Sometimes when I'm tired,
I'll think that I don't want to exist
This life is suffering, striving,
And why should I continue
I hate the life I've made.

But there are other things
There are dreams
There is presence
There is support
There is beauty

When I'm in these things,
I don't think life is suffering.
I think issues can be managed
I don't think, really.
I just love.

I’ll get there someday, I just know it
I’ll get it right
I just have to get out there and
Keep trying
And refuse to compromise
With less love than what I give
I’ll get there but it’s scary
To get out there again
I have my memories
I have my comfort
I’m not ready
To let go
Yes
Go ahead,
Say that I’m a coward
But I just need more time
I need much much more practice
Saying that things can get better
Saying that the pains of leaving the status quo
Would be worth it for a happy love

My heart hurts and hurts and hurts
It hurts when I don’t distract it with media, or stuff it away to do work
It hurts with a low ache, a mourning
Hasn’t it always hurt?
Even when we were together, I hurt
What’s wrong with me?
Everything feels somehow wrong
An undercurrent of dread
Nausea
I want to throw up, but there’s no bile
It’s the thought of you I want to push away
Reject
Expel from my dreams and my memories
Why did you not love me?
Why did I love you?
Why did we do all this?
It’s disgusting
It’s wrong
The kind of thing that someone’d wrinkle their nose to
It’s just boy problems
Stupid silly
But all’s fair in love and war, I remember

You have taught me
that I can want birth and kids and marriage
You have taught me
that I can give myself pleasure
You have taught me
that mindfulness is based on curiousity, not belief
You have taught me
that I want security, as well as a partner and friend
You have taught me
to speak up for what it is my heart wants
You have taught me
some pieces in the holes of my past
You have taught me
to dominate
You have taught me
to receive
You have taught me
to massage
You have taught me
to climb

When you break my heart, it will be worth it, because you made me feel the whole of it again
You poor deprived boy, you are the tragic one to not feel the awe of love
While you see in me a book that has opened its pages for you
I see in you our happiness, our selves, our life
I feel like a medium
I feel like a clown
I feel like the worst *****
Who sold herself for her heart, in the rush of a holiday sale
I feel like I am stripped naked and returned to a truth clothed by logic and scorn
I trust you to care for me when you break me
You sweet beautiful thing

I want to tell you that I love you.

“I love you,” isn’t necessarily a romantic sentiment. “I love you,” can mean all types of things.

I want to tell you “I love you,” because it feels important to tell people that they are loved, and someone telling you directly that you are loved by them seems like it could give a lot of comfort.

Though if you panic instead, that doesn’t seem like it would bring comfort.

I suppose my urge to tell you “I love you” is an urge to wrap you in the burning thought of a strongest hug.

I want to convey that I think you are worthy of care, that I want you to feel loved, that you are beautiful, that I am so glad I have you in my life, that you push me and comfort me in ways I’ve never gotten to explore, that I would be there for you if you let me.

I want to give you a kiss on the forehead and see you smile, pleased and content.

I want to go back and take you and shake you and tell you
      “NO they are not right for us”
I want to make it so neither of us gets hurt,
   but instead we grow old and heal together,
with fewer scars and more time.

Do I act like a chameleon
With the color that you'll like on?
Can I let myself relax?
And just be me with all the lights on?

Do we talk about our parents?
Do I tell you who I'm dating?
Do you let me in your house?
Do you ask me how I'm doing?

Do you invite me out in public,
Or do you keep me in your bed?
Do we call? Just text? How often?
Will you let me hold your hand?

Do you tell me that you love me?
Can I trust you with each layer?
Do I feel confident directing you
To do what I desire?

I would give
All of me
Willingly
Excited for connection

You have my love so
How about
You let me in
Be open

Instead of saying 'Sorry'
All you give are more excuses
Me asking that I'm safe
Makes you feel uncomfortable
You've never broken my limits?
Oh I could list a few times
You need some time from me
Obviously not a punishment

I know what you are
I've known for a while
But I was hoping I could avoid this
If I just played along

Until... I couldn't
You'd crossed a line
And thought I would let it slide
Like every other time

But your grasp on me
Faded
My abuser
My love

After all the pain he's caused me
The thought still invades,
A beautiful nightmare

Does he love me?
Does he love me?
Does he love me?

A meaningless question
That'll only cause me pain
Neither of us will allow change

My therapist said that
I would still be awesome
Even if I change my dreams in for him

It's my choice, as well as his.

My boyfriend said that
He is trying to manipulate me
Because he wants to keep me around

It's my choice, as well as his.

My friend said that maybe
He keeps me as a FWB rather than one of his casual relationships
Because he'd want all of a relationship or none with me

It's my choice, as well as his.

It's my choice, as well as his.
It's my choice, as well as his.
It's my choice, as well as his.

And he is a passive aggressive
Boundary-ignoring
Egotistical child of a man.

Love, true love
Is a radical act
That I'm only now learning
Or relearning

Simply put, love is care, acceptance, trust
When the butterflies are gone
We are alone
And you still want to be there

I started to assume that wanting to date me
Meant wanting things from me
My work, my words, my body
Saying 'I love you' was a stage in a relationship
After you've been full of giddiness and longing
And before you move in together

I'm realizing that you care for me
You really really care for me
You want to listen to my troubles
You want me to go to the doctor
You want me to wear a helmet
You don't care if all we do in bed is cuddle

You love my good heart
You love my maturity
You love my views on life
You love my high and low energies
You love my stubbornness

You are committed to putting in the effort
To make a relationship continue
When I'm no longer giddy in love
You don't wish for me to still be
A manic pixie dream girl
You're happy to be with all versions of me

You are accepting
You are trusting
You are caring
You love me

Simple as that

When you hugged me tight and swung me in your arms
I knew for certain that I liked you

The conversation where you admitted you couldn't cuddle me as friends
Made me want to date you more than anything

The conversation where I told you not to touch me
Left me wishing to kiss you

I don't want to get away with just a hookup
I want to join that big sweet heart to mine and do everything together

I want to help each other on a bouldering move
Then make out on the mat

My friend tells me a workplace romance is ok if it's discreet
I'm hoping your girlfriend will give us her blessing

She's right that I have no red flags
I bite back my response that I'm a fantastic girlfriend

Oooooo forbidden fruit
Seems the sweetest

I wish I'd be taken in someone's arms
It could be his
It could be my mother's
It could be God's
Any would be a comfort

You know me so well
We talk solely in code
One winks backwards
The other laughs

I am your goat
You are my monkey
The sweetest nicknames
Because they belong to us

I lie in bed with you for hours
Feel your warm skin and
Wish I could be forever closer
Languid yet excited to have you

This is not a spark
No fireworks
This is the stage
Of a slow deep burn

Ahh but when I'm distraught
You comfort me well down
And when I'm careless to my health
You protect me from myself

We joke and shove and ****
Like children in schoolyards
Yet we massage and cook for the other
Like years-long dear lovers

If you had it in you
To be just a smidge less of a troll
I'd sing you sonnets
That would make a siren blush

I swear my kisses are innocent
But you take them in so deeply
My breath catches
Your hands tighten
And we are lost in each other

God cast out Lucifer
And neither dared apologize
Over fast centuries
God's anger yielded to pain
Which told him all the more
He could not see Luce again

They were too different
The God and now Devil
Family so close
Separation was cutting off
A gangrene limb
Even when no longer painful
It was harder to move in the world

Unable to do
Tasks that used to be simple
The inability flashed the memory of separation
They would silently watch each other
Having spys tell them
When the coast was clear to try

In rare times, they would have to meet
Duty forced it for both
Then, Lucifer would stare through God
To the blank wall behind
Past to oblivion he smoldered in
That's all God was to Luce now
A nothingness

When God felt that stare, he shivered
He escaped him as soon as he could
Anxious to leave his right hand again
Lucifer, in eternal age, would never apologize
And what could God apologize for?
He was no capable of sin
He would not apologize for his holiness

And so God merely wept

At the concert of an artist we've both listened to for years
The opener soothes us so that
I finally put my head on your shoulder
You breathe an audible sigh
And lay your head on mine
At the next song, you yawn exaggeratedly
To put your hand over my shoulders
I giggle, and relax into you

The next time I see you, a Saturday morning
We agree to make muffins
You find a recipe and lay out the ingredients
I direct the baking process
Our coordination is natural
As if done for years
I end up staying til after dinner

Soon after, we lay in bed
I ask you what you would like
Lay your cards down before I do
Partners?
Partners
Of course
Why would we call it anything else?

We are very different people
But on the same page
When it comes to who we are together
Hours spent together, talking and not
It is not eroutic, it is not platonic
It is companionship
It is our partnership

The luck of an easy love

My mother shook her head sadly
As she mourned my brother
The pain
And the anger
With which he's set himself aflame
A bonfire continuing
Since he came to first grade
He was sent to the principal
For a peeing contest with friends
Though the teacher'd let me be
When I'd cheated and lied on tests
I was the good child
The first child
The straight A
He was the ugly middle
The one who couldn't be saved
The more he misbehaved
The more they wrote him off
The more they wrote him off
The more he wrote off school
They told him,
'Why can't you be more like your sister?'
'I remember her still'
The more they asked him
The more he hated me
My mother tells me that
He used to adore me
I loved my teachers
I respected them greatly
I couldn't understand him
My mom coaxed him and fought with him
While saying it was fate
I'd always be the good one
He'd never get straight
The lazy one, the black sheep
He couldn't be helped
How more could she bother
A sad muscled whelp
In our distance, in time
We grew to hate one another
Every morning in high school
We would have to disturb the other
To have our father
Take us to the bus together
Every morning in high school
Became a battleground
'Why can't you wake up?'
'Why can't you leave me alone?'
'Please don't make me late again'
'Shut the fck up you btch'
He shot from his den
I left for college
He didn't get in
I came back for Christmas
The flame relit then
'You'll never become a musician
If you can't show up on time'
He told me never to speak
Hand across my windpipe
I left upstairs sobbing
Wanting punishment for his crime
When I mentioned police
My mom turned on a dime
'You've done this to each other'
What could I have done, Mother?
I was only always the good one
He was always the Devil
He's hurt each of us
He hates each of us, though me in special
I've seen him assault
Each of us but our father
His life is a trap
He trudges through wearily
I'm the only one
Who will go to therapy
My mom, shaking her head
Burdened so heavily
Though she has her part
In our play of tragedy
I ask her if she would
Seek mental help too
She says, 'Why?
I'm fine dear
There's nothing to do
I've got my friends
To talk about this sort of thing to'
Equating them to a doctor
Defending her innocence
Leaving me be
The sacrifice again
The focus of his hate
The good little lamb
Go save the world
Leave us
At home in bedlam.

Oh it's just that I'm ex-Mormon
Well I like to be in control
Ah, no thank you really
I'm not judging you
I'm judging me
I just don't drink
(or smoke or swallow or shoot)
because I see
My brother,
My uncles,
My grandfather,
The pain it's caused them and their families
My family
Has a history with addiction
I feel in my genes this predisposition
So I'll keep going to bars for
The setting which has been
For millenia in human civilization
I'll keep learning the compounds
Brewing my own mead
But I won't consume
The things that could consume me

I'm turning you
In my mind
In my writing
Into a figure of longing
A trope of star-crossed lover
Losing sight of who you are

You aren't unique
In the way that I love you
I'm not unique
In the way that you do

It is still bitter
To leave one another
We want different lives
We want each other

We don't dare to change
The other or me
I support your dream
That leaves me lonely

We will find lovers
At our destination
But though I'll find him
You set me in motion

I don't find
Your line of friend and lover
Until you trip
My feet with its wire

My face and hopes crushed on the ground again

He is taking care of me,
making me dinner or picking it up,
buying me groceries,
massaging me with ice cubes.

He comes into the room with a mask,
to ask me if he can hang out,
and we cuddle in bed watching Better Call Saul,
a mask over each of us.

I’m realizing I can’t kiss him with a clear conscience
for seven more days.
Somehow he keeps testing negative.
I'm glad he's not sick, but I'm annoyed too that we can't be together

This is part of why I love him
This is part of why I know he loves me

Get on the trolley!
Oo at the statues!
Let's be tourists
For this city
Again

I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner

The truth is, I save your texts
Like chocolate at end of day

My sweetest escape
A stash for stomach butterflies

She hates men
Because I spend time
with them instead of her

'Women are better'
She promises unaware
Of the jealousy in her voice

My darling man-hater

He took over my mind
I let him, willingly

In lust I trust you
In love I cannot
But one is more seductive
Than the other thought

My love offered me candles
One smelled just like you
My body responded in a gasp
I wanted, then refused

My dear he loved me sweetly
And I wished that he'd be you
I wished that he would ravage me
The way you used to do

My sweet says you're a ******
I could only nod, agree
But my mind is still enveloped
You will not set me free

My heart feels numb, lifeless
And I have to keep it secret
No one can know or understand
What he meant to me

I wish I could shape myself
Become the woman he wants me be
But I'd be abandoning
The life I live, the life I dream

You say this is goodbye until September
We plan ideas for the future
But we're spilling our secrets
As if we know it's the last time
We'll see each other again

Grounded mind
Ascended body
Jelly arms
Jelly legs

If you can hold tight to the wave of pain
Perhaps it's true that eventually
You make it to shore

Crisscrossing lines of analysis
Theology, ethics, songs
Your movements and mine

Laughing at jokes
I can't tell her, but can him
Reflecting on the others's choices

All of us tied together
In conversation
Knot too tight, nor loose

Kissing hard, hungry, ragged
Breathless not from the ride over
But the anticipation finally met

I'll do anything to sate it
I'll do anything you say to
Complete control
Freely, eagerly given

I surrounded myself with people
And still felt lonely
My phone in my lap
In case you text me

I don't think I can handle this
I want to, badly
If I had any confidence
I'd be the one to end it

I want to write a song for this city
Sing it to my family, they’d understand why I left them
Sing it to the natives, and they’d roll their eyes
Sing it to the brownstones, and they’d echo heavy replies
Sing it to the innovators, and they’d see the cloth they hem
Sing it to myself, and I’d realize I live the life I dreamt

I want to write a song for this city
As many have before
Because I walk the same cobbled streets
As mythic tales of yore

Falling for someone?
How embarrassing
What a stupid person
What an overactive imagination

I reach into myself
Find the tiny strong voice
Who knows who I am

Present in the moment
Assured in all my actions
Aware of all my value

An un-earthed superpower
I'll grow to become her
The strong woman inside me

Have the energy go through me,
Absorb me and I absorb it

Bang my head
Stay stock sill and stare

I sing along
Listen to sounds I've never made

Make me an artist
Make me human

My toes are curling
I'm touching my neck
Grabbing my hair
Just like he did

Waiting
Waiting
Impatient
To scream

My worldview changed 2 months ago
I realized I couldn't afford grad school

Since then my brain has been aflame
Looking for jobs, scholarships,
ANYTHING

I should have a real job
But that actually doesn't pay?!?

I can get a scholarship
Yeah, and compete with thousands

I could be a sugar baby
You couldn't deal with the shame

And now
Do I even want to go anymore?

It's all futile nonsense
The nurtured dreams of changing the world?

There's no money to train for that
And you'll make no money in doing that

You work, you get kids, you move to the suburbs, you read them cute books and encourage them to have a career just like you but BETTER.

Until they look back after thousands in tuition and realize that
The degree they got in how to save the world?
Hardly pays more than McDonalds

Maybe I don't want to save this world
Maybe it doesn't want to be saved

Thank you for being forthcoming
Let's go!
Just got out of the ocean dripping in water and sweat
Tell me more how you miss me

He stopped me on the sidewalk
And I almost walked away

My politeness stopped me
Perhaps he's lost?

But then, he was very cute
Charismatic, bright-eyed, skilled

Show a girl a picture of his sourdough
Yeah, he wins her heart

Later, I confess my unacceptability
He thanks me, and still asks me out

Now he breaks the touch barrier
Now we're holding hands
Now we're walking home
Now we're in his bed

Over the intellectual conversation
The latter part of the night is what stays seared.

I feel like I am watching myself apart
An anthropologist, an endocrinologist

The hypothesis is: I've warily fallen
Romance is truly odd

I dread sending a friend one text back,
And yet I restrain myself from texting him each day?

Stupid hormones
Stupid brain

How could you be so desperate
Selective in your end to loneliness

The day expanding
Colors bursting from the ground
The glow beginning
Winter surrendering

Spring is coming 'round

She is so demanding
No pride, just begging

Haughty kitty
You have food
Quit your mewing

my heart hurts
but it brims for him

i drag myself down
but i hold him up

he is my love
my beautiful boy

my energy is low
but i'm determined to help her

little girl earnest to learn
what took me years to love

she is my hope
my student

my body feels hollow
but i move it again

i've not given up
on not giving up

i am my only soul
my own

Endless waiting
Someone asked
When will I be happy?

They hurt me
But that was years ago
And I'm still waiting

I remind myself
Happiness is in the moment
When it comes, I hold it tight

I remind myself of too much
Repeated conversations
Painful memories, waiting to-dos

I remember to look at the numbers
At my energy, my feelings
Nope, still not the right day