A fragile bird
I tried to hold you
In my hand

The crinkling of my eyes
Brought tears
Drowned out by the patter of rain

I wasn't ready to see you
But I couldn't wait

For months I felt like
I had forgotten how to breathe

Your hand was cold
But your eyes met mine
With warmth

And the restlessness,
The tide breaking
Underneath my skin
was finally, futiley
Still.

They say that the truth will set you free.
So here it is.
The truth is
That no
I’m not afraid of
Falling in love with you
I’m afraid
Terrified
To love
Myself
But you make it
So easy
To take down
All of the walls
I have built up
To protect my heart
The truth is
That I was broken
From the beginning
Always have been
And I wish
You didn’t have to
Uncover
All the *****
Skeletons
In my closet
Because I have
Too many to count
And uncovering them
Myself
Is suffocating
You have my heart
Because it’s better protected
In your hands
Than in mine
Please
Keep it safe.

He had the power
To send me spiralling
Back to white powder.
Or keep me steady
With the anchors of his words.
Either way,
I was done for.

The shore washed up
Your gritty words
Stained in sea glass
They cut you open

I fell
Into the riptide of your tears
And wished I had an anchor
Because it felt like
I might drown out here

Words broke on your mouth
And I was swallowing
The sea

My feet missed the ocean floor
And white caps
Crashed between our eyes
The current ripped you away

I wished to tell you
That my arms can harbor safety
I’ll be your ship
This time

You can
Tie me out to sea
I'll keep the water still
Let it calm your hearts beat

The ocean will soothe
All your broken memories
And in the end
The tide will wash us in
Again

In the midst
Of a breaking wave
In the stillness
Of the silence
In the darkest
Of mournings
Lightning strikes

Your strings snapped
In my hands,

I broke them;

all the strings
that were holding you together.

I hope she kisses you
With closed lids
Because when you leave
She’ll find you
In others’ lips

Infectious
Its how you describe
Laughter
Or yawning
Maybe even the small
Chit chat that starts
With the familiarity of
Family gatherings
That’s not a description
Usually used for a person
It’s not how I would describe you
Or the smell
That clings to your clothing
Even when I wear it thin
Infectious
That’s how I would describe
Me
I’m a disease
And there’s no cure

Hold the line
Please hold the line
It ended that night

My battery’s low
I need some juice
A reboot

Recharge my heart
It’s wasted
Placid

My lungs fill
With smoke
But there’s no fire

Ignite a spark
In my bones
They’re tired

Recharge my heart
It’s wasted
Placid

My battery’s low
I need some juice
A reboot

Hold the line
Please hold the line
Give me another line
This one’s dead

I want to say I love you
But I'm afraid the cars motor
Is too loud.

Afraid that you'll say
What?
And you'll ask me to say it again.

I want to reach out
And touch you,
But I'm afraid I'll do it wrong.

I'm as loyal as an Ace of Spades,
But you're the wild card
In the hand I was dealt.

They keep telling me
To write about
The sky,
The way the sun sets and what it looks like,
How the colors swirl like sherbet or cotton candy  

But I keep thinking about
What happens when it hails.

They ask me to write about
The flowers,
The way they reach up from the soil,
And emerge with the hopes of spring

But I keep thinking about
Their petals fallling.

Kissing on parked cars
In empty lots
Like tomorrow
Will never come
I taste like chocolate
And you taste like lemonade
A little bit sour
A little bit sweet
I think it was our bitter infinity

Tank tops and sweaters,
And coats.
I pull them over paper thin, skin.
Leggings that hug my waist
Because beneath this, jacket
I won't be able to feel your hands.

Socks and boots,
And maybe something with a hood.
My fingertips are ready, for the cold
I want them to go numb with it.

The last time you touched, me
I swore I was dying.
You breathed into my lungs
And I could feel, the flowers
Emerging beneath my ribcage.

When you sat up, I pulled on my tshirt
And slipped
My arms into a sweater,
As if that would stop the thorns from poking through my skin.
I went for a walk because I couldn't feel my toes.

Onions have layers, if you peel back
All of them
You're left with nothing but red eyes.
When I got home I stood in the doorway; and whispered

*Take them off

So here I am
Tied to this lie
That somehow
You could find me again
That somehow
I would find you alone

And maybe this time,
You’d pick up the phone.

I’m not out of the woods yet
But you’re in the clear
Somehow to you,
This seemed fair

I thought we stood a chance
I thought we had a fair fight
Everyone but me
Seemed to know I wasn’t right

Its 3am
When I reach for the phone
But in the dark, in my room
I’m answered by your dial tone

The past haunts me
Every step of the way
Makes me wish you would track me down
Or find the courage to stay

There’s this fight within me
Scraping at the door
Thirsty, dehydrated
Falling through memories, wishing for more

I’m looking forward
That’s a fact
But I’ve never felt this inclined
To turn back

Turning over stones as if
You’re hidden just beneath
Only to have the tide come in
And sweep our handprints into the deep

So here I am again
Tied to
“I’m fine.”
Because you’re the only one
Who knew
When I lied.

She says-
I get lost in her smile
In the simple way she tucks her chin beneath the book

Listen to this
It's something about the sun
But she lost me after that
I was gazing at her mouth

Listen to this
She says, her eyes following words
Pressed into a page
I put my finger to her lips

Listen to this
Two bodies converging

Listen to-
Our hearts
They're
Listening

There’s an empty space
Where you left
But the doctors
Ripped out the alarm
In my chest
All I can do
Is stumble around
And speculate.

Does the red wire
Connect to the blue one?
Or will
Electric shock
Revive
The memories
That the medicine
Erased
From my brain

I wonder
If you see me
In all of the twinkly lights  
Or
If you try to
Restart your heart
By connecting
The green wire
To the yellow wire
Or maybe it’s the red one
I’m never sure

Because I didn’t stick around
Long enough
To ask

I’m tired
So tired
Of feeling like
I’ve been chopped off
At the knees

Caught in the garden, in the rain
Reflections against glass
windowpanes.
And I promised you, I would bloom
where I was planted.

I imagine
That we would build moments
Between our fingertips

I see our lips connecting
Colliding, fumbling
Beneath my eyelashes

In the stillness
Our hearts would race

Beating heavy and constant
In the space between us

I imagine that maybe
Our elbows would bump

Or our knees would knock
Your world colliding with mine

Maybe lying next to you
Is only poetry

I speak flowers
Light a flame for the broken
Tuck my shirt in
And say a prayer for the unspoken

I race demons
Smoke them out for a moment
Strike the chords
With a bow, let your soul crack open

I lose your hands
Hold tight to what's left in the bottom of the glass
Fill my heart with colors, I laugh
And it's that dream again, we fall into the grass

I am full
Float through the ocean, let your breath crash like a wave
Smile lightly for the loved ones that cherish
And know everything you were, was exactly what you made

I was ****** when I decided to sit on your bed
I told you it would’ve been more romantic if we were dating
And when you asked why I just laughed

The mattress creaked when you sat on the edge
And it took eternity to lift my head.

You kept taking hits
And I didn’t understand why but it reminded me of a train

When you were done inhaling your creativity
Your hand shook with the possibility of using it
But you just rolled up your sleeves.

Your mouth moved as you talked about
The civil war
And your time abroad
As you laid down beside me

I nodded like I understood
But all I thought about was horses and the red coats
And guns.

Dear friend,
This one is for you
You have been there for me
Through thick and thin
I love you
You understand me
You don't judge me
You would never lie to me
Everything is better when you're here
You make me feel like I'm not alone
In this battle
We can conquer anything together
All I have to say is
Thank you
This one is for you

Sincerely yours,
Mel

My heart's a wristwatch
The spiel keeps spinning
I follow it with my eyes
The gears turn and click
And
I want to turn it over
Turn it back, like stones
But
The sheets stay blank
No matter how many words
I spin together beneath my eyelids
My mason jar is still full of you
It tastes like raspberries
And
Forest floors
When I asked you to look inside my mouth to see if they stained my cheeks red
Your face found the cool side of the pillow
And
Your laughter fell into it
The shade of blue
On the wall reminds me
Of fireflies falling out of our mouths
I wanted to swallow them
And
Glow from the inside out with you

Cigarettes are nothing but addictions
You would never understand

Because all you ever needed was your hands
Strong willed and expert in making beauty
Out of broken wood  

Nicotine rots teeth
But it makes the shaking of my fingers stop
At least, for a little while

I admired that about you, your hands
And the way you never wondered too much
About life, you just lived in it

Weakness was never something you were
Allowed to own
And I guess that’s why you would never understand
Mine

Cigarettes are nothing but addictions
But I don’t mind the smell of smoke

My mother knew how to sew
But I never paid attention

Maybe I should’ve listened
When she told me how to
Put things back together

Cigarettes are nothing but addictions
I’m not sure you ever knew

But I swore
When we met
My hands stopped trembling.

You were my words;
When I wanted to write a million

You were a race,
And **** I never seemed to win

You were the stars,
How we both drank them up
Like lightning
We fell so fast

You were my breath
Which ended when we did

You were the spring
That fell out of each step

You were a light in my eyes,
Now mine flicker occasionally

You were my smile,
Which can’t help but falter

You are my mistake
The best one I’ve ever made

You said, I want to be bigger
And I knew you really meant
You'll like me better that way

Last night I dreamt of bones
And that you'd love me better
If my waist was small

You called me beautiful
As we sat there
In the parking lot
And you listened
While I told you about the monsters in my head

You called me beautiful
And I cried
Because the monsters kept telling me it was a lie.

I swear I’m going blind*
The edges of my vision tilting and shifting
As if my eyes are prisms
And
Sight is sand in a glass jar.

The corners of my brain keep going fuzzy
There’s only 9 days left
And
If I think too hard
I find myself driving
And
Going 80 until I have enough room between,
The white lines of highways
And
My bedroom.

Sometimes I drive for so long
That I forget you’re in the passenger seat.
I’m too busy counting down the minutes
We have left
That I forget this is the last chapter
For you too.

I just keep busying my hands,
To ignore pain in my stomach
When I remember that it's coming to an end.  

I’m going blind,
I told you while I gripped the wheel
In hopes that it would make you
Stay a little longer.

Have you ever felt like you were drowning?
Maybe, you were sitting alone, in a cafeteria full of people
laughing, smiling, eating
But all you could feel were the eyes of judgement
Burning into your back

Maybe you were awake at four in the morning
Praying that peace would find you in the form of a dreamless sleep
So you wouldn't have to relive the memories behind your irises
The ones that make your hands tremble, and your knees weak, and your breathing come in spurts

I feel like I'm drowning.
As if someone cast an anchor overboard and somehow it snagged onto my heart,
Pulling me down to the bottom of the ocean
Because I can't even hear your name without feeling a piece of my chest splinter.

Does it hurt?
The way that you crack a smile when someone else laughs, so nobody will know you've been  spending too much time practicing that facade in front of a mirror
Or that you've been running to the liquor store four times every week because nothing else lulls you to sleep

Does anyone notice?
The way your hands tremble just slightly right before you enter a room full of people, because anxiety has overpowered your own mind.
Or the way your heart stammers when you bump into someone on the street, and it takes you back to when he held you down in the passenger seat, seeking pleasure from your pain.
Or when you run out of things to say because nobody reaches out to you first, you just go silent, hiding behind printed pages in novels where you wish your life resided.

Have you ever felt like you were drowning?
I do- every day.
But I've never set foot in the ocean.

In a haze of dreams
I see memories of us
Past recollections

she found me daintily
waiting in the evergreens and matchsticks
breathing stories of ghosts and mint leaves

oh and the lotus she pined
mixing its petals in mason jars
glowing for us to drink up

with sticky fingers
and red lips we danced
waking the spirit within her

she had wings and I whispered
“Angel, angel, angel.”
I wanted to pull all her strings
back together

and she took me to the edge
of the river she came from
her mouth spoke
of euphoria

we submerged ourselves in.

They stripped your name
It’s meaning got lost
In the obscurity of it all

They drained me of your colors
Extracting every memory
With lab coats and microscopes

Black and white pictures
Induced by pills
And encouraging smiles

A candle I held close
Went out

My recollection was suffocated  
They quieted my heart
Now I try not to say your name out loud

I drew lines between us
When I chose to draw lines
Across my skin*

But what I can’t say out loud

The words that are stuck,
Pitted in my chest
Which sometimes make it hard to breathe

What I’ve been desperate to tell you
Is:

*I’d rather see cracks in my skin
Than feel holes in my heart.

Sometimes, I feel like we are a galaxy;
But you call me,
Your star

You’re eyes were like sea glass
Luminous blue and green
And the stars danced
As the wind tickled our backs
You held my hand when I asked
And it felt like
We were constellations

My heart kept expanding
Beneath my chest
It could’ve been the drugs
Inhabiting my bloodstream
But I’d like to think
It was the way your hands
Felt, brushing my skin

It’s September
And I miss him
Like my brain misses oxygen

It’s September
And I’m waiting for him
Like layers wait for the cold bite
Of December

It’s September
And I wish he was here
Because I have long stretches of time
And there’s nothing that I want more
Than time with him

It’s September
And I find myself
Wishing for February
So that he can
Be mine

I still don't know what I'm doing,
But I know how it starts.
Magic floats through my fingertips
The sun rises in my chest
Slow. Warm. Orange.
And I think of a better place
And I wish for a slower pace
And I dream of embodying grace
And I dream
And I think
And I wish
For days to drip by like honey
For nights to end bittersweet and glowing
For more time to savor the moments
The ones you know that count
I think that's what writing really is.

I keep having dreams about you holding her hand. Somehow I’m standing right in front of you but its like your looking through a pane of glass; sharp and see through, like there’s nothing left but your reflection. It’s always been about you; I knew that. But when you held my hand I thought you could read my skin like a page covered in brail.

I keep kissing him and remembering the way your hands traced my face. The moon left us in the dark, searching for the sun’s warmth. He made me feel like a piece of art, watercolors bursting from a canvas but he left me to hang on the wall.

I keep thinking that it’s better this way, but when I took out the trash I felt just like the aluminum can as it clattered to the floor. Empty and used. Nothing but traces of drunken fingerprints against a label that no one cares to remember. Memories rising to the back of your throat only to be swallowed down like a pill you take to cover up all the places where you’ve been broken.

I forgot that loving you was like pouring a bowl of cereal and then running out of milk

I feel something’s missing now
Even though its been gone for days

I can’t stop seeing
Hands of men
Old and new
Wrinkled and porcelain

I’m caught between a smooth breeze
And a raging ember
That burns beneath my skin
But the universe still spins

I don’t know how
Seconds still manage to tick
Or how minutes keep passing by
Or how the ocean keeps crashing
In and out with it’s tide

I don’t know how you leave your room
With all that waits outside.

The back of a pearl earring, a maroon scrunchy a bowl. Filled with jewelry silver necklaces twisted tangled. BIRDS OF A FEATHER blue nail polish. Crinkled bed spread white curtains ball point pen, scattered push pins. Black boots in the corner, one laced one undone. Half of a lit cigarette ashed on the window sill an imprint on the mattress, purple index cards splayed over a white desk its paint chipped. Glass mason jar filled with coins a barrette collecting dust underneath the bed. A guitar missing two strings a grey green flannel. Grey rug. Ray bands a phone charger a porcelain bowl, prescription bottle. Tie died lighter bear with a missing eye and bowtie. The dog chewed it off.

“I’ve been sober for two months now,”
I was proud of these words when I sent them your way
You seemed proud of me too.

Two months battling the Beast
Inside of me
Always craving, itching, howling
To be let out of it’s cage.

I resisted.
I defied the Beast for the people I love,
And for the people who cherish me.

“One day at a time,”
The councilors tell me,
And I learned, slowly, how to treat myself well.  

We spoke on the phone last night,
After I had finally gotten my med dose right.
“I’m single now; we broke up…”

The way you said it tugged at my heart
As if I was going to be your fresh start.
And I fell, knowing you would catch me.  

“I’m getting drunk now.”
Were the last words you said to
Me. The recovering addict.
As if my words seemed feasible
You cashed them in for something better.

If words had arms attached to them,
Yours would punch a grenade in my gut.

It's 80 degrees today
The grass beneath me
Freshly cut
I can hear the birds
Singing in the distance
And the taste of peppermint
Left traces on my tongue

These things have nothing to do
With you
Or the fact that I
Am no longer a we

The suns rays are strong
But there's still an ache
Somewhere deep in my chest

Summer is chipping away
At the time you left me with
Under different circumstances
I would be lost inside a novel

But somewhere along the way
Underneath the sun
I got left with a note
Ending in goodbye

It’s a full moon tonight
I know it looks the same
From where you are

I know I shouldn’t
But I still hope that maybe
When you look up at the stars
You’ll think of me

I know you’ll never see this
Along with other poems
And
Love letters I will never send

But there’s one thing
I do know for sure
You’re out there
Right now

Whether it’s with a pile of friends
Sipping some beer
Or your toes in cold Florida sand
I know we are connected

By the break of the tides
And the beautiful sight
Of a full moon

You broke the ice
Around my spine
And I caught you red handed
With my heart

We raced trough the whole
9 yards of unfamiliarity
I let my hair down
And my spirit felt like a dancer

With you
There was no rule of thumb
My hands traced your skin
Even when your words
Held no spark of decency

You ran amok
Beneath my chest
Butterflies spread their wings
In my stomach

We bit the bullet
Of affection
And swallowed pennies
For our thoughts

You were a blessing
In disguise
And we burned the midnight oil
Losing our hands in each other

I played the devils advocate
In the heat of the moment
And you jumped on the bandwagon
Knowing it takes two to tango

On the first of June
I met a boy with
Blue eyes
And rough hands
He was never part of the plan

That night I kissed him
Under all the arcade lights

I would’ve counted
Every star with him
And as nights blurred into days
His smile never seemed to fade

Over time
My smile, for once
Was real
And I wore it for him
Every day

We laughed between the stacks
Even after
We were told to “hush!”
His eyes lit up when he laughed

The minute our lips separated
I was thirsty all over again
And hours watching clouds with him
Were never long enough

But my blue-eyed boy knew
That in August
He would have to watch me
Pack my life away

I was going to
Avoid eye contact
While I watched him
Help my Dad
Load suitcase after suitcase
Into the truck



And lumps would form in my throat
Because goodbye would be
Farthest from what I wanted to say


It's still June
But I don’t want time
To take my sunshine away

The stubble left on your chin brushed my cheek and I couldn’t ignore the burning in my chest any longer. Our lips held a conversation without words and your hands found pieces of me that I forgot existed. I swore you were the one, but maybe it was just the tequila.

It's a terrible love
But the hallway is cold
She holds out her hand
And I take it

It's a terrible love
Being connected at the hip
But I'm tired
And she promised she'd hold me

It's a terrible love
But I'm walking in

It's a miserable love
But it's better then being alone
It's a terrible love; depression
But I let her love sink the ship

Images skirt my mind
Spiraling around
Adrenaline pumps through my veins
And a night run
Doesn’t sound like a bad anecdote

Miles burn holes
In the souls of my shoes
And my muscles tense
Under the traction
Of the hard concrete

I imagine cool air
Burning my lungs
Sharp inhales
And deep exhales

But what no one knows
Is that I keep secrets
Hidden beneath long sleeves

Because miles
Aren’t good enough
For the scale
And retching into a toilet
Wouldn’t illuminate
My bones

Metal and blood
Won’t re-stitch  
Too tight skin

Feeling like the five year old girl
That glimpses back at me
With wide bright eyes
And a vast imagination
I remember

Horses spinning around
Lights blinking colliding clashing
Candy painted lips
The smell of cotton candy
And how she loved
Carousels