Sometimes it’s easier to close your eyes even when there is light to guide you.

Corrode my honesty and
Jab my heart out with a sharp, split piece of glass.
Stick it deep in my muscles and tissue and bones.
Hurt me so much that you don't want to cry anymore.
Darling you can't help who you are by breaking me;
I'm not your piñata.

You left your words on my lips.
I’ve heard this song before.
You kissed the ink, then you kissed me and left a stain on my cheek. It was like spilling tea on paper, leaving it more crinkly and stiff than before.
You felt everything through that ink. You brought life to it, nurturing the words you wrote. You tugged me into them and dragged my brain on the floor until I was bleeding and wanted to leave. You are a whole different person now.

Poets live two lives. One is in their heads and the other is outside of them.
Poets write their mistakes down in sorrow. They give you all of their love so you don’t make the same mistakes they did.
They love you deeply; a kind of love they often can’t afford themselves.

You kiss the ink as it sinks into a crisp notebook. You stitched me into your mind and bound me to your thoughts. You run circles around your own brain, sewing up loose ends in every corner, frantically organizing your mind.
You kissed the ink, then kissed me, and left a stain on my lips. It dried like a tomato in the sun.
Only the tears of a poet can leave such a stain.

Your love terrifies me.
The second you touch me, through words or with hands,
I solidify like a marble muse placed on a pedestal
To forever hold its pose.
A muse scared of being judged by its audience.

I'm afraid of your love.
I think I know that it is so powerful it could help me, and
I have grown too comfortable in my sadness.
Sadness and sequestration, they are my comfort zone.
That is why you are scary.

I get so tense every time.
Every time you offer yourself or see me for who I am,
Each muscle in my body turns to glass and I
Breathe in sharply before holding my lungs.
Why are you still here?
Why haven’t you gone?

Knives are falling around me and you
Hold a shield above my body.
Can I trust you? You trust me.
Can I trust you with my mind, though?
Because if I let you in and you let me down,
I will be shattered.

In your palm I could safely be held,
But I’m slippery and I know it.
Partially and insecurely I sit like
A crumpled piece of paper hidden under layers of skin.
I crouch in the fetal position to protect from any external attack,
But I can’t hide from myself.

My love, you are an unstoppable force.
The power of your big and beautiful heart carries you.
I only wish I were whole enough to embrace you.

Hold the rhythm in your palm.
Share the mountains we build instead of
Focusing on the rhythm we killed.
These shards of shattered glass dig deeper in our skin
And we can’t climb out of the ditch we have dug
So we may as well hold each other.

The world won’t stop spinning.
The sun won’t cease to rise and set.
There is only so much time left for us in this world.
Please, please bare with me.
I don’t want us to die.
I don’t want us to die.

I wish we could have lived while we were still alive
Instead of dying while our hearts still beat.
Our hearts still beat.
Our hearts still beat?
They will never be aligned but imagine if they were.
Share the mountains of rock-solid and
Dusty dry emotion we put upon each other
Instead of focusing on the rhythm that we could have shared
But shot down instead.
This is my pain with you.
This is how much it hurts.
God I wish it didn’t hurt.

I feel like I am burying my own body beneath dirt and pebbles and my hands are split and bleeding from sharp edges of the rocks but I must keep my head above the ground because once it is buried I will never return. It would be so much easier to just fall asleep under the layers of ground that will protect me from the predators who come to hurt me when when I am tired and asleep at night but I must stay awake no matter what. I must stay awake.