Somewhere there is a nurse putting clean sheets on what was once someone's death bed. Somewhere there is a police officer laying awake at two in the morning contemplating breaking his thumbs so he won't have to pull another trigger. Somewhere there is a body bag taking the shape of a person. Somewhere a warden has accidentally called a prisoner by their first name. Somewhere there is a man getting ready to pay for his glass of whiskey, his '1 year' AA token falls out of his wallet onto the bar counter. Somewhere the glass is completely empty, somewhere it's overflowing. Somewhere a therapist sitting in an empty session reading the local newspaper's obituary section wondering what she could've done. Somewhere a bullet has fallen in love with a heart, giving a whole new meaning to the 'kiss of death'. Somewhere the girl that never speaks is raising her hand but immediately putting it back down after the sound of her classmates' laughter bounces back and forth from the back of her mind to the front. Somewhere the silence at the dinner table is making a dent in a child's suit of armor. Somewhere a 70 year old man starts skipping instead of walking, he stops taking his medication. Somewhere there is a mother too drunk to sign her daughter's permission slip. Somewhere a man has stolen all of the flowers from a grave, so he can somehow feel as though he's  being missed. Somewhere a child is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she realizes ''myself'' isn't a good enough answer. Somewhere a mirror has been mistaken for a stranger. Somewhere someone is being loved by another person the only way they know how to love; whether it's through kisses, bruises, sleeping too closely to the other, or fifteen missed calls. Somewhere a man is falling in love with the automated voice inside of a voice mail because at least she will listen to him. Somewhere a 911 operator is walking into her house, hearing screams that aren't actually there. Somewhere these short stories are being broadcasted on the news,  printed in the paper, whispered to a friend, or rotting in the back of someone's head. Somewhere I am whispering all of these things to a silent room full of people, none of them look up.

You have to fight for everything, even yourself.
Nothing was ever built for weak people.
But you are precious.
You are all the things I never believed in but happened anyway.
You are all the last thoughts of the last moments of someone's life. All I ask is that you always find your way home like you lose everything except for this.
Remember that wind is a language, like everything else, and every time you meet a new person you are discovering how to believe in people. And where we live, there is a lot of wind.
So in effect, I believe War is another way of saying I love something so much that I can't stop breaking whatever makes it sad.
And where we live, there is a lot of war.  
And courage is the form we take when we become someone else's second chance.
Remember that Earth is cold, that the world is a scary place to live, but ask yourself what the world is made of.
We all bleed the same amount, and we forget that if you ask for freedom then you have already lost it.
That sometimes running and leaving and going does not always take you somewhere else, and that in order to keep things, sometimes we have to lose them.

It's been raining for months and I can't turn the faucet off – which reminds me: the sea is yours if you want it, and you don't have to be afraid of a little rainwater anymore. When you walk to your car with your shoes off and most of your sanity folded in your jeans, when your feet slap against puddles and you are remembering that you left your jacket on the doorknob, don't ever wonder if I will awaken suddenly, crying because you never stayed long enough for me to write that song to the beat of your hesitant pulse. Your car, evidently can take you farther than my hands can, but no road leading to your house and no street lamp mocking you silently knows that I hang pearls on the threads of your sanity and my stairs groan loudest when you are trying to leave quietly. If you turn around now – if you run back and tell me that you want to be sky to me and nothing else, then I will let you, as long as you promise to bleed the next eighty thousand sunrises; I will stop mentioning you to forests and looking for you in satellites and in smoldering coals, if you promise to murmur my name when the horizon is stretching and prostrating itself across the late evening. I will tell you where the sun goes when the Atlantic swallows her whole, if you tell me about the streams of cirrus clouds backing up your bloodstream. And I never ask you to search for the wildfires under my shirt again, if you give me all of the starlight under yours.

Maiden in the ashes
Robed in silk
Robbed of milk
No mark on your tender skin
No sign of turmoil within
The coal does not yet scorch your soul
...
You walk your delicate path
Bearing the sightly, brightly beaten cut bloom of spring
Luscious petals not yet knowing
They will drop from the stem
No seeds to plant, and not her fault
the only water here tainted with salt
And the ground here is hard, turned up in its roots
And the soft garden bed tamped down by boots
Do you know the path you tread does not want you?
Do you not yet feel the cut of the stone or burning of the coal to your sole?
Or does this black earth need your bloodstained steps as much as you need to bleed them
Is it possible for one woman's blood to nourish this dead soil back to life?
And one woman's love to seed them

walking away
isnt always giving up
sometimes
its realizing
that theres nothing left
to stay and fight for

i never kept a diary for long
because i always found myself
ripping out the pages
of the memories that i didnt want to remember.

if my life were a book
ideally
half of the pages would be missing.

if my memory were a song
the melody would be
scrambled
by boughts of abrupt silence.

my skin feels
chafed
by eraser marks
even though erasers do not work on human flesh.

my brain feels
scrambled
by a large black scribble
desperately trying to cover the things i dont want to remember.

i wish to function as a clock
with wind up hands
so that i can tell time where to go instead.

i am ripping out my intestines
like vcr tape.

why are the memories still playing?

1) For every great skyscraper, there are petty fingers that built them.
I wonder if we were made the same way.
They were strong enough to raise a hammer, but not enough to raise a family.
I wonder if we were made the same way.
She is cold, and he is drinking, and this is our backbone.
She is alone and he is driving home too fast because sometimes you don't have to be in the wrong place to be looking for the wrong thing.
She is afraid and he is warm, this is the beginning spark of a forrest fire filled with broken glass shattering in broken homes with broken people inside on a broken piece of land in a city that has too much rain for someone to build an emergency room in. Everyone with a burden holds their confessions in their left palm and their beggings in their right and no one ends up having enough arms to hold each other.
2) One day the whole world will be in your hands too, and you'll see that sometimes darkness can blind you worse than the red glare the sun paints your vision when you stare at it with your eyes closed.
You will be brave, you will stand up straight, you will stop being royal when people stop painting Jesus with a purple robe.
Even the concrete asks the sun to make it a garden so try cracking your knuckles a little louder and maybe you will wake up as a mountain.
3) Autumn. When you wrote secrets on notebook paper and taped them underneath benches in the city park, you gave too many pieces of yourself to things that weren't made for holding that much weight.
But you said it kept you honest and there were never any reasons for me to ask you to stop giving away the parts of you I wanted to myself. It kept me humble.
4) I am alone
5) You are October in a green dress with a black mask around your eyes and you have stolen the breathe of that day. And I hope when you are 80 years old you feel a breeze sliding on the back of your neck reminding yourself of all the times it should have snapped in half during the moments of what should have been your hanging, how it takes you back to living life like you're always in the desert and stealing innocent people's money and smoking cigarettes beside rattlesnakes.
I hope you find a beach in the Caribbean that asks to be died on, I hope you learn to forgive people harder than you can cry on their shoulder. I hope you watch a sunrise that you spend the rest of your life thinking about. I feel like for that to happen you need your feet in the ocean or underneath a rocking chair, but I would settle for your bedroom.
6) But with you it was never settling.

Your fingers burned me
So when they asked me for proof
I lifted up my dress.
They dusted my thighs for
Fingerprints
Like they would a burglary.
They told me to explain again
What had happened.
I told them  how you
Pried me open like
The doors of a
Closed convenience store
Gutted me like an
Abandoned house
Left me for dead like
A deer after the
Headlights
They said there was
Nothing
They could do
I told them how you
Emptied me like
An alcoholic at the bar
After years of sobriety
Stained me like
The glass windows
In your church
Broke me like
The mirrors you
Can't bare to look into
Anymore
Anymore
Anymore
I can't look in the mirror
Anymore
They asked me for proof
So I lifted up my dress
They dusted my thighs
For fingerprints
I swear were there
I see them
The third degree burns
Covering my legs
My neck
My chest
I told them how
You made me into a
Museum of art
I don't want to be a part
Of
You made me into a
Museum of mosaics
And tragedies
And other broken things
I told them how
You made me into
Railroad tracks
That I lie on and
Wait for a train
That never comes
I told them about
the burns you kissed
into my skin
the blisters that
throb and
pulse
like the heartbeat
I used to have
They asked me for proof
So I lifted up my dress
For fingerprints I swear
Were there
They dusted my thighs
Like the crime scene
They were
Like the crime scene
They are
They asked me if
I had any other proof
I told them about the
Flashbacks
About how any hands
On me feel like your
Hands
About how you
Stripped me
Both physically
And mentally
About how I begged
You to stop
About how you didn’t stop
They said there was
Nothing
They could do
They said they were
Sorry
I said
Me too