Sometimes, I get embarrassed.
By my awkward, goofy features.
By my pretentious, know-it-all attitude.
By my anxious, self-concerned demeanor.
I act big, and I talk bigger.
I am the loudest.
I cut people off.
I take up space in conversation,
and in theaters
and on buses
and at restaurants
and in my own home.
Where I seem to be growing outwards,
only to be trapped
in myself.
My anxious, awkward, earthly existence.
I fumble and struggle and slip.
I become a pathetic pile of self doubt.
I am suddenly the embodiment of embarrassment.
And sometimes, I get
embarrassed.
But
mostly,
I embarrass myself.

I refuse to let you
break me.
Because I don't even know you,
and because
I cannot be broken
..anymore than I have
already
broken myself.
I refuse to let you turn me into
something I am
not.
Not before I know what
I really
am.
I will grow and expand to
one thousand times the size of anything
you have ever
been.
You can keep your fame
and your photos
and your happy little
life.
I am determined.
And I will be busy.
I will be making
mine.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm
moving
backwards.
I like myself less and less,
and a
little
less
each day.
Jealousy and sickness grow
rampant
inside me.
My head has been swelling
for months on end,
and my heart has been
shrinking
and shriveling.
I don't feel like
myself
anymore.
I am sad
and bitter
a irritable.
So many things I never was
before.
I go searching for
disappointment,
and still turn up
even more
empty
handed.
Everything hurts in me.
My body is giving up on me.
I begin each day
with my head
throbbing.
I can't eat.
I don't sleep.
And I am steadily losing
patience,
and
myself.
He's back.
That same monster.
From so many years before.
I wish he would leave me alone.
And yet I am still here,
fighting.
An ongoing war
inside
myself.

I should start writing again.
Start crafting my thoughts into words instead of
watching your every move.
Start writing again instead of
envying
you,
girl with the make-up.
Girl with the tools to use it.
Girl that should go to beauty school .
You, girl, who wants to get paid to be
pretty.
And I have to wonder why it is
you
that I envy.
Why not the smart girls?
The successful girls?
No, you.
With the boyfriend who you love who does
everything
for you.
You, who has barely reached the cusp of adulthood
with no adult mentality
to show for it.
Why you?
With the glamorous life,
that I so envy.
Because I should know better.
That every glamorous life is riddled with
sickness and
sadness.
But I envy you,
girl.
Me with my lonely little scribbles,
and you
with your thousands of loyal, devoted followers.
They don't know you any better than I do .
Yet I am the one writing a poem about
you.
The girl who I am so intrigued by,
for reasons unbeknownst to me.
The girl who's glamorous life I can see right through.
I envy you.

I am no longer searching for reasons of why you would leave me.

Watching the lines grow deeper on your face
every time that I
doubted
your presence.

"I'm not going anywhere."
You have chimed, again and again.
Frustrated and flickering in and out of consciousness,
but resilient enough to repeat yourself
over,
and over.

Like a faint, but still glowing lightbulb,
in a cold basement cellar.
You do not light the way, but you provide some
comfort and warmth.
And without you I would certainly be
left in the dark.

You are safe.

I like that as time has gone on, I have crushed your castle walls,
piece by piece.

There are moment where I still find sensitive spots,
and I can see your shell snap shut around you whenever I run my
hands, or
words
across them.
So strong-willed in your solitude.

I have learned how you live your life like a current.
Drifting from place to place,
simply along for the ride.

I have seen your cool, collected, cavalier crusade
crumble and crack into
silent tongues, and sad, sorrow stares through soft eyes.

I have seen a boy who sheds tears for no one say
"I'm sorry"
through crystal, crying eyes.

My eager heart pushed it's way into an
entrance, just ajar,
and when the clam shell cranium slammed shut like a car door,
I was left broken and bleeding like a
smashed pinky finger.

So then I wondered
why would you shut up all of your doors to
the only person who has seen
windows
to your soul?

Every time you opened them,
I pried my way to the curtains, and
peered inside.
Hoping to steal tiny glimmers of your
light, until they could only
flicker.
In and out of existence,
like they are not sure if this is the right
room.
Or even the right house.

Foggy and blurry, you might close them
to get some rest,
or just recharge, if only for a moment.

But when a blinking, bleeding heart,
still beating and bright,
says it is lost, and in need of more light,
you might draw the curtains a little more tight,
just for the night,
and wake up in darkness.

When I demanded you light my way after I had
subdued your sunshine,
why would you leave anything unsaid?

But then again,
why wouldn't you?

Concerned with image.
Hard to tell what decisions
I make for myself.

With every attempt
Neatly placed in a showcase
And shared openly.

Pencil pushing past
Writer's block; rubbing your eyes
'Til they're only bags.

I want to do some
Thing for myself, for only
My own desire to.

Yet still here needing
gratification for my
own satisfaction.

How can you feel proud
Of something that's been seen by
You, and you alone?

Pride stemmed, not from self,
But my need for approval.
To be justified.

So many sorrys.
For things with no offense I
Would apologize.

Considering my
Image. Always picturing
The scene I am in.

Viewing my life from
How it might look with someone
Else's perspective.

And I am amazed
That I could take this mind and
Make it look so good.

But in truth it is
Far frazzled and forgotten.
Ha ha. Tricked them all.

Iced coffee and streaks of sunlight,
it is too early for me to be awake
without you.
People keep telling me I will be
healthy and happy,
and I know that.
But morning time sunshine
spilling in through windows,
makes me think of times spent
smiling in silence.
Before we started sleeping in silence,
and loving in silence,
and living in silence.
All good things must come to an end,
some endings are just more difficult than others.

I'm wide awake with the rain,
and you are sleeping right beside me.
I think if I could remember anything these days,
I'd tell you
This is how it started the last time.
When things began to fall to pieces.

We distance ourselves from fears and facts
so we can stand sleeping back to back
and thunderstorms rain on my parade.
We were made of
stardust.
Or so I once really believed.

2014 will be my year.
It is my year.
The year I learned
sometimes we cry because we are
so
*******
happy.
The year I learned there was
love for me,
all around the world,
before my feet have touched European soil.

In 2014, I learned to start doing things for myself.
And I learned that when you are nothing but authentic,
it draws more people to you.
I learned to embrace my
honesty,
my sensitivity.
2014 was the year I learned that
what is popular
is not ineviable truth.
And if you choose to be one of the few people left who still has
***** to give,
people are drawn to that too.

I learned that
many of the reasons that people love me,
are the same reasons I love people.
In 2014 I made beautiful, important,
imperfect decisions.
I want this to be a year I'll look back on with pride,
knowing,
not that I found myself,
but, more so, that I was
never missing.

Forgive me.
I can't help wanting to plant kisses on you always.
For all the scary things you've shown me about myself,
and how you've always managed to hold on to me afterwards.
With shaking shoulders and a tender tremble from my
nose to my toes.
And how you have loved them,
and all the places in between.
I want to kiss you always,
but it is so much more than that.
Lips alone are not enough to disclose the emotions behind them.
They are clumsy in motion, and falter, between speeches, and sleep-talking, and sometimes they plant themselves on your neck, or chest, or forehead, in an effort to say
"Forgive me.
I don't have the words to tell you that you are beautiful and wonderful and magical.
Forgive me,
because I don't know how to explain that you mean the world to me.
Forgive me because
I am so headstrong, I will never let myself need anyone,
but if there was ever a person for me to need
I swear that it is you."
And those lips will stumble in search of the perfect place to kiss, so as to tell you these things, until they find
yours.
Resting quietly below two soft blues shining out of your skull,
with all the aches of a lovely soul,
and when you kiss back,
all is forgiven.

Don't tell me.
You're sorry.
and I'd like to ask you what exactly it is you're
"sorry" for.
For something you did or didn't do,
or for the reaction it got out of me?
You shouldn't have to be sorry.
And to be completely honest,
I am tired of "I'm sorry"s.
You have given me so many,
and I have kept them all.
Tucked neatly in my ear,
left in the folds of my belly.
Held graciously between my two tender thighs
waiting to be replaced with something
better.
Newer.
Different.
Don't give me any more "sorry"s.
Give me more "I love you"s and
"how are you"s and what have yous
and "I'll see you tomorrow"s.
Give me more time and energy,
instead of filling these spaces in between with
I'm sorry's.
You'll find that you're not so sorry.
And that if you came around as often as you'd "like" to,
you would never have to say "sorry"
in the first place.

And tonight, I'm feeling
very
very
empty,
Because that's how it feels
when its not enough to just
love.

Glass for looking,
and I saw myself in it.
I wanted to write something real **** poetic,
But your face kept popping up in my head
and I had no good words for the feeling it gave me.
I'm the Queen of Regret.
And that doesn't make you proud,
doesn't make you stay steady.
My guilt would pull us both down because it's
just that heavy.
And I have been sleeping underneath it for far too long.
What have you brought me?
Aside from being happy,
which is all I have ever really been asking.
You've done so well and I am so tired of
beating this dead horse.
Broken and ****** and bashful,
closed off like every "I love you"s a mouthful.
And people ask me how we're doing and I say
"I'm doing fine" which isn't a lie the way it used to be.
You got used to me.
As I've been used to second guessing.
Used to the mess we let ourselves step in.
Well adjusted to the ways
in which we can't communicate.
I allowed for more time,
you allow for more stays.
But I still can't shake that it's
all the same
and it's been a ******* year.
Why do I still feel like i'm wasting it here?

To do nothing but rot.
In moments like these
is all I want.
And it's been said I am wasteful.
The truth is distasteful.
Neglecting reflection for sake of your fables.
Living in a dream
built in your head
somewhere between
half asleep and half dead
just
won't
cut
it.
We are not so different, you and I.
Similarly leading separate lives.
Susceptible to the same old repetitive lies,
as the ones we will hear 'til the day we die
like
"I'm sorry"
"I love you"
"It's my fault"
"I didn't mean to"
"I'll try harder than I used to."
or
"One day I'll love you more,"
Well I've heard the score.
Love you better, love you often.
More affection and more talking.
More attention, more gawking.
More time.
You are mine,
and I haven't felt the truth in that.
And it is moments like these when I wonder
what I am doing
at all.

**** the things that make you run,
who needs 'em?
And let's be honest,
aren't we all a little more afraid of
staying, anyway?
I'm tired of all the toughness.
It is not pretty or popular or thoughtful or fond
to be a disconnected, dearly contented, apathetic
sack of **** body bag made of
music and stardust and a cacophany of epiphanies
being carried around in a lump of a brain that has
"no ***** to give".
I'm tired of the way that we're striving to live and it's *******.
Giving up is not poetic,
and heavy tears are not pathetic when they have been built by
resistance
to the every growing popularity of a
selfish way of living,
as in taking without giving
and being unconcerned with the result.
It's not adult to be so *******
foolish,
and childish,
and finicky
and spineless
and what is this "toughness" anyway but a
generation of *******
who's parents didn't want to have too listen to them cry.
And no silver spoons would ever ponder on why.

I want to push buttons to bring you closer to me.
to write pages upon pages of poetry.
I would like to give you all the finer things.
But this will end one day.
And maybe that day is fast approaching.
And maybe that's a notion I haven't opened.
And maybe my thoughts have been encroaching
on my day to day lifestyle
But you wouldn't know the difference.
And you keep it all hidden.
And I began to feel a bit forbidden
from your
day to day lifestyle.
I smile when I think about the past with you.
But maybe there's no future,
only slowly healing sutures,
holding closed what grew openly between us two.
And if pushing these buttons would bring you closer,
I would type faster than some ******* poser
who is only pretending they know what to do.
But in honest to God, unshaken truth:
that is all I am.
And I thought you knew.
And I thought our love was truer than true.
But I am young and so are you.
And I seem to be all out of the finer things.

6 feet under in the Utah snow.
Numbers falling below zero.
We like to bury ourselves beneath blankets and pillows.
But i've come to find,
morning comes just the same.
Whether you're depressed, hungover, sick, or deranged.
The weather doesn't care,
and your feelings don't change
the downpour, fleeing the overcast clouds,
falling down, all scattered about.
Sticking to windshields, and rooftops, and tongues.
It will clean out all the places that sat in the sun,
And refresh all the faces whose memories stung.
Replace all the moments where laughter was sung.
It will cover everything.
In a sheet of white,
overnight,
falling fast in
soft moonlight.
It will remind you of blizzards
in years past.
And leaving you feeling you're sorry you asked,
to ever escape the heat,
you will retreat.
Back into blankets and pillows,
and nostalgia to wallow.
But tomorrow the sun will come out again,
and no matter how clouded, be certain, then.
The weather is invincible,
and we will continue to trudge through it.

Faith
is a funny thing to me.
The unmistakeable certainty
that things are the way the ought to be,
or will be one day, if you just believe,
and I've never been one to really see
the truth in that.
I've never believed in destiny,
but i'm not one to disagree
with feelings that people take to lead
their mind in positivity
It's a funny thing.
But I have always been certain
there are no blue prints.
And life is made up of a bunch of
decisions,
that you make day to day,
and the things that you say,
affect you in the long run.
I believe in action and reaction.
And every motion or potion, or
silly little notion,
every emotion and
all of your devotions have
consequence.
I believe in evidence.
Circumstance.
And the ability to change,
because everything cannot turn out the same
despite our decisions,
our brief intermissions,
cheap ammunition,
and limited provisions,
I have never had "faith" that things would be okay.
I just tried with every ounce of me to
make it that way.

Let me kiss you.
With all the anger and hurt you ever left me with.
Let me hold you down
and press my lips against yours
with the kind of force
that only comes from big emotions.
I would not have devoted so much time,
except,
I’m a sickening, spineless, sorrowful creature.
And how could I say no to
you?
Oh you.
With the smile and eyes of a
thousand
wise words,
wise cracks,
you wise guy
will you come back
into my arms again?
And stop leaving them
so easily, friend.
I want every possibility to be
you.
But a love this big cannot be hidden from.
So i’m asking you,
to let me kiss you,
with all of it.
Every ounce of emotion I put in to this thing,
let me leave it on your lips.
Maybe you will better know
how to deal with it.

Feeling like the end of an era.
The era of
respect
and communication.
The era of mutual
agreements
feelings
interests.
The end of an era
of
trying and
caring and
giving two *****.
The end of an era of
pursuing and
speaking and
engaging.
The era of introspection,
and reflection,
and self detestation.
The end of the era of
strained relations.
It was the era of
“I love you”s
And I wanted to end it
with an era of
honest responses.

Go home,
you’ll be fine.

So I fell.
Recklessly,
headlessly,
in all of the ways I said I wouldn't.
I fell deep
and hard
and fast.
Like the skydiver who's cord won't pull.
Like the traindriver who's car is full
I moved too quickly.
There was no time to stop and realize
this could never end well.
Whether now or in twenty years.
And all I have done is postpone the expiration date.
It hurts sometimes.
Especially when I realize the way I miss you
now
is nothing compared to the way I will miss you
then.
The day you lock that door for the last time will
**** me inside.
I gave you the code
to everything about me.
My fantasies, my family.
My deepest fears, my future dreams.
The words I speak will form the key that allows you to unlock me.
Leaving my heart broken open,
spilling all my tokens of
rejection and affection.
All my lifelong infections in
my lungs
my heart,
my brain.
I don't hold things back from you because I
can't.
I can't be anything but my crazy, needy, sad, scary
self, when i'm with you.
But recently, that isn't true.
I have been bottling everything.
Saving it for the perfect moment when
I could say it
and you could own it.
And that moment hasn't come.
It is no where in sight
and that makes me run from
feelings
like these
that I have for you.
I keep thinking an end is the right thing to do
but something in me won't give up on you.
Some part absolutely must refuse
my heart in letting go of you.
And I
am *******
terrified,
that this thing might be really true.
But I can't shake the feeling it isn't.
What is it about you that you keep hidden
that drives me along in my endless mission
to stay with you?
And will I find it
before you find out
that
everyone leaves eventually.

If it were easier to be proud,
I might be.
But positivity doesn't often
ring in me.
I have shined for so many years,
making proclamations of my thoughts and fears,
relentlessly opening my heart,
my doors,
my mind.
Only to be crushed a dozen times.
And maybe it is beautiful that I keep trying.
But it doesn't feel that way on the
inside.
It is like
harboring a monster in me,
and hoping one day someone could
love it.
I can smile in so many ******* directions and it has
never
fixed the beast.
And it eats and feasts on
feelings.
I believe my neurons and nerve endings,
and my seratonin and dopamine,
have all been over-
compensating.
For fear of losing it all to this
thing
in me.
It's been there since I was about
13,
and I thought it had stopped
growing.
Long dormant,
but now returning from
submission.
Moving from feelings and making bigger decisions.
I fear he is now eating
me.
Some sickness from the inside out,
beginning with my sense of doubt.
And lack of fulfillment
and stupid ambitions.
And all of the things I have tried to keep hidden.
He is tearing holes in the very foundation
of this ******* facade I've been constantly faking
for something like 5 years
now.
All my best kept secrets are leaking through the cracks,
leaving people feeling like they're
sorry they asked.
He will go for my bones, and then my skin,
after devouring the flesh within
until there's
nothing
left of me.
I have been piles before.
Crumbled, bumbling,
cautiously fumbling for
doors or
floors
or lightswitches.
Chased into beds with sheets
far less than neat,
he's been following me for
some time now.
And I keep thinking I can write him out.
But the feeling never sticks around.
And the words will cease to make me proud.
It comes back.
Like clockwork.
Year after year,
cold after cold,
he is there.
Somewhere in me.
Eating steadily, slowly.
Savoring the taste of my suffering.
Depleting my positivity,
and filling it with other things.
And what I have been wondering
is if I can somehow make it leave
and allow what's left of me to breathe,
one day will it be easy
to be
proud?

I forget to write.
I forget how it feels to let loose,
hit keys,
touch pen to page
I forget the sweet release
of a violent rage,
a swift phase,
I'm quick to **** a thought's stage
as it is in
motion.
I stop my neural locomotion.
it's a new kind of devotion
to be void of all emotion.
I'm forgetting everyday,
all the things you used to say
and all the things I wanted to say back.
I forget how to attack all my
ambitions.
I'm on a mission
to find a new division
of this life I seem to live in.
I forget how to feel it,
I forget how to give in.
I forget how to succumb
to my fingers and thumbs.
And how to give way
to the trails that are made
between my hands and my brain,
and my heart and the same and
lately there is
nothing.  
I forget
how it feels
to really write
something.

If I could climb inside
this great divide.
I'd find some broken place to hide.
Fix it up,
make it right,
wrap the wound,
and shine some light.
Allow us both to have some time,
to breathe, and at the least
decide
what exactly we might find
when we choose to break the ties
we are making.

Day to day, a silence stays  
that's only broken when you sway
enough to give me time away from all the
thoughts that rot my brain.
You show up,
they are dismayed.
They all retreat and run away,
and for a night I might be
safe.
At least 'til morning.

And eventually, then,
a time will come when,
we will part, my friend,
and you will leave again,
and by some offense,
one day you
won't
come
back.
And I will have to hide
in this great divide.
To keep hope alive
that I'll get on
track.
But then again, I've always
lacked a lot of
things.

So you're a poser.
And isn't everyone else?
The way you imagine them all living so authentically,
and honestly,
and in so many ways you never could.
It's *******, don't you know?
Stop discrediting yourself.
There are plenty enough people to do it for you.

So you're a poser?
So you say you do things you maybe don't do.
So you have the tendency to maybe not follow through.
So you can't always be 100% in tune.
So what.
So you're trying?
So you're trying too hard.

So you're a poser.
Stop posing.
Be genuine in closing.
And optimistic in opening.
Stop thinking everyone is better than you,
and stop posing as someone who thinks
they
are better than
everyone else.

And everyone else?
They are posing, too.