There's a lot for you to learn, kid. (Mind you, I call everyone kid, don't take it personally.)

Make friends with her sisters, make sure her mother doesn't hesitate to call you her "sweetie". If you do that, you've secured yourself in a place very close to her heart. If her family can love you, she will love you.

If there's an insect on her radar, you get rid of it, no questions asked, no please and thank you. You get it done.

I don't care if dancing isn't your "style", that's one thing you can't take away from her. So it will just make your life easier if you just dance with her. Trust me.

Argue with her. Stand up for yourself. There are times when the fire in her eyes grows and feeds on your submission. It will burn her too, I promise. Douse it and any doubt she may have in her mind about your commitment.

She is one of the most driven, fearless, determined, and independent women I know that graces this earth. But there are times when her past spoils are not enough to appease her and she can and will drown in self-hate. I implore you to save her from herself in these times. She is worth too much. Hold her close and rub her back and tell her reasons for your love with each vertebrae you massage.

This girl will love you with every inch of her possible. She will love you wholeheartedly, she will give you everything she's got. Don't you dare give her anything less. Don't waste her time.

Gifts are always really special to her. She has this way of always getting you something you wanted, regardless of if you knew it. Her gifts are quirky and clever and incredibly thought-out. Appreciate them, please.

There will come a night where both of you will have fire for blood and lust for thoughts. Be gentle, be loving. Make her feel safe.

She gives many different kinds of kisses. She'll give you a quick kiss as you both head out the door, she'll give you these spontaneous kisses that will send smiles through every inch of you, every time. She'll give you kisses that make you question your self control. She'll lie on top of you and give you butterfly kisses with her eyelashes.

One thing she doesn't do is get jealous. Don't you take advantage of that. If she ever does, you’ll never know it. She won’t question you going out with friends or not replying to her texts. She will trust you with all her heart. Don’t **** that up.

I am begging you, demanding of you: do not hurt her. Hold her close to your heart. She will memorize the way it beats and she'll always be able to tell when you fall asleep.

Hopefully you won't have the same demons as I. But rest assured that if you do, she will recognize that all demons are just fallen angels and she will bring light and love back to your shadowed mind.

If you're the one that makes her the happiest, I hope you never have to feel the pain of losing her.

This girl is the last bit of gold in this world, don’t let that shine fade out. Give her every ounce of your being and she will do the same. You will never, ever be loved the way she loves again. You will never have to ask anything of the Universe again.

Sincerely,
A name you'll hear in passing.

P. S. I hope you like football.

P. P. S. I shouldn't have to tell you any of this. This shouldn't motivate you to treat her right. You should know instantly in your heart that this girl is precious and that you should cherish her. If your love for her doesn't make you want to do that, then don't waste your time. She deserves better.

I'm not sure if you care much about me, I don't care much about me either, but ever since you came back after a year you've been flowing from the ink of my pen to my paper and I can't stop ******* writing about you.
I mostly sit in coffee shops thinking of how your left hand would spread across your cracked mug and how your right hand would grip my thigh, because you told me you always had to be touching me in one way or another to make up for the times you were too far to see the same stars as me. I see you carving our names into the wooden table and I'm tracing your lips with my cut up fingers and the only time you can tell me you love me is after a shot and a kiss or two. I never liked coffee until I tasted it tattooed on your lips and there I swallowed every apology for how much I drank and the way I ****** because both are so violent and both left us naked and crying until you held me so tight i thought my veins would burst, but I'd never tell you to stop.
Walking to the bus stop I confuse your eyes with street lights and maybe its because I'm slightly tipsy and in love with you. I hold your cut up hands, you told me your mom was trying to hurt you but you were as numb as you were when she slapped you, and you never cried. At the bus stop I kissed you so hard and your tears mixed with our saliva and I thought the four oceans had spilled from your beautiful eyes. On the bus I held you until you felt limp in my arms and I looked into your eyes and saw the street lights flicker and I made you get off at the next stop, even though we had 5 more to go. You had goosebumps covering your porcelain skin and you told me you had no idea who you were without your sadness in between sobs that shook my lungs and made me cry too.
Loving you is writing poetry so your eyes don't wander away from me even though I break pieces of myself to give to you so you'll stay, and that's not love but it's the only love I'll ever know.
Loving you is asking constantly if you've stopped loving me because self doubt swallows me whole and vomits apologies that tumble out of my mouth for the ways I try to **** myself I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
Loving you is echoing words I need to hear, hoping it'll quiet the voices in your head telling you to do terrible things to your body.
Loving you is listening to the 1975 and hearing your name in between each chord and god ****** I love you
Loving you is never knowing how you are but always knowing you're in your car, because you never like staying at home, and baby that's okay.
Loving you is never knowing the colours of your eyes because they always switch from brown to green and oh god I'm so scared for the day you won't be here.
Loving you is knowing that you have me tucked away in the back pocket of your skinny jeans but not knowing when you'll take me out and tell me you love me, because I do love you.
and I love you is big for me, it's an anxiety attack formed in words it's trying to speak with bruised lips from kissing you too hard it's breathing in water, but baby we're both drowning so we might as well hold hands and sink together.

when I painted the house
I was so tired that a piece of me may have slipped into the can
now I'm smeared all over your room
painted in drips like the teardrops our faces know so well
and you have fallen out of love with me
but I live inside your walls
hearing you kiss her so hard
the plaster might just crack
and the pictures we hung up might just shudder off their nails and shatter

One day
Someone will invent the word for books which are beautiful and hurtful and hateful at the same time
Bibliomortem
And one day
Someone will invent the word for the taste of cheese on toast
Caseusromanorum
And one day
Someone will invent the word for being too many different things to be anything because there is no one person that you are sure you can be and no one aspiration that you’re sure you can keep
Multimendacium
And one day
Someone will invent the word for saying promises when you know you can’t keep them but want to be able to
Fenusaccipiepromissum
And one day
Someone will invent the word for the point at the end of laughter when you’ve nothing left to give and a silence still to fill
Risustrangulare
And one day
Someone will invent the cure for loneliness
Bibliomortem

A dancer’s world is brimming with mirrors
So that you can identify the flaws
And meticulously correct them.
I saw that I was too fat, repulsive,
My leotard stretched too tight
Across rounded plains of skin,
I tried to correct it.
Thinner, thinner,
I said.
Better
Better.

One day
A collection of voices
Paid me a holiday visit.
They liked it so much
They never went home.
I don’t know why they liked it
All they ever did was shout at me
And tell me I wasn’t good enough
And make an insecure monster out of me.
They chewed me word by word and swallowed.
I asked to be left but they never repacked their suitcases.

I never meant to be a murderer, death’s employee
Not even when I was killing did I intend it
It was all accidental, I swear, honestly.
But even that won’t convince me
To stop washing off the blood -
Maroon aura blooming
And blooming until
Washing, washing,
I thought the
Stain got
Smaller.
Not.



'wait a minute shall we not dissect further and twist the scalpel and tease apart sinews until they're all just science and shall we not draw diagrams and observe the peculiarities of their ways and shall we not uncover their biology and their phycology and investigate a hypothesis without coming to a conclusion shall we not forget their humanity write them down as chemicals and failed reactions and have done with it shall we not turn impersonal and...

sorry, I forgot they were people.'

I'm hearing these alien words that terrify me.
Terminal, seroconvert, infection, inconclusive, possibility.
They say stay strong, keep your chin up.
They don't understand just the possibility is enough.
Who wants a woman you can't take to bed?
Who wants to fear when I bled?
Alien words, alien feelings, foreign bodies inside and out of me.
But don't worry, they say.
It's controllable, a pill a day.
Pills. That's what they give me.
For the depression, the infection, the anxiety.
I feel as helpless as the child I will never bare.
"What the hell is going on" I blare.
Testing, testing, testing they say.
As I ***** to cope and my legs give way.
Fragility, infertility, susceptibility.
But don't worry, it's all just a possibility.

I spell “I love you” on the lines of your collarbone

and I always try to go from one end to another,
brushing calligraphy strokes with my tongue
and blotting your skin as a page with my lips.

I never really have finished saying it,
and I guess I never will

my motions are lost among your curves
and my lips almost always end up
meeting yours somewhere in the middle.