i wrote you a poem
where i’m scared to say everything
for fear of seeming too open.
where i loved you without embarrassment
or agitation
or sudden fear.
i wrote you a poem
where you were shining—
the sun looked like you tonight—
so i cried
staining ill-fitting clothes
on an ill-fitted body.
i wrote you a poem
where i showed you the admiration
i hold quietly inside
in tender unspeakable dreams.
i have countless dreams
sleepless feelings
of you and to my dismay
i drift to sleep
with your name floating above my forehead like counting sheep.
i wrote you a poem
where you smiled
and your tear drops fell,
up sprouted a garden.
i harvested your flowers;
put them in my hair.
i wrote a poem
where you care.

all nights bathing in the print of my own shadow
flow
in the same rhythm;
the same continuous rhythm
slithering
grasping onto its victim.

how dare i let myself sleep
in wishful periodic dazzling daydreams?

i taught myself how to be alone
now i cannot relearn how to reach out for someone’s hand in the light i so erratically disguised as the dark

you may call me a coward for being incapable of reaching you,
but the ship you rode onto my shore
has suddenly started to drift down current
and i cannot save you with it.

it’s inevitable that i will have to let you drown.

i am continually alone in a crowded room
an immovable mass.
the time creeps
slow with a soft begging—a hard press.
it hurts my bones to sit still
and the time won’t move
won’t move
won’t move.
it doesn’t move ever
and i’m sick, bland, and alone
i don’t need sound to fill the space,
but this pains me in a way i cannot describe.
i have sat in crowded rooms with the pain pounding on my stomach
and i look like a strange life form that doesn’t belong
and everyone else does
and that’s why it is astronomically harder.
the silence is permanent; it will seldom leave my side
it’ll leave me in its wake and i’ll be a body
lost to the immense unknown of the ocean
wash up on your shore
and you can hold me
and you can tell me the quiet doesn’t make me who i am?
you said, “it’s not in your bones—the need to speak everything you feel”
and i just told that to myself because i have myself to hold.
my loneliness is everlasting and violent
i belonged and i ruined that image for myself.
my slow ability to start feeling like myself around people i adore
but i mess it up every single time.
i continually hold my tongue for fear of faux judgement.
THEY AREN’T GOING TO HURT YOU
THEY INVITED YOU PLACES
THEY CALLED YOU SWEET AND FUNNY
AND YOU MATTERED TO THEM
AND YET YOUR TSUNAMI WAYS DROWNED EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
YOU DESTROYED THEM.
YOU DEMOLISHED THEIR VILLAGES
AND DEVASTATED THEIR LAND.
YOU ARE EVIL.

they told you to book it in the opposite direction
with your back turned
never glance behind.
but you didn’t run
your feet stayed stationed, loyal soldiers
digging into the never-yet conquered land.
i made myself smaller,
a beautiful thoughtless daydream for your sharp obtuse thinking
but you weren’t even vicious like i made it up plainly in my mind.
i exaggerated your feelings
now i’m the only one left reeling
with my brain a foreigner in my own skull.
they told you to run,
but you stayed and hoped i would change.
forgive me for loving you in a psychotic way
where i locked up my affection in a jail cell
and never let it see the light of day
for your crystal-shining eyes
to see my true stance on you and us.
forget me
for your life could blossom if you free yourself from my shade
that prevents your soil from bringing up flowers
construct me a tower where i can hide
and you’ll never have to see my revolting face ever again.
they had told you to book it,
to blast down the road
and never look back
but you turned around
and smiled,
showing pristine white teeth,
and said you wouldn’t be leaving
because you had realized you loved me.
you were too naive to assume that i would accept that kind of adoration for myself
so i left you under the flickering street light
and when i looked back,
i could just see you crying

your lover wears silk and paints her nails.
her hair is blond.
meanwhile i was blind to your longing.
you laugh at my jokes
while she dances in restaurants with her model-like accomplices.
she’s spring,
i’m a winter chill climbing over those limbs of yours i long to lay beside.
does she make you laugh
even when the jokes aren’t funny
even when your nose is runny
and even if you spill out too much of you
would she adore you just the same?

i wanted be your accomplice, your right handed woman.
the fiery blaze to your cool gentle waters.
i wanted to be the woman on your mind, late night,
when you realize nobody gets you like i do.
i wanted to be the woman who made you feel alive
when we jumped over fences and hid behind trees
and you had to turn on the heat to ninety degrees
so you could warm me up
because i was shaking like a fragile fly in water
bobbing up and down
loose legs, aching head,
i wanted to be the woman you picked instead of the noose.
i wanted to be the woman who was your getaway driver
after some kids chased you down a grocery store aisle
and out into the parking lot
where your friend showed me his toy gun
and he started shooting it
i wanted to drive around and just listen to you move your tongue
up and down
and back around
and hear your speech become louder and louder
while you laugh at my jokes and i drive with no lights on because i lost track of my mind when i saw you
sweating at eleven p.m. with your hands raised up in surrender
and you told me i could be better at following you.
i think i completely blacked out when we played hide and seek
and my feet were sore and quiet as i hid behind the displays
i wanted to be the woman who wasn’t it, but she tagged you anyway.
i didn’t want the night to end
i didn’t want to lose my head
i wanted us so dearly to just be best friends
i didn’t want the night to end
i wanted you to invite me inside
but instead we talked cereal and tv shows and nothing
and i wished that you would’ve realized something
that you were the eclipse in my sky to shake me awake
the beginning to my ending
the hello to my goodbye
i would’ve been the woman
i would’ve been your man
i would’ve been the accomplice to your stupid crimes
i love you desperate and pathetic and sweet
and i don’t do love
but you brought out something in me
i never thought i would be
and that is one word and that word is complete.
we’ll keep jumping fences and loving so reckless
and maybe one day i’ll be everything you wanted
i occasionally reminisce on my real life experiences that feel like pipe dreams
running and running like dogs in the countryside
one day i won’t be terrified to hide the fact that i love you
i won’t be dying to be someone i’m not
and i will just run with the wind
and not run from my worry
or my fear to connect with humans so vulnerably
one day i’ll get it, my dear accomplice
but for now i’ll sit here with my stream of conscious
remembering and forgetting
and loving every second
and being the woman you hand all the credit
i’ll be the one you cross towns to find
avidly searching for some kind of person
who makes you smile even when you’re done hoping
i’ll be that girl for you, i won’t be a traitor
i’ll pick you up screaming on a saturday night
and i’ll save you from all the juvenile fights
i won’t leave you stranded,
i’ll reach my right hand out and never let go.
i was alive in a moment of time
and you were the kind to my uneasy mind
and now as i write this, i think of us fondly
oh darling, do we sparkle in your point of view?

i’m sorry
that i crumbled walls that we built standing up in a time of depression
an immediate regression
of faults and “i’m so terribly sorry”
you could’ve held me
i could’ve been your girl
if i didn’t take the sharp end of the sword
and push it in your back
as you let out a yelp
i’m sorry i wish i would’ve asked someone for help

to help bandage you up
those broken twisted bones
i was selfish
and opaque
i couldn’t let you stay
in a haven built just for my oppressive skeleton
build you some magic
then take it and grab it
and force it away
now i’m stuck in the same
pattern of anger
and “i knew you better”
no one can fix this
not bandages nor warm weather

i’m so sorry i’m selfish
i turned us to dust
no, i never loved you
i just wanted to be loved
someone to touch my back
and reassure me
make sure that i am the one in their favorite dreams
about becoming the hero
and being superior
you scraped your knees on my concrete
my hard rock consistency
you shattered my pattern of irregularity
but i never made it over the wall we built
with our sweaty fingers and our puffy cheeks
till it crumbled at my feet
and i slowly stepped over it
just for me to see you
stuck in the rubble.
you reached your hand out,
but i completely ignored it
i’m sorry, my darling, i hope you don’t hold it
against me forever
cause i would’ve loved you better.

i could’ve loved you better.


i should’ve loved you better.