I think my life took a vacation
Didn’t give me a letter
Just a feeling of something missing
I didn’t notice for a while
Kept moving along, not thinking
To look back to make sure
Somewhere I lost all the people
Who loved me for all this time
Maybe they went away too
I know I am a lot of work
Everyone needs a break
But its been a few months
I wonder if they left for good
I guess I couldn’t blame them
I don’t want to be me either
It’s exhausting trying to love
Someone so broken
I keep praying for everything to
Return and to have missed me
But they never do
I think maybe I will give my notice
I won’t be returning

My world is sometimes a confusing place
How do you slow the thoughts when they
Suffocate the thoughts from reaching your mouth
I want to say all the things I feel but they
Cannot be put into thoughts, twists of the mind
Who is the one behind the whirlwind that rages
Through my mind, I don’t recognize this girl
She is quiet, a mute ghost of the real me
How can I know the real me?
I am a patchwork of women
The hurt ones, the broke, the happy, the mix of me
That cannot be explained by words
Language is never enough for me
How many must I learn to describe the way I feel
After a glass of wine, I text him
To miss someone, an impossible task
Will someone slow the world so I can think
People become one into the grasp
A tipped can of moments that I cannot tell you
So many memories that can’t be remembered  
Teach me the words

When I heard his voice
Crack on the phone
I knew
I knew by the burning in
My chest, the tingling in
My fingers numbing

How your whole world
Can change in one phone
Call how was I supposed to
Know I had to fight

The appeal was the ease maybe
I was naive to think you could
Be everything I wanted
And also never leave me

My therapist told me today
I have abandonment issues
So why do you think I begged

What else can I do when everyone
Else leaves me to not expect
You would too

You scared me, yeah
But more than that I had flashbacks
To days where the only thing I
Could say was screaming into
A yellow pillow

I skipped a class this morning to
Hide my swollen eyes
I don’t know if they are staring
But it sure feels like it

There is no better word than
P a n i c

I felt my entire rib ate detatch
From me, it float around my body
Scraping my skin from the inside

My bitten fingernails can’t
Scratch my skin but if they
Could I would be just muscle and
Blood vessel

You don’t know how much you
Need someone until they want
To walk away

Please I said
Please don’t leave me
Everyone leaves me
You promised
You wouldn’t be the one who hurt me
You promised
Please don’t give up
Don’t give up on me please
Why can’t you say you love me
I love you
I don’t want to lose you
Please
Please
Baby please I love you
Do you still love me?
Why aren’t you saying anything

make yourself sick
become sick, head and body
wear your family's regret like
a badge of honor
make them sick themselves with worry
hold your father's sadness between
skinless fingers  
kiss the wrong boy and then another
kiss them until they leave
watch people die without a goodbye
fail and cry because it will not lead to success
hide your tears behind wine glasses
develop an addiction and another
hide the liquor bottles
run into class late for the forth time this week
wear ***** clothes instead of doing laundry
forget to eat for days
stare at the moon and sun and stars
feel so distant from the world

then you can write

Do you remember the sunset
When we were sprawled across
The wooden beach furniture
You held me, kissed my head
Whispered into my ear
"Lets have *** on the beach"
I smiled into your kiss
He wondered months later why
I cried every night of vacation
But, he doesn't know you and me
Spent our last night in love
Toes in the sand and a joint
Passed back and forth
You couldn't stop touching me
Every part of me, inside of me
Turning my stomach into knots
I melted for you
How can I tell him that the
Ocean will always be ours
You left a week after we drove
Back in the dark
The sea salt smell fading
You stopped looking at me
With stars in your eyes
So, yeah I cry when I see the
Sunset over pale sand
And I can't tell him why

Maybe this is as happy as I'll ever be
Maybe I'll be happy with someone who
doesn't make my skin feel like its on fire
But one who makes me feel like a warm
blanket is wrapped around my shoulders

Maybe I'll be happy with the guy who
pick me up from the bar instead of the one
I'll have to drive home high out of his mind

But what is happy really?
When I was with him my happy was like
bursting flames, my happy was adventurous
and emotion brewing, fights, screaming, and
make-up ***

So, maybe there's just two kinds of happy and
the happy I am now is a comfortable happy
A happy that maybe I can spend the rest of my life
being and I hope he finds a happy he wants to spend
the rest of his life being

Maybe this is as happy as I'll ever be, and maybe he'll
never be happy, at least he wasn't with me

Last night you told me
something I've waited
8 months to hear
You said you were sorry
for hurting me and that
you missed me too
You told me how much
you regret how we ended
our relationship
You asked for me back
I missed kissing you more
than anything in the world
It was just as passionate as
the day you left
When I begged to kiss you
one last time before you go

And then I woke up  
When will I stop dreaming
of you my love?

Enthralled by your significance
and the way you are and aren’t
all at once.
And the way I am and am not
when you hold my hands.
Did you know that your hands
are like small houses for the
unsightly curves of me.
You smell like the sound of a
front door at 5:31 and music
that makes me forget I’m driving.
Your existence is not my purpose
but believe it or not I find some in
the thought of sleeping with you
and your warm feet.
Everyone leaves but I hope God
knows that you can’t.
You can’t leave because I will leave
and become am not again.
I want to be am but sometimes am
is too much. When you aren’t and I
am not we can be that small part
of the quiet that is and isn’t.
Maybe your eyes are brown but
your smile is green in the iris
of your gaze.
I never wanted to say hello so much.  
So hello.

you told me once
that i absentmindedly
wrap my hands around
you when you change.

like an instinct to hold
you. it makes sense
now that you slipped
out of my grasp so
easily.

my mind, my hands
knew something
before i did.

that you would leave
and never come back.

i miss the feeling of
wrapping my hands
around you the most.

I didn't write for months
Maybe I was happy
The boy with pretty curls
And soft words

A lack of inspiration
In a calm heart
Like echoing silence
Resonating to my bones

His eyes are so warm,
I am safe and secure

And hollow
Do I want to feel pain?
Or maybe just something

I don't trust the quiet
When the reverberating
Of sobs still shake in my dreams

I see a car on campus
Maybe it is the boy that went
Of course not though

The rough drafts of my poems
Are not full of our love story

But the one I can't stop telling
I don't miss the pain
But inspiration that flowed
From finger tips bitten raw

I stopped writing for months
And no one saw
Cause happy me is just me
With a silence where the screams
Used to sleep

I’d slit my arms open for you
Let the blood soak the wood
Watch it spread like you did
When you were sleepy and
My bed was just too comfy

Every drop of blood I have
I’ll pour in glasses across the
Counter-tops you used to kiss
Me on top of at seven a.m.

I don’t need the pumping in
My chest if you are not here to
Hear it beat against your temples
In the middle of the night
When I’m sick and you don’t sleep
To check my fever every hour

What’s the point in blood if my
Heart is still in the backseat
Of your car, next to the shoes
I forgot to get after the beach

If it would bring you back
I would deal with the cold of
Uncirculated skin and freezing
Lungs holding their breathe until
You say you love me again

Fill your limbs with my bleeding
Take it all and warm your
Mind with the feeling of me
Back in your arms, through all my
Essence I don’t need without you

My fingers unlaced your skin like ribbon,
flowing warm satin down my palms into spine

When you pulled me closer, your hands
became part of my hips, unmovable

The way your thigh was an extension of my
clenched fist and my legs and yours tied in
a messy bow,
cold feet and scalding chests
and fixed jaws

In a singular moment from you changing
to my back against the wall and vague texts
canceling dinner plans

We could not go out when we were more
conjoined twin than happy couple
the only double date that night was our lips
exchanging moans

Maybe tomorrow night we will see friends

My happiness found a
new home in the clouds

It taunts me that a drought
is here and will be long

The rain will not come
for many months  

I am alone in the sticky
cold sadness of the winter

When I write to you,
I imagine you are laying in my bed
reading over my shoulder
I think that maybe you would be
sad to know how hard my life can be
You would rub my arm
Proclaiming "How dare she talk to you like that"
Or "You're better than that new boy"
Sometimes you apologize for hurting me
Or sit in silent solidarity for the hole in my chest  
Today I watched the you that is never actually here
count my veins and arteries perfectly arranged on the floor
Turned to me "Why do you hate me?"
I told you I could never
You hold the vein that belongs in my hip
"This is where you loved me, where my thumb fits,
where I held you"
The vein is empty
I ask what you expected, you left me months ago
Your eyes make me want to apologize
I ask if you still love me
But, you are always gone before I get an answer

The clothes on her floor are always covered in regrets
Maybe that's why she walks over them when she flops into bed

The ones that smell like heartbreak are unfolded in the bottom drawer
She sleeps in them, the scents fueling her dreams

A pile of his shirts that look like him and smell like home
Sleep next to her like a missing person

When I visit, I borrow the hanging dresses that remind her of happy she will never feel again
They feel like her skin is on mine

I listen as she cries about  missing him
I tell her about how much I love her only when she sleeps

Oh you know I keep on runnin
And my heart it can’t stop thumpin
I just can’t stop

We’ve got all of these issues
Baby gets some tissues
I have to say a lot

Forgive me for the blatancy
But I could use some urgency
When I say I miss you
I mean for you to run

Give me your best
I’ll forget the rest
All these days they fly
So tell me why

I lost you a long time ago
You don’t love me like you did
Next to you I feel alone
But our house is still my home

Kiss me like you mean it
Love me I have seen it
When it’s good and it’s good
Now it’s bad so let’s go back

Your mom bought
me a gift at the beach
She asked me to go
shopping with her
and your sister
Instead we went back and
i put on a pretty dress
We took the family car
and found the best burgers
on the island
The juice dripping down our
chins made us laugh
You took pictures of me
next to the palm trees
The wallet your mom bought
still hangs from my keys
And the pictures with the palm
trees are still my best smile pictures
And the memory of the
juice on your face
is still my favorite
But the last time i wore
that pretty blue dress
was the day you left