I don’t know how to write about missing you.

Rain falls from the mists of heaven, slinking through the air, refusing to gaze upon the ground
       Though it remains its destination
All the while the earth rises towards the mist without hope of reaching the rays shining upon it.

We live in-between these places of ground and air.
Hoping to touch the rays and the earth at the same time.

They say some people wear their hearts on their sleeves,
But I try to keep mine stuffed away in the back of a sock drawer
      Where no one will ever find it.

I want to tell you about the sun
     As blind as it is blinding
Or that smiling is easier when you’re in the room
Or that sometimes I dream
Of allowing forbidden words to pass through my lips.

Because I found something new in you. Terrifyingly close to the kind of love that breaks hearts.

Gripping my soul in your clutches.
     You had me
     You have me
I always thought this kind of thing was fiction
And I will probably never tell you that I wrote this poem
But I miss you

I wonder what's under your skin.
Sometimes
I see the glitter in your eyes
Of hidden things
Like the shine of silver minows in deep water
But then the sun comes out and blinds me
And I've lost the trail
Of that starlight that I know drags its soft fingers through the dark corners of your heart.
I want the long shadows it casts.
I want the  complicated, messy figures it throws up on the cave walls of your soul,
I want their unabashed wildness,
I want the savage way they will never keep still in one form.
I want the way they scare you and the way they thrill you.
We hide
So much in this life.
We hide from the world.
I will show you every edge of me
And I will map your edges
With tender hands and gentle words,
And awe.
I want in
To whatever makes you be.

Chocolate colored Toms, Cool Blue and Navy, too,
North Face jacket, give me some individuality
I wanna feel ethereal; violently, annoyingly
happy. But the sky is as black as lonely cancer
without a soul mate; I know what it's like
to kiss as you erase her.

Hauntingly, melancholic instances ingrained
into my gelatin mind and
stayed.
And the smolder
from the brand on my shoulder
frayed.
I wish I could alter my reflection,
but the mirror I've bought,
somebody else
made.

I'm not easy to manage
I have a storm in my mind
Trying to find its way out
And I will grip unto you
Like I've never seen sunlight
But you don't need to calm the storm
I just like to know there's still light

I crawled away from you
The way a dog deserts its pack to die
And you all
Watched me make my slow progress across the floor
Inch
By
Inch
And you did nothing.
You saw, and I saw you see
And you saw me see you pretend to know nothing.
And now I am alive again
Awake and able.
The shadows of my suffering still follow at my heels, trying to trip me as I walk, and scurry behind doorjambs and under tablecloths when I turn to catch them but,
I no longer crawl.
I no longer struggle.
And as I have woken and made my weary way back to humanity
I have found that my complete transformation
My journey into hell and through the fires-
The torment that forged me into something utterly new,
I find that you look past it
Let your eyes slide over me like you used to
Unwilling to ask,
Unwilling to know and yet your false knowing sets off bombs
The ones I walk so lightly over
Grenades buried beneath the tender green new grass
Which covers the battlefield where I fought for my life, for my status as a human being, for my place in this world,
And you say "We all fight."
"Everyone struggles."
Of course
To hurt is to be human. Everybody does-
But not everyone
Sits back and watches another crumble to dust,
Not everyone says
Well
It isn't my problem if they can't cope,
Not everyone looks with eyes
So cold
Upon a bleeding, broken thing
And concludes that because it bleeds when beaten it invites its wounds.
And as you look past me
As you name me by a word I no longer recognize
All I can think is that
I fought
I won
At a cost
And I am still not fully healed,
And yet I am the same to you
Either way
You who are supposed to see
You who are supposed to be
Observers
Of the human condition-
Observers, not bystanders!
Nowhere is it written that you must take notes--
'Oh yes, see how her lip trembles as she cries
See how she fights for breath.'
Nowhere is it set down in stone that you can't
Get up and at least pretend to be like they are
These people you look at
And study
And pin to your pages like butterflies catalogued.
Can you feel? Did you
Feel?
Did you look into my eyes and see me
Decimated
And blame me? And never ask me the truth? And create your own?
Did you really think I could forget being
In the center of a circle
Of lies I had to agree with to survive
Shredding my pride for the sake of my place?
My place, indeed,
In a place where emotions are bought and sold
But never owned or treasured.
You watched me fight
Life or death
You, whose arms I've fallen into when I could have hit the floor,
You who I am supposed to trust with my soul and its dark wounded parts
You who I am supposed to grow with.
You watched me and
You let me
Fight
Alone.

I'm the smell before rainfall
And you're thunder in a storm
And it's a strange kind of beautiful
When dark clouds come to play

i'd like to kiss you

but i can't bring myself
to lean closer

in fear of
tasting all the things
you won't tell me