Sometimes,
lots of times,
I look back.

I fear I will turn to salt
like the taste of tears
reaching your lips.

I can't help it,
to turn back and look
it's human nature.

What do I look back at?

the good times
the bad times
lots of times

I'm different now
not bad not good not (yet) salt
just different.

This bracelet
This bracelet means nothing, really
Just some plastic beads
Black thread
Uncomplicated knots with strings of offset orange, yellow, green.
It’s just a bracelet.

But it’s your bracelet.
Your bracelet.
The replacement for the blue one I lost in New York
The one I hated myself for dropping
But you never did
You just fixed it
And every time I see it,
It’s like I’m there with you again

My heart leaps from my chest
At it’s shining, vibrant face
Smiling at me like an old friend
Because that’s what we are

When I’m nervous, I twist the band
The beads click and dance and sing in my fingertips
I think of it like those ruby red slippers
Maybe if I click it enough times you’ll appear next to me

I wish that were how it worked
Wished the bracelet could talk me down
Off of this ledge of conclusions
But it can’t.
We will never be the same...
Unlike the bracelet.
Because when it comes together on my wrist,
Kissing the skin you used to

It feels like you
It feels like home

and whether you want to hear it or not-
time eventually runs out.

and I know it's hard to accept
and I know death is
often times
petrifying
and it's okay to
be afraid
of what you do not know
because
I too
have no clue
as to what
awaits me on the
other side.

All I know is-

there is one.

After all this suffering.
After all this grief.
After all the highs to
low's and
the dramatic
in-betweens-

there is more to this life
than simply being here.

And a part of me would like to believe
that what we do here;
matters.

And even if it's a tiny gesture
or a massive shift in
humanity-

we all play our part.

We are all tiny messages
in fragile glass bottles
that we are too scared
to break out of.

Life is unpredictable
and we-
foolish and naive-
take our opportunities
for expression
for granted.

It is senseless to keep
anything back.

It is asinine
to believe
anything
less than
transparency
will bring us

freedom.

It won't.

Say what's on your mind
before it's too late.

And don't be one of those people
that say they

can't.

I hold these valentines close to my chest
They are all addressed to you,
You with the faith unbroken
You with such gentle intentions
It's not easy to quiet the sounds of the heart
Yet these love poems do the best they can

i'm warmly lost in the absence of that aspiring red light,
as your heartbeat is still a stabbing pain in the side of my gelatin femurs,
losing visions of the rigidity necessary to live this life of ambivalent autonomy.

--

steel strings and fibers of teeth eating this flesh like a false promise of love,
i am a windowsill covered by a nebulous, translucent shade,
clothespins existing simply to taper my eyes from the pain.

the stars take no mention of this cynical cycle of self-doubt,
for they're lighting our hearts long after they've burnt out.

and your hazel kitchen recipes are hanging over the paint-chipped railing,
giving meaning to this heart,
a blood-stained peach in constant mourning.

break this furtive glass,
there is no light pointing home,
**directionless map

If the only sound we had to hear at night
Was the sprinklers
Wouldn't things be so easy?
No, we just have to have those pesky kids playing Josie at 3 AM