Friends become strangers as fast as I was forgotten
beneath the quick pale of the moon.
Seemingly fleeting and self destructive, but really
just sad and lonely and broken from the past.

For a few months there I couldn't get out of bed.
I wrapped myself in blankets like I wanted to mummify myself.
Like I was already dead, and maybe I actually was.

I was foolishly waiting for someone to ask me if I was okay.
I was foolishly waiting to be missed.
But the girl who blends in with the night is never noticed by anything
but the quick pale of the moon.

And soon, painfully, forgetfully, I disappear.
Oblivion greets me like an old friend and I have no choice
but to smile and wave back, before taking its hand
and walking down the path of insanity.

I just wanted someone to save me.

But I don't know what they'd be saving me from.
Maybe myself.
Maybe the past.
But more likely, every bit of hurt that stains my soul
quite similarly to the way you stained my good blouse with your tears.
I didn't even mind, until I saw you across the street and you looked at me
like I was a stranger.

It's just me, the moon and everything else that shines in the night.
I'm wearing a sign that says save me.
And I was foolish to think that you might.

Sometimes I catch myself thinkin’ about you with my fingers crossed.
And my eyes closed, like I’m wishing for something.
This is funny to me, because I learned recently
that my brain does this weird thing where it’s incapable of feeling superstitious.
I have always wanted a black cat.
You have always been a wishing well begging for the famished to come and dip their hands.
You wear a sign that says
“Take something, or leave something, doesn’t matter, just leave feeling won”
Leave feeling like you won.
This is how you will leave me.
When my fingers are crossed. Because then the promises don’t matter.
When my eyes are closed. Because it will hurt more to watch you leave
than to wonder if you crawled or if you ran.
When my teeth hurt, from all the chatter, from all the shake, from all the wisdom they extracted.
You know I’ve been leaving bite marks in the crust of the earth,
trying to find a wormhole that will take me to the moment you thought,
“hey, this girl’s gonna write poems about me every Friday” and
“hey, she won’t win me, but maybe she’ll win something”.
I'm the award winning heartache, I'm the pain they thought would last forever.
I'm my grandmother's years of Elvis & Jack Daniel's coming to the surface
and passing themselves off as vertigo.
You're the sum of the times you and the earth were in disagreement over your leaving.
You're the only thing that will shine when the sun dies.
We are Samson and Delilah. You are so sunshine.
I am grateful to the doctors that gave me second chances, I am grateful for the opportunity
that someday is engraved with.
This is how you will leave me.
I pray with my fingers crossed.
and my eyes closed, like I'm wishing for something.
I don't say Amen. I say thank you.
Thank you.

the harsh reality of life is that everything moves on
and for things to move on, first other things have to end

people leave;
they leave you and they leave places and they leave things behind
and sometimes it's messy, and you'll cry and hug your pillow at night
because it's the only thing that has stayed
and people may leave places, and maybe you'll be a person leaving a place
but you'll be finding a new one

everyone finds their way, and an end is just a new beginning
because that is the true meaning of moving on

and maybe you'll look around your new house in a new city or even state or country
and you'll find something; a letter maybe, from a person who left
or a bracelet, or a picture- anything that holds a memory
and you'll remember them, and it won't be because they left
it will be because they moved on, and luckily they left you with a piece of them
because we are all made up of fragments of other people and places and things
and no matter how hard we try to piece them all together quickly and with shaking hands,
we can't

and sometimes the puzzles that are our souls will be messy,
and you'll cry and you'll hug a new person
that hasn't left yet because you're missing pieces you think you'll never find

but one day you'll complete the puzzle
and it won't be the end
it will be moving on

If you see her again before I do, tell her the way she left left me shaking like a winter windchime;
the song too frozen to melt on her tongue.
I am scared of all her moving on.
The only serious love poems I write are about the same person who hides God in her hair and shows me the lingerie she bought while I try to unfog my glasses to look at her straight.
I am too convinced that she is made up of lines that lead straight to my firework skin. There has been too many explosions here.
The only way to deal with missing you is to tell you and wait and see if you feel the same. Or novacane.
I imagine you taste like an acid trip... all conspiracy theories and sugary words too sober to ever speak.
If you see her again before I do, tell her that I am a mess without her.  That my mind only settles with her tear-stained cheeks and the only way I can see the ocean in the winter in Canada is to look into her eyes.
I am scared that I am being overdramatic.
I want to rub our wrists together so we can trade scars.
Tell me the story of how you met your best friend and I'll tell you the story of how I fell out of loving my mother.
I would rather listen to you ramble than check the time.
If you see her again before I do, tell her that on the way home from her arms I counted 1200 streetlamps, 13 lovers, 3 liquor stores and 72 shakes of my knees.
Tell her I miss her like Frances misses Kurt.  Like dive bars miss blues music.
When I see you again, lover, I'll tell you that when you told me your name two years ago, I was surprised that it wasn't Love.

I write a lot about things I don't understand.
I keep thinking that maybe if I write about them,
I'll be able to gain a better knowledge.
So far this has proved untrue.

I write a lot about love when all I really know is that it hurts.

I've been told by people (yes plural) that they either
don't know how to love or don't like love itself.
And quickly and shakily, and with an unstable mindset,
I am starting to think that what those people meant was not
"I don't know how to love", but "I don't know how to love you".
Not "I don't like love", but "I don't like the idea of love with you"

I am a blackhole of both unrequited love and endless bottles of
self destruction and I secretly like being perpetually alone.
I am a lover without a lover.
I am a writer, and writers are almost always broken.
If not broken, there are definitely surface cracks.
Take it from me.

My poems are all about love and you, and I don't quite understand.

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.

You are a beacon of light shining for me, the way home.
Which is a sort of contradiction because you are my home.
And right now I am just lost at sea.
I'm almost drowning in the ocean because I naively mistook it
for the depths of your eyes.
What a foolish, lovelorn mistake;
A mistake only lovers make.

For all I know you could give me an anchor disgused as a life preserver.
I'll take it because I trust too easily and I'll be thrusted down to the bottom
where the bodies of water keep their secrets.
I'm just another thing to keep quiet about.
Another mystery when the sun's up and another mistake when it's down.

The moon has a way of showing me for who I really am.
I want to yell out "**** you" to it for illuminating me but I'll swallow water.
Just like I have choked back my love for you all this time out of fear
of your silence.
A silence I am all too familiar with.

I use my last breath to say that I'll miss you.
But only the fish can hear me.
And frankly, they don't give a ****.

Before you get lost in the unfinished maps of her veins
the ones like yours, but not stitched up too many times to count on the ticks of a clock,
make sure that she trusts you enough to tell the truth.
Make sure that she loves you enough to know how you lie.
Remember that every single time you open your mouth, she's wishing
you're saying I love you.
Remember that on Fridays she doesn't want to cook.
And she sure doesn't want you to cook anything that was slaughtered.
Remember that she prefers cheap whiskey over champagne.
And when you're opening your ribcage to show her how fast your heart beats
when she grabs your wrists, make sure the butterflies are set free.
Make sure they find the window.
Make sure they find a home.
Remember that every living creature is just that, living.
Remember that they have a heartbeat.
And when you stop breathing when you see her with her hair down,
when you're thinking about starting a religion about girls with flowers for eyes,
tell her she's beautiful.
Tell her she's so full of the future.
Get her a telescope so you can show her the moon when it's bigger than both your thumbs.
Take her skiing while it's Summer in Australia even though you curse the snow as if it
were born out of wedlock.
Let her know she's not the first but she's definitely the only, and you're so scared of dying.
You never know what you have until it's locked firmly in your grasp as if to not let it run away.
You might lose a lot of blood but you'll never lose your way home.
I don't want to hear the dial tone.
I want to hear your voice, I want to hear you scream.  Tell me to leave.
Tell me that I am the only road that leads you to a purpose.
That in a world of blindness I am so technicolour.
Even though I can't promise you that, I can give you my words, thrusted from my lungs
like wildfire.
Searching for the way out.
Talk to me about religion, please please convince me that there is something out there other than
rotting in the ground for all of eternity.
Bible scripture doesn't whisper of your lips like my pillows do.
I never really thought about pillow talk until they started speaking me to sleep.
I find myself found by the curvature of your spine, of the shadows that take up residence on your shoulders like they have lived there all along.
I want to kiss away every bit of pain that has ever stopped you from smiling at strangers
and let you know that I'm coming home and I will always find your hands.
Let your ribs shake when your heart has had enough.
Let them shake.
Let the rain come through your window while you're sitting there in your makeshift darkroom.
You are the only thing I know about consistency.
And before I get lost in the unfinished maps of your veins,
I will be making sure they lead to me.

Tell me what you know and don't hold back.

I want to know the secrets
that shade your soul.

I want you to love my darkest hours
and the days I want so badly to disappear.

Please don't make me regret loving you,
make me regret lusting after you.

Make me regret the decision to stay
and please regret your decision to stray.

You told me you loved me when you were drunk
and I guess I believed you because whiskey is
a sort of truth serum.

You know that well enough now from all the nights
I'd stumble home and into your arms,
telling you everything through teardrops and
cigarette breath.

I don't know why you still loved me after that.

And I'm starting to think that maybe you didn't.

I write poems on my skin for you.
You say you love me and then leave
and I write you poems on my ******* skin.

The ink sinks through all the layers that cover my bones
and almost poisons me.
It worries me that I don't even care
and even more that you wouldn't either.

There were certain things in life in which I was absolutely certain;
you were one of them.
You were one of those things that I thought would never leave.
Constant, like the ocean.
But the tide came in and you got washed away.
And I was left with nothing but uncertainty.

And you left on purpose.

When I think of you two words come to mind; reckless abandonment.
Only I was the reckless thing and you were the abandoner.
And I feel completely foolish for missing you.

I wrote a haiku on my skin for you;

Those who I love leave
Recklessly and forever;
tide sweeps you away.

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.

Lungs burning with affliction, no prayer can help you realize that you are on fire.
Help me, open my ribcage and read the encryption that is my heart.
This is where my ideas form; this is where the magic happens.
This is where trees become homes when I turn to prose.
This is where love becomes tangible.
Take the helm from my chest cavity and steer me home.
Sew me back up and pretend you didn’t figure out how my mind works from studying my heartbeat.
You can keep my memories there, keep my stanzas there.
But you cannot lock up an idea.

Do you realize that every single time you open your mouth I’m wishing I could have a lobotomy?
I don’t want my brain to miss you when you leave.
I don’t want my heart to miss you when it realizes that it no longer beats in sync with yours.
You can take yourself away from me.
You can make me cry so the salt water stings my face like it’s a burning map.
You can take my poems from my veins and scatter them in the river.
But you cannot lock up an idea.

Oh Captain my captain, I think we are going down.
But everyone is just an arm’s length from drowning.
When life preservers are anchors and every single thing is whispering for you to sink.
The Bermuda triangle is just another place where sailors go to pray and what kind of god ***** you in and tests you with a tempest?
You and I are so much more than child’s play.
Tell me to stay.
Tell me my ideas do not belong on the ocean floor.
Because you cannot lock up an idea.

If the sun shines through your blinds, think of me.
Think of the morning.
But without all your leaving.
Don’t think of the bags packed, of the plane tickets bought.
Of the ferry setting off its horn for you in the middle of the night.
Think of the morning.
Without all your leaving.
With the coffee, with the metaphors that were leaking through the walls as you blinked.
You wanted to keep them for yourself, hold them hostage in your bones.
But you cannot lock up an idea.

So next time you think of leaving, think of taking the ferry across the ocean.
Next time you think of whispering my secrets into the waves that kiss the rocks like they are not hurting anyone, think of me first.
Without the poems.
Before I even started writing.
Remember how I chased butterflies and the sunset.
How I begged you to let me climb up on the roof to watch the sun rise again.
Remember that my ideas are my prayers to a god I have not yet found in the curve of your spine.
Remember that I want nothing more than to not have to miss you.
Remember that every time you dismiss my words, my art, my need to chase the sunset; you are diminishing my creativity.
Remember that you cannot lock up an idea.

your lips are a sort of heaven
take that from an athiest

I used to believe in God
until he took away the one I loved most
and even though I don't believe
I hope I'm wrong
because surely someone as beautiful as you
deserves a heaven

your words are a sort of paradox
seemingly neverending, thank God
I don't know what I'd do without them

but also like a maze that I can't find my way out of
you've got my mind spinning and I wouldn't want
to find my way even if I could

and don't get me started on your eyes
because I can't help but look into them and see an hourglass
ticking down the time until you leave again and i'll be
praying to whoever will listen that I get to see them one last time
they're blue like the sky,

sky blue sky blue
I've never written words more true