I held it
That cactus of a beating heart
And I thought it was an honor
Thought the cuts in my palms meant something
Marked me as worthy
And the blood running down my wrists to my elbows
Sealed this bond like blood-brothers.
The tears shed when the needles dug deep
Meant I was chosen
I was special because no matter how much it hurt,
I could still hold on.
Reliable, dedicated, adoring, lasting
Loving.
And when others wanted their turn,
I'd surrender over my treasure
Sometimes ginger, sometimes impatiently forceful,
They would take their turn with you.
But they weren't interested in pricking their fingers,
Or shedding tears over you,
So you'd come back.
And in my slashed, stabbed, scarred hands
With needles still stuck in my skin,
I would cradle you.
Pull you up to my chest and breathe in hope,
Only to sink your spines in deeper
Anchored to me.

I thought the pain was worth it
Thought no one could hold you like I could
Told you I'd wait for you to shed those ****** and spines
Wait for my hands, my chest, to be enough.

But you, cowardly heart that you are,
Will never shed those spikes for me,
Trade protection for vulnerability,
For love.
Nor will you stop from wrenching yourself from my fingertips,
Give up the thrill of a new conquest,
The satisfaction of new blood drawn.

And if it's true,
If it was all a lie,
A ruse to buy you more time, more blood,
And if my hands are not feeding me insecurities again,
Then maybe it's time I put you down
And wash my hands.

I thought I was growing tall,
Making progress,
Even if that meant outgrowing you.
Turns out those pains weren't growth at all
They were cracks in my foundation,
And all it took was one taptaptap from you
To make me *snap

I waited.
You never showed,
I'll bet you never will.

I know why now
How just the mention of her name
Makes my skin bubble up and run away
How seeing her face makes my belly button turn into a black hole
How the very thought of her makes me want to crawl under my bed and cower

She is the memory of that day
The day that you came home to tell me
Of your adventures between several women's legs
How it ended with you tangled up drunk with her
How she possessed you, probably better than I ever could,
While I waited for you to come home.

She is the moment I realized I couldn't be with you anymore
She is me throwing myself into a wall
Screaming in agony because words could not express
She is the raw wound still seeping in my chest
She is me collapsed on the floor in my living room
She is you looking over me, helpless and panic in your eyes
She is the moments I never want to recall
Yet there she goes,
Flaunting her existence down the street

She is what I lack.
She is the possession of what I'll never have.
She is admired by the people I crave to know.
She is who my childhood dreamt I'd become.
She is a choice you can make over and over  and over again.

She is insecurity manifested.

And I
Am only me.

Something about this city,
Like amnesia,
You forget me here.

"I'm happy for you."
But I'm not.

Okay, maybe that's not really true.
I'm happy you can wake up each morning
Warm, not alone, safe,
Smiling.
I'm glad that you have someone to go home to,
Someone to sit beside at the bar,
Someone to get brunch with,
Someone to go vegan for,
But I'm not happy it's her.

Something in the way she looks at me
And what she says about me when drunk
Something about her fake glasses
And her fake hair,
And, apparently, her fake smile,
Makes me worry about you,
About our friendship.

When the time comes,
When she asks you to choose,
What's going to happen then?

Because when "someday" becomes "never," you'll keep wishing on stars

Like her mother,
Her desires before her children.

It continues.

We like to say that stillness comes with night
That on hot summer evenings we can hear God breathe
But I disagree.

Summer nights, beautiful as they come,
Are filled with crickets, cicadas, birds of prey, and the sound of growing
They smell of burnt marshmallows and laughter
Bursting with life,
Loud and exuberant.
No, summer nights are not still.

It is in winter,
When death and slumber rule the woods,
Where even our breath is muffled by the cold,
Frozen into puffs of clouds.
The night does not sing as summer,
Cicadas and crickets and owls and coyotes
Calling out in the heat.
No.
Silence basks in moonlight on a bed of leaves
That tucked the summer away in their fall.

It is here that we find the still in the night
The quiet so deep we must look inward for sound
Heartbeats and whispers of breath,
Memories filling our inner ear,
Unable to keep the quiet.
But when calmed,
When frozen still by the cold,
You can hear it,
The throbbing in the dirt,
The heartbeat of the earth,
The subtle zephyrs through naked trees
The breath of gods.

Here,
We find the still in the night.

Strange, the place you've taken us,
Stranger, features once familiar turned vague
Darkness behind eyes once effervescent
Well-meaning lies
To cover up the scent of drowning

You're falling,
And it's not with love.
It's with fear, and chains,
Suffocation and denial.
Not only are you sinking,
A hole in your hull the size of your need for a bottle,
You refuse rescue.

Like sitting on the edge of a wishing well,
The fountain water sprinkling my face,
And there you are,
The penny flipping end over end
About to hit rock bottom.

And no matter how I try,
You keep slipping through my fingers.

Potential.
Enough to graze your fingertips across
The kind that enduces goosebumps
A soft weight dangling from your limbs
A nauseousness pumping adrenaline into your circuits
The Almost.

And now it's over.
The precipice,
The "one ill-timed-slip" into seduction,
The conscious choice to stay on the cliff
To not tumble into selfish indulgence,
This once-favored hang out, gone.
Nothing but a meadow,
Grassy, blooming, safe.

The adrenaline, the temptation, the choice
Vanished.
Nothing but a humid breeze to imply movement
A hint that something was once here, before.

And now, just another memory.
Another secret.

There is something in the play of your eyes
A mischievous glint
A promise of laughter
A whisper of guilt
A threat of tears

Something in the way you move
Like you could be diving into the perfect somersault
Or in front of a bus
Every movement
Like it could be your last

Something in the quiet of your breathing
On nights when we shared the same bed
Something about how you reached for my hand
Even in sleep, present
Peaceful yet turbulent
Your body couldn't stay still.
Even in unconsciousness, restlessness took you from bed
To roam the house at night

More and less
The Paradox

I am the starfish
That has secured itself tightly to your back.
Parasitic, I use your strength to steady me.
Clinging tightly,
Fearing the outgoing tide.
Don't let me be swept out to sea
Don't reach your strong, calloused fingers
Behind your back to pry me away.
Don't leave me for the rip current.

I know you're growing weary.
I can taste the blood risen under your skin.
Even if I lose all grip,
Muscles cramped from the strain,
I'll still leave my marks behind.
Branding you.

You'll be free, lighter even
But all who see will know,
The round in your shoulders bore the burden
So named Anxiety

A cliché I've heard before
One that hits the sternum
And knocks your breath out.
And now it applies to me.

A loving friend pointed it out to me
Handed me her glasses and said,
"Take a better look, love."
And she was so right.

Seeing it clearly
For the first time in what feels like years
I know the truth,
What you see in me.

An option you don't want to lose
But will never make a priority
Above all your other
Pretty, shiny, sparkly, more interesting, more intelligent, more playful, more down-to-****, down-to-party, less uptight, less afraid, less work, less stressful,
Less me
Options.

I see it now
The truth to those drunken words
Words well meaning,
Words of fear and self-loathing
Words of hope and love and longing
Words of promises to keep and goals set
Words that turn to dust when dried out
Words that mean nothing,
Like the dust bunnies under your couch
Just. Words.

Just like your words today,
Telling me you asked someone else on a date.
While I was sitting
Just five feet away.

Life at the bottom of a poisoned well
Can be soothing sometimes
The dim weight,
All that water
Makes for a comforting blanket.
No sudden movements,
No loud noises to shake me.

But there are days
Days like today when all I want is a breath
A gasp of that green breeze
Warm with sunlight
So my lungs can finally feel full again.

There's no fighting that water though
And even if I could,
There's not enough strength left in these withered limbs
To break through the shimmering glass above

So I lay here.

Life at the bottom of a poisoned well
Can be soothing sometimes.

You were the first
And the first man
To tell me you loved me.
But I wasn't the first
For you

And I know
This doesn't make it any less true,
But your love scares me
Because affection you give
Is more flighty than the birds themselves.

Delicate, it is the birdsong.
And I cannot tell sometimes
If it is your song I hear
Or the memories replaying in my mind.

It is the doubt I bear like a cancer
That poisons my mind with fear
And unanswered 'I love you's
I keep my distance now.

I keep my heart safer
No more stumbling about in the woods,
Scraping up open palms
And the heart I so carelessly carried on my sleeve
Searching desperately for you
And your song.

Somehow you dragged me onto your stage
And our personal narrative somehow became entertainment
A Saturday night special in line for review
By the very people I fear most
Your peers
And dropped lines like
"You need to love yourself"
And "why didn't you tell me you were bringing her?"
Become my crimson A of shame
It is on this stage
I can finally see
That my daydreams have become the stuff of nightmares
My worst fears of being judged
Come true.

Someday,
Someone will want to be in just this bed
Laying next to me

And maybe by then,
It'll be worth it for them to stay
Because I'll have myself
Finally figured out.

Feelings are like astrophysics to me
I can't explain them

So when they tell me what I feared
Even if I didn't know I feared it
When they confirm that it's true
There's a whole side of you I don't know

It shakes me

And I'm sorry,
But I can't explain why that upsets me
I can't tell you how I got from point a to point b

Maybe I've got monsters living in my head, too

Fear** is the thorn bush
Seeking refuge in my left ventricle
Stealing all the oxygen from the rest of my body
Keeping me immobile for fright of suffocation
Feeding my brain with insecurity
And self depreciation.

Saying things like
He doesn't really want you back.
You don't really mean that much.
You're an embarrassment.
You're too demanding.
You're too broken to fix.
And who would want to help with repairs anyways,
You charity case?

So you see,
There really is no escaping this
Without injesting herbicide
Or ripping my heart out.

Sometimes, you just know
And you don't want it confirmed.

Even after
All
This
Time

You still captivate me.
Picturesque in your passion
Like a lighthouse,
Channeling your energy, golden.
You shine

And though there are times when it hurts to stare
I can't look away from your flame.

I wonder
Is the earth simply insecure?
Beneath twenty or so miles of dirt and dust
Some places harder than others,
She buries her brilliance.
Her effervescent truth hidden away.

Underneath it all,
She really is a star,
Hot as her sun's surface.
Capable of wonders
And destruction.

Challenge my self perception
Show me that I am not the only vault you keep
And I am not the singular candle in the window
Nor am I your solitary partner in crime
I, alone, do not shoulder the weight of your world.

And that,
Is okay.

The faeries are out today
I can feel then tickling my skin
Riding zephyrs like kites
Dancing on the branches
Rattling leaves like maracas
Crooning like sirens in the alleys
Hear them howl

Fall is on its way

Looking back on how it all crumbled
Now that the dust has settled
It still looks the same
The same jagged, torn, scalding cuts
Sliced into my flesh with a glance
No clinical approach to it
Just a peek, and it burns like hell
A lingering, slow burn
Like the chemical variety.
Fitting, considering your chemistry.

There's no other way to see it.
Your choices that weekend
Still echo in the caverns of my veins
And on slow mornings like this one,
I can't breathe for the striking,
Astringent slap in the face it still is
Like being thrown into an ice bath.
And here I still lay,
Floating like an ice cube, frozen
Asking the same questions:

Why?
And
How could you?

How strange, to stand with our feet touching the same wave

I came to the ocean to forget about you
Especially at night
On nights like tonight
But here you are

And I can't help but think of how I came here to forget you
And I indulge in the thought that maybe
Just maybe there's nothing to forget right now

But then your phone DOOT doot DOOT doots
And it's her. Calling you.
******* her.
You ******* her
You calling her name out
Her calling yours
and it's tumbling out on the locked drawer in my brain
All protection I had built up
Crumbles like the sand I'm digging my toes into
Hoping tears don't come to my eyes
But they do

And suddenly everything is glassy and I can't come up with the correct responses and you know it and I'm trying to keep my breathing even and slow and I'm spiraling down like a whirlpool and I wish I could just lay down in the tide without ruining my clothes and just float away.

But I can't do that.
So I don't.
I don't know what it is about her and you and me
That has me unraveling at any mention,
But it's still too painful to sit down and analyze.
So for now, I'll settle for falling asleep with the TV on,
Trying to stop myself from wondering who you're thinking about
As you fall asleep at night.

Broken promises.
All it was amounted to
Was a string of broken promises.

You're going to meet no resistance
When you decide you're ready
Once you've made it clear that you're looking
They'll be jumping in your way to catch your attention
"Over here! Over here!" They'll cry,
Begging for a moment of your fancy.

I already know,
Don't you?
You'll have no trouble
Putting on the other shoe.

With every sunset
I can see more clearly
That I was the one holding the rope
I was the one stealing your air

I am the reason I'm alone.
But I'm not the only one.

Two broken things don't make a whole.

I know your frame
Too well
For you to be
Just a face in the crowd

You're going to be just fine
You've suffered greater losses
Than the likes of me.
Hell, you suffered for me.
It's only fair that I relinquish any hold on you
Set you free from the charcoal chamber of my heart.
I can feel the grates cracking beneath your clenched hands

Run.
Run from here before I devour your light.

Seek the daytime,
Embrace the sunshine, my friend.
No more rainy days
Here comes the sun.
Just for you.

Since we met,
a day has not gone by



Where I do not think of you.

I will keep writing until it stops hurting.

Even if it's just rewriting our conversations in my head

Over and over


And over

She's a deep breathe of happiness
Or at the very least
She's not sticky with the muck of sadness

I can see it now.
Why you needed them
Your light in the darkness that was my life
Your life vest in my treacherous waters

Baby, I'm the shark.
And the sad fact is
I may be made of fire
But I am no beacon of hope, light, and laughter

It doesn't make you a bad person
To not want to burn for me
Like I burn for you
This is what love looks like for me

But I am certain,
If you ask,
They'll see my shade of grey
and not just your black and white.

I release the smoke in the night,
Not the blackness itself
Think on that, if you will think on me at all.
In the mean time
Know that I finally understand
Why you needed all of them.

This is me
With my hands over my ears
Eyes squeezed shut
Humming sweet lalalalalalalullabys to myself
Rocking back and forth
In the fetal position.

This is me falling asleep with the TV on
This is me hoping it's just a nightmare I'll wake up from
This is me holding out for a hopeless cause
This is me on a bad day

Thank any god that's out there
It's my first bad day in weeks.

It's like some well-kept secret...


Shhhhh, don't tell Evie!

The vest grows heavy on my shoulders
Fuse in one hand
Match in the other
Fingertips practically itching to act.

Why is it so hard to self destruct?
I've got all the required materials right here
Why can't I be just like them
Loose with words and actions
Spreading myself like cloudcover?

They've got me thinking
Maybe if I could just explode
Pulverize myself into tiny bits
In that brief moment
Of becoming nothing from something
I'll forget your scent
Your eyes and your voice
That for a heartbeat, if only just one
Your name won't be pulsing through my veins

Even if it was the last thing on my lips.

Fate can go **** itself.
Here is my mountaintop
These are my curses to the stars
Tear at my clothes,
Scorch my flesh
Plead with the moon
Then nothing
Not even a ripple in the black
Destiny has spurned me here.


If this is what's in store for me,
I ******* give up
Since when has love not been enough?

Funny,
What I'd do to get you off my mind.

I can feel the warmth,
So close I can taste your sunlight
But in truth,
You're millions of miles away.

I could lay there
Soaking in your heat
Breathing in your electric energy
Until I ******* burn
But it won't bring us any closer

Like moons and suns and planets,
Wandering aimlessly in space
Searching down familiar paths
Looking for an answer.

And just like those celestial bodies,
We'll never truely touch
But I can still feel your warmth.

Still sleeping with the tv on


Missing your light snores

Funny how just the mention of your name still makes my blood race and breath quicken.

I look up at the stars


And I see you.

Everywhere.
Cracks in the brick pavers
Branches in the trees
Water stains on discarded cigarette butts
All resembling lovers mid-embrace.

Dizzy spells,
Deep breaths,
Strained muscles,
Respite.

Gritty acceleration of my car
Climbing wrung after wrung
Descending and reaccending staircases

Today
Has me thinking of you
Everywhere

Sometimes I remember what it is to be a muse.

And for that,

I am sorry for the pain I've cause you here.

Keep drinking from that tap
Even when you grow weak
Return still to take another gulp
Make yourself sick from it

But keep going back
Until it ******* kills you.


I stretch my hand out
Red with warm, healing heat
Burning up from my gut
Supercharged by my longing heart

You're just within reach
Let me touch you.

I stretch my hand out
Red with warm, healing heat
Burning up from my gut
Supercharged by my longing heart

You're just within reach
Let me touch you.