I never believed you when you said
that you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
until now.
You are too poisonous to be anyone’s cure;
did you know that I didn’t
need anyone until I met you,
or that before I never once
cursed at the stars because
I forgot what it meant
to love myself?

Please stop whispering
my name at three in the morning
and weaving Foxglove laced threads
through my heart
and don’t even think
about kissing my hands
or murmuring your darkest secrets
while you sleep next to me because
you don’t need me
and I’m as tried and tired
as my grandmother’s splintering rocking chair
of you needing you.

You are not mine,
you were never mine,
not for seven days
or seven hours but
I felt like you were mine
all those times
when we would lie under my favorite apple tree
and we were careful not to touch hands
and you told me all those things
you kept hidden from everyone else.
Why did you tell me all of those things?
Be honest.

I was so careful not let
my cheek brush yours
when I hugged you,
and I never looked at my phone
before I fell asleep or when I woke up
because you had already grown like dandelions
in every part of my life, and I wanted
to be careful that you were not
the first thing that crossed my mind every morning,
and the last thing I thought about before I finally
drifted off into sleep, ensuring that you’d
always haunt my dreams. I was so careful
to not let myself
fall in love
with the idea
of you.

(But I did anyway.)
(Maybe I wasn’t so careful after all.)

I absolutely hate planes
but I love airports.
It’s because I hate sloshing stomachs,
empty eyes, and broken bones
but I love freshly cut sunflowers,
kneading bread, and healed paper cuts.

No, I am not okay
because I’m a bush airliner
and you are an entire airport;
I am constantly failing to make myself
into something lovely,
just a landing pad.

I can’t make myself into a home
or even find a place to land
because the harder
I try, the higher I fly, and believe me when I say
I do not like
to fly.

I only want to land
somewhere new
with you. I want to be loved,
I do, I promise, and I promise
that I don’t break promises
like planes break bones.

Everywhere you kissed, my skin burned
but, you quickly backtracked
and healed my skin with your hands.
I should’ve stopped and warned you
that it wasn’t okay for you to reopen wounds
that weren’t your fault
and then heal them all at once,
but everything was blurry and slurred.
I didn’t mind.

My heart and my mind constantly let me know
that they don’t enjoy being at war with each other.
I would like to relieve them,
but I don’t know who to let win.

(Please, don’t kiss me like that ever again.)
(I don’t know what I want.)

He doesn’t owe me the very breath I just savored
so I yell at the stars,
“I think He owes me a favor.”
He does not.

Yet, there's mercy.
Even more, there's love,
and still I spit
on jewels wrapped in burlap
I don’t need You.

What more, I plead and bargain
for light to peak through a crack
in the crevice of your soul
that cannot feel, nor love
because precious, precious jewels wrapped in burlap
do not compare to an explorer’s find of Alexandrite
in the cave I call your soul.

A fool, an explorer – one in the same,
there was not one jewel in burlap,
but many.
What imprudence! I still long for
one glimpse of Alexandrite
hoarded under hate and lies,
deception and malice.
What nerve! To demand for
light to leak in caves
that are not mine to reconnoitre.

An explorer is a demitasse
for when she is graced with eternal diamonds
she selects coal instead.