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.

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.

Begging to be heard by the deaf.
Begging for warmth in the winter.
Begging for recognition by the blind.
Don't you remember?
I'm autumn.
You're the leaves.
I'm the reason you fall.

I am so afraid that the longer I stay in one place the more people around me will come to know and understand me and the thought paralyzes me

Am I pushing them away because I can’t stomach that level of vulnerability or does it really take just a few quick months for people to learn to love and then get sick of me

I want to run away and start again but I’ve already done that twice and both times it’s taken less than a year to start to feel that way again

Is that empty weight in my chest really called loneliness and why is it that heavy and how long do I have to carry this around for
how far across the world do I need to drive and how long do I need to disappear to remind myself to stop packing these insecurities at the bottom of my suitcase when I go

I'm so ******* tired of chasing after you
My feet hurt
Run to me

I know I don't tell you ever so I know I don't say it nearly enough,
but the way you touch me is unlike any other being has or could-
the softness your hands hold make me feel like a flower, and you're the bee, stopping by for a quick moment to kiss me.
I wish you wouldn't fly away in the evening and I didn't have to wait until the morning to be kissed goodbye.

I loved her because she made me a morning person; we'd wake up and make peanut butter banana toast and have days to spend together before night fell.
I love him because he makes sleeping in until noon feel productive, his soft sleepy breath like an oxygen tank, and when he pulls me close, I no longer feel the freezing air around me. My blanket of yellow and blue flowers isn't nearly as warm as his precious hands, the tapestry he covered the window with blocks the wrong source...
I love him because even at noon, when the sun is directly overhead, beaming its brightest and fighting to be the center of attention, he makes darkness feel like heaven and I swear I could sleep forever.

the muchness of people only starts to bother me when I don’t feel like enough
And I wish I could honestly say it was all your fault the way I sometimes act like it is
but I know my agression and annoyance is only a response to the emptiness
A need to feel something and it comes out as attacking and I belittle you and make you feel small knowing it won’t make me feel bigger or better only more bitter at the way
that you love.
The way that you look at me through soft eyes when I’m ******* you
The way you feed me when I take and take and purge it all back up and say it’s not good enough to appease me
Your patience when I’ve pushed you away with rolled eyes and locked jaws
I can hear you silently standing up for yourself
Knowing you deserve better
Kinder
Softer

I know my soul does too

These clenched teeth have snarled and growled
I hope I’ve never bitten you
But your hands are so giving
and so forgiving
So long and gracious and always outstretched towards my cheek
as you turn the other one
away from me

The sweet Venus fly trap of life

in these words I hope you find wings
or tenderness
I would open my jaws and set you free if you ever asked
but you are the sweet flypaper in my life and if the roles were reversed,
I wouldn’t have a reason for leaving

"Do you remember when you used to love me?"
"Of course, I never stopped."
"I'm so happy to see you...I'm so happy you're here...I'm so happy to see you."
Hunched over pools of pink on the concrete I used a bar napkin to dab your tears.

You looked up at me on the dark street and I saw a lamb in those droopy eyes.
You looked up at me from white sheets and I saw Vegas in your smile.

some nights i have dreams of ventriloquist dummies leaking ink and tsunamis washing over me and some nights i have dreams of you leaving me and sometimes i wake up crying hysterically but never because of the dolls or waves

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

all at once
that's how everything hits
But don't worry, broken bones will soon be masked by morphine

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.

I know your soul is drenched and the water keeps rising inside of you.
I know you're worried about your lungs filling up and your veins exploding from the pressure and your brain floating around in your skull.
But I know the worst pain is still in your heart, the only part that's dry, cracking and swelling and pumping too hard.
But you're not the flood, you're not the cause of it, and you're definitely not the destruction caused by it.
You're a great swimmer, with long flowing red hair, eyes like the ocean and a smile like the sun, rising beautifully and brightly at the end of a long storm.
You're the help, the relief, the last bit of hope.
Let the water wash away the heartbreak, the anxiety, the sorrow.
Let it revitalize you.
Let it be the end of an exhausting era, and the start of a serene one.

I wanted to tell you that you have nice hands
but before the words could casually come out of my mouth,
they were stifled in my throat and my mind was consumed
with the thought of how they would feel upon my skin;  
lightly running them through my hair,
or firmly grabbing my hips and pulling me closer to you,
or gently and delicately caressing my scarred and
imperfect body with your soft touch.
I wish I could sculpt your hands,
every line on your palm, every vein in your wrist,
a smooth marble replication of my favorite part of you.
But art would still be incomparable to the real thing.
A sculpture could never capture the reality of the feeling I get
when tracing every indention and wrinkle and crease
with my nervous and trembling fingers.
I'd much rather the genuine and delicate warmth.
*They say palms tell stories, I hope one day yours will tell ours.
And I hope that the lines on your hands read that you belong with me.

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.

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

I can’t write anymore because the only word that comes to mind is “her” and that word is not mine anymore.

I thought the nineties saw the last of leaving voicemails
I thought we left that mess of feelings back at the apartment on that bed
I thought I left your mind as well
I always felt we left too many things unsaid
You toggle back and forth between opening up and closing that chapter
You probably think the same of me
There’s an unparalleled sadness in getting rid of a book you didn’t get to read

Bliss was sitting close on the cerulean carpeted floors between colorful bookshelves at the library. As she skimmed and scanned for artistic advice and techniques, I was intrigued by the history and works of Michelangelo. We exchanged alluring glances and subtle smiles between the silent absorption of information. I carried her books for her from the checkout counter to her car.
Life was a fairy tale, a fantasy, a novel in the romance section.

Contentment was cuddled next to her on a mattress with one hand wrapped around my torso and the other gently playing with my hair. She told me not to let her forget that her library books were due soon. She excitedly exclaimed that we'd have to go back and search for more.  
Life was the occasional poem she allowed me to read and the words that spilled from her mouth in sweet songs.

Angst was asking her to come to the library with me to search for a good book because even in forced silence I enjoyed her company. I was nervous that her response of "maybe one day" was a premeditated broken promise and that her feelings had faded like the inspiration for my old stories that have been tucked away for years in the attic.
Life was a mystery novel with cliffhangers and hidden clues.

I traced patterns on her shoulder with my fingertips and studied her face as she stared silently at the ceiling for hours.
Finally, with a somber voice and blank expression, she spoke to me.

"my library books are overdue."

I'm beginning to think that her abandonment is as well.

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.

I don't want you to think of me when I'm gone if it hurts to reminisce.
File the details in the back of your mind and please don't pull them out in fear of forgetting them, for they will only feed the already heavy heart.
In a few weeks, or months, or whenever you're ready, really ready,  I'll have them here for you to read and recollect.

I always freaked out when you licked my face and nostrils and tried to kiss my armpits and toes, but secretly enjoyed the attention and slight aggravation because i knew one day all of it would end, so I tried not to overreact every time in case you decided to actually stop for good. I knew I'd miss it when it was gone.

I liked to shower with the lights off but you had to let me get in first.

I loved your shoulders and wrists and rubbing them softly through the night with my fingertips.

I tried to cuddle you every second i could but i think I put off so much body heat it was hard for you to sleep.

I watched all of the Kevin Gates and Logic interviews because i knew you wanted me to be interested in them because you were.

I wanted to take you to see the ocean and every sunset.

I didn't mind holding your hand and the steering while at the same time, although i wished sometimes i could nap in the passenger seat or be the one shoving fries into your mouth at midnight.

I drank every bottle of wine you bought for me and saw the conscious love in that simple gesture.

I wanted more than you could give, more than anyone could, more than i could give myself.

I wanted nothing more than to be able to love you and for you to love me back in the same way.

I was insecure and worried that I wouldnt ever live up to the first idea you had of me.

I love you. I don't want you to leave. But I will feel so pathetic if I fight for something I know you don't want anymore. I am trying to make this easy although it is killing me.

I wonder how long you've been waiting for an excuse to leave me..
I wonder if she is worth throwing it all away with me. I hope so. Genuinely.
I wonder if she is even the reason.
Maybe I was just too clingy, too needy, too crazy, too much to put up with.  
I hope that if she is the reason, there is longevity in your relationship.
It would hurt even worse if I let you go and you still were unhappy.

The thought of you not wanting me anymore breaks me.

Your kiss on my shoulder through my soft denim shattered me.
I ran away, like I always do, and I sliced my foot open and it still took everything in me not to turn around and run to you.
I even tried, I almost made it, but I turned around again.
I will not fight someone who won't fight back.
.

Perhaps I'm awful at keeping a steady rhythm because I'm terrified of what note the future holds - it's so unpredictable, constantly changing and shifting and shaping.
never knowing exactly what or when whatever "what" is, will happen makes me hesitate on how I will react.
Every time I think I'm on the upbeat I'm reminded that life is not always a perfectly composed song.

I miss the poetry of it all
not just reading it, of course that too,
but feeling it, the romance of a paper cut from the opening of a bottle of red wine called "california dreams"
showering and the light switch turning off, a thoughtful gesture, sending waves of comfort and oblivion
watching hands conducting folk songs  in the front seat
laying on roof tops, recreating ideas from Tar Beach
I'm yearning for that youthful prose I used to write about all the time
feels like ages ago

I can't shake these dreams that wake me with salt in my mouth and puddles on his chest
I wouldn't stray far enough into the dark to call them nightmares
I won't dare call them out by name
I'll go deep enough to whisper that they make embers glow again but I'll close my eyes before I scream at the moon or the corpses I'm lying next to
I'll wander hesitantly through the dates again but I won't admit that my mind might as well be buried with them
Am I in my head or in the coffin
Maybe the one I used to sleep on remains unmarked only because it's waiting for me to finally get some rest
Or maybe I just need to hold my peace I guess

I tried to be strong for you when your mom died
We cried in the car in the driveway next door with all of the lights off
I held your hand up to my mouth and kissed it
We sat in silence and sobs for a long while before we were ready to go into my own moms house
I hug her tighter now
I wonder if you wish it were the other way around
I know I would find it hard not to

I see her in your stubbornness
Your silliness
Your vices
Your voice
Losing her is like losing a big part of you
Like losing a big part of myself

I wanted more years with her
But for now I’ll water her ivy and always wear patchouli and watch my mouth when I want to say “god ******” and maybe dance a little more in her honor and make grilled cheeses with mayonnaise instead of butter and sit outside on my porch more often and make sure you sweep up your crumbs that I know you are tired of hearing about

We can’t gang up on you anymore like you always claimed we did, I laughed every time you told me I acted like her in little ways, I just liked being on her side
I liked her being on my side

I’ve never felt more special in my life than knowing and feeling her approval and love for me

I want to be the woman she saw in me. I want to prove her right, that she knew all along there was no one else out there for you, besides me,
for me, besides you.

I know in my heart that there was not a more special woman in this world.
I wanted more years with you.

October
I feel that I have an unconventional belief/idea of love.
• To love is a verb, I think it's more an emotion rather than a permanent state of being.
• It can be used and expressed in different ways for different things, but it is all the same love. I may love some things or people more than others, but it's the same feeling. I love my mom and dad, I love reading, I love lasagna, I love the feeling I get when something is more amazing than I originally thought it would be.
• Love isn't a serious thing. It's okay to say to people you may barely know or at random times.
• Contrary to popular belief, I don't believe that you never stop loving someone. You can be in and out of love with someone, at points people are worth loving and at other times, they are less deserving. And I don't have to love them in that moment.
• Love is temporary. If I love a boy tonight, it doesn't mean that I will and/or must love him in thirty years, or six months, or even tomorrow morning.
• I am capable of loving several people simultaneously because several people may deserve my love at that time. It's a feeling that should be shared and expressed whenever appropriate and there shouldn't be consequences or guilt associated in sharing it.
• I don't believe there comes a point when you cross the line of liking someone to loving them, this line to me doesn't exist. You are not aware of the moment you fall in love with someone, because there is no definitive of love or falling into it.
• Love isn't a fairytale, myth, or fabricated term. It's real.
But I think the term and feeling of love is more romanticized than anything.

April*
Oh God, I think that I'm in love and everything has changed.
• Can a simple emotion really have this great of an impact?
• This is different from any other emotion. It's stronger and it hurts better than the love I have for coffee and ***** and my stepsister
• Love, it's a thing. And even though we were drunk when we admitted it, it still meant what we wanted it to mean.
• I won't ever stop loving you because you're never not deserving.
• I will love you tomorrow morning, and in six months, and in thirty years.
• It can't possibly be temporary because there are visions of us growing up, around, and into one another and still being happy together in the future
• Love like this isn't felt with everyone. I could never look at anyone the way I look at you. It's not something to be shared, it's special and specific to one person.
• I think I fell in love with you that night we laid on the mattress together and I traced the lines in your hands with my fingers.
• Love is when what you want finally aligns perfectly with what you need
• Love is what I feel for her
• And it is the best ******* feeling in the world

This morning I woke up smiling.
I kissed your cheeks.
Every tiny thing about you inspires me to write stanzas,
But who wants to read a poem entirely based on the way your face scrunches up in the shower, exposing your pearly whites while you grab loose strands of knots from the suds of conditioner
Or how in awe I am at the sight of the beautifully constructed transition of your chest to your neck and how I envision maroon little passions marks along it every time I stare at your throat vibrating when you speak, and your strong hands on my shoulders, hips, everything.
The way you smile seductively to get what you want and how I never thought you'd be that good at making my knees weak enough to buckle and bow down and give you every thing and every part of me I can muster up or hold in the palms of my tiny hands.
(I actually teared up today while looking at you but you don't know that because I was hogging the water and your eyes were closed.
For a moment I thought you must be the physical embodiment of the perfect human polykelitos wrote an entire novel and carved an entire bronze sculpture trying to create and bring to life.

-----

This morning I woke up and you were smiling. You kissed my cheeks. You told me you liked my cheeks. You gave me butterfly kisses and butterflies in my stomach and you left little maroon passion marks along my neck.

I don't think my body has ever felt more euphoric.
We fit together like Tetris.
Your body felt sacred.
Our passion was electric,
both of our souls pure and naked
just like the Greeks and then Romans painted.
Sometimes I feel like our love is geometric.

They say everyone has a chance
for eternal life if they accept Him.
They say "the blood of Christ will
make hearts white and cleanse them."
What about the girl whose heart beats
for another girl under her sheets?
Or the boy who was born in sin
lusting over and loving men?
Who makes those sinners well?
If love condemns me to Hell
then I want no part in this holy land
because I only feel heaven when I'm holding her hand.
And if that's wrong
then I don't want to be right
because her blood will cleanse me
and make my heart light.
So call me Judas Iscariot
or nail me to a cross
But love is a battle I've fought and fought
And I won't take this loss.

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

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 was just one autumn of many to come
Just a change and something new.
I was just one winter of your life,
Enjoyed only for a short while, and then wished away.
I was no more than spring to you,
Nice, but dull and simple and ordinary.
Just one summer,
A break that would soon come to an end.
Eventually, you yearned for
a new autumn,
           a new winter,
                      a new spring,
                                 a new summer.
Like seasons,
Love never lasts.

The most groundbreaking moments in my life have mostly been the minute connections I have made with other mortals, the ones that made me feel small while making my heart feel like it was growing inside of my tiny chest, like my organs were running around, making way, like my rib cage disconnected, tried to move, and eventually would break, like my veins were stems of flowers, and I could see the petals growing in the pinks of cheeks and across my pale chest, I felt the stitches, long gone now, from my twenty year old scar would rip my torso open right down the center and expose the heart inside, honest.

But my heart doesn't swell the way it used to, and my rib cage fells like its sinking in on itself, like the my organs are running and squeezing themselves into dark corners to avoid being attacked by the shards of ivory.

When I look into the eyes of a girl I know I'd have been enamored by, if I had met her at an earlier time, I only see the glare in her glasses. I sigh at her misfortunes but check the clock, noticing how slowly time passes
when you're unable to understand someone
looking at their palms, the way their fingers move,
wondering why my mind is feeling so numb...
My heart feels like an empty rim, missing the face of the drum.

I have not been to the cardiologist in six years,
I'm afraid he will tell me the stickers on my skin told him my secret,
when I smile they see my skeleton,
when I sing they see my gums,
that's why I listen with my mouth closed and protect the illusion with a hum.

I have not flossed for a long time either, afraid they will find the plaque in the trash, pull it out and reveal inside this furnace is only ash.

I was not looking for you, but I am so glad that I have found you.
I thought I was lost, and then I realized that cuddled on a mattress on the floor in your bedroom, with your hands on my waist and your lips on my neck and breathing to the sound of your heart beating through your chest,
is exactly where I am meant to be.

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 should melt every time I hear your laugh.
I should crave the gentle touch of your strong fingers.
I should swoon over your hazel eyes, your soft smile.
I should have held your hand, walking through the flowers.
I should have let you kiss me on my doorstep.
Because maybe you could be good for me.
Maybe I could learn to love you, if I tried hard enough.
Maybe I should try hard enough.
I've been looking for a simple solution
and I've finally found you,
so why don't I want you?

Most nights I do not have to suffer the silence of showers in solitude
I am usually blessed with the sensation of the feeling of my fingers catching the puddles of water
drop by drop
that roll off of your torso,
like the hungry in a dumpster
like a lamb and a lion
like an 8 year old trying to grasp the difference between a metaphor and a smilie
like searching for the last dandelion of the season
eager and starving for it

I battle the drops spilling into my eyes to meet your grimace, teeth bared and eyes shut tight, as they win the war on your front, cascading down your lashes and curls and nose and jawline.
Even in this state, you look delicate and beautiful.
I've always said you were a work of art, a painting, a statue.
Like a sculpture on a frieze on the Parthenon. Or at least a roman marble copy.
Or at least you make me look at you that way.
I always slyly look up in hopes that you're returning the gaze when I'm not looking...
That's when I lose the war, with drops cascading down my lashes, and my curls, and my nose and collar bones.

Tonight your chest was bare and maybe you finally conquered the water
But tonight I'm showering with the lights off, under the distortion of the glow of pink lava ebbing and flowing from behind the curtains and I don't care if I'm alone or standing in an army of soldiers
I don't care if I win or lose
I'll let the stream rush over the contours of my face and mold it until it becomes a grimace or agonized or etched into wry
like it once did the very ground I walk upon and I'll let the steam fog the mirrors and leave dew drops on my shoulders until my bare chest turns scarlet and I crawl into the covers forced into silence

We can't ever snap on beat
We started drinking chianti
I've been having beautiful dreams
And today snow filled our Louisiana streets
We're on the upbeat of swings
And there are people I want to meet
and things I want to see
"And miles to go before I sleep"
And love to give before I leave

How do you throw the good away at the chance of something better?
What if the grass is filled with snakes and glass on the otherside?
What if I'm scared?
What if the risk ends up not being worth it?
What if what is good is good enough?

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.

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.

'Souvenir' comes from the french word meaning remembrance. It is an almost universal behavior to collect tiny mementos while traveling, some tangible object that holds all of the intangible memories and joy that came with the moment. Souvenirs are a quite lovely sentiment when you really think about it - before the plastic and mass-production and tourism industry come into the picture. In Japan, souvenirs are called omiyage, which travelers bring back home to loved ones and friends as a sort of apology for their absence, a way of saying "sorry you couldn't make it" or "wish you were here."
Today, the top ten most popular souvenirs are ornaments, t-shirts, postcards, shot glasses, tattoos, sand in a bottle, fridge magnets, tea towels, key rings, and random gifts. My mother has chosen to cherish the seventh most popular form of souvenir: fridge magnets. Manmade refrigerator magnets were popularized in the 1960's for educational and functional purposes but very quickly evolved into fun and inexpensive decor. She has so many state shaped magnets from all around the US, and a few from outside of it.
The thing with my mother though, is that she has always been a self-proclaimed homebody. I sometimes worry that she has agoraphobia but I think most of it is just that she never really had the opportunity to explore the world outside of the dead end street she grew up on (and still lives on to this day). She was raised by her grandfather who was a merchant marine and traveled often during her childhood, but she married and had kids at a young age and never really had the time or money to go on her own adventures. She was a stay-at-home mom to my four siblings and I, as well as to all of the neighborhood kids. Her door and arms and ears were always open for them. Now those neighborhood kids are all grown and so am I and they're off having their own kids and I'm off having my own adventures, but we all make a point to bring her back a magnet from the places we visit.

The wide variety of magnets you can find in a single gift shop in every city surprised me at first. There is now an art to choosing the perfect one for my mom - I went to four different shops in Portland, Oregon trying to find the perfect one. I never found the perfect one but still, that's dedication. I stray away from the boring traditional ones with the state name and shape (although this type is one of the less creative neighborhood kids go-to) and try to find ones that will make her laugh or show her some of the culture or sights from the city instead.
A green-eyed squirrel from North Carolina, a candy skull from Cancun, the mysterious Bigfoot from Washington, a sailboat from Maryland, a front porch with a lamppost from Puerto Rico, manatees from Central Florida, and entirely too many Los Angeles cityscapes and Smoky Mountain bottle openers adorn the kitchen. So many, in fact, that she ran out of room on the refrigerator and had my dad mount a magnetic board in the kitchen hallway to fit them all.

I know it makes her happy to see all of her children having these experiences and seeing the world but most of the time it just makes me sad that she couldn't be there with me. I hate to think that she ever looks at them and feels like she's missed out on too much or that we held her back in any way, though I know she would never admit that. We bring her souvenirs so she can live vicariously through us, so that she can cherish our memories in place of her own. Even now that I've moved away, I mail her magnets from Florida as an apology for my absence.  
I rate them three out of five stars.

some places beg to be written about
the lighthouse at what feels to be the edge of the world
has always been one of those places.
the desolate trees stretching up to a gray sky, a birds nest resting, teetering at the top of a bare branch
the clouded water revealing nothing of its depths
the fog so heavy - it doesn't linger, it lives there
forcing quiet introspection
demanding stillness
from those who squint through the gloom

at other times, astonishingly, the landscape transforms
monarch butterflies migrate en masse and flutter on the milkweeds
the sun sets, a tangerine looming over the saltwater marsh
tiny ***** dart into their holes in the sand and slowly poke their way back out when the coast is clear

In my memories of this place
I am always looking down at myself, on my bike,
small,
coasting down the winding road that leads to the tower for miles,
keeping up with the kid on his rollerblades weaving across dotted yellow lines
All-seeing, in the act of storytelling,
As if I'm one of the woodpeckers perched in the pines

since when did Seasonal Depression decide that summertime sadness is the new thing
the sun stares down at me as i trudge around blindly and i feel my body melting like a snowball onto the concrete under my bare feet
i have no desire to do anything with the time off that she has given me
and my mother bothers me with questions because i spend so much time inside silently next to her
she spends every day plugged into the living room couch
and my niece is growing older and bolder and her attitude reflects mine most of the time
i want to scream
i want to rip your hair from your scalp
i want to sink my teeth into something
maybe sanity huh
ha

I'm not sure what it means but I notice the difference in how we used to fall asleep together smiling and open our eyes in the morning like our faces never moved throughout the night, compared to the now cold backs against each other and restless sighs when we see the sunlight.
I'm not sure what it means