i don't want to smell alcohol
on your breath when you kiss me,
i want to taste the hours that you waited
and to feel how much you missed me.

i don't want to breathe in smoke
when i bury my face into your chest,
i want to hear your barely-beating heart
and feel it pulsate in the warmth of your flesh.

i don't want to see the moon & stars
swirl like diamonds against the onyx sky,
unless i can do so in the comfort of your arms
and have your fingers interwoven with mine.

i don't even want my morning coffee
unless you're the one that brings it to me,
having learned to make it just the way i like it
and committed my preferences to your memory.

i don't want sunrises or sunsets
if i can't watch them dance upon your skin,
or love you between dove-white sheets
on saturday mornings at half-past ten.

i don't want to see the day i become old & grey
an early grave i would sooner invite,
than to live to greet old age without you
by my side to guide me into eternal night.

- m.f.

contents of a human heart may include:
shifting shadows
wasted space
loose change
mumbled promises
secret hopes
tears - and
sometimes blood

m.f.

let me first say, i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing
and i don't really know what this is or where to start.

i am comprised of scratched porcelain and bad dreams -
made up entirely of half-hearted attempts at sanity,
countless unspoken "i need you's",
and ever-faltering faith in myself and those around me.

i am not a poet, or at least not a good one, i don't think.
i feel a lot of things, sometimes all at once -
other times i don't feel anything at all, which scares me beyond
a level of which i am capable of explaining to you.

i nearly jumped in front of a train in april of this year. i don't know why.
my feet ventured toward the platform before it had even registered
in my head that they were doing so. i heard my best friend speak my name,
and snapped out of the trance. not a lot of people know about that.

i've been in love a lot of times with a lot of different people.
i have a fear off falling but a tendency to jump from high places.
i don't read books as much as i used to, but i'm working on that.
i'm in love right now and it's really difficult but it's nice. i'm happy.

i grew up with five brothers, so i like to think that made me sort of tough.
(but i cry every time i see a deer or a possum on the side of the road.)
i don't smoke cigarettes anymore, partly because my father hates them,
partly because they remind me too much of someone who liked them more than he liked me.

i write a lot about people who i don't talk to or see anymore. they don't live in my heart,
but the curse of memory is more often than not unbreakable. i call it leftover poetry.
then again i don't consider any of my pitiful mutterings to be poetry. just a bunch of
raggedly strung together words that sometimes rhyme a little bit.

i used to want to die and i wrote a song about it that a lot of people really liked.
i don't want to die anymore. i will never show that song to my mother.
i am much more content with watching people talk than actually talking myself.
this piece of writing feels too personal and i don't think i like it, but i'm pretty sure
Eleanor Roosevelt said something about doing one thing every day that scares you.

m.f.

i am sitting in a cold and very much crowded room.
a sea of nameless faces, attached to 10,000 bodies, filling 10,000 seats.
a cacophony of voices and footsteps and shuffling figures, "pardon me."
small pieces of silence peeking through the static of hums and murmurs.
out of 10,000 - i catch myself looking for one face in particular: yours.
but all i can manage to pick out are not-quite's and hard-to-tell's.
in a room filled with 10,000 faces i'm looking for yours
(because it is all that i see when i close my eyes)
in a room filled with 10,000 faces your name is echoing in my chest.
each letter, ringing in my ears, crawling up the walls of my throat, desperate to escape my lips
and scream with every decibel i posses the power to create, "where are you?"
in a room filled with ten-*******-thousand faces - the only one that matters isn't there.

m.f.

something i noticed about myself
is that, for as long as i can remember,
i've always slept on only one side of my bed

i can't help but wonder - maybe it's my subconscious,
leaving room for all the lovers i dream up in my head -
awaiting a second body to occupy the extra space beside me

i sleep on my side, too. often times resembling the shape of a crescent moon.
arms outstretched, reaching to touch imaginary stars, like my nonexistent lover.

and so as the moon, cold, always longing for the safety and cover of the clouds,
the same way i long for holding arms - but instead, alone, in the vastness of the sky.

ill
    at
        the
             thought
of
   her
        head
                 in
                     the
                          spot
where
           mine
                    ought
                               to
                                   be
but
      is
         not
                 -

pounding temples
angry god(s)
boom like thunder
in my skull
sleep evades me
it's you that saves me
but dear,
your absence is hell

-m.f.