when you kiss me
i forget how to breathe

Every girl wants a bad boy
that will be good just for her
and every boy wants a good
girl that will be bad just for
him.

Morning    whispers,    legs
entwined, the tickle of your
skin in  the  soft  light  that
traces  softly through these
sheets  as  I  touch   you  in
places   you   never   knew
existed, and I've never been
happier
in this place,
      with you,
      with me,
       with us.

I want  to  be  the  only  hand
you ever need to hold and I'm
ready  to  do  anything  to  be
                      your  everything.
                                                                                 Jon York   2018

when i watch you light your cigarette
i wish it was me instead
what a honour
being inhaled by you
id love to dance through your lungs
be inside your body and fill a space within you
but instead i am just myself
you know i'll always be there and
i don't feel like a novelty or a luxury
i am simply just the girl
who's lighter you will borrow
to smoke out the sorrow
of someone else
so much more than me

it's about the time of year
that i get sad again
it's about the time of year
that i found out you were dying,
i didn't know if you'd be here at christmas

it's about the time of year
where you started slurring words
and forgetting things too,
but you bought me those boots for christmas
and told me about them a month early
you were so happy about them

it's about the time of year
where i can't breathe
i don't know if it's because of asthma
or if i'm imagining
how it felt to breathe like that

it's about the time of year
where i'd imagine i was on a boat
in the middle of a faraway lake in the UP
i'm a child again and she's much younger too
she's not sick, she's not dying

it's about the time of year
where cancer took my nonni's brain
and made her forget who she was
and how to do things

it's about the time of year
where i cried myself to sleep every night
and prayed to God,
that he'd take anyone but her, take me instead

one in ten women they say
that’s a hell of a lot of women

but still i’m here
at twenty years of age
speaking with the doctor
about infertility
and pain only manageable by
hormones and narcotics

we talk of a diagnosis
only discoverable by surgery
there has to be a better way
there has to be

you are a bunch of different things
but not someone i ever thought i’d write about

you were the cute guy in my class
the one i looked forward to talking to

you were the one i shared music with
the one i didn’t know if i liked

you were the one who helped me study
the one who did more distracting than helping

you were the one who kissed me
the one who made me feel things i haven’t felt in years

you were the one who heard me
the one who still liked me, despite all my problems

you were the one who couldn’t be in a relationship
the one who i can’t have

you were the one who i never thought i’d write about