i wonder if the doors in the house you grew up in
started slamming themselves to save your father the trouble.
i wonder if you can remember the last time you prayed,
and if you had trouble unfolding your hands.
i wonder if your mother knows
about the collection of hearts you hide in your closet,
i wonder if she could tell mine apart from the rest.
i wonder if your shoes know the reason why
you keep them by the back door and not your bedside.
and sometimes, i wonder
if you ever think about that night when i told you,
you wouldn't need to drink so much if you had me.
but it seems like we only speak when you've got body on your brain,
whiskey in your glass,
your judgement is overcast,
and you know i'm too weak to ignore you.
i learned how to translate your texts
from drunken mess back into english.
i am fluent in apology, but i don't ask you for them anymore.
this is just how it is.
it's not enough for either of us
but ******* it we are not above settling.
so i will ignore her name on your breath,
and you will ignore the fact that this means something to me.
i always thought the first time i kissed you,
it would be on your mouth.
i just wanted to be something warm for you to sink into,
something that could convince you to stay a second night.
but i sneak you out in the early morning,
and you take a piece of my pride with you when you go.
i am left to nurse the hangover from a wine i've never tasted,
wondering how this is possible.
waiting for the next drunk call,
for the next time i get to pretend we are lovers,
the next time i get to live out the fantasy i am most ashamed of.
it is the one in my head where you want me when you're sober too.

- m.f.

We are critical.

We find flaws in
everything we see
because nobody
wants to write
about perfection,
even though sometimes
we wish we could just stay
staring into that
unblemished surface.

2. We are never satisfied.

We live our lives upon
mountains of
scrunched up
bits of refill and
ideas we gave up
trying to
express.

3. We never forget.

We write words about
eye contact made
three months ago
that we replay over
and over in our minds
even though it
stopped
being relevant.

4. We are fickle.**

Our emotions flash
from one
to the other
like strobe lighting that
disorientates us
until we feel as if
the world
will never be still.

5. We are exposed.

We don't know how
to keep our feelings
to ourselves so
we'll write them
down for
you to find
'accidentally'.

6. We are vulnerable.

We wear our
hearts on our sleeves
and won't lift a
muscle to fight back
if somebody tries
to break it
because we thrive
from the pain.

7. We will never stop.

We will never stop
feeling and
we will never stop
hurting,
we will never stop
breaking and
bleeding and
loving
even though the cycle
is endless
and we know what's
coming next.


We are addicted
to agony,
but we agonise
for the art.

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

i will stop writing poetry like a eulogy when you start making me feel alive

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

It’s been three and a half months since we last spoke,
really spoke, not just guilty hellos
and scattered half-hearted pleas
And it’s not you, it’s never you
it’s me it’s me it’s me,
but you love
me
you love
me
you love
me

And my head has forgotten what it feels like,
but I know my heart is safe with you

Because you’ve never stopped chasing after me
and I’m tired of looking at my feet, telling myself
I’ll be okay without you, trying to navigate
through a thick forest at night,
pretending I don’t have matches at
my fingertips

You are the only thing
that has ever made me feel truly whole

I’m sorry I’ve kept my eyes shut so tight,
but I’m here now and I love you and I miss you

And I don’t want to keep living
like fragments of a person anymore

I’m Yours.

Thank you for being there

when I fell

or when I swore I was done

when I cursed my own name

when I told you to leave me alone

when I wanted to leave home

when I formed scars on my wrist

when I made the wrong decision

But

thank you for being there

when I picked myself back up

when I said maybe I'll go on

when I praised the new day

when I begged you to stay

when I let the lines of hurt heal

even when I had said it's no big deal

thank you

for not letting me be

1) I am not quite heart broken, but I am something adjacent. I felt as if i stole you away from your body, stole you away from the things that you are comfortable with. I felt guilty and angry that I was the one that you chose to be your first. You were not ready for this and i could feel your body trembling underneath of me as if in agreement to what i was thinking but i let it happen anyway. If there was any way that i could go back and reverse what happened and never meet you in the first place, i would do it in a heartbeat. Because i broke your heart and i was your first.

2. I can still feel your eyes on me when we were driving to the funeral and the way it made me shift my weight in my seat. I wanted to explain that sometimes your love made me uncomfortable but I looked at you and all I saw was him. I choked on the letters rising out of my throat and you told me to pull over so you could drive. You said "you look like you've seen a ghost or something"

3. When you left, you changed your phone number. Now someone else has your ten digits. Digits as in numbers or fingers? Either way, no one else will ever be good enough to hold your hand.

4. Scar tissue can become your literal walls you put around yourself if you try hard enough. Those pink raised lines call for more fabric, less body movement, trying to remain a statue so people can't figure out what you're hiding. But your ceramic frame is far too willing to show your cracks.

5. I drink every night so I can forget you. After you die, your bones take up to 50 years to disintegrate. So for half a century after I stop feeling you on my skin, my bones will still contain you.

6. You twist and crack your back to replicate what it would feel like to snap it, and it scares you to know that it only always feels like relief rather than pain.

7. I am the empty seat in the front of the classroom, everyone notices when I'm vacant but nobody wants to fill me up.

8. When you started taking out the screws that held me together, i grasped onto my structure for dear life as my walls and windows swayed. I turned into the Leaning Tower of Pisa as my frame settled lopsided, too eager to fall with one more blow. I became a tourist attraction with people who come to find out why i don't stand up straight anymore, why i tilt my paper to the side so i can write in a straight line, why i never seem to see things the right way. People take pictures of them feigning to be the reason why I'm so crooked with their arms extended as if they were the ones who pushed me. But they will never know why i look the way i do until they see your hands, dirtied with the rust of bolts.

9. I may be in pieces but please do not take me in moderation.

10. I am the kind of tired that sleep can't fix. My sadness is so heavy that it's hard to keep my eyelids open. I think that even if i slept forever I could still never be satisfied. I am never whole.