you will think too much when you are kissing the girl down the hall.
you will dance with her, half-drunk and half-joking, and something foreign in you will ignite. you will blatantly ask her to be your girlfriend just to gauge her reaction. you will curiously perch yourself on her lap and beam when she praises your vocabulary. you are more drunk but you are still half-joking.
you will think of the way she runs her hands through your hair and over your shoulders. you will remember how she feels about touching things, how she only touches what is important to her, what she doesn't want to forget. you will think about this when she asks if she can kiss you. you will think about this when her dry, drunken lips find yours and you will think about it when the pad of her thumb grazes the waistband of your jeans. you will think about how your jeans look, pooled on her carpet.
you will think about the time she told you how fluently she reads body language, how people's feet point to what they want. you will step on your own toes in protest every time you see her in the cafeteria. you will think about the time she laughs and says, "god, you're so submissive, it's adorable" and you will think about how naked she makes your clumsy body feel, no matter what you're wearing, like each flippant comment peels back another layer of skin and muscle and tendon and bone until there is nothing left of you but her whispers, evaporating into the november air.
you will think about how she makes you feel like a bad metaphor. like the fluffy rhyme schemes that she bemoans.
you will worry about her panic attacks. you will want to remind her to breathe. you want to make her chase you but you worry about her shin splints.
you will think about the song you'd told her you wanted to lose your virginity to. you will think of how she scrolls through her music library methodically until she finds it and kisses your neck for four minutes and fifty seconds so you can sing along.
you will think of her words. you will wonder if she writes about you. you will wonder how she would feel if she knew you write about her. you will grieve how miserably your feeble musings stack up to her well-timed, self-aware prose and you will draw parallels between this and the rest of her and how everything she says is profound and every gesture is intentional and how small and stupid she makes you feel, and you are gasping into the darkness beyond her ears, whimpering under her mouth, shivering under her quilt.
you will think about the hand she stretches precariously over her shoulder to you just before she is sleeping beside you. you will think about her fingertips. you will think about her hair.
your thoughts will be clouds of her cigarette smoke.
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 11:14 PM UTC
i have kissed too many girls, who,
between leaded lashes
and bloodied lips, begged me not
to fall in love with them
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 11:08 PM UTC
last i dreamed that you were a renaissance portrait. you were hanging under a fluorescent light in the museum.
a small red sign told me i couldn't touch you. your cheeks were glossed with gold dust and your lips curled delicate as roses.
i came to see you every day on my lunch break. i came to see you every single day, to watch the way the unnatural light bounced off your gold-dusted face and to wonder who you were, who you'd loved and who'd loved you, the way your voice sounded, the way it would feel to run my hands through your hair.
one day, no one is around, and i reach out to trace the fragile lines of your cheekbones. you are only paint and canvas. an alarm sounds somewhere in the distance.
i am holding you in my arms, you are kissing me with reckless abandon. i feel you laugh into my stunned mouth and i feel your body pressing into mine. it is warm and soft, so much more than paint and canvas.
i smile first into your eyes, and then down at my gold-stained hands.
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 2:26 PM UTC
i don't carry a lighter
but, baby,
i would hold a match to the entire free world
just so you could light your cigarette
on the flames of civilization going to ****
i love the smell of capitalism cremating
and of you breathing your slow death
into my trembling lungs.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 6:45 PM UTC
i am a ********* lady.
and you can bet your ***
that i will dress
i will speak
i will act
however the ****
i please.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 9:51 PM UTC
i left my favorite sunglasses in your bed.
and what a perfect metaphor that is
for the other pieces of me
that i won't be getting back
any time soon.
Jun 7, 2013
Jun 7, 2013 at 2:25 PM UTC
my friends
will all forget me
when i leave
and i can't do a ****
thing about it
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 11:18 PM UTC
it takes some people
forty years
two kids
a mortgage
and a divorce
to learn that, sometimes, love doesn't mean a **** thing.
lucky me.
it only took me one you.
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 12:55 AM UTC
i am afraid to see you,
because i am afraid you will covet parts of me
that i have cultivated on my own.
the color yellow,
regina spektor and ukeleles, blazers and old dogs.
pieces of you embedded in me.
yours.
but mine are sunny days, and glittery pop music
the way i drive my green car too fast
and my red lipstick
my habit of singing reckless harmonies
to the songs on the radio
going away to college and dyeing all my hair pink.
mine.
i don't want to see you.
because harmonizing with you means losing something that i found on my own, and leaving my red lipstick on your face--and we both know it will come to that-- will only leave my lips pale and wan and you telling me to slow down means that i will never drive alone again and whether you tell me that i should or should not dye my hair and run away i will do the opposite just to spite you and not for the happiness that is finally mine.
and ********* you do not get to galavant back into my life with your
"Happy birthday! <3"
and your
"I'll be in town this weekend, can I see you?"
and run my life again with your manipulative ********
that i learned to absorb into my bloodstream,
or spit back into your face
because i had to get rid of you
i don't want you to know what my new favorite book is.
or about that one movie that i've watched of my own accord more than once
or the song that makes me cry about the future because these things are mine. I do not belong to you anymore and I will never belong to you again so long as my heart is my own and if i have to give up seeing you forever to make that so, then so be it.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 11:58 PM UTC
Wandering mazily in an autumn afternoon,
I in the sunlight and he in the shade,
We met by chance,
Somewhere between sun and geography.
I could tell he had something to say,
A song of despair to sing me,
But my Spanish is sadly limited
And his words revolved around me,
Never colliding with my comprehension.
So we did not speak
Except for sighing
Unuttered words suspended heavily
In a green Santiago sky
It is unlikely I would have understood, anyway
The words from his aging lips
No more than fever understands why it burns.
But mis ojos found his,
Civil war of his head,
Exile of his heart,
And I knew.
Without knowing how
Or when
Or from where
Or even what it was I knew.
But I knew.
Yo sé.
And I understood.
Yo conozco.
And we walked.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC