Are you a book?
Because your face has words across it
and you have a ripped leather spine
and you have pages I could flip through
and maybe you'd give me a paper cut.
I wouldn't mind, you know.
Because if you are a book,
you'd be a number one best seller
in my world.

I once read on a snapple cap that said the average weight of an elephants heart is 29 pounds. I can't imagine walking around or sitting down with a heart that heavy. But I realized that's what I've been doing for the last few weeks. I don't leave footprints in the snow anymore. I leave sink holes in the ground. I don't leave an imprint in my mattress I break the seams and fall through the floorboard until the hands of the clock even dream of three am. I don't wear your t-shirts, either. I display them like a billboard because a heart this heavy needs an industrial strength ribcage to sustain it and I no longer wonder why any guy who will come after you will be unable to infiltrate it.
T.L.

My mother used to yell at me.
When I would call my birthday,
'one-day-closer-to-death day'
because ladies don't do that.
and she always thought an 8 year old
shouldn't talk about death.
As if I didn't fully comprehend what the
words coming out of my mouth 
were carrying. 
I did. 
I pondered them in her closet every night and soon figured out
They were obviously forests tied with
boulders.
I carried more words of mass heaviness like that than she
carried bone marrow.
   When someone first told me
they loved me, I panicked
and scattered into almost a thousand black beetles and crawled up his spine
so he couldn't see my face 
and the death spilling from my blood
red lips.
Because ladies don't do that.
FALLING IN LOVE IS THE DUMBEST
THING YOU COULD DO.
I told myself that for each star 
I counted in your eyes,
And every cut on your chest.
That I more than likely
caused by throwing my words
around not realizing they turned
into blades at the very last moment
but maybe if I did, I'd be a lady.
And I wouldn't think 
birthdays equal death.
Since ladies don't do that.
T.L

There's this thing about
      How sheets fold together
after they've been spread apart.
Hey, did I ever tell you that
it rained the first Sunday you were
  gone?
Or did your phone catch the wind and
fly from your hand never
to return.
Just like you.

You're the equivalent of a rainstorm
without the clouds
constantly falling on him
when he least expects it.
Drowning out his sorrows with empty love.
Just like you when you came from mountains with blood spilling from your mouth,
tying tree branches around your
nearly broken fingers as if they were
strands of his ***** hair
that he hasn't washed since last week 
I bet.
What's the point of cleaning up for a
funeral when no one will pay 
attention to you unless you're the
one about to be buried in the ground.
Pounding on everyone's chests hoping their breath together will pull 
out one last heart beat,
or one last sigh that would break
the silence and send the world
tumbling into a fit of volcanic ash.
Kind of like the way he wished
he swallowed your words whole
and could puke them up onto
a white wall to rid
himself of the burden of
keeping secrets.
But now I guess I'll walk around
aimlessly until I can find
something to own, not the place.
Just something to brand my name
on.
Maybe this time without collapsing into
a pile of dust
and screaming "Mother Earth save me"
because i am the earth.
Just burnt and unholy.
T.L

Closets hold a lot.
Yours holds skeletons just like a cliche.
Mine happens to hold a whole solar system.
I was afraid of it. As if it were the monster we read about as children
but soon I realized that monster was configured inside of me.
So I decided to reach inside and pull planets out and stuff them underneath
my bed just so id have 
something to say goodnight to 
even though they never said it back.

Each night I reached through the cobwebs as if they were lasers about to burn my skin off
for trying to steal something so precious even though I controlled them.
The monster we talked about 
wanted to hold those planets again
"I need you guys" I thought.
juggling them in my hands was quite the trick. 
I never had sturdy hands and constantly poked
myself with needles trying to stitch
articles of your clothing together 
to make a full nightgown.
Have your ever looked in a mirror and felt like spiders were crawling on your back? 
Maybe it's just the solar system of 
humans stuffed in your closet
begging to be let out and
held in your arms instead.
Maybe I'm the skeletons in your closet 
and the stars In mine are your blood cells.
T.L