Can we get much higher than this?
When all I can hear over the old dial up phone you use is the sound of nicotine exhales
and big sighs caused by silences I am too scared to fill.
Can we love any more than this?
I can hear you humming the song that's spinning and it makes me love you more.
You laugh at my nervousness, how I twitch when you say my name.
I always ignore you because I'm scared you'd say goodbye.
Can we get more tired than this?
Four am, your favorite albums crooning me to sleep.
Could you be more mistaken?
You thought I was scared of your darkness, of the shadows beckoning to you from every corner of
homes you did not own, and people you did not really know... yet.
I have a permanent dent in my ear from piercings that were too heavy for my fragile skin,
and everytime I run my fingertips over it, it reminds me of you.
You are bent but never broken, never broken.
Can we get more distant than this?
It's been months since I could honestly say that I thought you loved me.
So many miles, so many miles, so many



miles...
You're 874 kilometres away from me.
You are universes away from me.
And now everything tastes like goodbye.

Everyone you have lost is gone forever.  
If you try to call the dead, the phone won’t ring.
You won’t hear their voices.
The ground will shake like your wrists.
You will realize this sometime, when you’re in the bath and every nerve in your body is screaming at you to put your head under and count to a thousand.
You are more than a suicide note.
You are more than a suicide attempt.
You are more than cuts and bruises, and friends that abandon you and don’t even say hello in the hallways anymore.
People will leave you, daughter. People will leave you alone and shaking.
You’ll find solace in the most unexpected places, in the boys that look like they belong in the 1970s and in the vinyl that whispers to you while the sun is going down.
Eventually you will find the people that will bend the sky down to you so that you can touch the clouds.
They will become your motivation, they will become the glow in the dark stars on your bedroom ceiling.
You will forget that they are plastic, and often mistake them for the night’s sky.
Memories do not always hurt, it’s okay to be nostalgic but do not drown in it.
Do not drown in anything but love, daughter.
Love every leaf, every lover’s vein.
And every single time you think you’re going insane.
You’re not.
Remember that the door is always closed, but always easily opened.
Remember that you can leave.
Remember that you can take the next flight out, start a new life.
Remember that the world is in your piano hands.
You’ll meet someone and call them love because they don’t know the difference between the dull and sharp edge of a knife.
You’ll write poems.
Lots of them.
You’ll write enough poems to fill the walls in all of the rooms in all of the houses you have ever lived in.
You’ll scrawl them on the tree stumps you find temporary homes in while walking in the forest.
You’ll engrave them on someone’s bones after they tell you that they would rather die a thousand deaths than go a second without your energy warming their cheeks.
For every accomplishment, erase five shortcomings from your mind.
Be yourself before you forget who that is.
Be, daughter, be who you want to be;
Be who you know yourself to be.
When the world is sleeping on your shoulders at 4 in the morning, don’t wake it up.  
Take a deep breath, rock the earth into a deeper sleep.
Tell the walls your secrets because they don’t whisper.
Don’t tell anyone with a tongue something you wouldn’t want to end up floating back out of their mouths like a catchy song.
When you’re standing up on stage, waiting to start your poem, do not avoid eye contact.
Make everyone nervous with your metaphors.
Make everyone nervous with your passion.
You are the strongest soul you’ll ever be.
And when I die, shall we not meet again,
Remember that I am your mother, daughter.
And mothers, *always know best.

I miss you like sadness.
I used to wrap around myself like some lovelorn python
with a desire for suicide blondes.
Called yourself a wrecking ball, but you had no choice.
Maybe you wanted to caress my house softly without destruction.
Maybe you cried afterwards like a lost child on a mountain of doubt.
Full of maybes! You make me full of maybes!
I was taught as a child that maybe was just a watered down no.
Stop watering the truth down, I'm not your flower.
I'm a ****.
And I'll just continue to grow until I can't fit in anything except for my own grave.

You make me want to go to church.
I was baptised once, I forget as what.
I honestly don't even know what religion is,
but I can religiously blacken my lungs with nicotine and lies.
Lie with me.
Caress my sins.

My body is world war three,
I have nuclear bombs in the dips of my collarbones
and every single freckle you used to compare to the galaxies
are bullet holes.
Save your prose for someone who gives a ****.

Pull the blinds baby, we don't need light in here.
Did you know that with three minutes of asphyxiation you become brain dead?
Let's try it baby, suicide pact?
Let's dance with the dead darling.
You always said the devil was our best friend.

My tarot cards turned black when you turned them over.
You said that I was hard to read.
I had trouble reading anything except the bell jar.
And now it's my turn to ring it.

You're prettier with a necklace made of fingers.
I want to collect your energy in a mason jar and sell it at a garage sale.
I want to smash it in the middle of a highway and lay in a ditch until the wolves eat my body.
I want to be lost.
Lose me baby.
I'll lose myself in your lies.
Lie with me.
I just want to be held.

You're so beautiful darling,
your words can move mountains even when you think
they can't touch an anthill.
You are a rebel with a cause and the cause is me.
You are Janis Joplin in the evening, without the ******.
"Darling, I love you"
"I love you, darling" and there was no need to say "too"
Three words were enough to throw a curveball in a hockey rink,
to ride horses in a car race, to love someone at night
and even more in the morning.
You are an earthquake, I know you'll break my heart but I welcome it.
It would be such an honor to be broken by you.
You are my guilty pleasure and all of my proud ones.
I want to tattoo you on my skin in places only I can see
so that every time I take off my sweater and my tshirt and everything
masking my scars and tree rings of age, I will always be surprised to find you.
I want to hold you in the crevice of my elbow like a baby and never ever let you go.
Darling, you're a willow tree that I write poems under.
In the most poetic way, I found you in hallways, always.
In my high school where I hid in the bathrooms, Jane loves John
and everything else scribbled in hearts in bad ninth grade writing.
I found you there. I find you here, in my heart.
You are filled with blood, you are 72% water that I would gladly drown in.
I think if I kissed you you'd poison me with your lips.
You are the forked tongue of desire.
I want to talk to you about dreams, I want to be your sweetest nightmare.
I don't want you to question reality but if you do, think you're lucid dreaming.
Because I want you to want me around; even when you're sleeping.
You are 2am with the lights on and the music loud.
You are a five hour time difference dancing inside of me like a storm.
If my knees wouldn't give out, I would run to you.
And when they did, I would crawl to you.
My hands scraped from debris from car crashes, you are electric.
You are heat lightning. You give me flashes of hope on a humid day.
You are a winter breeze through a cracked window in all of the glorious ways that could be glorious.
I will whisper to you that I don't know why I'm whispering,
there is nobody home, "I love you" sounds better in hushed tones.
You're so beautiful, Darling.
The prettiest pictures you'll ever take will be self-portraits.
Don't argue with me, I know you're stubborn.
It's written in the stars.
You can move me like a mountain or an anthill
because your strength is a blood diamond permanently placed on my left hand.
I did, I do, I will.
You are forever.

If I thought I was losing you I wouldn't beg you to stay
I'd say that when you breathe, I see stars because I imagine your heart inside your body pumping blood
to your veins and your lungs expanding and letting go and all I can think of is how I never want to be your lungs
because I could never let go of your air.

I'd tell you that your eyes put the northern lights to shame.
That I've been everywhere and nowhere feels more at home than
sitting on the curb of a street in a city I don't know with you by my side.

If I thought I was losing you I would tell you that I'm not one
for love poems, but the sound of you saying my name is enough to make me think of red roses and blue violets.
And that when you touch me the roses are blue and the violets are red
and everything painful inside my head doesn't matter.

If I thought you were going to leave I wouldn't ask you to stay,
I'd tell you that every word that comes from your mouth leaves me breathless;
That there are little caves in your body and I picked a temporary home in your larynx
so you could always feel me in the words you're nervous to say.

I'd let you know that my whole life I've been searching for myself,
and amidst the shadows I found your bright eyes, and I lost my senses there...
and found them as well.

I want to tell you that all I need is you and a record player.
That music runs through my veins, and right next to Every Grain of Sand
and my love for Bob Dylan, you're there.
Shining through my bloodstream, leading the way to my heart.

If I thought I was losing you, I wouldn't beg you to stay.
I'd say that you're the best and worst thing that has ever happened to my poetry.
That I find metaphors in the notches of your spine,
that I play them like a piano.
And most of all, above all these things,
I'd say darling don't go, I'll miss you.