I'm reading a book
About life and death and stars
And everything in between
Like love and hospitals
And all I can do
Is sit here and cry
Because it is beautiful

The living and the dying
Is translated into words that I understand
Heartbreaking phrases
And hysterically awkward conversations
And it's all there:
Life
Death
Love
Hospitals
Kisses in Amsterdam
Love in Indiana
Life

(I think I've lost the ability to start things, so please forgive this poem for not having an attention grabbing genesis)
I've been twiddling my thumbs for almost eight months now
Putting off all that I care about
(And especially everything that I don't. Here's lookin' at you, AP World History)
Sitting around amassing a booklet of words to use in the future for novels and whatnot
But only using them in essays so I seem smarter than I am
(For example, susurrus means 'a whispering or rustling sound; a murmur')
Hording anything affiliated with Ben Folds because he makes me feel things on occasion
(I currently have 189 songs of his on my iTunes library; No one understands me.)
Making dick jokes at lunch while masking the thoughts of substance ricocheting around in my head
(Also your mom jokes because no one would think that you're crying internally about the uncertainty of the afterlife whilst making lewd stabs at their mother's integrity(and vagina. Ba dum tss.))
Apparently craving the lingering feel of another's touch
As illustrated by my subconscious through the medium of dreams
(I had a dream a few weeks back that Ben Folds licked my hand; My stomach folded (hahahah, folded) in on itself.)
Thinking that my feelings of misanthropy and apathy and everything else I can't find the words for yet are mine alone because everyone else is too stupid to have thought them themselves
(Even though I know that I'm not particularly special and I should stop being so elitist and stupid)

But I've finally found a light at the end of the table in the last place I'd expect--
(I meant to say tunnel, but hey, the source of said light does sit at my lunch table.)
A cherubic Presbyterian boy with an aversion to all things perverse,
(Which includes my sailor's tongue and occasional tendencies to want to put it on a member of my own sex, thought he doesn't know about that)
A spec on cleanliness on the grimy waistcoat of humanity who makes me want to be the best I can be
(Today when I saw him, I only swore once; I was very proud of myself)
But maybe I'm just jumping the gun
Because what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me who isn't even sure she believes in God?
Maybe his prolonged contingencies were merely contingent and I'm just overreacting because of my few and far between incidences of human contact.
(Seriously. Don't touch me.)
Maybe I just want someone to talk to for hours about everything and nothing at all.
(What with me being relatively antisocial, it's hard to find people with similar mindsets.)
Maybe it's just because the way the Bible quote on the back of his t-shirt conflicted so humorously with the way he shook his hips to a J-Lo song on "Just Dance."
(Seriously, though, it was hilarious. I was dying.)
Or the way our fingers brushed when we were catching frogs
Or the way he blushed when I stepped out in my bikini
(I went to a pool party today.)
Or the way he held me momentarily in the delirious confusion of the flashing strobe lights
Or the way he got one point higher on his research paper than me a month ago
(He was excited; I was upset.)
Or the way that he does everything nearly to perfection.
I could go on..
But I don't know.
Maybe I'll get over him in a week and slip back into myself.
Because, like I said, what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me?

I woke with your laughter pounding in my eyes.
It was as if I had swallowed a grapefruit whole
and my breaths were determined to defeat each other.
Your name never did sit right on my tongue.
Your tongue, however, is another story.
I miss you with five of these useless senses
and I find myself dancing around your shadow
in dust you kicked up when you spoke our confession:
This is not meant to be.
How many of those fifteen hundred moons
did you look up to with longing?
How many stars witnessed our passion,
and on which of them did you wish to be free?
I can't look at you without tasting envy
of whoever will one day be home for your skin.
It is coating my tongue,
filling the awkward places where your name used to be.

But it's as if you’re sucked into the page on which you sit so precariously. You realize his eyes have become weird again, throbbing to the beat of your love. He looks away, leaning back on his hands, arms taught. And you sit as if alone, watching him tear a piece off your history and craft a paper airplane from your devotion, fingers gently folding and creasing, lovingly shaping, his head turning, focusing, admiring. And when he is satisfied, he throws it with a flick of his pale wrist. It sails beautifully through the air, buoyed by affection and adoration, leaping through the gusts with pride. You reach out a hand willing it to come to you, wanting something so tender for yourself, for your gasping heart. But as you lean in, poised with glory, a thief melts from a burning tree, morphs from the shadows, an ugly, beaten creature, scaly and peeling. It slinks foreword catching the plane in its mottled claws, pinching it slightly as your lover lets out a small gasp, eyes widening. The creature places it inside the steel bars over its heart and suddenly the thing changes and becomes lovely, blooming and whole, an infection of grace and slender frame. Fragrance floats back to you as you cower and your lover looks at the lovely figure descending upon him and you scream and scream, seizing and foaming, something mad, unwanted, hidden from sight. But he is no more than smoke; naked body drooling, jagged blades protruding from his back; and where his heart should have been, there are only iron bars. He turns and howls, an alien sound, unreal, lips curling back, twisting and forcing his screeching notes into your chest smothering your mind. But finally you have had enough; finally you understand, finally you find strength to pull apart the stitching and release yourself and you fall.

The moon peaks,
catching the glimmering
snow, the rustling trees
 
But I long for the cabin,
the cabin up ahead
 
Kissing the night,
as she would me,
with warm firelight
 
A small crack offers entrance
and, as in before,
I sit beneath the floorboards
 
Notes drift through the cracks,
and soft thumps echo down:
the ghosts of dancing feet
 
I catch them in stride
 
They show me glimpses,
but only glimpses
 
To reach, to touch, my
still heart yearns to
join the lonely dancer
 
But what would she feel?
 
The slip of one hair?
The chill of silent breath?
The crawl of closed eyes?
 
No.
 
Better to stay, sleeping,
beneath the floorboards

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
The rain ticks against my window.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
My thoughts stray as I sit alone.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
Footsteps come up the stairway.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
Oh, how I wish those steps would stop at my door.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
And how I wish over and over,
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter, patter,
That those footsteps would knock on the wood.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
Come on in.

Since I don't know if we'll ever meet again-
I guess
that we'll try to stay together
forever.

"I'll tell you someday."
Laughing and sticking your tongue out,
teasing me,
you were the most beautiful then.
But-
When is that someday?
A link in the far distant future;
without any promise
or solidity.

Your back is growing fainter,
more distant,
vaguer,
quieter,
it's almost transparent now.

The fact that no matter how long my fingers were;
How much I grew;
How much I learned;
How much I matured-
The fact
that I could still not reach or touch you
or your standard;
I could do nothing
but slump to the floor,
Admit painful defeat-
And cry.  

The Villain-
was me.
The one who ran away-
was me.
It was no lie,
For I am
the true deceiver.

And
I say to the plaster
peeling wall-
"I'm Sorry."
Uselessly,
Meaninglessly,
inutility,
I just sit there
in a wooden, peeling
chair;
Wondering.

The Characters that I wrote then-
They don't dance for me anymore.
"Is that so?"
The poems that I scribbled-
on a napkin at a fast food restaurant,
Where are they now?
"Who knows?"
My memories and limits-
Are they gone?
"Why don't you figure out yourself?
Isn't the person,
who knows you best-
yourself?"  
--
--
--
I'm sorry-
My light was gone.
I'm Sorry-
My head wasn't thinking straight.
I'm Sorry-
I let go.
What kind of excuses are these?

For being a coward,
For being a shallow person
who didn't see the world-
Sorry doesn't even take up half of it.

The beginning of the end,
tell me,
when does that time come?

The promise that our naïve selves made together
"Forever, Eternally,"
You believed in those words.
For crushing your morals,
For mocking them,
For taking away your innocence-
"Forgive me."

a girl with too-long hair and smiling eyes
and two laughs-- one sardonic, one irrepressible
had very little
room to sit
next to him:

                                           a boy, almost a man with a
                                           guitar and callused fingers.
                                           strong-- hands two sizes
                                           bigger than hers.


she leaned on him (out of necessity, of course)
he held her up (to be nice, of course)


                                           their knuckles touched and she got restless
                                           she moved her fingers against his ever so
                                           light
                                                         ly


he played the game and nudged her thumb


                                           fingertips like dancers on broken glass
                                           collided
                                           quietly--



                                                             ­   like vines, we intertwined
                                                             ­   carelessly growing up

I have been running for years
Tub full of tears..
Fighting dozens of fears
Betrayed by peers..
Trust issues ..
As I sit here and clutch tissues..
How can a man cry blood.
Pops killed as a kid life of a thug...
Not me but he..
I am a lover not fighter.
Guess that's why at one point I was a womanizer..
Liquor licked lust until the night expired
I ran from my calling..
Taking the wrong shots I failed at balling...
Realized the love of the Messiah
Sin check my rap sheet I had piers
Should have been put in a hellish prison
Embracing conviction.
Jesus Christ gave me redemption