Blue velvet flowers
born prisoners in the window
listen to your delicious
candy secrets and
breath them to the universe

You are haunted by
perfume and concrete
slow, lingering kisses
and the salt of her
soft wet lips

Oh, wild things
laughing and blushing
devouring that warm
delicious champagne breeze

That fever and desire
it is sacred
slow
poetry

Kiss me he said
And she did

Just lay beneath the stars with me

Pretending that we're kids again

Still dreaming big dreams

Still stealing kisses

Living back in the before time

When we hadn't yet learned

That some people are like matches

And if you hold on too long

You get burned.

You were all honeysuckle kisses
That led to bee sting lips

The one last glass of wine
that I knew was a mistake

But I drank you anyway

I.

First it’s a look shared through the glass
A window between us

The feeling that passes through me
When I watch him explain the impossible
And make it look easy

Then it’s the wondering that overtakes me
Behind the counter where I’ve lost myself in thought
Surrounded by books that won’t tell me
If he’s thinking of me too

It’s the ache that comes from longing
To hear the sound of his voice
But I’m too scared to call
Unless I’m already drunk

It’s that feeling in the pit of my stomach
Everyone calls butterflies, but really
It feels like too much, just so much

It happens when you start to fall.

And it’s a slap in my own the face
As I hide deeper inside of myself
Because he is beautiful
And I am all sharp edges

He is enough
But I am just not ready

II.

I always find myself going back to you
When I imagine how I wanted it to be
And what I wish I had said

It’s so strange to be here
So many years later
Still wondering if it was you all along

We shared this kiss once
You and I
Once of those steamy
Spur of the moment
You only live once type of deals

I know you remember it too

My heart hurts just thinking about it because
It was always such a blur of wrongtimewrongplacewrongsomething
Between me and you

I guess I never stopped being too scared to call
Unless I was already drunk
It’s been years since I heard your voice
But I am haunted

Everyone makes promises
Pinky swears and vows
Always and forever
But the road to eternity is
Paved with deception

Still somehow I let them weave
A blanket of lies beneath me
False security, holding me up
A net made of spider webbing
So easily torn apart by
The swipe
of a hand

But then I’m falling again.

Spiraling headfirst toward the concrete
And I can’t help but feel
Like this

Is exactly what I deserve.

I remember
when you were young and wide eyed
excited at the possibility of the world
and afraid because it was all so big and you,
you were the smallest creature in a forest full of monsters

still, you had big dreams and wanted
so badly to write something
so unique and profound
something to make people understand you
understand themselves
see that we are all one
know that we all bleed the same
slippery shades of water color
even if the canvas is is different

Fear is an ugly thing and overshadows
and overwhelms, *******
the life out of life
and the colors out of the rainbow that
is supposed to shine overhead and keep
the bad the things at bay

it crawls into bed with you at night and
keeps you awake, drilling
everything that is wrong
straight through your skull and
into your soul like a
woodpecker, never ceasing
never letting you rest

there is so much that is so hard
to comprehend and make sense of
and it is so much easier to let the fear
take hold of you, wrap it's fingers
tightly around your neck
a noose growing ever tighter, strangling
while you struggle until
you have no voice left to speak

It left you choking
out fragments
and run-on sentences into a journal
that no one would ever see
that still makes me burn when
I flip through those pages reliving
the story of my life that you wrote
all those years ago

I remember
when you thought that no one could see you,
so you lived your life like a child
jumping up to see over the counter,
making make-shift ladders out of whatever
you could find so that you could grasp
everything that always seemed so far above your reach,
losing yourself so easily
in a sea of people
because they were so big
and you were
nothing

You words are a time capsule
that bring me back to a place when
when we stared at each other in the mirror
and curled our tiny fingers into a fist
wanting to smash the glass
because
we were ugly

But my words are a time machine,
my gift to you from the future

You are small still,
but the world is not as big as it used to be
and nothing ever comes easy
but your dreams are coming true,
you did not give up despite
believing so often that you would fail and
you are making a difference

I am afraid
because
everyone is afraid, but
I stand in front of the mirror
young and wide-eyed,
excited about the possibility of the world
and when I look at you now, I know
that we are learning to love each other
finally.

She was a sapling,
Small and shaded by
The branches of  
One hundred year old oak trees
Maples and Evergreens

Wilting without sunlight,
The rain never reaching the dirt around
The places she buried her roots

The sky was a dream
Clouds she could not see
Through the thickness
Of birds’ nests and tree forts
Nestled in the arms of
The great plants surrounding
The seedling, starving for sustenance

I was a sapling, dying alone
In a petrified forest
Surrounded by what seemed
Like no hope for hope
No chance for survival

Then along came a woodsman
Or so I thought
Ready to put me out of my misery
Cut me into kindling and
Burn me into my next life

But a woodsman, no
Instead he was a farmer
Come to hack and saw the trees around me
And cultivate my species

Nurturing and sacrificing
He cleared the air around me and
For the first time I found myself
Breathing in

He cut away the branches
Prison bars that held me
Back and down for so long

Released me from a doomed fate
I had nearly begun to accept and  
Because of him I drank the tears
That fell from heaven
And for the first time
Felt alive

And then one day I realized
A farmer you were not
But instead like me
You were another tree
With vines that grew towards
And with me

You brought me back to life
You know
Reminded me of why it is
I wake each morning and
Lean towards the sun
Soaking in her rays
And living

It is Sunday and
there is nothing but the newspaper
and last nights clothing
scattered on the floor

A trail to the bedroom
from the front door
where little feet and big feet
are tangled, hanging off
the edge of the bed

Sweat on your brow and
my ***** fingernails
from when we crash landed
inside of each other

Seeking safety
in the middle of the night
and I can still taste
the salt of your skin
where it lingers

And you can feel me
from your shoulders
to the small of your back
as I trace
with my lips,
the road maps of where I have been

It is Sunday and
there is nothing but the newspaper
and the way you make me feel
like I am drowning
in the sweetest painful joy

It started with a whisper
And ended with a bang
A cliché ending
With a waterfall running down my face
And a rock where his heart should have been

Well I tried to fix the broken things
That ate away at your soul
And in return you looked at me
Like you couldn’t believe that I was real

But I guess you can’t give everything
Because if you do they’ll **** you dry
And it’s just such a sad story
When enough is not enough

I guess you cry. You grieve. You curl into a ball, clutching your blankets so hard that your knuckles turn white, and you let that pain roll through your body like an earthquake, sobbing and sobbing and drowning in that sweet agony that consumes you until you can barely breathe. You let all of the pain and suffering leak from your body and into the world, and far, far away from you.

You don’t eat because your throat is so tight, you’re choking on everything, and your stomach feels like a rock anyway. You avoid the radio and the TV and reading books because there is always a song or a kiss or a quote that reminds you of him.

You wear the same clothes two days in a row, forget to brush your hair and write a lot of bad poetry. You take all of his things and throw them in the trash. And then you take them out again because throwing them out feels too much like admitting that its over. You don’t want to hold on but you don’t want to let go.

You barely sleep at all and when you do, you dream about him. You dream about the way it ended and wake up aching and when you think that it can’t hurt any worse, you fall back to sleep and you dream about the beginning. You dream that you are together, pushing his hair out of his face, grasping his hand while your heart beats its way out of your chest. You dream about your lips pressed up against his, and your bodies tangled together. You dream about how it all started, and then you wake up crying because he’s not there and you can’t change that.

You want to call him, send him an email, ask one of his friends if he’s even sad. You want him to suffer, but your heart breaks at the idea of him being in any pain. You want answers, closure, things you deserve but will never get. You want to yell and scream at him. You want to know why. You want to understand.

You hate yourself. You blame it all on yourself. You go over the last night you were together in your head a thousand times. His words echo in your ears. You pick apart your dialogue and think of all of things that you should have said, or done to fix it.

You cry so hard you nearly make yourself sick. You want to puke because you want him out of you, but there is nothing in your stomach anyway. You tell yourself that you want to erase him from your memory. You pretend that you wish you had never met him.

You swear that you will never trust again. You will never let another man touch you. You think that you are damaged goods and no one will want you anyway.

You’re friends listen to you cry about him, and vent and complain, for a few days before they cant handle it anymore. They think you’re overreacting. For days or weeks or however long you need, you grieve. You want to die some days, but you pull yourself back before it goes that far. You feel like you’ve gone crazy. (You really haven’t). You feel like no one understands.

It doesn’t matter what your label was. It doesn’t matter if he was your boyfriend, or your best friend or just the guy who led you on. It doesn’t matter if you dated for three years or fell for him six months ago. Your pain is real and it is valid.

He took a peice of you when he left, and now you have to learn to live without it. Now you have to remember how to breathe again. You have to let yourself stop wanting him, which takes longer than you want. In fact, you’ll probably tell yourself that you’re over him before you really are.

When your relationship with someone ends, it is the death of something. It is a tragedy and it changes you forever.

But you survive it. You learn from it. You forgive, but you never forget.

My point is, that you’re not alone. You are not the first person to feel this way, to suffer through this. I am not the first person to ache this way.
And I won’t be the last.

So if you can’t sleep, and you’re up looking for someone whose been aching like you have and writing about it, then this entry is for you.

Everything that you feel is real and it is valid and you are justified. It is okay for you to feel like this right now. Its okay for me to feel like this too.

You’re not alone.

I'm not enough butter
Spread across too much bread
Pinned like butterfly wings
Trapped in a frame
I'm looking out from underneath
And I've got water in my lungs

Screaming but no one hears
Over laughter and clinking glasses
Alone and surrounded by everyone
Suffocating and frozen
I'm on the outside
And every word is a dagger
Stabbing my insides
I'm bleeding out

So what about me?
Exhausted and empty inside
Missing the rush of blood
Like it was only yesterday
Cracking like an egg to watch
The yolk stain my sweater sleeve

But I won't go back there
Tired of pulling apart my seams like
The creases from an envelope
Unfolded and exposed
So the world can see
That there’s nothing left inside
        Unshackle your heart from my memories
I know now that I'll never get inside of you

Restless but exhausted
But the sleep will never come
And when it does its riddled
With nightmares and monsters
Cold sweat and tears running down
The sides of my face but I can't wake up
And when I do I'm still crying
Because I am the option
The second choice, the forgotten
I am a mirage, I am invisible
So what about me?

I am not enough butter
Spread across too much bread
I am not enough

Tell me lies for just
a little bit longer
let me live in a dreamland
where my wishes come true

Gut me with the truth
too soon and
rip me from my reverie
I'm wide awake now and seeing
what I should have seen

And my tears drop like
rain on a rooftop
running through the gutters
and down my cheeks

Splat on the sidewalk
where the rest of me lies
waiting for the time
when I can pick up the pieces
and pull myself together again

because you weren't supposed to be
another name on another list
of reasons why I should be hopeless

and I wasn't suppose to be
another scratch on a bedpost
or a name in a little black book

and I'm not sure how
I got here this time
but here we are now
here I am.

She came in like a lion. Long wild hair everywhere, loud and outlandish. She was outspoken and shameless, so settled in her own skin.  You couldn’t not see her, not hear her, not want a part of her to be inside of you. Vibrant and never ending. There were memories jam packed behind her eyes, things you knew that she was dying to forget. But she was stronger for them, better for them. She grew from every tragedy. If you were lucky she might whisper them to you alone in the safety of darkness, but in the light of day she would never show weakness. No, she was all over the room, opinions, and laughter, hand motions and impressions, spinning like the Tasmanian Devil of Human Emotion. Everywhere, and spreading like wildfire. There was no stopping her, no controlling the wildcat inside of her. She came in like a lion. She roared and everyone listened.

Waves crashing against rocks
making rough surfaces smooth
the way they were in the beginning
how they were always meant to be

Hazy sun is blinding
scorching rock faces
making steam rise and
mirages dance in front of me

But I can't find the water
to trickle down my throat and save me
to wake me up and satisfy
my relentless thirst

Can you hear the seagulls crying
Slow down, slow down
I am sinking into the sand
but you can't hear me

Stomach's twisting like wet towels
rung out into the city's bowels
truths and lies that make no sense
actions that have no consequence
spraying liquid on the ground
running down and right around
into the sewers below your feet
the deepest depths, beneath the streets
in the darkness where she lies
waiting for her sweet demise
choking out for some escape
crying out for that single taste
of the all the rain that goes to waste
watch her the dreams, elude her grasp
reaching, clawing, running back
grabbing at the same mistakes
because there is no place that’s safe
and there's always too much at stake
but you go back there late at night
watch him as he wields his knife
you crave the heartbreak, eat your pain
like an addict, moth to flame

Reliving my memories
buried under blankets of time
passing like sand through my fingers
I would give anything

Nails bitten until they're bleeding
I don't do this, I can't do this
look into the mirror
and face the awful truths

So pick me up and spin me around
I'm just a little girl again
My hopes and dreams are on my sleeve
And you are my greatest hero

Whisper the words out loud
that are screaming in my mind
I'm choking on this
Trying to heal the broken ones
over and over
because I can't reach you

And somehow the road curved
led me astray and into the forest
I'm Gretel but Hansel's nowhere
and the crows stole my way home

And they just keep saying “let it be”
but how can  I ever be okay again
when the truth is
that I can't fix you

Every time you lie
you steal another tiny piece of me
how much can you lose
before you're nothing?

So pick me up and spin me around again
Because I am your little girl
Bitter and jaded from memories faded
And you are my greatest failure