They say

you only regret the things you didn't do

but where you regret not staying

I regret leaving

You said

I love you

You said

I'll stay by your side

You said

Goodbye

In my world

when a tree falls in the forest

it is only laying down to sleep

and of course it makes a sound

because its limbs creak with dreams

These are words that I would write on the moon.

I’d trace them into the dust where no wind could ever blow them away,

then I’d leave a trail of footprints so you could always find me,

because sometimes I lose myself in the night sky.

I used to think that what never goes up never has to come down,
that if I kept my head out of the clouds I would never have to hit the ground,
but I must have made one too many dandelion wishes,
because suddenly I’m so high in the atmosphere that I can barely breathe.

Now I can see that my dreams built me a staircase,
I’m just too scared to keep following them because what if it breaks?
I can’t fly, I lost my super hero cape,
It got ripped apart when I had to start saving my everyday

Still I can’t just stay here in this in-between
Maybe I can’t fly, but I can still fall, like everyone does,
and there isn’t any point trying to save me,
Just listen to the screams of my heartbeat

It says that I want to be free
and I will hit the ground running even if it breaks my knees
because being grounded doesn’t mean giving up
It just means I want to walk on something that I can trust

They say that words can never hurt me,
But its the stab of a scrawling pen that stings the most
Because they aren't just sticks and stones.

They’re a sharp knife between my ribs
That my heart tries to escape,
But it can’t get out of its cage.

Words slice us open until dark ink
Gushes from our wounds and pools over the paper,
Where those who can’t read hop through the puddles of our misery.

And words may not break my bones,
But they propel every speeding bullet that crashes through my skull.
They fuel ever ticking bomb of age old scripts that condemn my home.

Words are the push from the ledge in every excess suicide
They form the noose that strangles your neck before you even touch a rope.
They label every empty pill bottle and they write the note.

I want to scream at the top of my lungs
But sadness is a quiet song
And my lungs are weak from shallow breaths
And my racing heart gets no rest

Silence can be just as profound
But not when your veins course with sound
And voices whisper in your ear
Sometimes you need to hear more than an echo

The world needs to hear what I feel
So I can be sure that's it's real
Because even the words I put down in ink
Don't hold the power of what I speak

I have never heard a more beautiful sound,
than the song she sang as I fell asleep.
It illuminated every star in the sky,
and captured my every dream.

It sounded like the brush strokes that paint the sunset,
and winter icicles melting.
I heard the sound of tears rolling down stained cheeks,
and the ghostly wail of wind through the trees.

That haunting music followed me into sleep,
and I was blinded by what I couldn’t see,
but the soundscape was ethereal, pulsing with every heartbeat.
It was the sound of her heart and she had given it to me.

I heard every high, every low, and every sad silence.
The sound of her soul was greater than any symphony.
Somehow the notes became me, they changed me,
and I could finally hear my own quiet.

I have never sang a more beautiful song,
than the song I sang as she fell asleep.
I had never scrawled the contours of my soul into composition,
but I did it for her, because she brings beauty.

When I walk down the halls,
I feel the stares that I know aren't there
but I feel them all the same.  

Every eye, every mind, but this isn’t vanity,
because every glance is a burning pain,
a picture of the thousand words that I don't want to hear.  

So pill after pill,
until empty bottles cover my floors,
and steel locks bolt my doors.  

There is no overdose to present me with a midnight rose,
because who knows what would happen. I don't.  
So I stay here where I can see because blinding light paints away every shadow.

The windows are always shuttered to keep out the dark,
the growing, bulging, draining fear that I can't even keep out of my head,
the shady figure waiting around every street corner.  

You think that I don't know? It doesn't have to make sense to be real for me.
They say I have nothing to fear but fear itself,
but why do that when fear is my constant company?

I missed you before you even left.
Now that you’re gone I can feel your absence in every step.
I can’t escape the shadows of this tangible emptiness.
Strangely, it’s easier to feel than presence.

You left so soon, there was no farewell.
I don't know where you’ve gone or why,
but when you become a ghost,
come back and haunt me.

You’ll always be in my heart,
and you’ll always be my daydreams,
but I need you in my reality,
even if you’re only real to me.

Come back like those faded photographs,
with our school books, young love, and backpacks.
We were never high school sweethearts, never really sweet.
We were guitars, and singing, and poetry.

We were like a summer storm,
blowing away everything in our path.
Thunder always let lightning go first,
and I guess old habits die hard.

But I was never meant to be alone,
missing your harmony to my melody.
It’s harming me and I can't find the right note,
to capture your goodbye and to capture your soul.

So, I know they say people only become ghosts if they have a reason to stay,
but can't I be your reason? I need you for my rainy days,
because you can't have thunder without lightning,
Only storming skies and raining eyes and ghostly goodbyes.

Maybe you should leave me here
this building will collapse one day
the trees and the earth will cover my bones
until the sun embraces them and takes them home

Maybe you never should have come
I was alone, not lonely, just ghostly
there was no emptiness until you created it with your presence
and ignorance is a bliss I can’t get back

Maybe I shouldn’t have come
I withdrew from the world because, like a shattered mirror
it didn’t reflect dreams, just distorted reality
and I never learned to believe unless I could see

Maybe we should both stay here
love could come live with us in our cage
we write write poetry and the birds might teach us how to sing
you could make this hiding place a home

I need you to fill my hollow bones
I want to curl up with you on a rainy day
So neither of us will have to cry alone
And neither of us will be out in the cold

I need this so I may build a ribcage
Around a heart that actually beats
We can rebuild our skeletons together
So we can finally stand on our own, but not alone

I need a mouth to wrap around mine
To taste the words I can't bring myself to speak
And I won't mind if your lips are rough from screaming
As long as your lips will echo me

I need you so that my heart doesn't fade from lack of use
But I have my own storm clouds too
So I need you to need me back
To need someone just as broken as you

I’ve always thought I was a lot like the sun,
burning, exploding, colliding inside.
My nuclear fusion radiating light,
but people mistake it for a twinkle in my eye.

I live in this black void of space,
my life has never been a coloring book page,
like those pictures children draw of the sun,
round and yellow with crooked rays and even a smiley face.

But then that kid grows up and goes to school.
He thinks space is cool so he gets a telescope,
then a certificate of cosmology, now he really knows me,
and the childhood smiley face is erased.

My astronomy simply isn’t a crayola color.
I don’t fit in that little box, I’m light years away.
No one can hear me from so far in the galaxy,
and the planets circle just out of reach.

The sun is such a lonely star,
since the others only come out at night, once he’s left.
His lunar love always has to leave too soon,
because the earth can’t stop spinning for the sun and the moon.

So he floats on the horizon alone,
warming our world and lighting the sky.
People forget that he’s there, the thing they couldn't live without.
Ancient tribes used to worship him, but those people died out.

And people seem to think the sun controls the weather.
Whether its hot or cold, rain or snow,
but its never enough or always too much,
because I can never get it right.

For five billion years I have watched worlds rise and fall.
For billions more I will watch from afar.
Nobody’s ever managed to survive out here with me,
I always tear them apart with my gravity.

So yes, I have skeletons in my closet,
but when I put them there, they were more than shadows.
I guess their rocket ship broke,
because now they’re just charred bones.

But when you’re the sun, its not your fault,
that people who get too close go up in flames,
because its hard not to burn every bridge,
when burning is how you live.

Finally, I broke...

I picked up the sharpener
and put down the pencil
took out the blade
let my pain become a stencil
for ruby tattoos
to tally mark broken hearts
how much blood will it take
to hide the scars?

The ends of my veins
are tied off with guitar strings
to keep the sad song inside of me
but I still worry that my blood will stop flowing
because did you know
that the ocean only moves because of the moon
and my constellations are fading
these waves are waning
it is only a matter of time
before the push and pull of these tides
stops like a kid too heavy for the seesaw of truth or dare

I dare you
to tell me that feeling nothing is better than feeling pain
because the heart
is nothing more than a muscle
bench pressing suicides
trying not to flatline
playing a marching band of panic attack drum rolls
and skip-a-beat silence
It has to feel something

and I can see it in your eyes
the truth found you
I can see it in the way you hold yourself
as if your bones have been hollowed
and are as thin as eggshells
I can hear the pain in your breathing
tell me where it hurts
and I will build you a ribcage out of my scars
because they have always been more solid than my bones
in the same way that I never believed in god
but I have always known about the monsters under my bed

When people talk about everything thats wrong with kids these days,
I say to just look at how they are raised.
I was taught to judge people first by their face,
and second my how much money their father made.

I was taught that if it was weird, it was gay,
but if it was actually gay, nature had made a mistake.
I was told that the kids with cuts on their arms were only looking for attention,
and that the differences between us could be seen in complexion.

My brother was raised exactly the same way,
but every day I am reminded that he never changed.
And when I open my mouth I am accused of brainwashing him,
but I he still doesn’t care even when I get him to listen.

I only escaped out of necessity,
when LGBT became a part of me,
and I couldn’t bear to look in the mirror because I only knew one type of beauty,
when I had to accept that I would drown without therapy.

The world looked a lot different through orange pill bottle goggles;
I could finally see that the apple had to fall far from the tree,
or I would become part of this society that kills every dream,
and tells you there are endless possibilities then ties you down with material things.

I spent three years breaking myself into pieces,
trying to find my broken heart and replace it with one that did not have lines drawn at every divide.
Every minute of it hurt, but not more than the hate I had for myself,
or that awful feeling that I had hated someone for just being themself.

Still, on the inside I am stained.
I am marked from every time my family spit a venomous name.
For awhile I thought that what they didn’t know, couldn’t hurt me,
but then I spent an entire weekend under my bed because their words left me so empty.

But this is the price I pay for privacy.
This is what comes from being a wolf in a family of sheep.
It’s more like being in shackles than wearing false clothing;
I can’t even howl at the moon because what if they heard me.

If this is just how they were raised, then who should I blame?
When does a person become at fault for not being able to look past the things so deeply ingrained?
Who am I to ask them to use their brain and think for a change,
instead of doing what their parents taught them was okay?

I am the daughter that can’t bring a girlfriend home.
There is a reason that they will never get to hear this poem,
because I am their daughter who locks herself away in her room and tells friends she’s busy,
I am their daughter with out-of-control anxiety and depression that they don't bother to see.

I spent three years falling apart and I wouldn’t take their hugs.
I was always holding myself together because I knew that I would never let go,
but it’s funny how having your arms trapped around you feels just like a straight jacket,
and you can only take it off when you realize that you aren’t alone.

There are thousands of kids diagnosing themselves on the internet because their parents won’t listen,
and thousands more who hide everything they are because they just can’t take anymore scars.
But what I’m saying is the opposite of comforting,
because there are hundreds of thousands of people just like me.

When people talk about what’s wrong with kids these days,
I know that the ones they’re talking about are the kids who struggle every day,
not the kids who turn the keys that bind our chains,
and all I can think about is was this really just how they were raised?

I heard the hope is a thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
And I can certainly feel something fluttering
Stuttering like a heart with no metronome
But the closest thing I hear to bird song
Is the A minor scale of these accordion lungs
Trying to breath slowly, sore from screaming
Breathing shallow like a drowning sea, crashing
Take deep breaths that feel like they could break this ribcage
Be careful...
But I'm not sure there's any hope left to escape
I hope I haven't given up
At least not on them
I have given up on myself over and over again
But I will always believe in my army of tired eyes
Soldiers screaming the truth while gagged with lies
Fighting a civil war against themselves and the world
I won't give up
For the kids who wear rope burn necklaces
Like medals that they still made it through
For the people who live on the edge of a pill bottle trying not to fall in
While taking drugs with a side effect of dizziness
I'll keep hoping for you
For believing that the rain is playing the percussion of washing away
That our fingertips are like maps of the paths we take
For teaching me that hope isn't a bird
It is the feeling of holding hands
That turns falling into skydiving
It's the feeling that people who are barely surviving
Will take the time to hold on to you even when they're trying to keep their entire world together
That is the definition of hope
Not the words in the dictionary
But the four lead clover pressed in the pages
That echoes
"good luck"