I watched as you
cast yourself away
one step at a time;
with my gaze fixed
at your dauntless irises
how could I have known
that with every breath
you were drifting further away.

The clocks ticked away,
and all I have is the last of
second chances.

I watched as you slowly,
very slowly,
with such grace,
effortlessly,
faded into the horizon.

And all I have to thank
is the image of you
my eye lids were able to retain.

sometimes, you can't feel the sunshine and you can't see the flowers and there could be a fire roasting on open coals inches from your hands and you could still not sense its warmth. sometimes you just can't help it and ******* im so ******* sorry that you're telling me you love me and i cannot feel it.
i'm living in a fog and it's not lifting, all i can see are the headlights that are all coming at me, all approaching rapidly.
i skinned my knee but it doesn't really hurt. you left me for her but it really could be worse. all i know is i'm alone in this big empty world. sometimes the sun is shining but you cannot see it. do not scold a blind man for just not seeing. do not fault a boat for being rocked by the water.
sometimes it's all one can do to not be pulled under
i promise i'm trying to swim but i fear i am more a rock than a fish; meant less for the water and more for the ground

Together amid greenery and blossoms
they stand shoulder to shoulder, narrow eyed
and fixated upon bursts of golden daylily.

More than spring mingles in the mist
more than heat flows between them
mystery envelops them

There was the first time she held a clock
a miniature spring operated swiss piece
forbidden, still she opened the back

Movement, synchronized with sound, churned
tick, tick, tock, tock, steady clicks
worked the hands notch after notch

Would she let what was between them
work without her fingers, incited by catlike curiosity,
prying open the back of him

Stare at his insides, his tick, tick, tock, tock
until she sees him as a machine
turning until the spring unwinds?

and it goes like this:
one day you will look at me
and tell me i'm beautiful like
you always do and i will
not be able to take it anymore

i've been trying hard not to
be in love with you like i know i always
have been, because since day one
i never wanted to just ******* or lie to you
or push you away

i just
wanted
you

beautiful you, with
your quirked eyebrow and your
mother's nose and your love of
stormy afternoons and most recently
me

(i think about you all the time)
you tell me, like i don't understand
but one day you will learn that
i have written hundreds of lines of
poetry about you and i hope that they
will make you
smile

You are the perfect medicine
To my bleeding rib cage
And aching monochrome bones
The lies I hold
Under my skin are too much
For me to carry
Alone

Did you know
That girls are more likely to
Commit suicide by something
Slow
Like a bottle of pills
Or a slash at both wrists
So they can wait in the last minutes
With their last breath
For someone to rescue them

A boy however
Is more brash
Crashes his car into a building
Takes a gun to his head
Jumps off a bridge
Because his anger
Leaves no space for hope

I find it interesting
That I want to die
Yet look both ways while crossing
The street
And still quake in fear at the idea
Of someone breaking in
Is this because I'm secretly
Waiting
(What a boring thing)
To be saved?
Or am I just too stubborn
To die
If not at my own hands

Whatever it is
I know that you are the same

You are a car crash waiting to
Happen
And I am an empty bottle of pills
Orange and cracked on the
Bathroom floor

i. he was three am coffee
   and an orange pill bottle
   cracked and lifeless on
   the bathroom floor tiles
ii. he was poetry and no
    lies and animal rights
    and current events &
    wow he was beautiful
iii. He Was A Tidal Wave
    That Crashed My Heart
    A Total of Seventeen And
    A Half Times And I Loved
    Him Like I Loved The Sun
iv. number four was myself and
     it had never felt so good to
     smile at the beauty of your
     self because you are the stars
     and the moon and you are you
v.  She was thunder and rain and
      the calm after the storm. She
      tasted like caramel and smelt
      like cigarettes. I thought that
     she would be my last first kiss.
vi. he was the liquid in my lungs
     and the stars in the sky. we
     ******. a lot. and then he
     would kiss me and hold me
     real soft and real tender
     and i was home

blossoming love and blossoming flowers
the nights are sweet, smelling of
lavender and cherry lipgloss
this may just be skinny love
but it’s summer and I want to kiss
under the stars and drown in the
undercurrents of our affection
I want to dance freely at 3 am
with friends in the backyard
playing our mixtape and forgetting
curfews
I want to be held under the mist of a
waterfall ( we can spill all our secrets )
and I want to make this summer last
skinny love only lasts a year
but the summer is all I need

I am the queen of stutter.
There was a time every creak and crack in my bones resonated between every slur of a word and every pop in my vowels.
I was a young girl with a white picket fence and yet there were still moments when words mixed and broke and-and-and-and
kids thought it was weird.
So I hid the voice with lollipops and suckers because I was
"That kid" and the "Freak" and I started to believe it like I believed my mothers bedtime stories that rested in her cheeks.
I was a broken jar and no matter how many times you tried to put me back together I always broke again and again and again.

There was a time where words came out together,
like a butterfly hatching from a cocoon and instead having feathers. I spoke with a voice of the age of four and before I was five I spoke no more because ****, vowels came out like clicks and grinds and everyone told me they paid no mind but I knew that they hated it liked I hated consonants. And I think the reason I hated it so much was because it reminded me too much of her and it made me feel like I was turning into her and all I could see was her standing over me like a murderer stands over a corpse and for a moment I forgot what it meant to be cradled to a chest, fluttering with a beating heart.



The first time my mother left, It was June.
She gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said she'd be away for awhile but that her love for me was longer than any mile that she would have to cross. I kissed her on both cheeks and it wasn't until she left that I realized that I was the one pushing her out the door. So when my dad came home from work he found an empty house and nothing more, he knew where to find me. I sat out in the pouring rain on a swing set that was older than my veins and waited to be saved to be rescued to be heard to be found to be be be be be be
I, was the queen of stutter.
And I had dropped that off when I moved from the city and I started a new life, carving it out of the trees outside with motivation and a knife. I did not yet understand that life was difficult.
But then my mother did not return and my father got scared because she had been the only one to ever love him the way he needed to be loved. And I did not understand so I started to carve life out of my palms and wrists and every **** kiss and nothing was ever good enough. I was the kid that turned to pill bottles and drugs but it was a metaphors for my dying bones and cracking lips. I breathed air that was blue and told my dad lies that were true and I was lost in a lost world, where being found was something that happened when you were dead and God, I wanted to be found.

So the story continued on and I wrote poetry to encompass my heart and my lungs and I painted over myself, scribbled all the mismatches and righted out all of the wrongs. Life seemed to continue and my dad had been injecting life into his veins and had been living at the doctors and had been tired all the time and had been lonely and sad and had been gone. He promised me a graduation and maybe even my wedding if he was lucky. I took these words with me everywhere I went and trust me if I could marry now I would in a heart beat.

I am fifteen.
My marriage has not yet come but I feel like I have all the time in the world and the doctor is only a place my dad goes to visit now. I can make words come out of my mouth the way they appear in my head and I now know the meaning to carving life into my bones and into the hues of the sunset. I am no longer afraid of every click and grind and twist and churn in my brain because it reminds me that I am alive and breathing and that my veins are filled with blood and that I breathe air like every other person does.
I was the queen of stutter.
Now I am the queen of hope.