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.

despite what you may think
this soul is still janglin
danglin
on the edge
of running towards your closed palms
when I know they will not open for me
I know you'll leave me hangin
or at least I hope you will

I jumped on a trampoline with my sister for the first time today since I was a girl.
It was a strange feeling.
We were closer for an instant
like we were girls again
like each jump towards the sun lightened us
like gravity loosened up a bit
like he laughed
and oh we laughed and laughed and laughed and LAUGHED
the sun wasn't quite ready to set and the leaves were emerald like her birthstone and her hair was long again
and her heart soft and her smile not straight
her fiance looked like Tarzan, the young cartoon one.

i think i know that she's right to marry him
because he felt right on that trampoline
with us girls
like he belonged
like he was always a part of our childhood

i think that's how you know you've found "the one"
when even the memories they weren't apart of
feel like they were experienced together
when you can't remember what it was like without them
when memories of moments in their absence cease to exist

I have a hard time remembering my own childhood.
I wonder what that means...

the sticky taste of metal,
lime,
cholula, and eventually
beer
hits my chapped lips as I hide a tender smile
watching you fight back tears and laugh at how silly you must be for it while talking about your past, thinking about your future,
how hard your dad was on you,
the internal war going on in your head telling you to make him proud by surrendering your own happiness.

your vulnerability pierced my HEART in that moment,
choked me up a little bit;
it's been a while since i've seen that level of sincerity in another person.
I wanted to freeze time and the people talking around us,
reach out a hand, and tell you:

you are safe to cry with me.

Lately I feel
Tethered
Tethered to the things that distract my thoughts like twiddling and texting and

T
E
T
H
E
R
E
D

To the time it takes for you to get home
The hands on the clock rotating round and round day after day, waiting for the sun to set and the headlights to shine through the blinds of my bedroom
Tethered
to the springs inside my mattress
Bouncing back and forth with each toss and turn like a ball on a string
The momentum slowing as it winds down but
Never once touching
The ground

I told you that everything you touched turn to ash.
I saw layers forming, soot, embers, and flurries burying all of the things I treasured.
I was afraid I'd get buried beneath them, too.
I blamed you for the tightness in my chest, my inability to breathe, my crawling skin, and scattered mind.

but a few equations and excavated truths later,
I realized all along it was me.
Like a slow leak, going mostly unnoticed, except for a few small signs, that eventually would lead to an explosion that would take thousands of years to recover from,
I spread this, this disease, seeped into your lungs and skin,
stole your good days and pleasant thoughts,
filled them with my fears and malice that I didn't know were possible to feel anymore,
didn't know were hiding, fragile and waiting to be triggered, inside of me.

if we're talking Chernobyl, maybe you're the fire but I'm the core.

why would you bother asking if i'd like you to stay when you know you're going to leave anyway?
you give me the illusion of choice you so often complain about in the outside world.
why do you pretend eagerness at helping me when I never asked for it, but then refuse to give it when I do?

be the change you wish to see
and let my mind rest independently.

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.

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.

I don't drink white chocolate + caramel lattes, but tonight, I did.
And I put hella whipped cream on it like you asked
and I cried with each swirl: the cup, the espresso inside the cup, the little tulip I made from whole milk, the spiral handled spoon, the can of whipped cream, a fluffy spiral staircase right into the feels.
I took two sips and set it down because there was work to do and smiles to fake but I won't pretend I didn't microwave it later and finish it to the last drop because I knew you would
and I just wanted to pretend that you were there at that counter, caring about every twirl I made behind the bar, like a captain of the ship, as you wrote poetry in bars with every steamy sip.
But you weren't and I'll learn that no matter how hard I try, I just can't do white chocolate + caramel lattes.
You're the only way I want to drink anything these days.
But that's the only way you'll drink it.

Suicide doesn't sound like the bullet that escapes the barrel.
It doesn't sound like the tiny pills hitting the floor.
It doesn't sound like the tightening of the rope or
the chair falling over or the gurgle of water in the throat
or the crushed bones against the concrete.
Suicide sounds like the sigh of relief.
It sort of sounds like hope.

you had multiple options, at first there were so many open doors in front of you, but the longer you waited, the more started closing, until only one was left open in front of you, so reluctantly, you walked in, better than being stuck out there alone, with only a hint of what could be lying behind the door you stepped into.
I understand.
If you happen to get cabin fever, I hope you know that the door isn't locked. And there is no water outside, keeping you here.
If you need to get a breath of fresh air, I hope you know that I will smile with each inhale if you are happier there.

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?

It all starts to get a little heavy the longer you hold it.
I'd like to set some things down, free my hands.
Little by little.
Trivial first, then the troubles.

He wore a name tag, which just so happened to rhyme with mine, and after handing him his coffee, he asked what it was.
What compels a stranger to ask for your name?


I feel so vulnerable with my hair pulled up
Exposed..
Like people are peaking at the back of my earlobes through the blinds and I can feel the warmth setting on the nape of my neck like the sun shining through them
I want to wrap my curls around myself and hide..
Fade..



Did you hear the one about the school teacher who won the sweepstakes to be on the space shuttle Challenger, the one that exploded seventy three seconds after take off and disintegrated, littering the ocean with built up promises and reminders, palms holding faces whispering
"don't let fear hold ya back"




Every January people pray that this year, this year!, will be better than the last, and I feel good admitting that none of mine will ever be as bad as the year the girl broke my heart, my parents broke up, and my first semester of college left me broke. Rock bottom was eighteen years old and wishing they would stop coming.





I'm know you still have fantasies about the girl with eyes the color of the plants she nurtures, how maybe she was the one that got away, how you wish she still wrote to you. It's getting easier to brush off as the time grows. I guess everyone has that person, the idea of them never leaves your heart even if the opportunity has.






I have twenty one voicemails I haven't yet listened to and I'm just - not.
I know somewhere at the very bottom, your voice is waiting for me, asking questions you never really cared to hear the answers for.







I have stored memories that I have never once shared with any one because of how badly they hurt me. I try not to carry the repercussions around with me. I try not to worry my future self by sharing the past with my present myself.








I've always been a collector,
of wine corks,
grocery lists,
small cut outs from magazines,
of sparse compliments you give in passing,
I hold on to every one and still wonder if you think I'm pretty.
I'm still trying to figure out
why I don't accept them in the moment,
how to.










Words come as easily as sleep these days,
usually not at all.
I try to quiet my breath and stop the sniffles so that you don't worry about me, mostly unsuccessfully.
I am always curious as to why sometimes, you'd rather not know what troubles my mind.
Don't ask, don't tell.










I'll let you quietly love, if that's the language you know.











Do you check up on me like you do with her?
Search for my name,
hear my name
with the same ring to it.
I know I said earlier that it's getting easier to deal with the fact that you still have this looming ******* love for her but you know what, it's not.
Not at all.









Sometimes I feel like I'm seventy three seconds away from exploding, disintegrating, littering the world with my broken promises,
the reminder of my failure to survive the pressure.









But don't feel bad.
and don't ask, I won't tell.
I'll let you love silently, if that's the language you know.

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.

Why do you hurt the only people who actually care about you?
Are you too busy wallowing in self pity and misery
to study the detailed mosaic of a daughter's sympathy?
The brightly coloured tiles paint a picture for you only
yet you refuse to even acknowledge the art.
In case you didn't notice:
I was the one screaming through sobs and helplessly begging for him
to stop, even though I knew you hit him first.
I was the one trying to keep you alive when your skin sunk in
and your bones stuck out and your wrists shook with weakness.
I was the one holding your hand while you were praying to die.
I was the one helping you clean the fragments of broken mirrors off the floor
and I guess I should have known that trying to pick up the glass in your heart
would only leave me ****** and broken, too.

I should have showed you love when I had you.

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 like boys."

But I like your soft and feminine hands as they lightly tickle my spine and I love your smooth shirtless body laying on top of mine.

"I like boys."

But the taste of your glossed and pouty lips
and the feel of your thighs brushing the sides of my hips
will forever be my weaknesses.

"I like boys."

But I can't help but cry at the sound of your delicate voice when you sing sleepy and slurred lullabies
or your heart pounding along with your heavy breaths and sighs
and I can't keep my hands from grasping your every curve and limb.

"I like boys."*
But all I know is that I never felt any of this with him.

Yes I'm angry
And it's eating me alive
Because I want to be the one who makes you happy
But the only time I ever see you smiling is when you're talking to her, or about her, or listening to her spanish music on the radio
I'm so angry that I can't be enough for you
I'm so angry
I'm never angry
I'm so ******* angry I can't see straight

I tell myself I'm done until you say that you are not

I'm not much of a woman anymore
sometimes just a corpse lying in the dark while the sound of video games drown out my thoughts
sometimes I laugh with my teeth showing
sometimes
I want to be whole for you
to remind you why you fell in love with those shoe laces in the first place
to remind you how pretty I can be dressed up in lace
but those were the days before we had to be quiet
before I lost the words to say and the will to speak

I drink the quickest when I'm alone
Coincidentally that's also when I love the hardest
Wishing you were all here to listen to your hearts and
I still get waves of missing you
when I play songs on the guitar and
nostalgia makes me smile but in the morning my heart will harden

dreams of tangled limbs and locked lips
soft heartbeats and fingertips
a foreign feeling, and perspective too
I am more than happy to have found you.
Our souls are connected, don't you see?
I have to know, do you dream of me?

I try to be good to you, especially when I cannot be to myself.
I will try to love you most in the times that I cannot feel it.

I'm not afraid to throw away the past few years for the sake of the next
I'll never truly know how I feel or how you do
or if the choice I made was the best
Sometimes it's so easy to say those words in my head
All I know is sometimes I know I won't settle for less
Other times I just deal with what I got handed
and hope you don't feel the same way

Do not tell me "pretty girls don't cry"
I'm not a pretty girl.
And I'm allowed to cry when I feel hurt.
Take your superficial ******* injected phrases and shove them up your ***.
I bet pretty girls don't say **** like that either.

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

I DONT KNOW WHAT IT IS ABOUT YOU
OR ME
OR US
OR WHATEVER IT IS
THAT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE MILLIONS OF PIECES OF MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE HAVE EACH OF MY HANDS TUGGING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS WHEN IM AWAY FROM YOU
LIKE IM IN MULTI PARALLEL WORLDS
LIKE ITS TRYING TO TELL ME TO GIVE YOU SOME SPACE
AND ITS NOT LETTING ME FATHOM WHAT ON EARTH THAT EVEN IS
LIKE NO OTHER LIFE EXISTS OUTSIDE OF THIS WORLD -
OUR WORLD
LIKE YOU LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE I DONT
HELLO
I AM ALIVE
I AM HERE
AND I NEED YOU HERE TOO
AND I DONT KNOW WHY
BUT I DO
CAN YOU HEAR ME

Maybe I've always had trouble trusting others because I couldn't trust myself. I always claimed to have good intentions but it's my nature to be a traitor and most of the time I will ******* over. But I swear to whoever that I'll always be your most caring lover. my actions will never illustrate my words and I wonder if that means I don't mean them. I feel the words so intensely in my bones, but you would never know. Expression has never been my forte. I can't understand my thoughts and I'm even worse at comprehending my own feelings. I'm the monster. I'm the numb and cold lover. I wish I would have found out who I was before I found out who you were. I wouldn't have let you get so ******* in someone who undoubtedly would hurt you. But what does that say about me? god what does all of this say about me? who am I now? what are morals and values and respect and love and genuine tenderness? I can't remember but I want to.

in dreams we hold hands like we know better this time but the lines in our palms will never change
I have to keep reminding myself of that

sometimes i want to scream at the top of my lungs
the way you do in the car randomly
i bet it feels exhilarating when ya need it
but those walls were thin and these are too
so I'm forever left to sob in silence

"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.

Things have been feeling very off for me.
I wake up and stare at the light coming in my window and wish I could live in a timelapse and watch the sun set and rise and set again within seconds that I didn't have to be truly present for.
I'm searching for life's purpose and the little joys in between but I'm tired of looking so it's not very thorough.
I don't want to read books, or play piano, or paint flowers, or talk to friends (not that I have any, anyway) and I don't even have the desire to drink wine all night or try to impress you.
My heart feels heavy and my brain feels empty and really I think the problem is that I haven't been feeling anything lately.
The numbness has taken over and turned me into some sort of zombie that doesn't even have the energy to eat.

there are always those people that you can never abandon your affinity for, the very first poem I was proud enough of to share with people is about the same person i'm writing about tonight.
the one soul I was so close to learning and yet, never got the chance to.
I don't think I'll ever stop trying, however, these days I hear from you on days far and in between.
and that's the way it will be and it's the way it's always been and now it has to be that way but i never wanted it to be.

When I was younger, my dream was to make it to Australia, move there and build a life. I always thought this small Louisiana town was where I was born, but not where I belonged; Canberra was where my real heart and home was.
I met someone.
But that person sneezes and coughs the polluted air around here too.
Lately, it seems the 17 hour time difference isn't far enough from this dusty place I still haven't gotten away from.
Maybe if we could travel light-years, we'd finally be home.
I know he gets close sometimes, in his head.
I can see the distance and I can imagine the world he's built, with waves and petals and jasper, and you can feel the clean and rhythmic pulsing of the atmosphere and the creatures there all roam free and take care of others in need,
the words never linger on the tip of tongues, rather they spill out in poetic truth and your head was always feather-like and the all knowing man in the sky was the one inside your own vessel, and you worried not about what you had to do to keep your pockets full but the simplest form of survival and the currency was smiles
and it didn't matter if there was a slight gap in your teeth or if you ever had morning breath, because it is all so beautiful, so perfect.
It is a dream.

I often wonder if my idea of the place he'd rather be is anything like the one he actually desires.
I wonder if he'd take me with him to this Utopia, had he had the chance to go.
I wonder if, in this perfect paradise, it would be my hand in his.

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.

I'm dipping my paint brushes in my flower's water hoping the natural beauty will leak onto the canvas in the form of your wilting lashes and withering affection
because as tortuous as it is for me to watch the slow growth of your apathy, watching the spread of stems, sunflowers and red little buds that I'm not sure the name of, sitting in a mason jar on my coffee table, somehow manages to  romanticize it enough for me to look at the roots being planted and see the leaves come autumn. If only I could use these tiny tips accurately to articulate how I feel in detail, so that I didn't have to use this tiny voice who always uses the wrong tone to convey how I feel to you. Maybe then you could read the painting instead of my face to know that I'm decaying too.

But perhaps I'm not the flower, I'm the vase that holds it.
Or the "not-quite-a-vase-but-it's-the-only-thing-I-could find" that holds on to you.

A pair of reading glasses I've never seen before sit perched on the counter, singing with that angelic voice I've heard before.
The coffee in my mug starts to swirl.
I have to set it down.
I have to take my flannel off.
I have to look away.

Have you ever heard the story about the girl who started counting seconds between the lighting and the thunder, to see how far away the rain was?

We sat there, two weathered minds, on the wooden swing chained to your porch,
the delicate wind chimes were at war with the tumultuous thunder.
The little metal pipes singing, begging us not to speak.
The explosions in the sky shouting, demanding us to yell even if in comparison our voices were weak.

Maybe it was the tension between us, sitting so close yet so far, not a single space of skin touching, that cracked the sky with white lines.
Maybe it was the shaky thoughts in our heads that rattled the house the way it did.


I don't remember the name of the story, or how it went really.
All I know is that I was singing quietly to the rain and I realized that I stopped counting the seconds between me and you.

What's the point of keeping on?
A few glasses of wine will open up your eyes sometimes
It did mine.
I used to believe the dark days would dim my life for decades, and it did for two of them. After that, I started to see the light.
The light in everything,
In people around me, in their sheepish smiles when they push their buggees past me,
and their drunk texts at 2am when they're up way past their bed time and sleep is singing their favorite soothing tunes, Yet the story in their minds is too specialized to pass up
Like if I don't say it now it will expire and lose its significance in the morning
and that significance is significant
Enough to keep me up past my bed time

The smell of wine at night and coffee in the morning to cure the hangover
The headaches hurt but the memories make me feel alive

The spontaneous conversations that occur every three years when you run into an old friend and thoughts spill like the drinks when you've had too much

Mimosas in the morning and toast with peanut butter and bananas

Alcohol makes living a little easier to be frank

But apart from that

The sound of piano keys is magical
And the sunsets are enough to keep me alive at least for the next few hours

The potential of falling in love, the opportunity to travel the world, to hear Crane Your Neck for the first time again, in a different set of notes

The feeling of fingers through your hair and a plate made for you of your favorite Italian food
And the plate washed because you're tired from the wine
That's what I live for

And if you don't have these reasons yet
You will soon
You will someday
You have to believe that

I bought a new typewriter today
found it sitting on a table made of plywood at our local flea market
the case is falling apart
and it doesn't actually work
but it was cheap
and its an antique and I guess the rust gives it character

The irony is that even if it did work,
I still wouldn't have any words.

The irony is writing a poem about writers block.

The irony is that I already have one that does work, I just hoped that maybe the previous hands would have left a message on the keys that would inspire me to make my own.

But today I am the broken keys and the missing ribbon.

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.

try not to cry while reading the words someone once wrote about you and try not to cry thinking about how they don't flow that way anymore...

Don't worry;
no ones got palms like yours babe
I've only got eyes for you these days
I'm bleeding from my ankles
like the man in that story with thorns in his feet but I'd preach my belief in you anyway
You know I'd lie at your feet and wash them any day.
Just promise that you won't turn out to be Judas, that it's not in your blood to betray
Don't worry, even then I'd forgive you if you at least promised me you'd stay

Somethings different in my head, somewhere along the road of growing up, something changed. I'm not sure when and I definitely don't know exactly what it was that switched and sent me into this intense spiraling, the strangest sensation in my cranium.
you know how when something is spinning so quickly it appears to be standing still?
it's not thoughts.
I wish I could still concentrate on or articulate those things.
Sometimes my head feels like a hive, thousands of swarming bees buzzing, worried only about their honey, when something comes along and shoves a fist inside, grabs a handful, and leaves the bees in a vehement and mettlesome rage. Exasperated and feeling defeated, but determined to please their queen, they never stop.
It never stops.
It never stops.

It grinds it's teeth. It yells "listen to me, do what I say," it yells.
It hardly ever sleeps, and when it does it only dreams of hands reaching - grabbing, jutting out from very direction,
desperately hoping to find something to hold on to.

"Have you ever experienced writers block? And if so, how did you overcome it?"

"Well, you know, I used to write about things that made me happy, basically my reasons to live. I had so many words, so many reasons.
And then I got depressed, and you know, I couldn't write anything.
I thought to myself, how do I find the words? What did I write about before? And so I started writing about all of the reasons I wanted to die.
And everyone saw it as poetic."

And everyone saw it as poetic.