once in a while,
love changes form
it turns from a sweet sunrise
to a sad sunset
a beautiful love song
to a melancholic tune
and though love hurts
when it changes forms
love will always be love
through the rain and fire
love prevails the change in intensity
and that's what I learned the day I learned
to let my anger,
go.

I will not be my parents.


For every negative comment they exchange,
I will have something positive to say.
For every door that slams,
I will hold one open.

I will not let myself bring unhappiness to the table, then wonder why supper is so bitter.

i wonder if the doors in the house you grew up in
started slamming themselves to save your father the trouble.
i wonder if you can remember the last time you prayed,
and if you had trouble unfolding your hands.
i wonder if your mother knows
about the collection of hearts you hide in your closet,
i wonder if she could tell mine apart from the rest.
i wonder if your shoes know the reason why
you keep them by the back door and not your bedside.
and sometimes, i wonder
if you ever think about that night when i told you,
you wouldn't need to drink so much if you had me.
but it seems like we only speak when you've got body on your brain,
whiskey in your glass,
your judgement is overcast,
and you know i'm too weak to ignore you.
i learned how to translate your texts
from drunken mess back into english.
i am fluent in apology, but i don't ask you for them anymore.
this is just how it is.
it's not enough for either of us
but ******* it we are not above settling.
so i will ignore her name on your breath,
and you will ignore the fact that this means something to me.
i always thought the first time i kissed you,
it would be on your mouth.
i just wanted to be something warm for you to sink into,
something that could convince you to stay a second night.
but i sneak you out in the early morning,
and you take a piece of my pride with you when you go.
i am left to nurse the hangover from a wine i've never tasted,
wondering how this is possible.
waiting for the next drunk call,
for the next time i get to pretend we are lovers,
the next time i get to live out the fantasy i am most ashamed of.
it is the one in my head where you want me when you're sober too.

- m.f.

And sometimes I just want to cry. Not because I'm sad.
But because the universe is so big and there isn't a big enough word to describe it.
And I'm so small and there isn't a small enough word to describe that.
I want to cry but not because I'm lost. I want to cry because there are so many people who are.
I want to shake them and tell them
"we're only here for a second".
You only need one thing, anyway.
One thing to remind you how small you are.
But that one thing has to be what lifts you up, makes you stands taller...reminds you that no matter how small you are in the universe, you are big to someone.  
I want to cry because I've been lost but it's happening. Here. Now.
And there's nothing I can do or say to stop it.
I want to cry for the time I lost when I was lost and there isn't enough time for that.
We're here for a second and I don't want to cry about that.
I want to cry about how many beautifully exquisite things there are to see and I want to shake the hands of the men and women who made it that way.
I know there isn't enough time for that either.
So maybe instead I'll cry tears of joy that the people I see in photographs and on television are part of my team.
That they are small, just like me and they got to see something I may never see.
And that's okay with me.
Because I'll feel things like they don't feel and see things they don't see, too. Because that's the way it works.
We cry and we laugh. We scream and we whisper. We run and then we crawl.  
All because we want to do it all.
I don't want to do it all.

I just want to keep being a part of the team.

Kiss me in the corner with the lights raking across our skin.
Kiss me until I forget her.
I dare you. I challenge you.
I'm asking you
Make her irrelevant
Make her insubstantial.
Make me forget her name.
Make me forget mine.
I'm begging you,
Touch me until I am different.
Pound that music through my chest like a stake
And **** what loves her
Because I can't.
Make me new. Make me the darkness between strobe lights.
****** me and bring me back, cold and hard like a jewel.
Breathe me in like smoke, toxic and rough.
Crush me like a soda can in the alley way.
I can take anything but this.
Kiss me until it doesn't hurt.
I beg you.
I dare you.
Demolish me.

I fell in love with you too easily.
Too easily, I hoped and prayed
and placed too much faith in something I knew,
in the back of my mind, was not there.
I placed you on a pedestal
so high and above the clouds
it was unreachable, and I loved you
from the ground on which I stood
to the stars that hung above your head.
You never looked down, you never noticed.
And I planted beanstalk upon beanstalk
to try and get to you, but they all withered and died.
I tried and tried, and still you never glanced at me.
But I loved you all the same.
I loved from a distance, the same way I loved before.
It was easy to love you, it was easy to try.
And it was easy to get hurt, and have my selfish hopes ruined.
It was also easy to stop caring,
To stop sitting at the base of the pedestal that I built.
Oh it was so easy to dismantle that pedestal.
Too easy.
It was hard, though,
seeing you on the same plane as I.
Seeing you for who you were and not what I wanted you to be.
It was hard to walk away, because I did love you,
I just didn't love you enough to stay and hope anymore.
So I did.
I walked away, and left you there,
bewildered at my antics, and still not seeing
the ruins of the pedestal, the dimming of the stars,
or the withered beanstalks that littered the ground around you.
I walked away.
But I left a piece of me with you,
and you still haven't noticed.

this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.

i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when we talked about going to seattle?
you said you liked the rain
and the fact that no one there would know you,
i just wanted to be wherever you were.
i was never afraid of the dark
when you talked about yours.
i still don't have words for what i felt
when you told me the only other number
you had saved in your phone apart from your mother's was mine.
i keep telling myself you're not allowed
to just exit and re-enter my life as you please,
but i leave the door unlocked,
so what does that make me?
the last "i love you" from the last time we spoke,
is still stuck to the roof of my mouth.
other lovers have tried to pry it out of me,
but the memory of you is like lockjaw.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember the lizard you caught last summer?
you let me name him forrest.
if life is a box of chocolates,
there are pieces missing,
and whatever is left has gone stale.
i can't smoke cigarettes in my backyard anymore
without wondering where you are
or if you're smoking too.
i hope you're not drinking,
i know you hate what it does to you.
your secrets are still tucked between my ribs,
i will hold them safe and repeat them back to you
if you ever lose your way home.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when you told me
about the person you were afraid of becoming,
i said i wasn't scared,
and i told you i was proud of you?
i'm still proud of you.
i hope you're in school or at least keeping busy.
i hope you still make yourself laugh.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember what movie we were watching
the night you got arrested?
i still can't finish it.
i am holding the place.
can we pick up where we left off?
can we stand up and wipe the dust off?
i never got to tell you why i only write in pen,
or why i can't sleep with socks on,
or about the day i caught god with his hands in a public fountain
fishing for change.
i'm not mad at you for disappearing, but i'm lonely.
the only reason i haven't called
is because i'm afraid of being sent straight to voicemail,
but if i ever find myself in indiana again,
you'll be the first to know.

- m.f.