I want a glass of bubbles
To warm my icy throat
And thaw my tongue,
Which always seems to be too frozen
To say anything right.
And I want to chase the fire down
With your kisses.
I want my heart to slow down,
Just a little,
Enough to keep in time with my
Lazy thoughts of you.

I want to hear your voice
Like a velvet dress,
Clinging to my body
In whispers of never letting go.
And I want to feel cold again
While you go out for a smoke.

And I just want to watch you
As you tug on those **** sticks,
Looking like a kind of mystery
I could ponder over for years.

I want to watch the smoke come off your lips,
I think I’m learning to like the smell
Of your smoky clothes.
And suddenly I’m as addicted to you,
As you are to them.
And I’m jealous
Because I want to be your addiction
And suddenly I’m like a cigarette
And that’s weird.

when i flip through my notebook,
i see your name cluttered in its pages.
its scribbled in the margins,
scrawled in big bold letters,
and sometimes,
i can see where i’ve written half of it
before reality pulled me
out of my own head.
your eyes are drawn
in my sketchbooks,
your words are etched
in my heart.
and then,
there is nothing.
barren pages like dead forests,
filled with invisible words.
invisible words like ***** water,
trickling off of my paper.
the letters in your name
don’t haunt me anymore.
they don’t tangle their fingers
into my hair and pull at my thoughts.
your eyes don’t seem to
watch me,
no matter how long i look.
your words are still
etched into my heart,
like the carvings that cover
old oak trees,
but they no longer mean
the things they did,
my notebooks are filled again,
with all the colors of a sunrise
and all the sounds of an orchestra.
a thousand emotions bleed into
its snow-white pages,
staining them with a color
i’ve never seen before.
they’re filled with endless hours
of a dull pencil dragging
across a new page.
they’re filled with myself,
flipping through its papers,
as the sun creeps into the sky.
my notebooks are filled
with everything now,
but never again will they be filled,
with you.

i wrote you
a letter every day
letters to tell you
just how i feel

written in neat, curved
writing i told you
just how sweet
i thought you were
how you made my heart
glow

letters in which i wrote
with various colors of ink
pouring out my whole being
to you

i wrote you
a letter every day.

i wrote you letters in which
i told you how you made me
bloom.

eventually
i found myself
pressing harder on
the paper
than i had before.

creating tears in them
similar in shape
and size
as the ones
inside of me.

i began to send
letters
with creases
and bumps
and stains
splattered with tears

pouring
from my eyes

as i wrote
the anger
bubbling within me.

my last letter
addressed to you
contained
no words

but was blank.
because
i had none that

could reach
as far

and deep

into the cracks
of my
heart

to describe
just
what you

had left
of me.

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.