I spell “I love you” on the lines of your collarbone

and I always try to go from one end to another,
brushing calligraphy strokes with my tongue
and blotting your skin as a page with my lips.

I never really have finished saying it,
and I guess I never will

my motions are lost among your curves
and my lips almost always end up
meeting yours somewhere in the middle.

I’m awfully homesick, but

people always ask me the wrong questions.

It’s always
“Where is home for you?
Where do you go?”

The thing is,

“home”

isn’t a “where” question to me.

There is no mere
longitude and latitude
that can locate home for me,
my home is not cemented into the earth.

Home is a “who” question.

Who is home for you?

Where there ought to be brick and mortar there are bones,
where there should be couches and beds to rest on
there are arms open to embrace me.

I find home in no establishment of carpets and china cabinets,
I find comfort and solace in a person.

So, my dear,

you

are home for me.

And I’m homesick.

Wait.
Does she not trust you?
Have you tried looking at her differently?
Maybe she had trusted too many people in the past
who broke her trust. (And her heart.)
Maybe the last guy she loved, told her the same things
that you did.
"Don't worry honey, you can trust me."
"Hey, I promise you I won't leave."
Maybe she's pushing you away because she knows
how this is going to end. (she'll be hurt again.)
Maybe she's too broken to try again.
Maybe she just needs some time (or forever.)
Maybe she just needs herself right now.
Or maybe someone who could love her better
and remove all her fears away.
But you won't understand that obviously.
(because you won't stay.)



(Nobody ever does.)

Nobody tells you
it is okay to call yourself beautiful
it is okay to smile at mirrors
and it is perfectly fine
to say your own eyes are pretty

it is wonderful to love your waist
and your legs
regardless of their size
and you are not conceited
if you use your fingers to list
everything you’re good at
rather than point
at all your own flaws

you can acknowledge you’re smart
and that you will go places
and you will be someone
greater than your mistakes

you can’t always expect
other people to believe in yourself
for you

Somewhere, right now, soulmates are meeting.
Somewhere, right now, lovers are departing.
Somewhere right now, a lonely man is sipping the last drops of his fifth bottle.
Somewhere, a daughter is watching her father drive away for the last time.
Somewhere a little boy sits with a therapist locking words under his tongue.
Somewhere a blade is being introduced to raw flesh.
Somewhere, right now a young life is being put in the ground, with a psychiatrist pondering at what he could have done to save her.
Somewhere right now, pettles are being ripped from flowers by hearts wondering if they're loved.
Somewhere right now a nurse is changing the sheets on what used to be a death bed.
Somewhere right now, a ship is sinking into the bottom of deep waters that don't promise revival.
Somewhere right now someone is crying out to a God who doesn't exist to listen.
Somewhere right now hands are being held in the back of churches in remembrance of loved ones gone.
Somewhere a song is playing that brings tears to the eyes of ones who haven't lived long enough to feel.
Somewhere letters are being sent to houses that are vacant.
Somewhere doors are being shut in the faces of those who have never known what its like to crave loneliness.
Somewhere there are all these things.
I'm here, you're there.
I don't know where there is; but its lucky to have you.

I constantly find myself reaching out to the side of my bed where you used to lay, and disappoint myself to have even set an expectation that I might have been able to touch your skin. I won’t lie, I've let myself fall asleep in the arms who have dared to hold me, but they've never felt like you. The day I woke up alone to a single sun ray beaming on my cheek, I realized that I held love in my hand almost as tightly as you held the door handle the day you left & I guess that’s been sitting on my mind for so long that I forget to welcome in any other thoughts. I let myself hate who I am, because you couldn't love me the way I thought you did. I hear people talk of love as though it’s the sweetest thing they've ever tasted, while I sit there listening with a bitter blandness on my tongue. I find myself clutching onto bottles of ***** and pills I never end up popping, almost as though my hands have the habit of holding on too tightly to things that aren't good for me. The problem is that I've never found this feeling in anything else but you. I've never longed for something so badly to the point that without it, I can’t function. My knees are so heavy, my head is constantly spinning I try to see the reflection of your face in the windows at night when I play your favorite songs. I write with my fingers in the snow till they go blue, messages to remind me this isn't permanent so that when the sun comes out and they melt, they will have been proving it all along. Trust me when I say, numb fingers can never forget the feeling of something so warm. And kissed lips will always remember the ones that made them tremble.

I hope you believe me when my I tell you my body is composed of more than a skin and bone frame.
My body is a picture book of times stained to me like tattoos of memories unable to be washed off.
If you stare closely enough my purple knuckles tell a story of walls caving in on days I can't remember.
My fingers are a light shade of skin because they have traced bodies who's pigment fell in love with my hands.
My palms are empty from receiving and giving a little more than I should of let go; some things I should of clutched onto for longer.
My arms are made of clenched embrace and have a scent of regret laced from wrist to elbow.
My shoulders hold individual carvings of finger nails and teeth marks from more than one individual night.
My lips are a discolored red from every poison stained mouth in which they've met.
My neck is a canvas of rough hands, ropes not tied tight enough and purple stains of affection from those who have lied about loving me,
and my eyes have turned grey from staring for too long into the forests and oceans they've met at three in the morning in the caves of unfamiliar faces.
So if you happen to walk into my room, don't be alarmed by the smell of apathy. Don't concern yourself about the bottles buried and broken under mounds of clothes that reek of Marlboros. Don't turn the light on, and don't open the curtains.
I have lived long enough, my body will tell you the story.
But before you read it, please trust me when I say "there is more to me than this."

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

The road behind bares us a backdrop, too many nights find us fractured in our thoughts and the dreamers we once were are far from the two people who stand today.

We're broken, mere splinters of our shipwreck past, driftwood on a shore that drowns every time the ocean breathes.
The path is littered with slaughtered dreams that didn't bleed.

As time and tide wait for no man shall we find it a tragic scene?
simply erased with the sunsets demise?
No one gets away without a scar and mine speak a road map to chaos
and a found hello to you.

Mine own scars are fingertips
gouged into the sand and faded
but salted by tears of the ocean, inerasable by the tide.
A soul washed up upon the shore, a road map etched delicately into fine bones.
You can trace where I'd been before. All roads lead to your hello.

In broken lines and have uttered phrases and one too many empty night.
Backdrop of chaos does paint in the darkest colors you could ever imagine .

How does it gets so flawed by our own creations and vices my dear?
Does it still ring ever so true?

The bell rings true whispering distant voices
Empty nights are just bottles lined up as dead soldiers
We contemplated our own truths and fell victim to our own vices
The backdrop is black, no colour beneath skin.
Honestly? Where does our downfall begin?

Two ships underneath the nightscape past the spark once understood the flame and nothing more .
In empty alleys, like cats to prowl, we find our moments, and then bury our thoughts to lay for no others to see.

half written papers and half heard conversation the keys of the piano haunt the silence as myself shadows that still remain.

Nothing is but a thought and those are like dead flowers laid to waste a reflection of far better times

The night crawls to meet the day as it has so many times before.

The thought of the minds bottle lay empty upon the table.
A fond farewell is but a sugar coated goodbye.
And I seldom have minced my words to mask their sting.

The page forever bleeds.

Pages that lay scattered on a ***** floor
Bleeding ink into cracks
that will forever more
hide the spirit of our souls.