Do not touch me with fingers that have cupped my mouth trying to keep me silent.

I am burnt.

These days, I find myself in a constant battle between the things I love and the things I need to push away because they don't know how to properly love me back. You have always been one to turn my feelings into a noose I want to **** myself with. You have always made me hate myself for having a heart that pumps the ink I use to attempt writing suicide letters with after making art on my wrists for too long. These days, I find more hope in the thought of dying... more peace in the thought of a final breath. We both get a different kind of pleasure when I beg you to choke me between satin sheets; I am looking for a beautiful way to to make my heart stop. The day I realized I stopped loving you was the day you told me you didn't like who I was becoming; you couldn't love the monster that was growing inside me. I've become to exhausted to keep trying to push him out. Its his eyes you're looking into now. Its his lips you've been kissing. It's his words telling you that I can no longer try and focus on my future when I don't even see a tomorrow for myself. It's hard to convince people you're okay with being alive after they see you looking for all the high places...

I've given up on trying.

Please don't tell me there's a light at the end of the tunnel; I've been running in the dark for too long for you to convince me I'll ever find my way out of this **** place.
I've become numb to whatever's trying to destroy me, I just wish it wasn't taking so much time to get the job done.

I once carved poetry into your back with the nail of my pinky finger-  so that any girl who lays beside you can read the way I fell in love with your breathing after all the nights you found sleep before I did. Maybe they'll get a bitter taste in their mouth when they realize my love for you was not enough to make you stay.
You traced your fingertips on my skin as though I was simply a map that led to your pleasure. You sunk your teeth into my shoulders while pulling back on my hair because you were convinced that I couldn't feel anything; somehow its 3 years later and my eyes still read through our conversations searching between the lines for the reason you left.
You used to touch me as though your hand on my thigh was the key to my heart and my moans were the only ways of expressing my love to you but you'll never be able to read the poem on your back that says I could feel your heart beat on the mattress of my twin bed... its been three years and my sheets still smell like vacancy. My heart is collecting dust in the corners because no ones been in there since you decided it wasn't enough for you. I can't recall the rhythm of your heart and sometimes my lungs forget how to breath.
Its days like these I wish you were right about my inability to feel. But God knows there are more nerve endings in my heart than the place between my thighs and maybe if you wouldn't have ****** all the love out of me it wouldn't be as hard to see you go.
Its been three years.

I’ve never been good with goodbye’s
This one would hurt I knew
I don’t remember the date
When the finish line ran to you.
Your skin was softly dimming
Your grip was weakening too
I do remember the weather
When the finish line ran to you
The may flowers were blooming
The sun shined in the room
But I swear the floor caught every tear
When the finish line ran to you
Its like I could see Jesus
Smiling down at the view
He knew that you would see him
When the finish line ran to you
Midnight saw your last breath
So did the lit up moon
There was a celebration in heaven
When the finish line ran to you
So grandma I hope you hear me
Singing our old favourite tunes
I was still on the sidelines cheering you on
When the finish line ran to you.

the sky was pink

lost in bed, room 26

blue motel walls

silent narrow halls

soft music in the streets

my hands, your cheeks

soft sighs

angel eyes

maybe

t h i s

is

the

P a r a d i s e

i've been searching for

The apple never falls close enough to the tree.

"do you ever feel like maybe we're taking this whole life thing too seriously? Because I do. If I had the choice I'd be out somewhere west, living in a tree house with a dog and possibly a garden of some sort... I don't know, it seems like a crazy thought but I've always felt like this whole experience of life should be less cliche than it is. People take **** way too seriously and I just can't conform to it"

I laughed. Not a mocking "what are you even saying right now?" kind of laugh, but I couldn't help but be blown away by such a crazy thought. The moment was fitting; our backs leaning against the wooden fence that enclosed my yard, heads tilted up towards a sky decorated in bright yellow stars. It was nearly 3 am and the world was asleep around us. All there was to be heard was our breathing amid the silence and I could feel the heat from the smoke of my cigarette grazing against my fingertips.

"You have no idea how much my wanderlust tears at me"* I brought the cigarette up to my lips and breathed deep till my lungs were filled and exhaled slowly. "I just want to get out of this town. Move to B.C, meet new people. Feel something different; something other than this desire for a new perspective. Its almost like..." I paused "I want to be happy but I don't know what makes me happy yet, if that makes any sense"

He quickly turned to me, the kitchen light from inside spilling on his face so I could see the constellations of freckles on his cheeks the queer smile on his lips.
"I make you happy" he said mockingly

I smirked,"you make me feel an emotion that doesn't even have a name yet, happiness isn't complicated enough to describe it"

"You're so in love with me, its cute"
I couldn't see his smile but I could hear it. Suddenly it felt as though a curtain had been removed and I was center stage with the leading roll in a play that everyone wanted to see. I couldn't mess up my lines because I was making them up as I go and they weren't directed towards anybody but him. He was sitting in the middle row, with his eyes on mine, listening.
So I spoke. I turned my heart upside down and spilled words out of my mouth till everything I said fit so perfectly it didn't require an explanation.

I said;
"I am not in love with you. I am not in love with you. I am not in love with you. I know I sound like a record on repeat but you're a song and I  don't want your lyrics stuck in my head.
I love the way you're not religious but look up at the stars as though you can finally believe in something. I love the way you're selfless and undefined; like sometimes you die just to revive as something better than you were before. I love the way the earth doesn't feel so big when I'm with you, or that this whole life thing feels more like a two person game that we're so good at winning. I love the way you talk about your dreams in a way that you want to make them more than just dreams. I love the way you talk about plans as though you're already pulling them out of your head and getting started. I love the way you perceive the day as an agenda that needs constant filling. I love the way you look when you're passionate and inspired, or the way you get goosebumps along the surface of your skin when you talk about summer. I've never wanted anything more than to lay outside with you at night and hear you speak so I can experience your mind. No I am not in love with you and no it's not cute. But your presence puts me at ease, almost like I could be on the other side of the world with you and never feel home sick. I told you before that there's no name for the emotion I feel when I'm with you, but whatever it is I never want to stop feeling it."

There's nothing I would rather be than the one you call home.

my poetry is empty
I need to fill these lines with the world around me. The snow melting in my hands, the rain racing down the sleeves of my jacket, the wind brushing my hair. I need to fill my poetry with the purest of things. I have been writing polluted poetry. Fake love, fake loss, fake feelings towards people who no longer exist. I have learned that the way I exist and the way I write are what will keep me alive on paper long after I am gone. Immortal poetry. Poetry that can't help but be unconfined. Poetry that can make you question if what you feel is what you feel and if the way you think of yourself is real and if any of this is even worth writing about, I don't know but I'm gonna do it anyways. My heart is pumping the keys of violins, my veins are filled with lyrics that I can't quite understand but I'll keep singing them.  There's something soft about listening, there's something soothing about the ending of a song. There's something about how I used to write poetry that seems so wrong and I'm not gonna erase it but I wish I could go back and make a couple of edits in the ways I talked about love as though it's something my heart has ever truly felt before. This poem isn't going to be about anyone else rather than myself. This poem is going to be that old book that sits on the book shelf that no one reads anymore, but everytime they see it they think "God I used to love that" and maybe one day they'll look back and miss the smell of the pages. This poem doesn't have any sort of secret message so stop dissecting the phrases. Stop wondering "why did the poet use the violin instead of another instrument?" Stop analyzing it and maybe you'll hear a song playing in your head as you read it. This poem is raw, it's what's seeping from the tips of my fingers and for that I think it's quite beautiful. When do we ever let anything spill for long enough to see that maybe the puddle could turn into art? Who had the audacity to call some plants flowers and others weeds? Who gave them the right to decide what was beautiful and what wasn't?  Don't try to tell me that this is how it's meant to be, because in poetry there's no guidelines. There's no wrong words and there's no wrong lines. There's just me - and you. And thoughts, and spills and weeds and flowers and love and things I've never felt and I hope one day as you pass by that book on the shelf, you pick it up and read it. I hope one day you remember why you always kept it. I hope the front cover feels glad to have felt your finger tips. I know I did.