never the reality of it
not the way it moves or twitches or yawns or blinks or longs to hold hands or scratch backs
maybe the way it moans and arches, maybe
not the way it sings or paints or makes coffee or plays with it's niece or hugs its mother
the way it stays quiet and still when discontent, maybe
the way it makes money, maybe
the way every motion is to please you, maybe

cmon
tell me how you really feel
tell me you don't think of me like you used to
tell me you finally see how people get sick of me
tell me you're tired of resting your arm beneath my neck
tell me you're tired of being tired together
tell me again how happy someone else could make you
tell me you hate my ****** rhythm and shaky voice
tell me all of my paintings look like ****
tell me I don't mean **** to you
tell me my words mean nothing anymore
tell me my words mean nothing
please tell me I mean nothing

Why is it I always find myself laying in the wet grass staring up at constellations with a set of chromosomes lighting up a cigarette that don’t belong to you?
This time the LSD flowed through the veins of a boy with blonde flowing hair. I laid next to him and tried to keep up with and envision what he saw and felt that night, and I think he could tell that I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant when he tried to describe it and he sighed with the faintest hint of frustration, but I reassured him with a simple
“talk about it.”
And he began to.
to use his hands, silhouettes against the dark violet sky, twirling and dancing, the stars twinkling and shining light between the shadowed fingers like the sun through trees. he described looking up at a circle of white light of life, and from it stemmed four hallways or paths, and then how there was a giant hand in the sky plucking at the stars, and then how the stars “danced, almost seductively, (no, seductively isn’t the right word, but it’s the easiest way to explain it)” for his eyes only. And how he was melting into the grass on our backs and the way Something by the Beatles made him feel something, and he asked about my writing and understood my anxiety and traced his tattoos in the dark, painting pictures of the ones I’d never noticed, the sparrow, the compass, the hamsa, with his words.
I felt as if I were tripping too, like the tiny tab dissolved into my own tongue for forty five minutes until it made it’s way down the back of my throat with a sip of water. Like I could feel myself melting into psychedelia with each syllable that rolled smoothly off of his tongue. Like the giant hand in the sky was mine, and I plucked the little lights like the strings of a guitar, like they burned my fingertips the way the flames from lighters did when I tested how slowly I could wave them over my fingers before I felt the heat when I was a child. Like the earth grew into me, like vines slithered their way up my spine and my vertebrae blossomed into lotus flowers, like Something by the Beatles made me feel something.
The earth was raw; it was so real.
Yet reality had never felt farther in a sober state.
I felt touched and untouchable, invincible and invisible, desired and deserted.
We finally stood and walked away from our little bed of leaves but they didn’t want me to leave- they tangled themselves in my hair and he told me to leave them in because it looked lovely.
So I did.
And I found you, where I always do.
You were laughing your acid off in the fluorescent lights of your bedroom.
And your eyes were green and your cheeks pink and your palms open and your mind
untouched by the untouched beauty we experienced and the enlightening clarity and the knowledge we sought under the all-knowing night sky.

The stars
The smoke
The silhouettes of the trees
The fog floating just above the ground
Making suburban houses on the horizon look like the pyramids in the distance
The soft snores from the now sleeping once silently staring boy laying on the grass beside me
I don't want to wake his slumber
He seems at peace and I find comfort in the outside sounds of his dreams and the crispness of the way his arm brushes the dirt when he turns and how the position of body resembles a corpse with crossed ankles and fingers draped over his chest
It's dark but I can make out the rise and fall of his breaths
It's getting cooler and the crickets chirp louder and the songs on my playlist start and end and start again
And it's so serene
It's so serene.

I wonder how long the stars captivated him before they serenaded him with twinkling lullabies
I wonder how he interpreted my silence or if he noticed it
I wonder if he's the type to notice things like that
I like to think he is.
One of those people who can lay next to you in the grass and look up at the stars and communicate the contentedness silently
I wonder if he felt it
I wonder if he heard my harmonies


I wonder how warm your bed is right now.
I wonder if you're happy you've got all that empty space to stretch your limbs like a starfish on the sheets.
I wonder if you snore.
I wonder what our pillow talk would sound like right now.
I wonder if we'd even pillow talk right now.


I wonder what time the sun rises this morning.
It must be just a few hours away.
I wonder if you're still awake.

I wonder where it goes when you're not surrounded by it.

I don't need anyone to pretend to care about my apathy.
I want to smoke cigarettes and skip meals and nights of sleep.
I want to cry to Elliott Smith and for the clouds to hide the moon because I need the darkness for a while.
The moon is shy, leave her be.
She's either shy or wants to hide.
The lunarity of my own skin shares the same feeling tonight.
I want to hide.
I want people to stop expecting me to be present, available, ready to listen
just because I have to be.
Just because I'm forced to be here.
Because I'm not being held to the earth by anything except gravity.
I don't really have to be here.
I'm choosing to be.
But gravity doesn't exist on the moon and I'm indecisive like she is;
I go through phases.
Right now, I want to be new.

The thing about inseparability is that you spend so many sleepless nights trying to familiarize yourself with each and every reason he named the arrangement of those walls "home" and when you finally leave (the candy bowl, the green Christmas lights, the keyboard, the twin size mattress, the bathroom cabinet),
Kenopsia lies in the forgotten combination code and you're left blankly staring at your front door and the splinter in your foot from the plywood floor and the unexpectedly obnoxious ding of the microwave and the look on your moms face when you have to ask which forks are in which drawer and when your cat paws at your tangled headphones but runs when you try to pet her and you remember that she is actually a he and you had to change his name because Matilda wasn't unisex enough for your niece, who's been making all A's in school, no thanks to you, even after the help you promised her was never provided, much like the bowling nights and painting mornings you once planned with her.
And you can't sleep at night because your arms aren't flexible enough to wrap themselves around your torso and rest beneath your neck like his did and your bed makes an unfamiliar screech each time you toss or turn or stretch, or blink, or take a breath and the light can't be turned off with a click of a button and the room is too cold without a radiating body next to you to fill the frigid air with warm words about running toward city lights, and you realize that you've dreamed of a home your entire life and you thought you'd never found it and maybe you still haven't but you've built a structure with his bones and use his curls as blankets,
but what the three little pigs didn't warn you of was that all it takes is a cloudy day to birth a storm strong enough to rip the ribs off their hinges.
The storm hasn't hit home yet, but it's almost hurricane season, and you can't remember where your dad always hid the flashlights from your niece; and light is shed on the fact that darkness houses vulnerability.

If you place a welcome mat outside your heart and invite me in for tea,
I'll take too long to gather my belongings
and my hands will linger on the door **** as I leave.
You'll have to wake me from the depths of my dreams because I already know I'll fall asleep,
and the infrared exit signs are the only ones I never see.
And all the while you'll be thinking of excuses, like the ones my dad used to make when the pantry was empty and so was his wallet or like the ones your dad made, the time he disappeared for months after seeing little blue balloons.
But I'll have a solution for every potential problematic goodbye
And I'll probably talk until the morning light and ignore the apathy in your eyes or the sympathy in your smile and you'll grow silent after a while and I'll question what the problem is,
but I won't see that my departure should've been the answer to this, until it was too late,
just like the time your dad disappeared for years after seeing the little blue balloons.
I'll try to lose track of time by staring at the moon.
I'll always overstay my welcome, but maybe you'll want me to stay because he didn't.

Must you parade around with the flag of betrayal
waving high above our heads?
Wearing the colors of your victory proudly on your neck.

Love lost, barrel checked,
Medal stripped, and home sent,
I surrender.
I surrender everything.
Every memory.
Every shaky touch,
every spilt cup of joe, every flower that shot out of the ground that spring.
Every flower that died that winter.
I've been waiting for a new front all along.
One where I've got arms behind me that are strong,
pushing me to walk and holding me when I cant.
You see, I may have lost that battle, with her,
but, my dear with him, I'll win the war.

Cemetaries with graves more comforting than my own bed and bottles of wine in Parkinson's palms
Industrial factory lights at night that bewilder and leave wandering wants and wondering won'ts and wanderlust
Abandoned rodeos with the perfect pair of longitude and latitudinal lines for a sunset view and dance floors of dirt and footprints in spirals and you
And bowling alley parking lots and songs from my adolescence and secrets spilling from our mouths
And the fairground park swingset and sparklers and nostalgia looming just above the grassy horizon
The 10th floor of the casino parking garage and the water looks curious and inviting,
and it's a long way down.

And I'm a long way from home,
Until I'm in your arms.

It's so easy to slip back into old patterns,
like the floral quilt your grandma sewed that's hanging on your wall with nails or thumbtacks, next to the painted tulips much like the ones I searched many meadows
(grocery aisles) for.
It's so easy to forget the memories.
Block out the bad ones and reminisce on the lovely walks through the patch of woods between your brothers house and the street you ran down, the street I always promised to run down with you, the street I picked flowers from the ditches instead for you.
It's so easy to name the songs you always got stuck in your head.
Which ones you thought sounded prettier on piano and which ones you liked to strum to.
The ones that made me believe in angels because there sat one, on the bench directly in front of me.
It makes it easy to get stuck in my head.
It makes it easy to skip breakfast,
and lunch. And dinner...
And to slice yellow bananas for my peanut butter toast,
only to skip breakfast again...
It's easy to smoke a cigarette and think of the dock by the pond and how I never wanted to taste the smoke on your lips or the **** in your lungs and how I can no longer go a full day without the numb buzz in my brain.
It's hard to forget the memories.
Of swings and soft songs and snowballs and sunflowers.
Of screams and scary dreams and starry storms and ****** showers.

Please remember.
Don't you ever forget.
The sun shone brightly from behind your lids, and even when you cried, there were rainbows in the sky.
It's was never easy to love you but it was even harder not to.
It's hard to look back at and smile, but sometimes I don't even have to try.

I forgot what shivered bones felt like
I forgot about weak indexes and knees
I forgot how I sometimes used to forget how to breathe
I forgot about the blood pumping head crunching beats
But simultaneous yawns, constant blushing, and white teeth don't erase the past in me
I find warmth in your fingers and the sun shines from your mind,
but the snowflakes and ice cycles come back sometimes

"I can't look at a sunset and not think of you."
If there's ever a sunset when I'm not by your side, know that you're on my mind every glance I catch of the sky.

never forget who watered the soil your roots were planted in
or the rays that helped you grow emerald leaves and slanted limbs
and when it rains don't be afraid cause that's how flowers bloom
i promise not to runaway from the dark side of the moon
cause you were my sunset in disguise
all the gray clouds and tangerine skies
the introspective orb so bright
that even the blind wolf cries
you were all the songs I grew up on that thunder sang to me
and if I ever find myself gnawing and barking up at the wrong tree
I'll howl my loudest and wait for help to stand on my own two feet

We're in your bed with the blinds down and a book in my hands and my hair in yours and there are no complaints and you could do this forever as long as we had a little change in scenery.

Click.

We wake up to tangled limbs, sandy toes, and terribly translated Spanish sentences in Cancun.

Click.

We're hungover from pina coladas and white russian daquiris in a Russian red hammock hanging off the coast of Honolulu.

Click.

I open my eyes to ivory smiles and mountain tops and snowflakes in your lashes and smoke cascading from your lips because it's legal here and I love seeing you in your element.

Click.

You yawn to the sound of our mixtape softly playing, wrapped in your aunt's quilts in the back of our van parked overlooking the rust colored rocks topped with lavender reflections in the lake.

Click.

The sun greets us with golden rays leaking through the gaps of shadowed hills that mimic the autumn tinted hazel eyes I'm staring into.

Click.

Hazy gray fog surrounds us to the point we can't see our own hands, only each others faces.

Click.

We roll around on hundreds of palettes of the most famous of artists as we take in the spectrum of colors from inside the Antelope Valley Canyon and we whisper in each other's ears what part of our own bodies each shade reminds us of.

Click.

We're warmed by a fireplace in a quaint house made of stone surrounded by fluffs of white and glacier blue tranquility and a tiny spec of sun fighting to shine through piles of dull pink and gray clouds.

Click.

We're chapped lips and dry skin beneath 900 year old trees and thousands of stars and the man in the moon is looking down in approval like he finally got the perfect candid shot he's been trying to capture for centuries.


We jump into images of the world like old cartoons.
I want to explore every one of earths phenomena with you.
Canals in Venice. Cathedrals in Versailles.
Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam. Cueva del Fantasma in Venezuela.
I want to spend our nights under the northern lights.
I'd disappear somewhere in the Bermuda triangle if it meant I wouldn't ever have to find myself without you by my side.

I want my happiness to be found in,
my life to be measured by,
my dreams to be slept under,
and my time to pass by,
the sunsets watched with you.

We'll vagabond our way through the seasons and changes in scenery and grow as tall as the trees we carved our initials into.

no one ever tells you that:

• her lips are not his lips are not her lips

drunken minds still want sober kisses

• it's not disrespectful to be cuddled while sobbing on the vacant graves in the churchyard with just birth dates inscribed into the headstones if you need to

and if you feel as though you should dance on said graves, ******* dance, even if it's not empty, because who says ghosts don't like to waltz? that man was born in 1917 and he died in the mid thirties and he spent his glory days in a hospital bed rather than a ballroom so I'll spend mine twirling a girl in my arms in his honor and I'll tilt my head back and laugh the way he might have and I'm sure he'll get a kick out of that one

• timing is everything but it's also nothing in the grand scheme of chronologistics

sometimes you have to channel your inner new age Shakespeare and just make up your own words to express yourself in writing when you feel as though there are no adequate words in the dictionary to describe what's in your head

(sometimes the best way to get out of your head is to get lost in it and get really drunk on your own thoughts and drive straight first into a ditch on Summerfield Road and when you have the urge to look in a stranger's phone book to call someone for help, don't.)

• sometimes you need to listen to that boy repeat himself over the phone  for 9 minutes about how much he cares about your best friend and how he'd do anything for her and how he'd quit selling drugs and driving drunk because she makes him want to be a better person to realize what you have and what you want

sometimes the only songs that relate to your current situation and make your heart want to explode are the ones you used to listen to when you were 9 because that boy let it play on your oldest sister's voicemail and you hadn't yet experienced what it was like to love someone who made you feel like there were "twice as many stars in the sky" and sometimes you need to turn that song up all the way and just feel it with every ounce of your bike riding tree climbing porcelain childhood heart

• sometimes people are like the sunset for you, and you look up at them with the highest degree of awe, but sometimes you have to be your own sky and you have to gaze at yourself in amazement

sometimes you need to just go home and sleep in your own ******* bed for once and spend some time with the person you miss the most

when you feel like you're torn between the people you're in love with, because you're in love with everyone, you need to take a step back and realize the one you should be in love with is yourself.

the ones who chase the sunset
the ones who dream of dreaming on abandoned mattresses
the ones who never sleep
the ones who find homes in the passenger seat
the ones with endless wanderlust and bare feet
the ones who travel with journals on their sleeves
the ones with open minds and prying hands
the ones who finally learned how to speak
the ones with golden tongues and opalescent teeth
the ones with glowing green lights in their eyes
the ones with ticklish knees and bruised thighs
the ones with unheard symphonies in their eardrums
the ones who grow with the trees and bloom like chrysanthemums
the ones with ideas too big for the small town scene
the ones who perform silent spoken word for their television screens
the ones bubbling with spontaneity and sentimentality
the ones with broken dreamcatchers, lightbulbs, and families
the ones who are captivated by constellations and insanity
the ones who make snow angels on mountain peaks
the ones with freckles, curly hair, and rosy cheeks
and the one with olive skin and emerald split ends
the ones with tracing thumbs and laureled limbs
the ones who have taken each others flaws in
wrapped them in silk and blocked out the bitter wind
the ones who weave orbs with moth wings
the ones who still buzz with bee stings
the ones with the power and voodoo
the ones who don't think like you do
the earth, the fire, the water, the air
the ones who can't help but to stop and stare
the misfit poets;
the ones who dare to care.

FRIDAY NIGHTS WERE FOR
walmart runs and getting drunk and baking red velvet cake and another walmart run because we forgot to get chocolate icing the first time and flour on our eyelashes like snowflakes in Colorado and cranberry juice and ***** and twirling around the kitchen and heavy hearted kissing on the sofa and medicine for the people and forbidden touching and a few tears and endless loving.

SATURDAY NIGHTS WERE FOR
numbly staring at the tile above the faucet and soaking for hours in the tub with a book sitting on the ground and not being able to gather my thoughts and focus enough to pick it up and start reading it and laying in my mothers bed and watching sad films about writers and hitchhikers and thinking if this were 1947, that would be us;

but this isn't 1947,
this is sunday,

and SUNDAYS ARE FOR
sleeping until my body cannot take any more rest and willing myself to get dressed and singing on the 10th floor of parking garages over looking the city and looking for green lights at the end of all the tunnels because you're okay and I'm doing my best.

I've been thinking a whole lot about Gatsby.
A whole lot about the past.
About second chances.
The green light.

I should have seen it coming,
that first time on the gym floor
when you wouldn't hold my hand when I asked
and you watched as embarrassment and rejection spread across my face
or the second time after attendance recovery
when you hugged me too long and waited so long to decide whether or not you should kiss me that you just didn't make a decision
and you watched me walk to my sisters car in the back of the school's parking lot with my hands probably in my pockets my eyes on the pavement and my lip between my teeth
or the third time in my car after a day at the flea market on valentines day when we pretended to not to notice the fact that the plans we had made aligned perfectly with the calender's lovely little notice in the bottom corner of the 14th square as we sat in the dark so close and yet so far and you told me goodnight and retreated inside
or the fourth time just a few nights later when I built up the courage to slightly graze your skin with mine as we talked about life and I still wonder if that took you by surprise because I was so scared and nervous that I couldn't do it until I closed my eyes and you must've been nervous and scared too but you managed to keep it disguised
or the fifth time when I got too high to drive home so I slept over and you didn't want our bodies connected in too many places so you intentionally shifted each time I did to create empty sheeted spaces
and I snuggled close into your neck and I could feel something in you this time but you rolled over and slept until I was awaken for a favor from a past lover and I left


or the last time, a few months later,
after I told you I felt us ending and you told me there were people who could make both of us happier than we were and I cried and I held you tight and we spent some time outside admiring nature and the bugs and when it came time for me to leave all I was left with was a hug and "don't text and drive."
It took everything in me not to turn around as soon as I pulled out and ask for one last chance to kiss you
just one more, for the memory, for old times sake, for anything
but I was tired of being brave
and I was tired of making the first move
and I sure as hell wasn't going to make the last one.
So I unlocked the wooden gate, and drove on through the cooling twilight.

But this time I'm having trouble
seeing the green light at the end of the dock.
This time when someone questions me, I know the answer.
"Can't repeat the past?"
Why of course you can't.
I'm not a fool, and neither are you.

when the nicotine from the black & mild
and the extra shots from the extra pina colada daiquiri downed
(because who can pass up two for one drinks on tuesdays)
and the taste of his bearded lips on mine
finally wear off and subside,
I'm forced to feel the ache I've been so desperately trying to numb and push away
Sometimes things don't work out just the way you thought they would
and not everything that appears to feel good feels good
and ending things seems sad then fine and freeing to teetering on the line
and tongues don't line up but single file is for preschoolers anyway
and happiness is an illusion and a concept I can't grasp
because the idea and the craving of having your hand in mine gets me through the night still but while I held it I felt like my father with arthritic joints and I couldn't ball my fists tight enough to show you how you caused them to lock up and then how you rubbed your thumbs across my skin like medicine traveling beneath it and how you released all of the tension and increased my levels of serotonin.


when the lights go off and my keys begin to click I am overwhelmed with the fear that that i'll never find another pair of hands like yours.
I don't want lipstick stains on the same page I wrote my thoughts down on.

I'm always accused of some sort of voodoo or magic,
that I possess the ability to make people become
irrevocably infatuated and attached to my presence.

But I think it is those surrounding me that are the ones who are compelling and captivating and mesmerizing and I can't keep up.
I'm burning in thoughts surrounding the idea that I may be intriguing
but I'm never entertaining.

I feel as though I am a sideshow attraction in a ring of circus performers.
The bearded lady and the trapeze swingers;
the human dartboard and the fire dancing singers;
intrigue versus talent and disappointment versus awe.
I'll draw them in for a second,
a quick glimpse of what and who I really am is all
and they tilt their head in confusion and pity and dissatisfaction
when a giant teddy bear down the brightly lit and vividly colored lane catches their eye and they stroll away with wide excited eyes at popcorn and corn dogs and dogmatic persuaders with yellow balloons and the promise of a prize.
The only part I feel I can compare is the feeling that my brain is a contortionist, it twists and folds into itself until it's hardly recognizable.
I am made up of loose joints and a personality that is flexible enough to love any and every one and perhaps that is what is so lovable about me.
However, I'll never be the ring leader. I'll leave that up to the man coaching the nice lady in red parading around on the elephant's back.

the way her eyes hypnotize and magnetize me, pulling me into otherworldly realms every time they meet mine and how intrigued I am to untwist the knots in her mind because no one ever bothered to listen to her beauty unwind or the story behind her necklace shaped like a tree or her affinity for abandoned houses and the treasures in the rubble she'd find

the way she looks at me and smirks and utters something sweet and then realizes she's a flirt so she looks at the road and tries to hide her cheeks blushing like roses and the sentimental sunset spots we found and the hours we spend staring at the stars and wandering around

the way he dreams of pink seashells in grayscale underwater libraries and how he inhales and leans his head back on the seat with his eyes closed as he takes in the indian summer and how he always wears autumn wear and rolls up his sleeves and how it makes me think just how ******* handsome a man can be

the way she comforts me with her optimism and laughs every time like its the last time she may ever get a chance to, how she lives life like she's never gonna dance to another persons beat and she sweeps her own self off her feet and carries me simultaneously

the way her hair flows in the wind out of the passenger side window like flames flicking, like fire burning, like youth glowing, like not knowing anything yet somehow knowing all the right things to say

the way he gets passionate about music and the shriek he does when he gets excited about something FOR ONCE IN HIS LIFE and his charm and wit that could persuade any girl to drop to her knees and feel weak and the way he goes weeks without washing his hair and wears the same hat every single time we meet

the way he giggles at every word one and thing and how his eyes squint shut when he smiles and how he dances with me to Led Zeppelin in Waffle House at 3 am and how he carries his backpack everywhere he goes and how easy it is to carry on a conversation and how his vibes just flow into mine and how he justifies his disobedience with the excuse that he is always down for an adventure and how happy he always seems to be in my passenger seat

THE WAY HE ASKS FOR THE LAST HAIR TIE ON MY WRIST TO TIE HIS HAIR INTO A BUN AND THE FRECKLES ON HIS CHEEKS AND THE WAY HIS HAZEL EYES BURN INTO MINE BENEATH WEIGHTED LIDS AND THE WAY HE SPEAKS WITH HEAVY HANDS IN MORE WAYS THAN IMAGINABLE AND THE WAY HE HUGS ME TIGHT AND EVEN THOUGH HE'S GROWN TALLER SINCE I FIRST WRAPPED MY ARMS AROUND HIS TORSO MY HEAD STILL FITS PERFECTLY ON HIS CHEST AND THE WAY HE GENTLY SLIDES HIS FINGERS ACROSS MY SKIN WHEN I'M TUCKED INTO HIS SHEETS AND THE WORDS HE WRITES AND THE WAY HE READS AND HOW HE REMEMBERS TO CHECK ON THE PIZZA ROLLS IN THE OVEN AND HOW HE SLIPS INTO THIS FUNNY UNKNOWN ACCENT AND HE TAPS ON MY FOREHEAD AND I KNOW IT'S A SIGN OF AFFECTION AND HOW HE CAN'T FOCUS ON ONE SUBJECT WHEN HE TAKES LSD OR ECSTASY AND HIS FIXATION WITH WORLD WAR II AND HOW HE SOMEHOW BREAKS HIS PHONE MORE THAN I DO AND HOW YOUR KEYBOARD SEEMS TO BE STUCK IN CAPS LOCK AND HOW YOU PUT YOUR ARM AROUND MY WAIST WHILE YOU TEACH ME HOW TO PLAY YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES AND HOW YOU MAKE ME FEEL WANTED WHEN YOU CAN'T KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME AND HOW YOU ALWAYS COMMENT ON YOUR BREATH AFTER YOU SMOKE LIKE I'VE NEVER KISSED KUSH BEFORE AND HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THE BEACH AND THE CLOUDS AND THE WAY YOU TALK ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS AND MONKEYS BEING DRENCHED WITH WATER AND HOW YOU'RE ALWAYS "BOUT WHATEVER" AND HOW YOU GET JEALOUS WHEN I SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS AND HOW SCATTERBRAINED YOU ARE AND HOW YOU'RE ALWAYS IN YOUR HEAD AND HOW TERRIBLE YOU ARE AT COMMUNICATION BUT YOU MANAGE TO PUT IT ALL ON PAPER AND TO BE HONEST I'D TAKE YOUR SILENCE OVER ANOTHER'S DULL MINDED NOISE ANY DAY

AND GOD I LOVE THE LITTLE THINGS ABOUT SO MANY PEOPLE
BUT I LOVE EVERY ******* THING ABOUT YOU AND NO ONE COULD EVER MAKE ME LOVE THE WAY MY HEART ACHES THE WAY IT DOES FOR YOU

Strings of wisdom flow through my fingertips
like front-porch-swing storytelling.
The stars are visible through the window tops
as moon eyes stare up at their sisters.

The truth is,
I could listen to you ramble for hours in the backseat of that car.
I listened to you ramble for hours,
just to hear every thought and pun and "but like"
that escaped your once clenched teeth and locked lips,
and after prying open your brain, my jaw was left ajar
in awe of the reality that a shy girl with seafoam eyes
could ever open mine that wide
in such a short amount of time.

The truth is,
I want to dig my hands into your thoughts and pull up roots from the dirt and find that I've got a green thumb.
I want to climb the tallest mountain in Tennessee and have your smile welcome and invite me into your home.
I want to watch your children grow older and want themselves as a mother like their mother did when she wasn't much older.
I want to hear every flirtatious remark dangling from that bracelet of yours clink together as you lift your chai latte from the counter.
I want to question what the time of day is
and wait for your mind to create a clever counter-clockwise comeback that throws mine for a loop and sends me spiraling back down to earth
on the dials of the sun and the mills of the wind.
I want to stop and read every spray-painted sentence on each step of the stairs leading to the perfect amalgamation of essays and creative journals, and analyze the way your cursive gets lazy and then cleans itself up while maintaining an enlightened tone.
I want to venture into abandoned shacks in the middle of the night that are hardly recognizable two seasons later just to find out that it's the wrong house and the open windows mean someone may be home.
I want to see the scribbled out "sandwhich" corrected in red ink.
I want to drink your words and refill and recycle the bottle.
I want to blend the blacks and whites on the palette and create a shiny sensitizing zinc.
I want to be the one who genuinely understands the way you think.

The truth is,
I have this irrevocable desire to listen to music that no one else has ever heard in a pair of headphones until I find a harmony,
and then let it play on the radio for those of us with complexity
to sing to as we stare down the road of an alligator bayou
and become hypnotized by the beat.

I told myself I wouldn't cry the second time because I already accepted the fact that you would leave again.
But today I cried when I turned off my street and saw the sunset more beautiful than I'd ever seen, and again when I was ordering a sandwich in the jimmy johns drivethru because you hate jimmy johns but you ate it because you knew how much I loved it and again when I non-accidentally found your note that you told me to burn that I never burned and again when I pulled into the Pjs driveway just because. And again on the way home because I realized I've never had one healthy romantic relationship. And again when I walked inside my house and saw my sister sleeping on the couch because she's leaving for Texas tomorrow and because that's the place I sleep when I'm at home so that I never have to sleep in my bed alone. But tonight she's got on my sweatpants and she's using my blanket and she's sleeping on my couch and I can't stop because I'm so lonely and I wish you cared for just one second, but she's probably sitting on my side of your bed and listening to all your high thoughts and I'll have to be okay with that from now on, because I already knew you would leave the second you decided to stay. And I already know you'll leave even though you haven't admitted it to me.
I just wish you knew how much you meant to me. How much it breaks my heart to see you unhappy with me. But I won't say anything and neither will you because communication has never been our thing. And all we are is just "a thing," so whatever, right?

oxymoron overdose
deadbolt atriums
intersected playlists
the unluckiest clothespin

a mailbox full of compliments
wallowing asterisks
carpeted portraits and
unearthed apologies

it all stemmed from backseat rattling complexity

lighthouse morphine
seventeen somber ached explosions
sipping acrylic reveries
cleverly blossomed illusions

thigh stumbling permission
clumsy german metaphors
thirsty chapter jigsaw keys
worried cities newfound screams

vision confusion and pity bottles
poisoned school affection
oh christ, darling
a deaf chorus

thoughtless phantom
seed eyed stranger
road scarred sighs
***** locked moths
velvet butterflies

a sweeter sleeping spine

growing began expression

storms lack protection
yesterday placed comfort in salvation

the vast presence of a strong man's island mother

hazel vacations
a shattered soldier

trembling girls in sorry gardens, limbs in full bloom

naive humming mirrors

children having mistook living

trees half known

whispered smiles and mattress lullabies

cigarette stories firework insecurities

books begging

floor stopping feeling

what I haven't been trying to say is that I love you but, but... BUT
but I see my parents in us and a life as an addict out of love just doesn't appeal to me after having to live it for as long as I have lived it and i don't ever want to relive that or the anger that arose when the high was gone and couldn't get got or the feeling of inferiority to the inspiration from inhalations or the rust on the prison cell steel or the carpet petting your cheek or the sound of three girls finally wearing big girl ******* and their daddies Guns N Roses and Van Halen and Eagles tees and yellow bangs and dark curls and strawberry blonde strands down to their knees wondering why mommy won't wake up on the living room sofa or what caused the ****** noses of the "pill ****** down the street" I don't want dangerous dealers, the downers or the rush or the teen riding to dallas alone on a bus
these are things I've seen and don't care to re-see
so what i'm trying to say is i love you but i see my parents in us

You said that you weren't as weak as I am.
weak weak weak weak weak weak weak weak weak
IF WEAK IS FORGIVING PEOPLE FOR BREAKING MY HEART AND HAVING THE COMPOSURE TO NOT DISREGARD OTHERS AS HUMAN BEINGS FOR ******* UP OR ******* MY BOYFRIEND THEN YOU ARE LUCKY THAT I AM WEAK. IF WEAK IS LOVING MY FATHER DESPITE THE ADDICTION AND MY MOTHER DESPITE THE PROMISCUITY AND BOTH DESPITE THEIR BROKEN PROMISES THEN I WANT TO BE WEAK.
WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO BE STRONG?
Weak is peaceful and weak is kind and if strength is measured by the ability to cut people out of your life with no remorse then I feel terribly sorry for the strong people in the world.
Strength is sad and lonely and begrudging
and tight muscles and hard exteriors and quick breaths.
Weakness can be the long drawn out exhale that comes before death
as long as I've got someone holding my hand in the hospital bed...

because my leg won't stop bouncing repeatedly against the chair
because my thoughts revert back to the memory of your touch
every
three
seconds
like closing my eyes and tapping my heels together
because you never understood what i meant when i told you
that there wasn't a reason as to why I grew anxious in
your presence why my breaths shortened or my my
jaw tightened why my muscles ached and my head
throbbed and pounded and my cheeks turned scarlet
why i felt like you were water and my skin melted when you brushed it
i was not blushing due to your charm although i do that too
i was not nervous and biting my nails because you thought i was cute
although im not even sure if that's true

sometimes i get freaked out and its not because of you
even if you wish that were the case not everything,
not bicycles or cows
not the world or my nerves
revolves around you
or your pinky finger
only my hormones head and heart do
because
there's no place like home
there's no place like home
there's no place like him

if I seem desperate, it's because i am.
i don't care about dignity.
i care about you.

how many nights in a row can I drink white russian daiquiris
and smack ink onto a blank sheet before I realize
that I haven't pressed the "J" key even once
in hopes that my brain won't jumble the letters
and create word searches with only your name in the word bank.
i'm not dyslexic but I do love puzzles.
crosswords, jigsaws, multi-colored cubes,
cryptograms, mazes, tetris, Sudoku...
the only one I can't seem to solve is you.

****.
Once again, I'm stuck.

You used to crave me like the drag of your last cigarette and with the passion of the sharp razor drawing blood from your hips and thighs.
I'm a smart girl but I'm not that wise.
You need something good for you and I'm not good enough.
You want something bad for you and I'm not bad enough.
I'm still the faint tobacco smell that still gives you headaches.
I'm the dull fishing hook in your top drawer that just won't suffice.
I never wanted to be your addiction, I wanted to be your salvation.
Neither worked out very nice.

Rip out my ribs with your teeth and then heal the wound with your lips because your kisses reseal the opening that vulnerability unzips.
I'll light my biggest fears on fire and lay them at your feet and watch you put out the flames only to sweep up the ashes and pour them down my smoke filled throat. And I'll gaze for hours in a trance as the blazing dance and scarlet hues mesmerize me until I'm warm inside and numb in a daze of blues.
It seems I'm only capable of flattering those flowing fingers that bend my bones rather than ridiculing the way they crush my decayed carcass.

"I can't look at a sunset and not think of you"
"Well that's too bad"

Love me when you meet me.
Love me when I tell you the time of day.
Love me when I'm uninterested.
And when you become interested,
don't forget me.
Love me when I ignore you.
Love me when I'm loving someone else.
Love me when I start to love you.
Love me when I spend three consecutive nights in your bed because I can't bear to be without you.
Love me when you see the smile you bring to my face.
Love me when I'm sad and don't want to talk to you for days.
Love me when I don't want you or your love anymore.
And then when you move on and make progress towards the direction of finally not being in love with me,
Love me.
Please.
Because even when I don't want you to love me, I want you to love me.

I am not like the ocean in that I've got waves flowing down my back or the warmth of the sand in my hands or the voice of a hundred seagulls harmonizing in sync when they land.
I am not like the ocean in that I can wrap myself around you, engulf you, show you a world you've never dreamed of, full of life and mystery and depth.

I am the lost limbs and home-wrecking tsunamis.
I am the high tide that tickles toddler's toes and pulls them in with each giggle when their moms glance away for a tiny second.
I am unknown and anonymous and dangerous to explore,
not miraculous.
I sting, strangle, bite, drown, and rip with no remorse.
I am like the darkest parts of the ocean, full of creatures with teeth you've never seen and an intense lust, hunger, and greed.
Full of lost skeletons and deflated floaties and engines from submarines.
I am like the ocean in that once you're in too deep,
once you're too far out at sea,
if you don't have the breath or the energy
to somehow find your way back to the beach,
I am ruthless and I will pull you under and then it will be too late,
you know?
And you'll be just another abandoned snorkel on the jagged rocks below.

And as much as I want to be the exhilarating parts of the sea for you,
all I can offer is the salt in me.

I'm not a gardener, and you say you aren't either, but we both know,
because I'll always have a soft spot for soft hips and small fingertips.
Because I'll always get high on the harmony of lullabies.
Because my favorite hair tie was his but it's also the color of your skin.
Because I'll always be wrapped around your green thumb,
even when I love him.
Roses bloom soon enough so that the thorns can hide.
Bare limbs can still look lovely beneath an overcast sky.
But just because the leaves are green when they grow again,
I won't forget the branches once were bent with emptiness.

I want you to put me on your tongue and let me dissolve into you like the tiny white squares that turn those glossy hazel marbles into black holes and intense stares. I want you to kiss me and see negative colored rulers in the corner of your vision and I want you to have trouble making a decision between kissing me and observing me while I'm sitting on your chest and I want you to laugh like you did with your cherry colored lip curled over your childish grin over and over and over again and I want you to forget the conversation topic every time you close your eyes because the world inside of your mind is filled with blinking images that you can't quite explain aloud so you settle for little talks about Rosa Parks and Indian style kisses and how the ocean is the Earth's thing or the complexity of butterfly brains and whether or not they remember their caterpillar memories (they do). Describe to me the first time you saw your favorite color and what developed the affinity for it: yours, a glacier blue toy that resembled the ocean and mine, a lavender Easter dress that twirled when I spun. Tell me about your school crushes when you were four and what you got your clothespin moved to the sad face for and I'll write it all in ink on my knee caps because "God, we're such writers" and you'll check the clock in the gaps and search for tunes or lighters and I'll want time to slow down because the nights spent with you usually seem as though minutes are just a few seconds shy of sixty, which turns the little hand pretty quickly.
I want hours, weeks, decades, to analyze the freckles on your face or the pace at which you move your tongue and precisely how it tastes.
I want you to tell me that your brother would like me and about the mountains in Tennessee and maybe next time I'll try to stay awake, unless you want to listen to the way I breathe so fully when I dream.

When I close my eyes, I want to be able to see what you see.
I want you to keep burying the numb parts of you into the warm parts of me.

Here's the truth:
I'm not a good writer.
And there are no words that will make this pain easier or prettier.
So here are a few more truths, minus the metaphors and alliterations and puns and other sorry excuses to romanticize the aches.

1. First, a quick question: who do you vent to when everyone you ever trusted hurts you? Why do I find myself questioning this so often?
2. A past lover told me I deserve a relationship with someone who doesn't need a conversation on how my current situation would hurt or not be okay. Regardless, I still feel like it's my fault for assuming you wanted only me.
3. I can't remember the last time I had two meals in one day. You like my ribs and collar bones and hips under your lips too much for me to risk it. I need to buy a new scale because the day before yesterday I weighed 88.6 lbs and tonight it reads 93 but that can't be because all I've eaten is a bagel and some peach yogurt and a cookie. Once again, it's probably just my thoughts weighing me down.
4. I get drunk to cope too often. I'm afraid one day I'll need help. Not because of the amount I drink, but the reasons behind all of the empty bottles.
5. I told you how afraid I was to open up again. I told you how vulnerability kept me from you for so long but I couldn't imagine any more what if's with you and I didn't think you'd ever be capable of making me feel this way so I squeezed your hand and overcame my fear.
6. Your bed started to feel like home a lot sooner than I expected it to.
7. I cried when I read what you wrote about me. I don't know how to take it. I don't know how I should feel about all of it.
8. You're different than when I first met you. I mean, I know that I have changed completely as well, but I hardly recognize you. I feel like I am getting to know a new person I've just met, which is actually sort of nice when I really think about it.
9. It took less than nine weeks.
10. I left all eight of my Harry Potter DVDs, five or so of my books, numerous ponytails and tic tac packs at your house. I'll have to get them back eventually but that will feel like a breakup and we were never together in the first place.
11. I always quote myself. I've always said "I've never been good at closing doors." This is still true. I can't cut you off. But a wise girl once proved to me that flipping the switch and cutting off emotions is a good way to keep my heart safe... When you came back into my life, I had every wall up that I could manage, but when I let one come down, I let them all down. I didn't have any protection or security. I was open. Open. Open. Open. Open and hoping not to get robbed... You either keep all of the walls up and hurt someone or let them all down and get hurt. Where's the middle? I need to find some sort of atrium.
12. I'm not good at not being a writer. Sometimes that's the best way to describe it. I couldn't think of how to word the previous truth in simpler terms or in relativity to the reality of it.
13. I told you about how my parents were addicted to pills, you saw the scars on my thighs, I fell asleep next to you and woke up still next to you. Did you realize as it was happening, how big of a deal that was for me?
14. Your justification was that you thought you meant less to me. WHAT ON EARTH MADE YOU THINK THAT

Don't question why it's four A.M. and I'm chugging
beer and wine and whisky.
It was the only thing keeping me from crying on your floor
while she guiltily tried to kiss me.
Don't question why I kissed her back through my confusion.
It was the only way to avert my eyes and maintain the illusion.
I couldn't bear to see the way your palms might look upon her skin.
Don't question my wide eyed numb limbed giggling pretense.
And how dare you call it salty or bitter or
anything other than exactly what it was.
Don't question my sad stumbling walk when you know I've got a buzz.

I'll drink wine in a different floral mug each night of the week to trick my kidneys into believing it is romantic rather than cataclysmic and I'll walk the graveyards like I don't have the dates and names memorized already and I'll call the moon a 'she' and watch her disappear and I'll never stop trying to impersonate the squeaks of your swings when my voice feels unsteady.

Ninety-seven pounds and a stitched mouth…



I feel so heavy. I tried not to eat today.

Two waffles (without syrup) for breakfast,

a raspberry white chocolate scone for lunch.

A bowl of potato salad to hide the suspicion.

An M&M; cookie to munch on.



However, I don’t believe that this is the kind of heaviness

that cutting my calories can fix,

for it is my thoughts that are weighing me down.



A few glasses of wine might make me feel a little lighter.

And, on the contrary, perhaps shattering

a few light bulbs might make things a bit brighter.

You know the old saying,
"You want your cake and you want to eat it too?"
Well, you see, I love to bake, and I love junk food.