When you tell your daughter that your life has been a series of near car crashes
Forgive her for mistaking the gloss behind your eyes - as nostalgia for a wreck that could have been
Forgive her for clawing her skin with the intent of stirring a tornado so violent she could match your presence
You taught her to see you as a fatality; too late to be saved, too proud to be held

Remember that an animal licking it's wound does so out of self-preservation, not self-pity
Remember that saline is salt water and tears need to be shed and that humans are capable of healing

Remember to feel
Teach her to pummel her fists
Teach her to shout down the boys

Remember the hollow below your heart that echoes like an abandoned house
When ivy grows out from her chest cavity and encapsulates all around you
Remember that she is not unruly
She merely sees within you a potency to create beauty

And consider her ability to grow and grow and grow
Encourage her to expand
Be mindful that little girls should never need permission to occupy space
Be humble - she may even teach you a thing or two

I filled your veins with water and wrote you down on white paper so I didn't have to read you back anymore. Girl's got a suicide pact across the pacific and all I can do is taste the dust.
2. There is a certainty in the way your body moves out time with itself when you think too much.
3. You told me you wanted to be a saint but you were too afraid of the sight of god. When you asked what belief tasted of they told you: fresh buttercream and a wasp's sting. We didn't see you for days.
4. There is a certain tension and it only exists between the bends of girl's legs and the concrete which holds them stronger than any arms could.
5. I want to run every cliche by you and watch you hold hands into the night with it instead of me.
6. Some people can be replicated entirely out of candle wax.
7. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO ******* SELF AWARE ALL THE TIME. You can't even watch yourself.
8. You know you're a halfway house of cells and who are you to say I can't keep up?
9. Say would you tell me if I was just a little off key?
9. Would you tell me the answers to the questions I never asked?
9. Would you play that evening differently if you could turn back the hands that bind you?
10. I burnt you a bridge and sent you the fire like we could ever fill a room with your god. I want to ask him what he thinks of our sins.
11. There is a fluidity in the way your words turn back on themselves.
11. There is a fluidity in the way you turn back on yourself.
11. There is a fluidity in the way people leave doors open for you.
12. I don't think I'd even know what to say to you if I saw you.
13. I only feel comfortable on even numbers.
13. I guess I made myself an odd number.
13. I don't know what we're left with.
13. This is not how we were supposed to end up.
14. I wish you could see the holes you left in the back of my throat.
15. Loving you was as easy as leaving the lights on.
16. And that walk to your parents house was a floodlit symphony like you capitalised every word of every passage I wrote about you with
17 reasons to stay.
And 18 to leave.

The first was the last time I shook like a guard rail and you were a concrete staircase, and I swear, I ain't never seen nothing like you yet.
The second: my fist on your name. But I am here now, like a lit splint bursting into flames, you won't ever find a ghost like me again babe.
The third. And you just want to **** everything. I said you just want to **** everything in your Berlin Wall house.
Your girl's got a bullet hole for a mouth and when it rains, it really does pour round here.

At some point                                                            ­                             I miss him.
along the line                                                             ­                      I haven't slept.
my thoughts changed.                               I can't remember how to be happy.
As nothing progressed                                        I can't escape from my head.
and I began                                        My nights belong to the nightmares.
to feel at home here                                                           I haven't slept.
the stillness                                                        ­                                   I miss him.
trickled into my head.                                                                        He's dead.
It's such a little change                                       I can't stop looking for him.
but now                                               I don't know how to deal with this.
the landscape is colored                                 I don't enjoy being alive.
with unfulfilled waiting,                                                                         He's dead.
unmet expectations                                                                          I'm not dead.
excuses.                                                                                        I still miss him.
The sharp brightness                                                         I still haven't slept.
of the initial pain                         I still can't remember how to be happy.
(and I had never felt so alive)          I still can't escape from my head.
fades to dull colors.      My nights still belong to the nightmares.
My eyes don't burn                                   I still haven't slept.
anymore.                                                 ­  I still miss him.
Maybe I don't have to run.                He's still dead.
I can just embrace this;          I still can't stop looking for him.
this stillness          I still don't know how to deal with this.
stop expecting             I still don't enjoy being alive.
stop waiting.                           He's still dead.
And in that case...I'm still not dead.
                  *Why not?

starlight,
i won't forgive you,
for you haven't done a single thing wrong.

and you don't have to say
anything, i can hear
your heartbeat through the sheaves
of grass that grow back in
small increments:
i know you're there,
no matter how invisible you may
find yourself feeling, late at
nights you can't sleep to
be more like my consistencies, you never knew.

so show me a freckle on your arm,
or the breadth of the world,
or nothing at all. you've
already collected my insides.

love, life is meaningless, but perhaps
with some time and another place,
we could still find purpose. my hopes
are wearing thin, but i'm hardly dead
yet.

so, don't cry. it's okay to hurt,
like i understand you do. i'm
hurt too, but i can lick clean
all your wounds. i could be
yours
if you wanted
me to.

in dreams, i
hear the sea on your
mind, once again, and build
catamarans we'll sail out of this
disjoint union of townships and countrysides
on; and i'll gouge my heart out and pour it into the
ocean, so with each swell and retreat of the waves you can
hear how many of its contractions are dedicated to the lights in your eyes.

I've never felt so cold as when you taught me how to feel-
As each stagnant second pushes
The great pulsating vibrato of life
Further and further into
Yesterday,
Until nothing is left but memories
And stale tap water in a ceramic coffee cup:
The trembling scale by which we measure happiness
That is only felt after it becomes a memory.
Who determines the expiration date
Of emotion?
Your warm pulsating skin
And the hottest month in August
Can only be felt in photo albums
And subtle murmurs only heard
Past 3am.
I never meant to get this caught up
In life-
Breathing in the bitter reality
Of fragmented testimonies
Warning me of what's to come
And fragility of time.
Selfishly I **** the marrow out of
Every fleeting moment,
Scattering the bones across the graveyard of my unrequited mind-
A self proclaimed martyr of suffering
And good intentions.
The confinement of my sordid thoughts,
Condenses reality,
Into the tangible.
Freedom is only felt
In the aftermath of an earthquake-
Crumbled barriers now bear remnants of security.
Is this how it is to feel?
The nerves in my finger tips
Are hot and trembling, as I trace the
Faded outline of something too real
To ever be strained out into the world
Of the living.
Time and time again, I remind myself
Of the ineptitude of anything
That isn't born
Within the sacred hours of
Insomnia.
A distorted image scatters across my empty mind,
Casting shadows on the times where
Nothing mattered beyond the moment.
Life breathes in and out
To the rhythm of the broken record
That we relentlessly cram
Into our vacant hearts,
As if trying to drown out the hollow drone
Of the love
Manufactured in Sunday night sitcoms and materialized on Broadway.
Simple actors, we betray our inner wishes,
And sell them in the form of words
To a greedy audience, yearning to be reassured
That they aren't the only ones who mistake pain for something
Pure.
Time and time again,
I repeat my cynical mantra
Through the motion of my feet upon the ground;
Because, history repeats himself
Until emotion can no longer tread
The freezing waters of existence,
Leaving nothing but a trace of
Something that we foolishly lament with the names of a lover,
And drape with the revealing veil of time-
Mistaken for the truth,
And worshiped at the alter of God.