I should have known not to
make homes out of boys, because
unraveling  like the binding of a bible
in a bathroom stall as unfamiliar
as he’s become isn’t romance.

I’ve bit my tongue so long
I’ll never taste anything
but rusty quarters again.
No toothpicks could pry
his name from between
my teeth.

When you laugh, loneliness
falls out like sunshine
dripping through tree limbs,
a world beyond our school.

For now our only world revolves
around our insecurities, my compulsion,
the emotions churning through your veins.
You rip yourself apart because you're terrified

of losing instability, fully functioning adults laugh
with a content emptiness, there is nothing
in their veins but blood.  Does craving

loneliness make you ****** up, or more
cultured?  Does not being perfect
make you normal

or the loneliest piece of art there is?

When the first boy who leaves
goose bumps trailing your skin
plays your favorite Death Cab for Cutie
song on guitar--stop him.

With the notes wedged under
his fingernails, stuck
like they are in your head,
you'll never be able to listen again
without cringing.

It's 3AM when you're clawing
bones to hold yourself
together, you wonder:
"Is the memory of me a light
peppering his ceiling,
keeping him awake?"

"Love" should have stayed
a word, not a fight.  Loneliness is a date
spent sniveling into the sleeve of a
different boy because Chili's played
your favorite Death Cab for Cutie song.

But if he comes back, asking
for a poem--don't write one.
It won't be any more appreciated
than you were two years ago.

I'm in anther room, my own
surgeon, slicing myself
open in search of muscles
aching with worthlessness.

I'm a soldier who missed
his homecoming, I shouldn't
be here, but anchored
to the bottom of a lake.
Choice weapon in hand,
looking to the surface
with glassy eyes.

I'm here, staring
through my feet
as they sink
further
   and further
      into the dirt.

I'm the chain fallen loose
from my father's truck
as he drives at night,
chasing him home from
                    ..."business."


My father is Lake Michigan
in January--cold and restles.
I'm the bystander of a shootout
between my family.

My father is a carpenter
painting my goldenness
gray.  He's the voice
in my head, and I am
                 ...worthless.

A Boy never had the chance
to break my heart, because
my father already had.

They say not to build homes
in people, for when they leave
you'll be empty and dry
as a forest creek in July,

but the sun shines from
inside the lining of her skin.
Her crescent moon smile
feels like home.

I've read ink stained pages
of 1000 books, but nothing
compares to the emotions
written across her face.

There's a toad nestled
inside my throat, hopping,
making it hard to ask
her for forever.

If I could, I would pick up
my ink pen, drowning an ocean
into you, instead of drowning
you inside one.

Wash away rotten feelings for sake
of ignorance.  Carve scriptures into
your minds delicacies so you no longer
dwell on "imperfections."

I would write you through every depth
of "crazy", only without the hurt,
so you no longer perish
on the idea of "death."

I thought you were dying
but you're just painting
red into black and white world.

You've yet to mention the ghosts
in my corners, collecting like dust,
or the tree limbs chandeliered
over my bed to remind me
I'm not the only one with lost pieces.

If there's another word
for love, I've yet to hear it.
If there's another name
for happiness-- it's yours.

Looking at you is sunshine
seeping into my pores.
Vitamin D makes me feel
like who I should be,
not who I am.

This wasn't supposed to be
an apology, but I'm sorry.
Sorry for my cookie smile,
crumbling, for my atrial
septal defect, for clinging
to you like the freckles
on your elbows.

I'm sorry about a lot
of things, but you'll never
be one of them.  What
I'm trying to say is
I love you

even on days I don't
know what love is.

Speak to me in darkness
when the sun is tucked behind trees
and stars welcome insomniacs to play.
Whisper to me through silence--
our secret strawberry pancake recipe.

"Eggs, flour, milk, sugar--" you list.
"Shhhh."
Parents are dreaming, not suspecting
two young lover frolicking their kitchen,
breathing their souls across a steaming skillet.
"Don't forget the strawberries," you say.
"Yeah, I know."

Thoughts swirl through my head
like steeping tea.
How cute you are while
you wait, licking batter
off calloused, worn hands.

To say that you are cute would be
to say these strawberries are sweet.
As sweet as a strawberry tastes
it has secret flavors, hidden--
sharp and ****,
red and deep.

I would love to find you growing wild
out by the woods.  I'd make
a basket with the looseness of my shirt
to carry home as many of you back to my kitchen
as I could possibly hold.

Lips pressed to my neck pull
my attention back from the brambles.

Sadness gathers in bruises along your hipbones
and in aches of metatarsals
when you're dancing alone at the bar, stumbling
over your feet, reeling into counters.

You greet 10 o'clock with the night's fifth drink,
searing the back of your esophagus--strong.
The spinning world around you romanticizes
loneliness.  There's nothing captivating
about swollen cheek bones and shaking knees
from the futile retracing of weary footsteps
in search of people and hope you've lost.

Misery crawls outside where radius meets ulna,
not for a party, but a bar fight,
full of drunkenness and hatred.
Pent up emotions carve flesh along your arms.

Emptiness pulverizes your ribcage,
plucked light guitar strings, your nerves cave
till you puke it all into an unwelcoming bathroom sink.

Despite all 206 bones,
you're never together in heart.

Lately I've been waiting.
Waiting for the trees to lose
their leaves, for the clouds to release
their snow, for April showers to summon
buttercups from the soil.

Autumn builds a cathedral above
my impatient head as light
shimmers through fallow branches
while the sycamores blossom orange.

Till winter's bustling breeze
pushes up daisies, and summer returns
to my arms (unnoticed and sudden).
I'll wait on whoever moves
the universal chess pieces to
exile the frost speckling my yard.

Sitting on edge, as spring's
raspberry sunset grazes the tree line
(and allergies drip from my nose),
I try to spy a lightening bug--
any trace or sign
of summer.

She'll arrive late May,
with curls toss'd like the sea and
blue eyes two shades lighter
than a cloudless sky.

Treasure her while she lingers,
notice how her bonfires consider
your friends' faces with a wild blaze--
dim, but bright all the same.

Let the sun brown your shoulders,
moving through each day she tucks away
with adoration.  Forgive her
for fading, for she's pulled by the wrists on
Galaxy's timeline.

She'll throw back her head
with a laugh that says,
"You don't know me,
and never will."

Then she'll leave you
waiting all year long.

One day you'll find the words
and they will be pure and simple,
effortless as first glances
unfurling a story in your heart.

Clean sheets of paper
are dirtied with confessions
bled from infatuated minds.
A poem is aligned
like dust in the sunlight.

Unlock your doors. Sweep
yourself off your feet.
No commas, no periods.
Words caught in nets taste
like love in the air.

Wake out of your slush pile in the dead of night,
searching for a hand underneath the sheets
or the vague outline of a body
smoothed against the darkness of your room.
Words huddle close against the back of your brain.

Our moments are the smallest handprints,
pressed into the permanence of concrete,
incarcerating the image for parents
who lost their memories.
We vowed never to become them;
our story drained from the tip of a pen
onto a sheet of paper and your heart--
held forever in white and red.

Don't tell me the moon is shining,
show me the glint of light of broken glass
because actions speak
louder than words.
What is love if you don't let him
watch The Terminator--Again?
(Even though you hate explosions and guns).

As the window to your mind tugs shut,
scatter your words into a breeze
like the seeds of a dandelion.
There's always another story to be written
even when this one
ends.

I miss cigarette talks where I broke
myself down for you, bleeding
from my soul instead of my veins.
I miss when my cigarette burned
out faster than the girl holding it.

I miss breathing you in with smoke,
choking on laughter, not panic.
Mumbled disconnections
over your car stereo mean more
than my empty conversations with God.