If you want to have ***, that's okay, nobody would blame you
Most sculptures are **** bodies, you told me *** is art.
If you want to **** yourself, I won't try to kiss it out of you,
Like a white guy. I'm not white and you don't like to kiss.
If you hurt yourself on purpose, I swear I won't ask.
If you hate yourself, I won't tell you I hate myself too. If you hurt yourself
on purpose, I won't make you feel like you have to tell me it was an
accident. If you want to be loved in the worst way, I won't hate the girl
that's willing to do it. Because that makes me a *****
and who wants to talk to a *****? If you want to give head tonight,
I won't call you. Sometimes scars look like stretch marks in the dark.
If you rail any drugs, try not to
wander in the streets. And don't cry if you cross any streets,
because i know your friends are dying and they don't seem to care,
but I know you do. If you want to write some bad poetry, I won't say,
"That's bad." That's because I'll think it's good and that's because,
I'm in love with you. I don't know what love is, by the way.
If you want someone to **** you, don't ask anybody pretty.
Ask me. I'm ugly and I'll say no. I never walked a mile in your shoes,
but I keep walking up and down the stairs,
like I can feel you creaking.

We write about two AM because it is simplicity and we are underexposed. Overtime, simplicity becomes complex and subjective and harder to define. Soon you associate two AM with her hair holding on desperately to her shoulder blades, but at that point it doesn't matter what time it is because all your brain understands is her mouth and how badly you want to kiss it. Everything is clinging to something: hair to skin, sheets to mattress, mouth to teeth; but the real fear lies in what will end up letting go and this is why we are born with out fists clenched, because from the moment we are living, every insecurity spills like air out of a bag you thought was vacuum sealed. See, life is full of complexities and we can't seem to find permanent serenity, but, in the midst of it all, there are small things that resonate within us and soon we collapse into a string of cliches and we fight not to drown within them, collectively babbling and trying to make sense of the concept of never letting go.

captain's log, #6

3/7/16, 9:17 a.m.

i woke up to the sound of rain and birds, it's almost spring and i'm nostalgic for something that i'm not sure has happened yet. 

captain's log, #7

3/11/16, 2:35 a.m.

at this point i don't even know why i still grieve over you. i've taken back what was once mine, to the best of my ability, but i think that you still have a tight grip on the parts of me that i'm not able to grow back. or maybe it's because i can't remember a time before i was either madly in love with you, or mourning the loss of your interest. me being "over it" means nothing when those words are still etched with traces of you. i can tell myself to get over it, that you have, that you're in the past, that none of this was ever real, but it was. it still is, somewhere. and in that somewhere, it grows. you will never be just, gone. 

captain's log, #8

3/11/16, 4:00 a.m.

let's go somewhere. somewhere far away, just for a while, where everyone else looks like ants. i wanna hold your hand there. i wanna go somewhere with you. 

captain's log, #9

3/16/16, 6:00 a.m.

it's only the beginning of a creation, but i already have that feeling in my gut, the one that can only accurately be described as nostalgia for the future. i feel things that don't make any sense, but here are some things i know; the weather's getting warmer, the days are getting longer, the flowers are tearing themselves open, and when i close my eyes i see your hand in mine. often times i'm not sure that i remember how to not be afraid, but i still find myself diving in head first. i can't stop thinking about two days ago when my therapist told me that it seems as though i like torturing myself. 

(EDIT ON 3/30/16: stop forcing yourself to like girls, stop falling in love with love.)

captain's log, #10

3/28/16, 7:04 p.m.

keep forgetting to write when i remember how to be happy. when she left, she didn't close the door, and he walked right in and turned on the lights that have been off for too long. his teeth are a little crooked, and he's only got one dimple, he hates these things but they make my chest flutter like it'll burst into a thousand flowers any second. i've waited months for this. i wish on every 11:11 that he won't be as fleeting.

captain's log, #1
 
2/26/16, 4:06 a.m.

my heart is growing, but has turned into an anchor. i guess a bigger heart means a heavier one, too. i remember what lightning bolts feel like. the elephant's feet are back. 

captain's log, #2

3/3/16, 5:05 a.m.

i think i know why night is the enemy. without light, there's no colour. i look out my window now, i can see a sun peeking over the horizon, and i know that the world does not spin for me. so why doesn't my brain work the same? i don't remember how or when this infinite night crept up, but i feel like someone took the saturation bar behind my eyes and slid it all the way left. i miss outlook. i miss the sun. 

captain's log, #3 

3/3/16, 9:52 p.m.

your bones get so weary and cold that all you're able to do is sit in the shower with the hot water all the way up, and it makes you feel less disgusting for a bit but we all know that letting water run over your body doesn't clean it, or your mind, of this filth. the greatest romantic couldn't make what you did to me sound remotely beautiful. many nights i have stood desperately scrubbing and washing my skin until it's raw but your touch still lingers.

captain's log, #4 

3/5/16, 3:14 a.m.

there are too many things in this world that i crave. i long for a different body, a different place, a different me. the rational parts of my brain know that this is what i've had, what i have, what i will always have and that i should just make the most of it, but depression creeps from somewhere dark, far below where my feet stand, and moves its way up my spine like a fiery slug. i am now realizing that the devil on my shoulder never left, only lied dormant. 

captain's log, #5

3/7/16, 2:10 a.m.

been driving too fast with my eyes closed. been smoking again. been forgetting to eat. been thinking a lot about the fine line between, "i want to die," and, "i don't want to live."

"love is a losing game", but for so long
i never understood that song, until,
i became a piece that you discarded,
left scorned and broken-hearted. it was
unbeknownst to me, but you knew exactly
how to maneuver your poison into my veins
and you made your home in my bones
without requesting my permission, having no intentions
of remaining any longer than your affections,
or your hands, could stand to stay in one place.

i've heard that love, is a losing hand,
and i imagine its partner, dry & cracked -
aching, reaching, grasping, empty -
desperately seeking to be filled with any kind
of warmth or wholeness, only to be met,
instead, by astounding disappointment
that reverberates and permeates unapologetically
beneath the surface of weathered skin,
similar to that which covered your back, as we laid
in the trunk of your station wagon in the mid-december darkness.

love is designed as a fate resigned,
but i knew not what my future held.
i did not know that it was possible, for
such a tangible pain to exist inside my ribcage,
but i swear you pretended not to hear my heart shatter
from all those miles and miles and miles away.
so i envisioned the oceans inside of your irises fading to gray,
and i forced myself to ignore the lack of air in my lungs,
as i spat out, "it's fine." promising myself i'd never call you again.
unbeknownst to you, you'd just taught me how to play the game.

- m.f

There is sea salt all over my hands, and I know I'm not the ocean.
So let's drink tea out of mason jars,
with cold porcelain shards instead of ice,
and let's cut our mouths on every argument we've ever had.
I hope you don't mind if I make a home out of you,
and I'm sorry if my spirit doesn't fit so well inside of yours, you see
I have been carrying dead weight with me like a terminated pregnancy,
and mourning the emptiness inside of me like a miscarriage.
Now it seems like I'm only giving birth
to the sorrow that my heart cannot hold.
Now I'm starting my mid-life crisis early, stating over, starting with you.
I'm writing my past into the sand, waiting for the tide to clean my slate.
So just wait a little but while I hold my breath hostage,
and I will wait for a ransom to come,
and I will pray that it doesn't come barreling down my door, looking like you.

you are not twenty seven years old. you are twenty seven sorrows, twenty seven apologies, twenty seven broken pencils in a coffee mug. you used to keep memories like fireflies in jars, but now, you harvest them like organs, and you can't shake them to make you glow. i stuck a bird in where my heart should be but my pulse still sounds like a dial tone. the way a ticking clock drives a person insane is the way everything falls in love with you. the way everything falls in love with you is the way that delicate things break, and everything is delicate in the presence of a hurricane. you know how to be a storm, but no one loved you enough to show you how be a home, and the foundation you are built on is a broken as our mind - you are held together by tape and tiny hands , you are bound together by apologies and if anyone forgave you, you would simply fall apart. we must fold ourselves seventy seven times and tuck ourselves into the arms of the people we love, in hopes they never learn to read our language, and you are words written in a way that leaves everyone hanging onto each one by the skin of their teeth, even if they don't understand. I hope it's fine if i still try. if you are brave enough to touch the world, you will find that it is constantly on fire, and you never have to ask for a light.
you are not twenty seven years old, you are twenty seven wet matches, twenty seven empty rooms to scream in, twenty seven breakdowns in the bathroom. sometimes you are the sun and you can rise, but you are a deadly comedown (in any event, you are always glowing). I can hear you folding and unfolding like an origami flower, my hands know where you bend even though i have never touched you. i have seen the fear that drips through the cracks in your tough exterior, and i pried apart my own innocence to slip my way inside.  
  how many times do you groan before you finally heave and let the weight **** you? you know, contrary to what is generally believed, love knows bounds very well. it knows them and, it plunges over them, spills and overcomes you and foams around your feet before dragging you out to open see and mocks your cries for help until you finally stop thrashing and succumb to the sick trick that you have fallen for. i used to think love was a steady push and pull, but then i love you; when play tug of war with a ghost, you always end up with enough rope on your side to make a noose out of. i wanted to turn you on, not disgustingly, but in the way that i stumble in the dark, groping the wall for a switch. all of my nerves were hair triggers when you opened your mouth, now they are loud sirens and they scream when you are gone. a barely present as you would like to paint yourself out to be, i have felt you in places that are four dimensional, in the depths of my own murky consciousness that not even i know how to reach. the way a storm busts down a wooden door is the way that you enter a room,  the way you enter me. you know how to bend the light and you know how to break it, too. allow me to envelop myself in you like words in brackets, but never let me speak aloud. how many times can someone caress your jaw until it feels like you've been clocked repeatedly, and how many times can you fall in love with same person before you bust your mouth completely on their shoulder?
even after you have dragged me through this fire and made me bite all of the dust and all of the concrete beneath it, i have still loved you with a mouthful of broken teeth. now i am here to spit them out into your hands and make enough room in my throat to cough up my stifled pride.

Walking in a circle is, in the fondest sense, going absolutely nowhere, even though it feels better than walking completely backwards. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I have never even been face to face with you and mine grows weaker and weaker with the length of time between the moments I get to touch you. The strange thing is that, prior to meeting you, I have a hard time describing what it was I was even doing - the storms you have hurled into my quiet life is all I know now, and I never realized just how flimsy my own infrastructure was. I have seeped into the walls you throw dishes in and the floors you roll around on, and I feel everything your fists do equally, if not more. Who knows my body better than you? The places I dip and divide and ***** and bend; who has held me down with nothing but words and sweaty silence that lay thick enough for us to cut with butcher knives? My stomach is trained to clench is desperation when your name is mentioned and I am nervous around anyone who shares with you; a picture is worth a thousand words, but your name is worth one million, and you've never spoken mine aloud but I have murmured yours, like a mantra, repeatedly, groaning in the way wounded animals do and trembling with that same fear. I can't count on my fingers how many nights I traded sleep for a reason to talk to you, and all too well do I know how many lifetimes are crammed into the seconds before an anticipated phone call. People might wonder how I even survive when you aren't around, but how many ways can a dog entertain himself when the master is away? Oftentimes, in a state of unwarranted panic, I claw at my clothes as though you are lurking underneath, and only rarely are you there, metaphysically. I am not the only person the rain falls on; I understand that there are plenty of others who are lulled by the charm of someone who knows nature of a human being in the way that otherworldly creatures might, but in this instance I know that everyone is haunted in their own exclusive way, and you are always flickering in the periphery of my blurry vision when my bedroom lights are out.