Place your heart in a jar. Bury it beneath the cold earth in the garden.  The all-consuming heat will still reach you.

2. Tell the butterflies they are free to leave your net.  You don't need them any longer.  They stay regardless.

3. When you are sad you will cry tears salty enough to float in and you will find yourself in the very depths of the ocean.  When you are happy you will cry tears sweet like a late summer peach and you will nestle among the clouds.

4. Place a cherry pie at the foot of your bed.  This will lure the monster out from beneath.  You find you feel ready to have a conversation with him.

5. Revisit your heart out in the garden.  Has life bloomed all around it?

This is how you will know you are in love.

Come close to me.
Let our skins become one in the same.
Fill my curves with yours.
A four-legged creature made of love and heat.
Dress me in your sweat.
When you breathe soft words into my mouth I will become putty in your hand and when I place my fingers on you throat, you will do the same.
When it's you and I in a dim room, new universes are created.

Come dance with us.
All glowing skin and long hair.
Come dance with us.
You with your gentle touches and sharp eyes.
Come dance with us.
With all your deep cutting love and laughter like a coyote in the night.
Come dance with us.
Bearing your toothy smile,
Offering your kindest words,
Compassion dripping from your mouth,
Blood dripping from your hands.
Come dance with us.

Sweet soft angel.  You make death seem so lovely.
You sing so heavenly and your grip is tight.  A siren in my own skull.  When I lay my head beside yours, desire and fear bleed together.  When I come to you with a knife in my stomach and you greet me with a twist of the wrist, I won't hold it against you.
Please keep singing ever so softly.
I'll come back for your embrace as soon as I can.

In my most calm and still moments, your face comes to me like a caress on the cheek.
My soul turns a deep pink-red for you, even if I favor a forest green.  When we are together my heart grows with yours like a mess of tangled ivy.
Fast.
There is no one else.
Hold my hand so we don't float away.
How do you make me feel so human and so celestial at the same time?

Let me be made of love.
I can be an oasis in the desert.
When the clouds roll in, let me be shelter.
Let my hands be gentle enough to mend a butterfly's wings.
I will listen like the moon.
I will love like the sun.

Autumn, when you kiss me goodnight, please don't invite the monsters into my closet. Tell the cool breeze, "Careful not to knock her off her feet when you ruffle her hair."  
Please don't burn my tongue with cider.  
When the leaves begin to turn, remind me not to blink.
Please love me as the summer days do.  I want to love you back.
I will admire your colors and make a poet of myself on your dark days.  I will bid farewell my plans in flowery meadows and bask in your moonlight, dancing like a witch.
Bathe me in cinnamon.  I will be a spirit dwelling in the orchards.  Just please, please.  
When you kiss me goodnight,
don't forget to close the shutters so my heart isn't frosted in the morning.

There once was a girl
Who lived in the woods.
She liked to explore
Far more than she should.
For once she found a cave far down south.
But to her surprise,
It was naught but a mouth.

There is a boy
Who believes he's a ghost.
But really he is just paler than most.
His only friend is his mother
They talk in his head.
"You," she tries to tell him, "are not the one dead."