I want to be
the ponytail holders
you find on your
bedside table
long after I've left
in the morning.

I tried to
write
a poem about you
but instead
I scribbled a
big, orange-ink blob
and I figured
that made
just as much sense.

You told me all of these
lovely, wonderful, amazing
things that I had been longing to hear.
But when you said it all,
I had no idea what to say.
You said such beautiful things and I..
I stumble on my words and sound so clumsy.
So instead, I said nothing at all.
I smiled and kissed you
wishing I had the courage to speak.

I want
to feel the warmth of your skin against me.
your lips against my neck,
the crook of my shoulder and collar bone,
against my ribs and hip bones.
I want
to hear your muffled voice, talking into my neck.
your breathing get faster, heavier.
I want
to see you smile after a kiss,
the look in your eyes after.
I want
this moment, right here,
right now, to last just a bit longer.

we could have fallen in love.

under different circumstances
(if i were there or
you were here)
we would have been something
                                           beautiful,
because you're the boy
who writes me poetry that
makes me feel
not so alone,
and i'm the only girl who's ever felt
so sure about a boy like
you.

it's a shame distance is the only line
i don't know how to cross.

when i was a child
i was told tales of
mosquitoes' songs and
car crash children;
i covered my ears
as tightly as i could,
but it is common knowledge
that nightmares always
prevail, and i was haunted
        night after night
with the reality of
what our world has
come to.

tell me, when you were young
did you dream of
drinking with the
'grown ups'?
    --i did--
     then i met a razor blade
     who told me
     i have an addictive
     personality,
     and i fell in love with
     a boy with an
     alcoholic father
(things changed after that
and i learned that
naivety is a gift
i gave away a long time ago.)

some things don't change:
there will always be three hundred
and sixty five days
in a year,
( except for when there is
threehundredsixtysix. )
there are times when i
wished i was a constant too,
but then i realized
i'd be stuck in my past
and that was a very
scary place to be-
now i am thankful for
the constant flow
of in and out, the constant
change of the tides.
although i cry at change
i w e l c o m e i t.

one of these days
my mind will no longer be sharp
and i won't remember
my children's names
and my sister will be gone
and i will be
                    alone.
i would like to think
that i'll be happy
just to know ( silence )
but in reality, i will probably
spend my time wishing
i had treated my mother better
and had not let the
alcoholic's son free.
(i will be plagued by
nightmares once again,
the same ones of my
childhood.)

i am done cutting off parts of myself
to give to you,
only to watch you rearrange me
to look more like her.

i'm haunted by my past,
but i don't want to be
someone else's ghost.

sometimes i like to pretend
that if you had bound books
in some life before this,
i was the story
you (again and again)
continued to stitch.

and when i was finished,
you would brush my spine softly
then unravel me,
just to piece me
back together again.