"There's comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool,
I'm holding my breath for you."
....except i'm not.
You are the shallow end of my pool;
dangerous if i dive head-first.
You tried to warn me before I jumped
but you forgot to show me your signs
and I never asked.
I just assumed you had more depth.
It was like you were trying to get me to drown for you
so you could save me
but you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party,
you can't be the car crash
and the paramedics,
you can't be the flatline
and the CPR.

You are the reason the lakes at my summer camp
have signs that say "Look Before You Jump"
because there could be creatures down there
that you don't want to touch you
but you are the deep sea monster
that National Geographic didn't want to discover.
They cower in the corner of their bedrooms
when they dream of what you're capable of.
You can swim among the krill
but still scare away the whales that eat them.
You had the ability to hold up my sinking ship
but you could still slip through my fingers like tap water.

I ******* want to kiss you sometimes
and others I really do want concrete
between you and my skin
like the small bridge next to my house
almost as if you are the babbling lake
and I am the jogger at 6 am.
The sun isn't quite up yet
but you haven't stopped creating noise in my head
since the moment I crossed your path.
I remember the reflection of the sunrise in your body
and the beautiful shade of pink you turned
when I tried to take a picture of it.
I was a little too out of breath to stay much longer
but you were quick to remind me that you'd be here again tomorrow morning
but I think I slept in and missed you.

I don't hold my breath for you anymore
because I'm no longer drowning.
I am not submerged in the Sea of You;
the tangled tendrils of your seaweed have let my ankles go
and I am free to swim back to land.
And although I know I haven't been to the ocean in weeks,
sometimes I still find sand in my hair,
sometimes I still feel the waves crashing over my head.

1) I am not quite heart broken, but I am something adjacent. I felt as if i stole you away from your body, stole you away from the things that you are comfortable with. I felt guilty and angry that I was the one that you chose to be your first. You were not ready for this and i could feel your body trembling underneath of me as if in agreement to what i was thinking but i let it happen anyway. If there was any way that i could go back and reverse what happened and never meet you in the first place, i would do it in a heartbeat. Because i broke your heart and i was your first.

2. I can still feel your eyes on me when we were driving to the funeral and the way it made me shift my weight in my seat. I wanted to explain that sometimes your love made me uncomfortable but I looked at you and all I saw was him. I choked on the letters rising out of my throat and you told me to pull over so you could drive. You said "you look like you've seen a ghost or something"

3. When you left, you changed your phone number. Now someone else has your ten digits. Digits as in numbers or fingers? Either way, no one else will ever be good enough to hold your hand.

4. Scar tissue can become your literal walls you put around yourself if you try hard enough. Those pink raised lines call for more fabric, less body movement, trying to remain a statue so people can't figure out what you're hiding. But your ceramic frame is far too willing to show your cracks.

5. I drink every night so I can forget you. After you die, your bones take up to 50 years to disintegrate. So for half a century after I stop feeling you on my skin, my bones will still contain you.

6. You twist and crack your back to replicate what it would feel like to snap it, and it scares you to know that it only always feels like relief rather than pain.

7. I am the empty seat in the front of the classroom, everyone notices when I'm vacant but nobody wants to fill me up.

8. When you started taking out the screws that held me together, i grasped onto my structure for dear life as my walls and windows swayed. I turned into the Leaning Tower of Pisa as my frame settled lopsided, too eager to fall with one more blow. I became a tourist attraction with people who come to find out why i don't stand up straight anymore, why i tilt my paper to the side so i can write in a straight line, why i never seem to see things the right way. People take pictures of them feigning to be the reason why I'm so crooked with their arms extended as if they were the ones who pushed me. But they will never know why i look the way i do until they see your hands, dirtied with the rust of bolts.

9. I may be in pieces but please do not take me in moderation.

10. I am the kind of tired that sleep can't fix. My sadness is so heavy that it's hard to keep my eyelids open. I think that even if i slept forever I could still never be satisfied. I am never whole.

You are the spectacle of love that I am trying to forget.
But somehow i can't get your image to be removed from my brain
like it was branded on the inside of my eyelids.
All I ever saw was you.
You made flowers grow in my lungs
and although they are beautiful
it's getting a little too hard to breathe.
I am asthmatic
so when I started to wheeze,
you lit a cigarette so I could become addicted to that too.
I never knew I could need nicotine
until it came from under your tongue,
a numberless cigarette lit twixt your fingers,
burning like the bridges
between your heart and mine.
You started to need the tobacco
a lot more than you needed me
and your body frame started to dwindle
because i was not enough to keep you stable.
I blame myself
because at first I didn't notice that you were shrinking
I just thought you needed some space.
Your skin became tighter,
your knuckles turning so white
I couldn't tell if it was your bones
but I could still count each fragment with clear definition.
That night i buried my heart in your backyard,
like a dog trying to save a treat for next spring,
but I never came back for it.
It's been three months
and i'm still picking shards of you out of my skin.
You dug yourself so deep into my flesh
that you almost became a part of my DNA.
But just like the wrong blood type
my body rejected you
no matter how much i thought i needed you to survive.
But my mother did not raise me
with a wolf in my chest
so i can howl every time i lost you.
You are not the moon,
you are not the sun.
And i am not a flower.
I need more than warmth to get me out of bed in the morning.
This world is not a garden
and you are not the rain.
You do not decide when i get to be loved.

Don't tell me about Long Distance.
I have known Long Distance
since the day I saw you waving out of the back window of that silver Prius.
The snow banks insulating my car
because i spent the last 47 hours with you
and held you while you cried
because you weren't ready to leave for the marines yet.
But your body said other wise,
your muscles sharp and deadly.
It's been a while since you've written,
and it's been 8 months since my blankets have stopped smelling like you.
I couldn't help but notice
the way my body drowns in these sheets
because you were my life vest
but you were not there when i jumped in.
I looked back at the dock before my head went under
and i saw you just sitting there,
watching me struggle.
I tore you apart in my head
every single strand of thread and love was separated
until every bit of silence that was woven in has been exposed.
But these strands don't hold any value when you're drowning,
what I have done is destroyed the only thing that could give me buoyancy.
Now I am left with extra weight on these shackles
i bear and water filling up my lungs
like a measuring cup to a recipe from Hell's kitchen.
In your last letter you asked
"Are we okay?"
but you don't just tell someone you love them then let them drown.
I have known Long Distance since you came back home today.
You are so close to me
but I still feel like you are not present.
There is something to be said
about missing someone who is right next to you.
Usually it is the person at home
who gives up on the one in the military,
but you found your home inside of those bunks and those guns.
You have only taught me to never make homes out of human beings.
I have to keep reminding myself
that you are a woman to never be slowed down
because you will leave everyone else behind
and I never wanted to come last to you
but i never wanted to beat you either.
I have known Long Distance
when I reach my hand out
and you've always been just slightly out of my grasp.
You were a goal to work towards,
a beautiful woman sitting on a pedestal waiting to be won
and I've always been too inadequate to be the one to have you.
You are the Epitome of Long Distance,
and I have known you for much longer than I would have liked.

God doesn't hear you unless you say things out loud.
So if you talk about how great the weather's been lately
and the next day it rains,
it's not called a jinx
its a joke.
Our God is known to punish
more than forgive
so it's no coincidence
that after I told you I loved you
that you left.

I never knew that God could be so ruthless
until I watched the days pile up without you here.
You are the clothes carelessly thrown on my floor,
the empty bottles on my night desk,
my wrinkled sheets that are never smoothed out.
You are a burden
but something i cannot bare to part with
in fear that i'll need you once you're gone.

If i iron my sheets
i'll miss the indents they made on my body
but i'll miss your body more.
Your absence has created a void
that can never be filled,
an empty crate that's too small for books
but too big for my words,
a hollow sorry with enough tears to fill up a baby pool
but not enough to drown me in.

It's been 42 days since we've last spoken
and I can still hear your sigh in the back of my head.
But God only hears you when you speak
so when I whispered Hello,
He arranged for a Goodbye.
I've never been good at them,
I always stutter when the words start leaving my throat
like the letters are ripping their way out of my chest.
No wonder why it keeps throbbing
because it seems that I have a gaping hole inside of me.

I've tried to right myself with the wrong people,
the wrong ***,
the wrong drinks,
and usually i'm left feeling emptier than i started
which is hard to do
seeing as though i'm always vacant.
I've started to become concave,
allowing more room for others
and I can't help but continue to apologize for the space I occupy.
Someone once told me
that i make a better door than window
and I wonder if it's because when you look at me
you can see it's always raining on the other side.

God can only hear you if you speak
so that's why I breathe my words
in fear that if i say them too loudly
He might make them shatter.
The broken shards of syllables
and chipped letters of your name
falling gracefully around me;
raining down like a slow motion hurricane.
I thought about grabbing on to your vowels
but you vowed to never make me bleed
so i stuffed my hands back in my pockets
only find your broken ceramic promises
digging deep into my palms.
I felt crucified and wondered
if one day Jesus would tell everyone
that I died for their sins.

Give me your poor,
your weak,
your sick
and your ******
and i will find a way to make them live forever.
Scream their names into the sky,
fracture the clouds with their stories.
Make the lightning bolts crumble
before ever leaving their homes
to give God an accurate representation
of what it feels like to want to die every morning.
Because I have crumbled long before the lightning,
long before the fractures in the clouds,
long before the names being thrown into the sky.
I have known the days
before silence became almost as excruciating as the screams
because God only hears you when you speak.

I felt time slow down, but it was a gradual shift. Like the ceiling fan that was previously on high suddenly being turned off but the blades continue to spin from sheer momentum. From the moment the alcohol hit my system, I thought about you. I lose sleep waiting for you to talk to me, but I've found a graveyard in this home. The only beings still awake with me are the ones you could see the through, people or ghosts. I would sleep better on your floor than I ever could in my bed. Treat me like your dog and I will gladly beg for your crumbs. This is hungry work and I should have worshiped you sooner. You've got molds of your hand prints on the sidewalk out front of your house and I think that's why you are so similar to the concrete. You preserve precious memories in the form of tangible keepsakes while staying completely solid. But I know that if I were to be concrete, I would crack myself apart just to let the smallest flowers grow because I have kept too many things buried when they needed to be said. I am the Queen of the Bitten Tongue, I have permanent divots on my taste buds, the words crowd around my teeth like plaque and I think that's why I started carrying floss with me every where I go so I could pick out the words that threaten to stain them. I'm glad my braces fixed the gap or else you would know a lot more than you should because the letters would drip out like a leaky faucet; word by word until they filled up the sink and have no choice but to over flow because these words will never go down smooth. They have thorns covering their every edge so when you hear them, they rip your eardrums to pieces. Leaving no part of you unaltered. I never wanted to hurt you so that's why I'm so quiet. Sometimes after speaking, I find it hard to stop my mouth from bleeding but it usually gets swallowed just like my pride. I would kiss your scars for the rest of time even if they were still open but you're so good at being closed off from me. I'm tired of taking your detours, having to turn around because the bridge to your heart is down due to construction but I never ordered any materials for this project. So who is the one working on your heart? My concrete queen, I would kiss your feet like the pavement you provide, take endless road trips down your winding roads but I'm afraid of the *** holes that I get stuck in constantly. You have no idea how unproductive it is to fall in and out of you as often as I do. I'm addicted to the pain of falling into you, but I wouldn't mind crashing into your sheets as long as I can have the throne next to you.