing but blood and gums and black eyes and
charred skin.
i fell in love and it was a dragon that i was too small and clumsy
to keep up with. whats the big deal? i'm not comparing myself
to a knight in this analogy. just one of the naive girls who fight
against forces out of her control because they don't know when
to give in. but in every analogy you are a dragon, or a monster, or a big animal with
claws and teeth that sinks into soft pink skin and can't mumble
out an apology with a full mouth. in every analogy you are
something i can't beat, something i let grab me by the throat and
shake me around like a dead rabbit. in every analogy you
are the predator and i am the prey.
i used to fight it, i used to hang dream-catchers in my room and
hold crystals in my hand and talk to the moon. i used to
tell her all about you, tell her to make you more gentle and
keep my heart safe. i was relying on the world to take care of me.
you are the dragon, the monster, the big angry animal
with no remorse and hurt eyes.
and i am not the hero or the knight or the champion. i fell in
love and let it beat me down and knock me out. i win by giving in. i win by caging
you up and putting my sword down. i win by taking my
belongings back and finding safety. i fell in love and it destroyed me. but i win by losing, by never letting it happen again.
i win because im staying down for the count.
i win because  it will never happen again.

I've spent a lot of time staring at myself
In the mirror, thinking that
Love looks like sacrifice.
See, where I come from,
Devotion twists itself into ****** forms.
Agony breathing between a lust for heaven or hell,
Misery dripping like blood onto concrete.
Love stains my hands red and the offering is such:
Here lies this contorted body,
Begging you to dismantle it.
Gut me of my delusions and
Carve out my smile to mount on your wall.
Here lies this mutilated body,
Unrecognizable in the face of faithfulness,
Staring into the eyes of adherence like
Its got a gun to my head.
Make me stand to look at this body.
Maybe its my misconstrued fantasies,
I bid myself to Love and it burns.
Take these confessions,
This ******,
Write about it like its poetry
When it reads like atonement.
Here lies this shrine of a body,
I flinch when you cup your hands around my face,
A knife pressed against my throat
Slicing into my mumbled apologies.
I am sorry
I cannot soften the corpse I am becoming.
I've spent a lot of time looking at you,
Thinking that Love may look like resurrection.
Rebirth in your softness.
Here lies this reviving heartbeat of a body,
If I am the sacrificial altar,
Get on your knees and start praying for my resurgence.
I'll see you back when it is bloodless and lifeless,
When its been emptied of its contents and is just the frame
Of our offerings.
I've had Love to die for
Your Love is holy,
Something to live for.

there is depth to the light that you can't
watch without squinting, without flinching
and moving towards shelter.
it rings true of the body you
are gripping so tightly.
i am the body that i have always been,
dimly lit and shaking like a wet dog,
cornered against faces that are pointed like knives.
i buzz like there are bees inside of my stomach, i harbor
nocturnal animals and bugs in my hair.
the edges of my mouth are not illuminated with
warmth when you touch me. not anymore.
not ever, i wont lie to soften the shadows.
you cover your
eyes with your stupid warm hands and the darkness
clears its throat.
you try to touch me but it doesn't feel holy, it doesn't
feel sacred, and the darkness
clears its throat.
i have never had exalted palms against
my skin. the good ones see the black hole of
my empty space and the bad ones see my
glow as a lack of commitment.
i am containing the twilight, right after
the sun gives up for the day.
if there is a light i will swallow it whole.
if there is a god i am going to make him turn his
head away.

there is a night
with the moon hung so low
it courses itself over my outstretched palms
and i lay in the middle of the street
with the gravel digging into my skin and
im repeating to a boy whos not listening to me
this doesn't make any sense and i try
my hardest to keep my fists clenched around
the surface of the moon but it falls through
my finger tips like sand he lies next to me
and tells me that maybe i am just hard to
love.

there is a morning
where i stumble down steps and into a bed
i pull blankets over my shoulders and i don't
cringe when you touch my stomach i used
to map out all of the bad parts on me like
a highway but all of my lines are blurred and
i feel less like roadwork and more like wandering
hands there is a version of you that i like most
it is right after we kiss and i pull away and
look right at you and i used to think that being
loved at all was the right thing to waste my time on
with car crash endings and angry words at least
it was love at least it was something now

there is the middle of the day
and all i am is that moment after i pull away
that split second where i feel so naive
for thinking i had any idea what love was before
i met you. that i could have ever let anyone convince me
the way they hurt me was a product of what my
heart could handle. that any love
besides this love was worth any of my time.
there is before and after,
night behind us and morning ahead of us and we
always just move forward.

Picking up where we left off. Picking up a body from the floor.
Arms stretched.
Teeth falling like seeds to the ground.
To the dirt underneath it.
What to do with something cold:
Stare at it,
Cover it with your palms,
Die with it.
Picking up from that moment, from the place I died for the hundredth time.
I cover up my puffy cheeks,
my rotting lips cracked and
caked in chapstick.
I smoke a blunt and wipe makeup onto a sweater.
It doesn’t feel like coming
Back to life, but it reminds me of a waning moon
and looking for the brightest stars from your driveway. My hair falls out in clumps in your hands,
If you notice it is only for a second. It doesn’t hurt because
You look through me, you can see someone else in my face.
Someone without maggots crawling out of her eyes.
I die again, when you look through me. When I follow your gaze
To the gravestones behind my back.
When you tell me
“I can’t do this with you anymore” and you break my fingers kissing them goodbye;
I die then, too.
Picking up where we left off, I am a ghost hotel for your lazy mistakes.
I am surrounding myself and hiding from myself.
I carry old versions of me in a funeral precession; I drag them on the
Floor behind me as I walk. I am still more gentle with myself than
You were.
I died last week when you called, when you tell me,
“I just want to hear your voice,”
I die before I can reply.
The body knows blunt force trauma but can’t
Recognize poison until it’s too late. It bubbles out of my broken jaw
And seeps into the mud.
I pick my teeth up and put them in a pile.
I would call back but I am choking on the grief.

There are some things you could never bring yourself to say aloud
But if you ever did you'd have no choice but to scream till you went hoarse
I put to paper my feelings toward you
Because there's not enough air in the world to suffice
For all the shouting I'd have to do

“I like when it loops over and over like that”, they said.
God if only you could see inside my head,
Playing sensory details over and over again
like there's a secret hidden in the way your eyes curl when you smile
or in the delicate shapes you trace on my skin that keep me anchored to the conscious world

Could you ever understand the way you
pull my heartstrings
round my neck like piano wire,
what a rotten way to go.
the way you
clog up the chambers of my heart,
kiss after kiss,
word after word,
drifting down the length of my chest,
falling softly on the floor of my condemned building of a heart,
like dead leaves piling up in the gutter,
the river runs over its banks,
and spills into my lungs,
i bail myself out in the silence of your sleep
let my heart be a vessel, its water your grief

Neither wholly light nor dark
Both the sun and the moon dance circles round our hearts
Will you still be here after dusk?
Will you still be here after dawn?
is every a precaution of scaring me away just an entreaty for me to stay?
a hundred little love notes folded into paper tigers
a hundred little red lights for me to run
a hundred little cuts for me to bleed from
when we decide to crash let’s be going to fast that it’s fatal rather than paralyzing
You promise yourself to me in totalities and you give yourself to me in teaspoons,
They said, “all of it is yours’,
Worried if all of it is something my heart has room for,
I promise, I promise, I promise, if only you’d just be unafraid to open the door
Do you think you won’t let this work?
What if I won’t let you?
Do you think you can hurt me?
What if I’m willing to do a lot more than just bleed for you?

the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like my father raising his voice.
i have always recoiled into loud noises, slamming
doors and heavy words have caused me to
flinch in record-reaction time. i fall in and in and
into myself and you say it quietly, but it
is louder than any breaking glass or screeching
tire noises in the driveway of my childhood home. i
have always chosen my words very carefully in a
world full of carelessness, i choose gentle and i choose
compassion and i choose kind. the way you told me
you didn't love me anymore sounded like the fight
where my mother said she was collecting her things.
the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like packing a suitcase and putting a for sale sign on the
glossy green suburban lawn. the way you told me you
didn't love me anymore sounded like the music my
sister would turn up to drown out the voices of adults
downstairs, or the creaking footsteps of a man coming
home late, wafting in someone else's perfume. the way you
told me you didn't love me anymore sounded like the wail
of a child after a blow to the face, after another blow to the
face, after another blow to the-
the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like something i had been waiting to hear since you told me
you loved me. the other shoe drops. the other shoe drops.
a swift, clean, repetitive blow to the face.

love rains from my mouth,
it drips down the front of my t shirt.
i am pouring,
i overflow.
with the lightning and thunder,
with a heart drumming
the beat of a hummingbirds wings-
briefly, breathlessly.
existing on the brink of tragedy;
what was it all for?
if there is comfort it is one thing,
you are here.
if there is fear it is another,
i am here, too.
i give up, i give in,
i won’t fight any more.
there is too much hurt here
but still, i am giving you this,
the right hand and the wrong one.
trusting that you will take both and hold them
to your chest, to your own
weathered heart.
you hurricane, you fire raging,  
i have been looking for you in every broken piece.
if it was all meant for this,
all meant to bring me here,
i would understand.
i would understand.

I liked to be in Hell, and
I liked to be there alone.
Violence tangled in this tissue,
This shame,
I am cut open,
A faithful mutilation with scars that
Read like atonement.
This Rage is violent and mine-
The wrong kind of ugly, I know.
The living body of a survivor
Wakes up each morning in a grave.  
I have always carried my love for this world,
Carried my horrible reverence for this world,
This world is sick like a knife.
I can feel eternity pressing against my throat.
There is Nothing,
It comes to devour from the inside.
The length of silence swells                
like a syndicate of ants.
In Hell we are alone.
What can you do besides hold your hand out to the dark?

To tell the truth about myself,
A confession to my untidy spirit.
Blood dries under nails,
I'm not sure which me it belongs to.
Once, I had a man tell me,
"Forgiveness looks beautiful on you."
I unhook my ribs
And hang my lungs on a coatrack,
I do it for love,
For love I abandon my self.
A soul stretching like one uninterrupted wound,
Climbing up the length of my spine.
Forgiveness looks like an accident,
Spilled on the pavement,
Reflecting the light.
I have never learned how to decay gracefully.
An affinity for crisis,
An empathy that runs deeper than dreams
And thicker than blood,
You couldn't wash me from your memories if you tried.
All the ways one heart can bruise,
Love in itself is a sort of solitude, you said.
The timid ghost of myself
Casted here at my feet,
I am looking at myself only to be seen.
How cruel a forgiveness which
Doesn't know when to trust itself.
To tell the truth about myself,
To be the sun instead of light emitting from a dead star,
Would be an admittance that even God isn't ready to hear.

two people go in circles, one
extending arms, holding a heart in hands,
dripping blood onto tile floor.
and shes asking what you'll do with it,
so it's about time you decide whether
to use your hands or your teeth.
whether to cup your palms and
let her relax her shoulders or dig your
fingernails into the muscle because there is blood
all over the floor and she just wants
to know if you'll go ahead and tear
her apart.
it is a dance that never stops dancing,
indecision thrives on the only defense you
have left. she doesn't stop dancing with you,
arms tired, legs spinning in circles and feet
slipping on the tiles below her and shes
asking you what you'll do with it,
so what's it going to be,
hands or teeth?

I thought I had wandered into a dream.
Like someone said, ”Action!" right before you came into the shot.
These are the things people write about, you know.
This is what they make those movies about.
Cut to, a moment.
Theres that moment you were looking for,
Where we stop becoming separate lives and
We cross paths like striking a match.
Take a boy,
take a sad boy and give him a small bird.
Something to hold without crushing it
He knows how to be careful.
Take a girl,
Take a sad girl and give her to the softness,
Watch how her body tenses around something kind.
Please cover my hurt with both hands.
Please make room for what is about to happen to your heart.
Take a boy and a girl and put them in a room.
Wild animals.
Two people searching for something to give away.
Please don't let this be too big a burden to carry but,
I need you like air and I love you like poetry.
If the orchestra was playing, the music would swell and we would kiss each other like it was the ****** of the story, and everything that follows is a mere afterthought.
No more questions,
The main characters never play it safe and the camera
Pans to us sharing a blanket that is too small.
I'd toss and turn all night if every direction I turned in was
Traced with your touch. If every memory that
Wakes me up with a gasp is quickly followed by your hands.
You cover the sadness with both hands.
My armor is cracking, and I forgot the key to let us into
Something soft, something secure, something vulnerable and big and
Fatal,
So lets break down this door.
I'm ready when you are
And someone is yelling ”Action!”
Take two people,
Put them in a room,
And ask them to trust each other.
Watch them touch,
Kiss,
Explore,
Think,
Love.
I'm knocking on your heart instead of
Forcing myself in, I'm reminding you that I'd stay through every piece of doubt, every time you say you're sorry,
Every time you fumble over a line, I see you at the end
Of each day and it's coming home, finally coming home. finally coming home.
I sleep with the lights on. I am scared to be in the dark.
And you let me sleep in the shifting moonlight
With your hand on my chest and your words in my head.
We are creating better memories,
We are creating a better universe.

come to the river of your longing,
put your grief down next to mine.
i will show you how i can bleed,
let time play on your chest like
the hands of a lover.
i will pull back the covers of the sky,
i will pull my heart back from the Dark,
i will pick up your pieces and bring them home.

It's a funny thing to lay next to someone, to sleep with them in a bed.
I can start off close and drift away in the summer heat, morning  brandishing my dreams until it rattles me awake, gasping for sunlight. I can account for the missing space between our bodies, getting drunk on the warmth of his skin and waking tangled up in his curly hair. I can count the stars and talk to the moon while I trace my name into his palm with a finger, listening to the sound of his even breathing and the steady drum of his heartbeat. The world is quiet when my lover is asleep, my heart takes a deep breath and the soul pauses. I exhale all of the days worries in the middle of the night when he takes my hand and pulls me closer to him. In the spring time, we wake up further apart than we are used to, and my sleepy head turns to face him, and it's like waking up all over again. That moment where we are remembering the bed, the person in it, coming back to life, and he runs his hand down my back and kisses my forehead. "I've missed you," every morning, like a daily prayer for our survival, for another day of bliss.

I note the tone of the way you say, "I love you too."
Always with a hint of doubt that I could taste on your tongue.
Like you were tired of me.
Follow up question, are you tired of me yet? Y/N?

2. I stopped paying attention to my paranoia when we slept in strangers beds for five nights straight and
Each time I woke up I felt like I was at home because your arm was wrapped around my waist.

3. How could I tire of you?
And it sounds so real that I want to believe it.
There are a lot of things you don't quite know about me yet,
And one of them is that I always leave first.

4.  Your warm eyes and exhausted smile,
Your mess of curly hair and fumbled words, you angel-shaped human. You absolute godsend.
Afraid to be looked at but begging to be touched/understood/forgiven (circle one).

5. I belong with you no matter how bad I'm feeling.
I decided this late last night (November 22nd).
When you held my head in both hands and said,
"No matter how bad it gets, we can do it together."
And you couldn't even tell how badly I needed those words;
They washed over me like prayer.
Like confession.

6. If I could screenshot life I would do it now,
I'm thinking as I lay in someone else's bed that we are sharing.
If only I could save this moment in a way that is richer than writing it down.
If only you could see yourself how I see you.

7. The way you twirl your hair in your fingers when you're thinking. The way your face lights up when you're excited. The way your smile looks in the morning. The way you kiss me like you're never going to see me again. The way you-
-Are you listening?
Yes.

8. Walking down a busy street,
Walking through a crowded room,
Walking amongst strangers,
Walking anywhere with you feels like coming home.

9. "I love you, too" sounds assured.
Sounds like laying down for the first time after a long day.
Like my favorite song on your lips.
I could hear it a million times over.

10. Sometimes, you are asleep for hours,
And I stay up and talk to the moon.
She tells me about the tide.
And I tell her about you.

A body self-possessed,
self-embraced,
Desperately trying to tear itself apart.
I write like I am trying to **** something.
Metaphors poisoned with memories.
I have always carried my love for this world,
carried all of my harsh words,
carried my horrible reverence for this world.
I write like I am trying to drown something,
To muffle their apologies in love poems.
I confront love just to consume it.
Lazy in the way that only negligence covets.

And then, you.

The way all good poets encounter a muse:
Terrified.
Terrified of your hands, your touch and how much it feels like
A place to hide.
A place to rest.
A place to put my grief down.
For once, I felt myself become gentle.
Your smile cutting glass and leaving scars on my heart,
Don't worry about that damage.
We will count our wounds when it's all over.
We have survived this much,
What would happen if we were to survive more?
Survive love like it is a creator,
Write for life instead of death,
Be able to live without decaying.
Sharing life with you makes life worth writing about.

Your love is anarchic like a storm
and gentle like waking up to raindrops on the window.
It is steady, a drumming on the walls of your chest.
You fall in love, and not a breath is wasted
In the absence of a kiss.
Every "goodnight" is drowned
With your hand in mine under the covers,
Because even next to each other is just too far away.
Your love.
I've been here before.
I've felt this downpour
Against your arms, against your heartbeat,
On your lips.
Intimate and domestic moments,
Grabbing my hips,
A hand on the small of my back.
Your love sticks to me like a wet raincoat.
I've been here before,
Watching the clouds roll in as the day gets dark.
Your love.
Something I had tasted and felt and
Died for a thousand times.
I would do it a thousand more.
Like a steady drizzle on my face as I stare towards the sky.
I am praying for rain.
Let the rivers flood.
Let the water wash away all of our hurt.
Let the clouds pour until there is nothing left,
Let me keep your love.

This is my apology.
it is my apology for how long I held onto you,
for how long I refused to let you go,
I loved you too long and it felt like my fault.
This is where I leave you, darling,
cold wet body sitting at the bottom of something dark.
Id like to step into the light now.
I loved you too much and didn't notice when you
Stopped loving me back.
I try to be gentle now,
I try to be all of the things I couldn't with your
Hands around my neck.
This is my apology, because
I would've died for you if you had asked.
I'm ready to live now, darling.
In this new life I've created out of what you left me with.
You left me so many times that it felt like my fault.
But love is faultless, it is ageless and nameless.
I've apologized to my love, I've held it back to life
and I've laid next to it in bed.
I'm sorry, for loving you so hard you felt like there was no way out.
This is my apology, my big red EXIT sign.
I'll let you go now.

you asked if you could touch me.
if you could cover me with your hands,
warm like you just buzzed back to life
under my skin.
and I said, "you can do whatever you want
as long as you don't leave."
I guess I should've been more specific.
What I meant was,
I have no respect for this body.
It holds me like a
creaky old home, dripping pipes and wind that
moves the ceiling tiles out of place until they crash
Into the floorboards.
It has never felt like me, it feels like a midnight bus stop
on the long journey to something softer.
something calmer.
What I meant was,
you can hit me if you want to.
Over and over you can leave bruises on my
hips and
my neck.
But don't tell me you love me in that voice I've almost forgotten.
It bubbles inside of me and suddenly
I am sitting on that bus,
going who knows where.
running to your home,
running away from mine.
Looking for where I found this body.
I feel like a guest in this body.
So it doesn't matter if you paint my walls black.
It doesn't matter if you grab my throat too tight or you
destroy me completely,
I die each night and then live again in the sunshine
of the morning.
Because I have never even been there to begin with.
Does that make sense?

there is the sunlight pouring through wafting curtains each morning.
i whisper “cover us” to the window.
if to stay here in your arms would mean giving up my life outside of this bed,
i would throw it over my shoulders like laundry and carry it to the return site of my heart breaking.
i would let the sickness air out.
what was it that you said?
“your smile is a panacea.
not a thing in the world it couldn’t cure.”

if to stay here, basked in the flickering brightness would mean slipping my love through my fingers and into yours,
i would tell you to use both hands.
dont be gentle,
but be kind.
remember that you’re holding a broken thing.
it just needs the right touch.

i wish you knew what you were grasping so tightly.
i wish i could press my forehead against yours
and you could hear what i’m trying to say.
what i’m trying to say is i always felt like
a puzzle piece in someone else’s picture but
you make me feel like i fit just right.

if to stay here, in the glow of a new day would mean my head would become vapid of anything but you, i’d let myself go dizzy.
you, you, you.
and who needs them, anyway?
to fall in love again and again as the light drapes itself across your cheeks,
how unchanged this heart is.
even after all of the hurt, the trauma, the pain
it is still a beating thing at its core.

"Full license to my heart."
I am dramatically trying to give myself away,
To burden this body less,
This body has so much to carry.
Skin looks different in the glowing light of abuse,
Shoulders heavier,
Mind fuller with worry and sick thoughts,
Sometimes I am crushed and barely breathing beneath it.
It is too much for any one person to carry,
So I am looking to give myself wholly away.
Desperately tearing myself into pieces and gift-wrapping them for you in poetry. In spoken words against your chest. In unspoken words that write themselves down in silence.
Things I won't say: I am so fragile that sometime you hug me and I think you will take the life out of my lungs. Sometimes you sneak up on me and I flinch.
Just barely, just for a second. But it happens. and it hurts.
Sometimes I ask questions in a language you don't understand,
I worry that you're going to shift into him and stop being the you that
Is so understanding and compassionate.
Things I wont say: if you want it, you can take it. You can take what you can balance, what you can hoist up behind you and
Drag against the asphalt as you walk.
You press your forehead against mine,
We let the silence sit in the air-
you are speaking to my heart again.
We will endure this together.
together.

it’s all very quiet,
very human,
very desperate.
each kiss a promise.
each sentence calculated.
each look lingers.
what are you trying to tell me?
what are we doing to each other?
my mother says i like to destroy everything i touch
like the composure is a foreign language,
tranquility isn’t as good a muse as all of this tragedy.
but you touch me and it isn’t destruction.
in fact, it feels like you’re holding me together
with your finger tips.
i know it must get exhausting,
i’m sorry for all the times i wake you up in a panic.
but i won’t apologize, i won’t hold onto this guilt that
i don’t belong to. i will try to do that for you.
i think i’m writing this poem to tell you
i’d do anything for you.
and you say be careful with big words like that.
promises of forever are currency that can’t be exchanged.
so take my words until i’m flat broke.
until i’m begging on the street.
always, forever, anything, everything.
i’ll sell those words to you for cheap,
if you can find a place to hide them like silver
in an old box. just keep them safe.
i cement these feelings into existence by talking about them.
by writing them down.
i’ll write you a poem every day.
good morning. here’s your coffee and your desperate love poem about leaving and staying and waking up just to kiss each other before we drift back into sleep.
good morning. another morning. i’m glad you’re here. here’s a love poem.
i love you.

do more than just touch.
this is your permission slip,
my ENTRANCE THIS WAY sign,
all of the arrows pointing to my chest.
to my ribcage that you play a familiar tune on,
to my lungs that gasp for air every night
at 3:30 AM,
to my heart that is a beating thing;
that is a drum, banging on the walls of what
is inside of me.
begging for your hands
draped around my hips in comfort,
in desperation,
in a moment where i didn’t even know
i’ve needed you this whole time.
i am a room.
a vacant room with two doors and no windows.
i’ve been waiting for someone to belong here.
this is me saying, “you belong here.”
this is your resigned silence,
the kiss we share when i can’t get the words out,
the “i love you”s that come in threes because
sometimes i just need to hear it more than once.
sometimes i have to listen to the sound of my own voice in order to understand what i’m trying to say.
that’s why the words drip out and spit themselves onto the floor beneath us.
i am a room.
a vacant room with two doors and no windows.
i take you into this room and say, “do whatever you want.”
and you pull me close.
i take you into this room and say “destroy it,”
and you kiss me.
every room an escape route,
every room is a home if you’re sharing the
bed with the person you love.
i wonder what you’re thinking when you write about me.
i wonder what you’re thinking when you look at me.
i want to be inside of your head so bad that i scare myself away from my own thoughts.
every room has an entrance,
an exit.
this is me holding the door open,
“please, come in. stay a while.”

The art of being lonely,
Something I've perfected after years of
Screaming and pounding. The act of being
Alone, the verb of it as it trickles down your face.
I cry when I'm scared.
I cry when I'm happy too.
The word alone slips away from my cheeks,
It falls out of my mouth.
A new lover I have found in a bed that looks
Like mine, but sideways when I can't pick my head up.
I cry when I'm angry,
And the lonely clears its throat.
It pushes against
The walls of my chest like a drum, like a beat pulsating
Out of my sobs.
A new taste on my tongue,
still here,
but if I lose my mind
In my own lonely,
will there ever be anyone
Around to notice?

We lock eyes.  
Thats how it starts. With a look.
You can see through me and there's nothing there,
There is no hurt to cascade my shoulders and no
Pain in my voice. It is sweet. It is light,
I invite you in.
Thats how it starts. With a touch.
You can move through me and there's nothing there,
There is no anger to wash over me and no
Wince when your hand meets my skin. It is calm.
It is calculated.
I let you in.
And that's how it always starts, right?
When the other shoe drops. And it hits the ground
with a thump like our bodies on the bed. But it's not
Over yet darling, the lights are still on
And there's still blood on the sheets. Can you help me clean
Up this mess? Can you help me fix this?
We lock eyes and it feels like a reminder,
like ive been waiting for you
The other shoe drops and I'm on my hands and knees
Scrubbing my old memories clean for you.
You deserve better than this, you deserve that much.
You deserve someone who is sweet. light. calm. calculated.
You open your mouth and say my name and it sounds like
"come home"

light a cigarette with shaky hands.
i never felt like i deserved the sweetness,
it cascades over me like fluorescent lighting
harsh and uncomfortable and out of place.
take a drag with trembling fingers.
i never feel like these words can do it justice
it being your lips on my skin.
it being your name falling out of my mouth like blood.
will you stay here, darling?
will you help me clean up this mess?
im scrubbing myself clean,
expunging all of the sins from my skin so i am
someone new just for you.
someone without so much weight on my shoulders.
someone lighter. i wish i was someone better for you.
and i can’t help but self-deprecate,
i cant help but never forgive myself for my mistakes
but you hold onto me and it stops the ache in my chest and maybe that deep breath is enough.
maybe taking a deep breath and knowing there
is no second-guess, no punchline, no catch is enough.
flick the ash onto the ground with weak palms.
with exalted memories. i am trying to be something i can’t recognize. i am trying to be someone else for you.
but how much of myself can i lose,
how much can i get away with before it becomes some sort of ******?
there’s blood everywhere.
take a drag with cold fingertips.
i don’t know if i’ll ever feel okay again.
i don’t know if i can stand to let you burden this for me.
i don’t know if i will ever feel like i’m not giving away my pieces on the sidewalk.
here. take this. take something. take everything. please. i’m begging.
please, i’m begging. i’m on my hands and knees. please don’t leave me just because i don’t know how to make you stay.

one.
your smile can cut me like crashing waves on sharp rocks.
I was always warned not to jump ship in deep waters.
I was always told not to get lost in steady waves,
but my reflection smiles back at me and the ocean is six miles deep and
if you were at the bottom, I would swim to you
until I ran out of air and then some.

two.
If you asked me for the stars,
I would rope them around a blue silk string
and hand wrap them for you.
I was always warned not to give too much too soon
but I hate being told what to do.

three.
it is a testament to everyone that came before you,
all of the words I wasted on them instead of you,
Isn't it rotten?
I will love you until you fall apart under my fingertips.

four.
comfortable silence has never been my strong suit.
I fill every space up with words, with dreams, with bad memories
and the worst things that have ever happened to me and
you sit there, caked in sunlight, and you listen like
i'm telling you a bedtime story.
and it feels safe, sharing the journey at how I arrived at
the point where your chest meets your heartbeat
and your lips meet mine.
I made it here, I know you were waiting for me, I know it took a long time, but I'm here now.

five.
I've never been good at writing love poems.
I'm better at writing loss poems, but these words have forced
themselves out of my skin and into the ink.
I dont want to lose you. I dont want to write our eulogy out
and replay it in my mind. Just stay. Just stay, just stay, just stay.
I could slip it
off of my tongue like a bad habit forever. I have belonged to you since the beginning. we will have new beginnings indefinitely. I promise.

You trace your thumb across my palm and God clears his throat. This is free therapy, this is the moment where we take a breath at the same time and our faces are so close that I can taste heaven in the space between them. What would you do with my hands if I gave them to you? Do you have an answer for that? Do you have the answer for everything? What would you do with my heart if I gave it to you? Think carefully. Be careful. There's no use in pretending that we're not going down with this ship, so honey hang on tightly. Because I'm waving the white flag, and you're standing on the shoreline with your palms up. What would it look like if we both surrendered? I imagine your hello on my lips and it tastes like sinking underwater. So what if I want the misery? So what if I've given up on trying to save us from destruction? Maybe I like how it feels to have something to die for. To die for. God clears his throat.

Sweet, like the way a flame feels on your skin before it starts to burn.
Slow, like how I fell for you in the middle of fall and kept you safe all winter long.
Don't worry about this darkness, baby.
The darkest day is almost over and the light is coming.
The light is coming.
And you tell me,
"Please never fall in love again."
And how could I? How could I find something that matches your laugh,
Or your lazy hands on my skin when the sun peaks through the windows,
or the smile that emerges when we kiss for too long and you can feel my touch wandering around, looking for scraps.
You are not like him in the best ways.
You are so gentle that it makes me feel breakable.
If you want to shatter me to pieces just have mercy. I'd rather not hear the echo of it breaking,
But I won't stop you from destroying it.
Oh, my love, this is going to hurt.
Those thoughts are a like a memory, they don't last in the illumination of your love that feels so final, so imminent like I am walking to my own grave but you are waiting for me in the dirt.
Every place, even a hole in the ground, is home when you are holding my hand.
We could never speak anything but melodies;
Anything but devotion in the spaces between breaths.
Finishing the gaps of your sentences,
You trail off and I'm there to voice the verse.
Our love dog eared like a book reread a hundred times over,
I keep coming back and reading my favorite parts aloud.
Our love like one of those movies where they say,
"if somebody gave me the choice right now, to never see you again or to marry you, I would marry you."
Tender words to throw around, to spare
I could never get tired of the way you talk about me like a metaphor for something divine,
Waking up in the middle of the night to profess my love for you,
If only to hear it come out of my mouth,
If only to watch that look spread across your face in the darkness.
That look where your eyes are to the ceiling and I know you're thanking god.
I wake you up just to kiss you and you never mind the interruption.
Our love like a hundred similes for heaven,
When you break my heart it will hurt like hell.
But we're not there yet, I'm skipping to the finale, I'm reading
Our story backwards out of fear for how it ends.
Those last pages,
Those blank pages, staring back at me, begging me to write
Some soft closure, an end that doesn't spark like a match and light
This chapter ablaze.
Let me hold onto these charred pages, I can find the ending somewhere in the smoke,
But I'm not looking for it anymore, I leave the poems unfinished
And the book open wide.
I'm trying to write a love poem that isn't caked in sadness and you show me how to move my hands just right.
You show me where to touch and when to kiss, you teach me
All the mechanisms for a happy ending, and you hold it in your hands like a gift you're giving to me every morning.
This anecdote like a never ending tragedy that all love is destined to become.
We are not All love, we are not People, we are the main characters for the greatest adventure ever written.
We sing poetry back and forth and neither of us are bleeding.
I will reread this over and over,
Keep it in my back pocket for the train,
Let the rain soak it and the sun dry it completely,
Destroy it,
And when it falls apart in my hands
I will get on my knees and scrawl my favorite lines in chalk on the asphalt.
I will write them in the smoke of mirrors, in our coffee cups,
On our pillowcases.
I will tell this story,
Our story,
Over and over like a lesson I am trying to learn.
You move my hands just right across the paper and it looks like love.

I AM WAGING WAR UPON MYSELF.
THEY TELL ME IT TAKES GRACE TO REMAIN KIND IN
CRUEL CIRCUMSTANCES.
IF THATS THE CASE,
THEN I AM HATEFUL,
I AM HEARTLESS.
I AM SPITEFUL.
GRASPING TO THE RUINS OF WHAT WE USED TO BE,
THRASHING LIKE A WOUNDED ANIMAL.
SHARDS OF GLASS PEAKING OUT FROM MY RIBCAGE,
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW.
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW.
IF YOU COULD SEE
ME NOW.
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN ONE TO CLING TO LIFE,
TO SEARCH FOR A BREATH IN LIFELESSNESS,
TO HOLD OUT FOR A HEARTBEAT.
I USED TO THINK IT WAS A CONVENIENCE,
TO FIND LOVE IN EVERY THING I SEE.
WE LOCK EYES AND I CAN HANG THAT LOOK LIKE A PICTURE ON THE WALLS OF MY CHEST.
I USED TO THINK IT WAS A SACRIFICE,
TO BLEED FOR EVERY MAN I TOUCH.
BUT I CAN'T BE TAMED,
I CAN'T BE HELPED,
THIS HAS MADE ME UNRECOGNIZABLE IN THE FACE OF KINDNESS.
BECAUSE YOU WERE SO CRUEL THAT I HAVE BEEN FIGHTING A WAR SINCE YOU LEFT.
AND I AM SCREAMING THROUGH THE BULLET WOUNDS,
DEPRAVED THE WAY YOU MADE ME.
BUT THIS TIME, I AM CHANTING A DIFFERENT PRAYER.
I AM SCREAMING INTO WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR LOVE:
"I WILL NOT DIE TO KEEP YOU WARM.
I WILL NOT BURN FOR YOU"

I'm sitting in a cramped chair, throwing popcorn at the screen.
"I don't know what to say" - he says, and I'm laughing.
"It's okay," I tell him, and I'm about to spill over.
It's so close he can see it in the reflection of my eyes.
"I know what we are-
and I know what we are not."
I can't bare a sequel to this awful film. I can't stand to look at it any longer.
Are you making her promises you can't keep?
He's running his hands through his hair, trying to find something interesting to say,
to bend the will of someone else and knock her over just to catch her.
Did you rehearse these lines at all?
It hurts the way that love isn't supposed to, and it reminds me of when my mother told me: always be the first to leave.
Cut to:
I'm standing in the shower, washing him off of me.
He sticks to me like blood, and it stains the water red as it circles the drain.
It's a scene I haven't played before, and I'm trembling because the cameras are following me like a raincloud.
I was the bird, and I know that much.
And I gave myself to him softly, as gently as I could.
I gave him a suitcase full of bad memories and said, "here. hold this."
And maybe that's selfish, but its okay because
I'm not the main character of this story. I don't think I ever was.
I think that this story is about you.
Lets go back, shall we?
The cast resets, the cameras pan to the first time I walked past.
Boy meets girl, and he wants everything he can get his hands on.
He's hungry for experiences, things that he can only dream of doing while other people do them.
He wants to be a person who does something- anything, so he falls in love without looking at me.
Without seeing me.
Is it love if you're dangling the telephone cord over my head?
What about wrapping it around my throat?
He wants to be the kind of person who writes about love, so he tries to be everything that he thinks love should be.
But,
I'm standing in a spinning room and I hear someone yell,
"Cut!"
The cameras turn off, and I can't see the way his face contorts into something unrecognizable.
But he bites his tongue so hard it bleeds and calls it poetry for you.
Whats the difference between bleeding out of agony and bleeding out of love?
Cut to:
Us, sitting on the floor, and he's trying to wrap his arms around me so completely that I fade into the outline of his sweater.
But it doesn't feel like comfort, it feels like choking.
And I can't breathe in the space that is left in between us.
Are you trying to close the gap, or are you trying to suffocate me
So I stop making noise?
The reviews are in:
Girl Falls for the Same Trap Over and Over Again.
A tragedy,
they're saying.
A real shame that its not what it could've been.
I scribble out "my love" and write his name at the beginning of an apology note I don't finish.
I don't have anything to be sorry for,
But my love is laying open on the pavement.
He's staring at it saying,
"We can fix this."
But he won't touch it.
And I wonder what is so disgusting about me that makes him turn his head away, makes him flinch.
I wonder if I can pinpoint the moment he decided I wasn't good enough, if I could go back and say my lines better.
Give me another chance to be what you were projecting onto me.
I can be a blank screen, you can use me to watch your own highlight reel.
Its a good scene, so I cry the way that an audience is supposed to.
I clasp my hands to my chest and try to will air into my lungs
For days.
I can't play this role, I can't fill these shoes for you. I don't even know who they belong to.
"Is this how you see me?" He's asking,
And I can't tell if the pain in his voice is recited from memory.
The audience laughs, because its funny, the way
The girl gave him a bird and watched it die in his palms.
I was the bird, and I know that much.
Everyone's eyes well with tears as the credits roll,
Or maybe its just mine.
Thank you for keeping up the act for so long.

What would you like to hear?
If not to listen to the song of my voice,
If not to watch the way my eyes dance over your face,
Trying to memorize each piece as if I'll never see it again,
Then what are all of these words for?
I am breathlessly craving your touch,
If you let me,
I will inhale all of the smoke and exhale all of your secrets
So we can watch them dance away like fog over water.
I can tell by the callouses on your palms,
You've been auctioning off your love like its a yard sale.
Can you find some use for all of those old love poems?
All of the times you thought you got it just right,
How many trains stations did you have to sit in before you finally came home to my heart?
And I'll admit,
I am ardently confessing my wish of forever.
I will hand pick you promises and tie them up in a bow,
We can stick them in a glass jar and watch them grow.
Can you bleed for me, if I water this love until it sprouts thorns?
You told me,
In love, there is no point in being anything but ravenous,
No use in loving someone if it doesn't exist on the brink of tragedy,
The edge of dangerous.
Tell me,
If we take one step too far,
Will we become nothing but two bodies
Haunted by the space that is left in between us?
Will I be pricking my fingers on the stem of our forever
Like a lesson to be learned?
Leave the wild things where they are.
Let love flourish in all directions, the raving thing it is.
When you think of the future, is my hand still in your palm?
Or am I across the sea somewhere?
The sea,
You are swimming there too,
Are you looking for me in the waves that crash against the rocks?
Does it always have to be so violent?
And you laugh,
Because if it isn't life or death,
It isn't love at all.

and you've changed your bed sheets twice because you
can smell him on your pillowcase. and you've showered
eighteen times in thirty one hours, scrubbing your skin raw and
digging your fingers into your scalp, trying to reach all
the parts that he touched, or may have touched, or breathed on,
and you have bruises on your
hips and maybe a hickey on your
neck, by your collarbone, or on your stomach, and
the most you can remember is shaking legs and
trying not to kick and scream like a child, feeling
helpless and defenseless like a child, so you keep
changing your bed sheets and you try not to remember how
you could practically see your fear in the
reflection of his eyes, you can hear your own voice
as an echo, "look at my face.
please listen to me." and you change your bed sheets and
you can't remember how it looked but you could hear his laugh
and you
take a shower and throw away the t shirt you were wearing,
the bra with the broken clasp, the jean shorts that dug into
your waistline.
and when he leaves you fall onto the floor and you cry and
you spend the day trying not to spit out what he just did to you
and then he stops calling, like he threw you against a wall and
didn't even bother to check and see if you were
still breathing, if any of your pieces were out of
place or broken completely, like he knew exactly what he
had done and somehow, somehow
this manages to make
you feel worse. disposable, like it was never an accident,
like he was looking at your face and he still didn't stop
so you change your sheets and wash your hair
and brush your teeth and take a cold shower and then a hot
shower and then you just sit in the tub and pretend that
he is falling off of you like water when you know that
all he will ever do is stick to you like blood