You make me want to dance.  
Caring for you makes me want to turn the volume all the way up,
and completely let go of
everything that has ever stopped my moving feet.

I feel your electricity pulsing through my bones,
burning out all the dampness.

You ignite a fire that restarts my heart.

You are unexpectedly the best thing that could have ever happened to me,
appearing out of thin air to catch me at just the right time.

I never saw you coming but,
I'm glad that you're here.

I've been so curious
about people who burn down their home's,
and drive their families off of mountain sides.
The ones who take their live's, pack up everything and leave
behind the ones they cannot imagine living without.
The people who cause their own hurt.
The lucky ones who gamble everything away.
The ones who let their live's tumble down and blow away.

I've stood in front of this mirror and watched myself bleed enough times to know what a good thing is.

I still light the match and burn it all to the ground,
cross over the barrier fast enough to free fall,
break your heart time and time again,
leave you behind when I know
you're the only thing stopping everything from completely unraveling.
I put you down like a bet,
and lose you every time.

I **** us,
over and over and over, again.
It's no wonder why I hurt so badly in the middle of the night,
and can't trust myself with my own heart.
I do this to myself,
these are self-inflicted tragedies.

My grandmother tells me that
there is a party of women whom I've never met
watching over me from heaven,
guarding my heart,
protecting my spirit from above the reaches of my mind,
I can imagine these women,
their white gowns draping over my head,
tickling the tops of my ears,
whispering to me from between gusts of wind,
between the lulls in my thoughts.

My grandmother tells me that
my heart is the only heart that’s ever reached out to hers,
and hasn’t found discomfort in the closeness.
I imagine my veins growing out of my body,
reaching across to her from our
opposite sides of the dining table,
I imagine them intertwining,
becoming one.
I imagine our heartache mending one another’s.
I imagine us finding solace
in our collective hundred years of broken pieces.

Two generations, decades apart, healing one another.

My grandmother tells me
that there is a party of women whom I have never met,
watching over me from heaven.
I loathe the thought that someday,
I will know one of those women watching over me,
when she is the keeper of my heart,
when my veins have to reach above the clouds to become one with hers.

My angel,
in life, in love.

You aren't going to find what you're looking for
in the mouth of the new woman you love,
even if you search behind her teeth for years,
even if you finally find the words to describe the emptiness
that blooms inside your body-
You're never going to find whatever you're trying to find
within some other empty chest,
mouth,
stomach.

She will let you look though.
She will offer her body to you
as if she's spent her whole life waiting for you to use her
to feed your soul.
She will map out all the places you can search,
and tell you all her stories
of how she grew into those places you're about to hollow out.
She will let you take her apart and search for yourself
behind her lips,
and
between her thighs.  
She will let you,
and so will the next one,
and then next one,
and the next.

You will burn through their bodies like a forest fire
until you realize-

Whatever you're looking for
can only be found
in the only place you are too afraid to look.

Whatever you're looking for is somewhere lost
inside yourself.

It ends,
fast and fragile the same way it started.
You get your handshake,
you get your piece of paper
and your four sentences worth of memories
that add up to a fifteen-second walk across a stage.  

All the important people say they're proud of you,
all your friends-
all your friends of friends say they'll miss you.
You toast them to a new beginning;
you smile your way into a new place.

Everything is different now,
four years go by and when it's over it all hits you at once.
Nothing is the same anymore,
everything has changed.

Now you must grow up,
the celebration ends,
the milestone passes,
now you must move on.

every time we get lost in translation
and find ourselves amidst frustration
on the wrong side of our own little world,
i get a little taste of the bitter flavour
that would be to spend the rest of my life missing you.
i’m frightened at my dependence.
i’m frightened at my attachment.
i’m frightened at how fragile this is.
i'm frightened at how strong my love is.
i’m frightened. i’m frightened. i’m frightened.

i want to be
the girl who likes daisies,
and the girl who likes chrysanthemums.

I want to be
the girl who wears skirts,
and the girl who dances with you in the kitchen
on new years morning.

i want to be
the girl who holds her heart out to you with both hands,
and the girl who says ‘take me, i will belong to you-
but more importantly, belong to myself’.

i want to be
the girl who reads you her poetry in parks in summertime,
and the girl who helps you feel
everything you’re meant to feel.

I want to be
the girl you tell your secrets too,
and the girl who tells you hers
too.

I want to be
the girl who holds you when you cry,
and the girl who whispers ‘i love you’s
in your ear at midnight.

i want to be
the girl you come home to,
and the girl you make breakfast with,
-the one you call home.

a.m.

i feel like i'm floating,
like i'm miles high above the rest of you.
i feel like i can see everything happening,
i feel like i can take it all in,
but i can't do anything about it.
i don't know how to save you.
how could i?
i don't even know how to save myself.

a.m.

do you feel that when we touch?
the feeling like we're two cars on the freeway,
about to collide head-on,
going 100 miles an hour,
and we don't have our headlights on,
and we don't see the impending mess we're about to beautifully configure.
but,
we keep driving.
i feel it when you look at me,
with my favourite pair of eyes.
i feel this rush of naive mystery,
i know it's going to hurt like hell when we collide,
but i keep driving.
i do not slow.
i do not falter.
i just wait for our impact,
and for all our pieces to go flying.

a.m.

if you say,
i miss you,
enough,
it starts to sound like the alphabet.
if i say,
i miss you
to myself enough,
eventually it will overflow onto your lips when you get close enough
to ******* smile,
and breathe my air.
we speak our own language,
of unrequited feelings
we trade for endless
'what if''s.
for as long as i've known your name,
my mouth has been practicing
how to perfectly say,
'i love you'.

a.m.

sky's grow dark,
and inside my mind
i see you,
standing alone beside a light switch
that could brighten my whole interior.
except
you don't touch it,
in fact
you ignore it.
you dance circles around candles you don't have matches for,
and lightbulbs that are already lit,
expecting me to get up,
walk over to you,
and guide your fingers to my 'on' switch.
but i can't,
i am physically unable.
every time you touch me
its electric,
whenever i feel you,
its like you tease a small star inside me
by dangling fire in front of it,
promising to make it the brightest it's ever been,
but you say you're lonely
and never follow through.

a.m.

You’re so close to the stars. i wonder if you can hear the secrets i told the constellations that one night i got lost on the roof trying to find my way without you. maybe you’ll get lost in the darkness up there and feel the way i feel when i get lonely sometimes. you’re going to cities I’ve never seen and you’ll be walking on roads my feet haven’t touched and in a way I’m jealous of the new air you get to breathe. the little intricate fibres that make up my lungs are burning with this constant northern oxygen I’ve been force feeding them. i wonder what its like to breath you in at 30, 000 ft above sea level going 600 miles per hour. i wonder if my lungs would burn out of blissful breathlessness for you. I wonder what jet lag looks when it's painted across your face. i hate being on planes, but I’m so curious about how tightly you’d let me hold your hand up there. until i met you i didn’t understand why people thought it would be so special to travel around the world with another person, because i’d always thought it would be better to be lost alone. but i get high off the thought of walking european streets with you.

I don't know what pieces of me want you.
It's lucky for you, honestly  
if I knew where they were hiding
I wouldn't think twice about ripping them out of me.
I would leave gapping holes in my chest,
I would abandon my mind for the sound of static on repeat,
I would swallow combustibles,
and paint my insides on the walls of my bedroom
if it meant I'd be able to want happiness for
myself
more than I want it for you.

and so today was the day my head won against my heart.
hearts don't realize they've been lied to.
my heart never wanted the best for me,
it just wanted you.
now,
i'm suffocating off the parts that crave your skin,
i'm killing them.
some parts die faster than others,
for example;
i've forgotten the placement of your freckles,
but the colour of your eyes are taking their time to leave me.
i don't remember the way you walk,
but i'm having trouble forgetting the sound of your heartbeats.
but today was the day my head won against my heart.
today was the day i started forgetting.

Letting this hurt will be my method of coping.
When you take my heart, please put it in your mouth and devour it.
Don't leave me silently.
Slam doors,
Break glass,
Leave bruises,
Yell until Hell hears you.
If you're going to rip me open, sharpen your teeth first and
make sure I'm wide awake.
Run at me full speed with a loaded gun and every intention of pulling the trigger.
Leave me with scars and an unquenchable emptiness that I'll notice for months.
And when you kiss me goodbye,
spit gas down my throat.
And before you walk out, don't forget to toss me the burning match.
If you don't love me so it hurts, you might as well leave me so it does.

I think my first mistake was acknowledging the part of me that found your lips the sweetest that I'd ever had.
Maybe from there it all went downhill because after that I started to feel the edges of my heart charing every time I heard your name on someone else's mouth.
I suppressed the hurt,
I thought I'd surpassed this,
But I think I just buried it because
I thought you'd be worth it in the long run.
Because I thought our love was our own,
Because I thought we were magic.
I didn't realize that magic was fast hands and optical allusions until after you'd made yourself disappear.

This might be hard to take
but it's even harder to say, okay
I swear to god that to this day,
my heart still beats a little faster at the thought of your name
and maybe i've lost it and maybe I'm completely insane
but my chest is full of dark blue butterflies,
and when you smile they all ignite
into little blue flames,
like beacons in the night inside my chest.
When you're here my soul smiles bright,
it's like you're my human sized night light
but for my mind, and
when the thoughts get a little too intertwined
you're there to untangle them,
untangle the hem that's unraveling the edges of my mind like my favourite sweater,
and you put me back together.
I don't know where i'd be if i'd never met your face,
if I never heard your story, 
if we'd never been at the right place, at the right time,
if i'd never organized my thoughts and said hello.

Perhaps to you i was empty.
Maybe for some time i was.
But, i never asked you to pour compliments into me like lemonade and
i never asked you to hold me while i imploded upon myself,
or watch as i wrote silver stories on my skin.
Maybe to you love means killing yourself to keep someone alive,
but i would've preferred dying together instead of living at your expense.

he made my lungs inflate and flutter like butterfly wings,
and my mind ignite like a wild fire,
and my veins pulse like electric currents,
and in the point-two seconds it took for me to realize i couldn't kiss someone who thought i was fragile,
i was already planning out the different ways i would say,

this has to end

because when the first person to ever love me left,
i realized that
i inflate my own lungs,
and i don't need anyone
to be my matches because i have imaginations full of my own,
and i've discovered that caffeine feels much better in my veins and never asks for anything in return.
and maybe i'm overthinking it, but maybe i don't care.
and i don't know lots about myself yet,
i know,
but i know i am not suppose to be delicate,
not ever.

I see him like he's the night sky,
with little galaxies hidden inside his green eyes,
and bright stars embedded under every freckle.
when daylight comes it flashes across his face like a bright smile,
with clouds of deep purple, enigmatic thoughts
i wish i could get lost in.
I've seen curiosity dance in the creases of his lips,
i've touched the laughter that sleeps in the dimples that frame his smile.
To others maybe we're unconventionally pretty,
but i see him as a full ocean when he sees himself as a wave in someone else's.

i feel you
in the valleys of my fingerprints.
i feel you
in the tissues of my lungs.
i feel you
in every wrinkle on my face,
in the back of my mind,
in the atriums of my heart,
in the pit of my stomach.
i feel you everywhere,
all over me.
you own a body, your mind doesn't even call home.
you occupy a heart yours is incapable of loving.
you overwhelm thoughts incapable of thinking about loving anyone except you.
i feel you,
but i haven't touched you in months.

-and so i spend my days without you,
pulling out my hair,
biting my tongue,
praying i never lose you permanently.  
darling, there's an unsatisfiable emptiness that gnaws away at the tissue inside my chest like an illness,
it beats on the backsides of my ribcages, and plays music against my spine.
but, when you're around me it's almost like your presence scares the emptiness away-
i feel myself again.
never leave me for this long ever again,
i think i'd miss you too much to function properly.

I think we're stuck in a perpetual, comfortable, beautiful state of
"I don't know".
What we have is a gorgeous free fall,
A comfortable conundrum of
Messy kisses,
and
Confused hands,
and
Very good acting.
We've gotten so wonderful at pretending;
At turning ourselves inside out for each other to find new places to explore.
But, somehow, I love how beautiful I've let this mess become.
I love the unsaid words,
I love this little universe we've built for ourselves.
I love our little "I don't know".
We've made something so incomprehensible even I can't find the words for us.
But, I've made it home, I suppose.
And I'd miss it if it went away.
-I love our little enigma.

When i'm with him it's like my ribs are being bent back and inside out like paper clips. When he cradles my face to kiss my mouth, it feels like my skull's being peeled back like an orange and he's trying to get inside of my thoughts and pick them open like pulp. When he kisses me, it's like he's sharing his deepest secrets with me, like i'm the only person with hollow lungs to fill; but his secrets are like smoke and they fill me like i'm a chimney. I feel so heavy when i'm with him, like he's put lead inside my veins and dropped me in the ocean. He doesn't understand that my ribs are made of steel and concrete, and my skull's made of galaxies with stars full of incomprehensible universes. My lungs are not hollow; they're full of tissue, and fibres and they're pink with blood and lust for oxygen; i am no one's chimney. And no, my veins are not buoyant; but drop me in the ocean and i'll sink like a submarine. There was a time when i found his painful affection unique and wonderful, like a glass of *****. but he's been killing me like rubbing alcohol instead.
Darling, i seem to have realized that dying is more fun when you do it with someone you love; and i do not love you.

everything about you comes in different shades of fog,
and the deeper we fall into one another, the thicker the confusion becomes.
"i love you"
-but which way?
"I need you"
-but how much?
"please don't go"
-but where do i sleep?
we're never together, but we're always
together.
i never know if this makes sense; if we make any sense at all because,
we're consistently, inconsistent.
Ironically enough, the most consistent, straightforward thing in my life is how inconsistent and jumbled we are.
and, part of me wants this fog to clear.
part of me wants us to be completely translucent.
but we're stuck in divine translucency that i continuously get lost in.
i'm scared to label us,
because it means i could lose you.
i'm scared to be transparent.  
i'm scared to see you with the lights on and my eyes wide open.

how does one delete?

i'm not at all a morning person, but,
could i be your morning person?
i could get up at seven on sundays and make your coffee.
and be up at 2am on wednesdays to hold you while you sleep.  
and,
at 4am,
when you feel like your worlds getting too small for all your thoughts,
i'll wake up,
and stay up,
so you can let your imagination over flow into mine just to stop it from spilling out onto the floor.
i'm not a morning person; not at all,
but, could i be your morning person?