summer poetry kills us now.
Lemon.
like, lemon on your tongue,
but you love it
like, and you wish i wasn't so ******,
and i wish i wasn't so ******,
it's ironic in the way we keep living
i stopped calling
i stopped praying
cigarettes on my skin, that magic 8 ball, what'd it tell you?
stop asking me why i leave so often.
but hey, the last time your horoscope got it right- it hit you
along with every shot you took that night
singe, we singe our skin, chemistry converts calories and
today my bus almost crashed. almost
it goes something like, the unprecedented laughs we hadn't heard until its over
its over

To the woman who should be .

I know it won't be alright.
Maybe not this time.
Maybe not the next.
Maybe not in the next 10 years.
And maybe, just maybe not in my lifetime. Probably.
It's the things that I have done and that I did so recklessly that were the seal of fate.
The red wax on the envelope.

But to the woman who should be ...

Please just be happy.

the night
your mom walked out the door
in her paisley dress,
she brushed you off her shoulders so easily,
it made you wonder how long she had been practising.

you still think about how
you weren't the only thing that fell off
the peaks of her bony shoulders;
birthday cards, goodnight kisses, home-made banana bread,
these things lay dead on the staircase she walked down too.

so you try to be kinder;
wait for me to finish my sentences;
make me pasta dinners when I come home;
all messy hair and tired eyes,
so exhausted from trying to love myself.

but I want you to know
that you don't have to love me too hard;
don't have to shove love into my crevices,
to make up for the love your mama never gave you.

so be kind to yourself;
try to get out of bed at a decent time,
make yourself some hot cereal for breakfast.

stop waiting for me to come home;
for my voice to echo through the hall and fill up
the empty spaces in your heart;
the ones you always trip over.

put on a new shirt,
go outside,
and sit by the park bench;
you can always go back
to writing poems,
like you used to.

stop waiting for me to come home;
stop waiting around for someone to love,
you can fill yourself up first;
and rip out the weeds that lace your lungs;

I'll be right beside you,
armed with metaphorical shears
and tangible kisses,
but you've got to promise me,
that you'll learn how to love yourself first.

i) do you remember? that night in the abandoned theatre; we were two bodies in the dark, tugging and pulling at each other; at all our rough edges, hoping to smooth them out, so we wouldn’t cut ourselves with the jagged bits.

ii) when the stars came out, we sipped on lime soda by the lake and I asked if you would love me; all ripped jeans, and messy hair. You laughed, and planted a hickey on my chest; I left it at that.

iii) why didn’t you tell me you preferred soft and meek; not loud and roaring, the way my voice filled up the empty rooms in your house. You could’ve told me you wanted peony pink not plum; that you wanted the moon, not the sun.

iv) but darling, I wasn’t meant to cave, to shrink, to make myself small.

v) so no, I’m not sorry, that my opinions occupy most of the space in bed, or that sometimes, I like kissing with my lips tinted cherry red. I will not apologize for my reluctance to get down on my knees for you; the last time I checked, you were not a ******* pew.

vi) and each time you kiss her neck now, I hope you remember what it was like to kiss mine, I hope you remember each and every groove that lies along the edges of my spine.

please,
do not compliment me
or speak in tongues of hope
because I am not worthy of such reassuring things

I am constantly reminded by every other
that I need to work
for worth
and I haven't even
punched in
on the clock
with you yet

so instead of letting me relax
and ease in gracefully
put me to work like a slave
because that is all I know
and anything else
must be fictitious

The sky is three shades of blue tonight, fading into one another, creating layered horizons. I painted it myself with the hopes that someone would see and understand. Sometimes I think I'm the only one that can see the difference in the shades. Sometimes I forget that I have to share the moon. There are lights from cities in the distance filled with people that I'll never know the names of. Everyone lives a different reality.  I don't exist in any of theirs. This world around me is too big and open to take shelter in. I retreat to the safety of the forest, the only home I've ever known. There is a certain peace I cannot find anywhere else. I take comfort in the stillness and the silence. I climb to leave the world below and everything it holds behind. Only after my feet are no longer touching the ground do I feel truly free. I have longed to be held by the trees' branches, but never by you. You only take up space in my thoughts and leave me feeling a way I've never been able to put into words. I don't want to put it into words. I want back what is mine and all you've stolen from me. I'm not myself when I'm with you.

I hold nothing against you.
These spines are in my chest
clutched like a sacred heart grenade
with fingers too close to let the blood through.
Driven in desperation
cyclone of nonsense and the neurotic
marred by nothing and marred by all
and the red dash trenches
with no man's land slowly decreasing
but too many futile-over -the-tops
for far away victory.
Fruitless as the wavering charge
one step forward
two hundred back
Stalingrad psychosis.
Shell-shock guilt and the stark reality
of one's own mind and the prisons it builds.
Peace is a forgotten word
not even whispered in dreams.
Freedom drowned in the mud.