I'd make tea for two
I'd make tea for you
Without asking me to
I'd offer to, for you
For you
For you.

But you were a coward afterall.

Remember that one time years ago on thanksgiving day when I was feeling so sad and had gotten in a shaky argument with my mom so I drove miles and miles into the night crying along to Radiohead, and all it took was sending one brief text message for me to end up at the step of your garage-bedroom door. your family had just finished eating dinner, I met your uncle for the first time, that might’ve been the last time I saw him, too. we spent the rest of the night in the dim of your bedroom, lying down on raschel blankets you’d carefully set out on the floor for us, my body like a crescent moon cradled in the orbit of your arms. darling boy, I’m falling apart again, and it’s in these times when it hits me most, when I realize the significance of your Autumn skin, of the monolithic bones behind them that held me close the way they did, that held me together as on that night. I’m sorry I didn’t know it then just how lucky I was. I’m sorry that I’m writing something like this now knowing all too well that none of this will ever reach you.

I'm not sure what's worse
Getting your heart broken
Or waiting around for a love that will never come

How does it feel
To kiss me without commitment?
And is that what this is?
Take and leave
As you choose
Is my heart really up to you?
There was love once
Inside of this house
The walls embraced it
Have they forgotten?
Will you remember?
That is was you
All these years

Can you remember anything without me?

Are you exactly where you want to be?
If you died, would it be happily?

Enclosed in off-white shell
Dug beneath earths dirt
Six feet underground
Pending, awaiting for the day
To be yours

In shadowed bloom
I rise
My body, soft and ripe
Yearns for your touch
To be only yours

You break me from my stem
Rip me from my roots
As I lay in the flame of your hand
You pierce your fingernails through my skin
Like shards of ice

Mercilessly, you peel off my layers
Leaving me all veins and flesh
I was made for you

Impudently, you apply me to your tongue
Your jagged teeth bite down
Sweetly, I burst in you

Turn to liquid in your mouth
Fill your organs
Quench your thirst
I am yours

You spit out
My bones when
You are done
And
I do not dwell

All that you’ve made of me
Lives inside you now

I'm no longer concerned with whether
Or not these words resonate
They're not for them
These words are for you

These words are to let you know
That today I wanted nothing more
Than to call you
Just so I could tell you
That I hope your day
Is even better than yesterday

And I can't wait to see your face
And kiss your lips
And hold your hand
This Thursday

One day our bodies will lose its breath,
and I am happy to have met you.

I leave the window
half-creaked open

enough to block you out
enough to let you in

I need you to try
I need you to cry
I need you to die a little
For me

We are in the front seats of your mustard yellow Subaru. This used to be your father's car when he was a college student in the 70's. It's strange how timing, location, and decisions changes everything. If your mother would have never left Savannah for Berkeley, or if your father would have left Berkeley for Kansas State, it would still be 11:45 on a Friday night but we would not be here. But here we are, in the Starbucks parking lot, my head leaning on your shoulder, your hand resting on my knee. "I'm glad I didn't die before I met you," I whisper. "I could go anywhere with you and I'd probably be happy," you respond as First Day of My Life fades into the background, luring our eyes to close. Sitting in these front seats, in the future looking back, I know that this is where I belong, they belonged, you belong, we belong.

2:20 on a Sunday afternoon, and I am afraid. I am afraid I'll one day forget the way this song moves me, the way it grasps my heart with invisible hands and pulls it out of my chest, past my mouth, past my head, leaving my mind perplexed and dizzy.

I am afraid you are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and I do not realize it.

There will come a day that I will not wake up to your disheveled hair and hagioscopic eyes, there will come a day that your warm skin pressed firmly against mine will not be the first thing I feel as I wake up to the rising of a new morning, and the idea, the mere thought of this brings me so much fear.

I am afraid of my heart, of its potential of becoming overtly attached, of becoming foreign and distant to a love it knows the most, to a love it keeps most close. I am afraid of my eyes, of their potential to overlook and oversee, images, moments, the passing of time, other sets of eyes.

I am afraid my layers of darkness, profound and crestfallen, will impede you from seeing any speck of light in me.

write the truest thing you know
even if makes you sad
persepective starts to change
a new gloaming
stop listening to your mind
read between your ******-up lines
drunk and in-loss
the emptiness starts to creek between the shallow spaces of your ribs
breath, you stop breathing
their whispering is never-ending
throughout the night
darling, will you ever be anything enough?
your mind it's in your mind
plague of maddening darkness
there is no frenzy
you were never very charming
always in-between
make up your mind
make up your life
take off your blue eyeshadow
take off your clothes
you've never been quite cool
make up your heart
last years tears stream past the valley of your cheek bones
fall out of your drought
fall out of your image
fall in love with yourself again
I won't remind you of your insecurites
love, I have forgotten them
drunk and with dreams
I lift you up
to bury you under

Selfish
I am the worst
Kind of selfish
I am the selfless kind of selfish
That unconditionally does nice things
For other people
Solemnly because it makes me feel limitedly better
About myself

I have to start seeing myself without you

I felt like writing
A haiku for you today
But I decided

To write these ******* lines
To you
Instead

I have a customer at work who is turning 91 on Valentines day. Her name is Ann, she doesn't believe in using cellphones, and she has the clearest blue eyes I think I've ever seen. I'm not sure why little details like this stick with me, a sticky note of sort attached to my brain and heart. Sometimes I'm scared of these little details, of learning too much about a person. It scares me to know that these details that make me so fond of a person will be the same details to sting my heart the most if ever the day comes in which that person is no longer around. little ghosts found everywhere, little ghosts that remind me when I'm trying to forget, little ghosts that effortlessly and casually whisper in my ear and tug at my heart. We've been learning more about each other lately. Slowly, gradually, quite deliberately, now that I think of it, we've been taking our time, careful not to reveal too much, but anxious, anxious to learn as much about each other as we can. The thought of everything I've learned about you so far makes my heart swell. This, too, terrifies me. Yet I want more of you. These things can be difficult to make sense of, and there is this part of me that doesn't wish to understand. Devendra Banhart's lyrics echo in the open spaces between my bones and blood vessels, insisting, pleading for you to *please destroy me, please destroy me, please destroy me

I paint my nails the color of pomegranate
The color of an open heart

I look like ****, but I feel phenomenal

I made a playlist for you once
Composed of twenty-two songs
The number of our age

I don't know why I'm fond of you
I've grown indifferent to most things by now

I'm smaller as an adult than I was as a child

If I had a home, I'd like you to come over
If you had the book of secrets
Would you share a secret with me?

There is music throughout the night
That only sounds while we are sleeping

There are faces we'll never see
And hands we'll never hold

There is meaning in reoccurring dreams

I cannot tell if it is cold outside
Or if I've come too close to the sun

I once wrote the words
"I'm gonna get run the **** over and be glad about it"
On an evening walk to my English class at school

Feelings change constantly
All the time

Even if they never apologized for breaking your heart

To Live as my Father has lived
To Love as my Father has loved
To weep as my Father has wept
To die as my Father has died

is it possible to spend your whole life fighting love
fighting for love
here I am and there you are
fighting for and fighting against
chasing a moment a sentence a feeling
is it possible to spend your whole life
determined to making it work
and is it enough? is it ever enough?
is it more than you could ever wrap your heart around?
is it possible to spend your whole life worried
of possibilities, whether or not these things will come
will I ever find a place to lie my worrying head
in the form of a lovers lap, corduroy pants on an autumn's day
is it possible to spend your whole life searching
is it possible to spend your whole life hiding
I've not a million lives but one
Love, where is my one?

Look at me. Really look at me tonight. Take me in. All that I unfold here before you. I'm the girl you could potentially learn to love. I'm the girl that you possibly do, already love. Open your self to me, you'll never be the same, we'll never be the same from here. Look at how beautiful this has the potential to be, our shared existence in this solemn universe, in this swollen universe, so filled with possibilities and love. Indulge yourself, immerse within, the welcoming of my open heart.

Your go to guy
When you can't find the words to say
Cause people are too much
And the world is not enough
And you're trying to keep sane
And you're afraid to **** it up
But aren't we all
A little stuck
A bit overwhelmed
A little lost

Me duele el alma porque te quiero

I'm homesick for a love I've never had.

I am going to pretend
That I have never heard what you are telling me
That way you aren't telling me
Something I already know

Last night I wept for you on the A train
Melodramatically, in my mind

You were holding her hand
Pressing her sadness against your baked skin
So that she might feel a little better
And oh, how she did

How you made her forget
If even for a little while
The image of his eyes from her mind
By looking into yours

But I can still see it through mine
And her
And you
And him
And these words

Betray me
Run me over
Make me sick

My eyes have done this once before. Cried before I could process the why. The last time it happened was on my drive home after kissing the boy who'd go on to break my heart. I didn't know it then, but it would be the last time I'd see him. I've concluded over time that it was my heart sending my body a signal. "Tell her it's happening. Tell her he's going to bring us pain. Tell her he's going to tear us apart."

It's been two days since, and I can feel it now. You won’t be the one to see me through, you won't be the one to truly cherish my heart. You’ll come close enough, linger on the surface, but you won’t know how.

I would probably try talking to it.
I guess I'm a pretty lonely person.

I'd end all my letters with 'to the moon and back.'

Beginners. The part in Beginners where Georgia takes young Oliver to the art museum and playfully tilts her body to mimic the juxtaposed metal frame installation. Or when on one of their drives in their 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D Turbo Diesel, Georgia tells young Oliver "You point, I'll drive," so Oliver knee-jerkily points his finger to the direction opposite of where they are driving, and Georgia calmly steers the car out of control without any bit of hesitation. The fact that Oliver keeps the "You point, I'll drive" tradition alive with Anna years after Georgia's passing, but never explains or even mentions to Anna the backstory and significance behind these words, it's just something he casually incorporates in his counted moments with her, which conveys through indirect verbalization just how much she means to him.

Oh, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Don't even get me started with Joel and Clementine, and all their heart-wrenching, perfect one-liners and phrases.

"I'm Clementine. Can I... borrow a piece of your chicken?"
"And then you just took it... without waiting for an answer. It was so intimate; like we were already lovers."

And,

"I could die right now, Clem. I'm just...happy. I'm exactly where I wanna be." All the right words, in the right sequence, with precise pause and emphasis.

Or,

"I'm a little out of sorts today." A line I secretly quote and have casually adapted into my every day utterances.

And of course the infamous Tangerine and Joely Sequence;

"You're pretty, you're pretty. You're pretty... you're pretty... pretty.."

Both of these movies mean so much to me. These are the kind of things I would tell you. These are the kind of things that would mean something to you, that would lead you to finding some bit of magic in me, and maybe even make you fall in love. But you've never asked, and you don't, and you won't. Still, I wish that you would ask.

Simply make them fall in love with you.

I could love you
On the painted steps
Those that tell us
To learn from our mistakes

Standin' sweetly
next to you
Sweet you, holdin' your hand

I could emphasize your name
At the start of every phrase
We could be as bright as day
Flor de luna,
Mi Ignacito

Amor de mis amores
Mi dulce elotito

Que mi dolor seas tu
Que sean tuyos mis errores

Que la vida es solamente
Solamente tu

How to express the weighing
Tenderness in my heart for you

How to explain
My heart
That is losing its shape
And taking form of
A condition

Invisible and critical, demanding
How to make sense of this

Longing here, in the empty shelves of my rib cage
Where you stand before me
Our feverish hands so close to touching
But they do not touch

How to let it be known that
You are wearing down, softly
The parts of me I stregnthened most

Should I laugh about it?
This comely irony, my soul burning bright for you
On winter's coldest night

Tell me, how should I behave?
What façade should I turn to?
When this means more to me than I know it should

How should I conceal, love
The layers
Of you
That can be found in me?