I can think of so many ways to ask you to stay. I feel like I’ve already emptied out my mason jar of them to the half-way mark. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what anything means. I just know that you’ll never feel for me the way I feel for you. I know that you will find someone that will love you in every way you need, and I know that person may not be me. If I said the idea of that made me happy, I’d be lying. I can’t be the ever-positive ex, I can’t promise you that someone else can know the right moments to touch your back. I can’t promise you that someone else will force you to open up to them when you’re upset. I can’t promise you that they’ll be able to hold your weeping head to their chest and they’ll feel the heartbreak I did every time you cried. I can’t even promise you that you’ll wake up holding another girls hand and it feel the way it felt for me. I can only promise you things I know. I promise you that every time you hear a song off of take this to your grave you’ll remember the night we all sang those songs drunk and in love with the worst and best of each other. I promise you that when you read these things you won’t look back at them and they probably won’t really even phase you. I promise you that you’ll always do your best to get to Moe’s on Mondays for your burrito that you won’t most always don't finish. I promise you that you’ll always have the best taste in whiskey, and you will always love the playlists I make. I promise you that the sun will rise every morning just for you, and you will smoke a cigarette to welcome it. I promise you that you will wear a striped shirt at least six out of seven days of the week, and blue jeans five out of seven. I promise you that you will have a soft hum of my voice in the back of your head every time you buy a new pack of marlboro smooths, better yet I promise that you’ll never buy the 100’s because of that. I can promise you all of those things, I can promise you myself.

I have written a text to you seven times, maybe it’s more like a fully fragmented novel consisting of over one thousand letters. Not one time did I beg for you back, I just begged you to remember the times I held you instead of you holding me. I asked you to scroll back through the times I beckoned you to me, the times I tied your shoe strings together to have you fall for me. I always wanted you to stay warm for me. You pulled away from my heart from the very beginning and out of all of that I just wanted you to feel less alone at night. I wanted you to strip your skin dry of its heavy self-consciousness and kiss the freckles that covered you inch by inch. Because I couldn’t do those things this far away. My scent never lingered where you were for very long, I knew that. But I didn’t want to change it, I didn’t spritz the air with my trademarks, I didn’t want you to realize I was gone. Sometimes that really worked, but it never worked for me. You’re even further now, it happens constantly with us. But us having a constant? That’s the most beautiful thing, and I’m keeping with it.

I am head over heels over knees over hands, I just keep falling farther and deeper. It's the ultimate free fall and I can't imagine anything without including you. You've arrested every thought. I feel like I've been blind my whole life and am finally able to see. You're technicolor. You're eyes carry lightening, I feel it enter through mine and extend through me and out my fingers and toes. I feel like I'm so high there shouldn't be air up here to breathe, but it's the easiest I've ever been able to inhale and exhale. I love you so much that it hurts my head. I can't wrap my brain around how it's even possible. I can't imagine ever being short or grumpy or even a little cross with you. I want to be nothing but kind and loving and patient towards you. I want to serve you. I want to make you feel good. I want to touch you always. I want to write you. I want to sing you. I want to be totally enveloped in you and I have zero fear behind it; it's literally as simple as needing another breath of air in my lungs.


I am in love with you. It feels better than I ever could have imagined it. I am so thankful to your parents for creating you. Your words roll through me like ******* thunder and I'm not scared. You're the best feeling I've ever known. It's only you. I couldn't imagine sharing myself with another person in this world. I will never treat you the way I've treated anyone else in my life. I have never felt this magnetism. I've never wanted someone to take ahold of me as much as I want you to. I will prove myself to you every hour of every day. My life surrounds this feeling, you run through me beautifully. I've known you were the one from the moment our eyes locked and you smiled at me the first day of the best year of my life.

there is nothing worse than polaroiding every thing that will remind me of you. how empty green fields open my eyes to fantasies that used to be plans, my thoughts screeching in the background, don’t put your arm around me on your front porch, your living room couch

somewhere there is a script for every past love, psychiatrist’s legal pads filled with paragraphs of repeated sentences and ticks (where I just can’t stop touching my fingertips) because I’d rather be touching you

it takes more than a hopeless romantic to save someone who isn’t stable, whose emotions can make the worst of them, they need someone who can hold them down and scream that they’re worth more than a golden ticket, they’re prettier than the brightest tulips, he can’t hurt you anymore, but you weren’t that, if I was in pain you closed your eyes

cover your walls with your poems in times new roman on printer paper and feel better about yourself, cause you can glance over and read that you are better than the lowest moments and the 12 donettes you just ate that you don't even like

and you can listen to really ******* sad country music and be okay with that because you are creating a ******* masterpiece of the words that made you feel worth something

you are the only one who can actually reassure you; you are the only one you can rely on, and you can't ever forget, you can't make homes out of people

because people don't come fully furnished and with a built-in security system, it takes a lot of work to finally fill every empty nook in another person, and sometimes your things are still in the boxes you packed them in months ago, but you always say you'll get around to unpacking it, you don't

you left those things in that cardboard because you ******* knew

you knew that you wouldn't get your security deposit back, you knew that it would be one less box you'd have to search for in a publix dumpster, but the worst part about that one less box is that it was a storage place for where you put yourself when you met her

and she left you in that corner, she didn't want you to fill her every nook and cranny, she didn't need your security system or your ******* poems on her walls, and she definitely didn't ******* need you, but you're better than the box she left you in, baby I am better than that ******* box you forever left me in

How do you move on from something like what we had? Words are flowing out of me like I’ve been taken over by an erupting volcano. I’ve thought of you every day for months, I’ve imagined my future so much differently with your light shining on it. You’ve taken me higher than anyone, you’ve made me feel when I was unconscious, completely left astray by the world.

I can do nothing less than thank you, love you, hopelessly adore who you once were. Your hands touched me with such exposing force, I knew exactly who you were and what you felt. I’ve known you like a ship and its sailor for almost half a year and it has been so beautiful. Your love has caused me to recognize growth and appreciate being constant. As of now, I’m lost and terrified of every second I have to brave. But I know it will get better, as it always does. What I’m going through is just a footnote, and I am a changed person because of what we had. Thank you.

before I understood what constituted as love I understood that there was a hole in my upper arteries where your fingerprints laced my vessels and scraped the blood clean from my veins

I knew what you had taken, and that was the entirety of loss, you caused a high that pressured me down to a flat-lined level; you'd broken no falls, dealt no hands, glued back no ties

that's why I always knew when it was you pathetically knocking at my door, you, waiting to break me down again and that's a satisfaction you will never see, goodnight to you
goodnight from me

you cling to me like I'm the answer to all of your questions
can you let go?
I'm less than a gravel road
no more than another ****.
I understand where you are, I understand who you aren't
break it, buy it, sell it back.
I wish you hadn't choked.

I am switching places with the stones in your bones. My arms are heavy because and I can no longer hold you up. The blood in my veins runs laps and I double take every time a strike doesn’t run through smoothly. It’s rough to think of things this way. I guess everything fell apart a day ago when nothing came out right.

Can you recall how dim the lighting was in the basement that night? I ran my fingers up and down my thighs in anxious habit. I was wearing the summer heat on my flesh. Though the ghosts kept me locked in my body, you kept me screaming to get out. Why have you made me feel that my frame is a prison? It’s not fair to place blame.

Last fall I broke my finger in your car door. You shut the door in anger, you opened it in spite. I sat down on your passenger seat and it sighed a caution warning. You were steaming; I listened to the leather exhale. Calling me stupid, you looked to me for confirmation. As I reached for the door, you slammed it. It was official then, the way you broke me had made its way to the surface.

I used to count down the seconds until you got here. I also used to count down the seconds until you left. One night you never got here, so I never had to count at all.

I don't know how to type without a backspace key
because I need to hit it
hit it
it it it
and remember why I'm so aggressive
and forget how to type without a
backspace key
and become less obsessive
what about now?

it it it
ends me

what about now?

I’ve spent hours realizing the reality of our motions. Your hands against my lower back felt so electrifying I could hardly breathe you in. The next night you stole my heart away from my heavy grasp and you became my lover. Though our actions and words seem progressive and dedicated, I still see us in a happy dance of love and ease. Remembering your face, I want nothing less than to graze it with the upper side of my palm and place my broken lips to your quivering counterpart. I can be every bullet point in your list of needs or wants; I can be everything you don’t know that you wish to understand. Tonight I wish for nothing less than your voice to linger through my ears, I wish to have you here. Please know that in this space we are granting to each other, you are forever on my mind. Constantly yours, Briana

Speaking from an easily cracked lead, my ink bleeds for you. My heart feels for you, my tone breathes for you. When will you be more than just my imagined point of view?

I think of times in elapsed homes and wonder if binding my hands with yours would have treated that isolation. I remember how cold my skin would become and I felt as if my veins would ice over like a great glacier beneath my frame. Not a single thing made sense while I was seven years old, not a single moment of reassurance was granted. Another afternoon I spent in a large wooden canvas that was my home, I felt as broken as a victim. Sit next to me while my limbs shake mercilessly; remind me why I’m here.
I have woken up to one more morning where my façade is raw and my heart feels constricted. I knew this was serious when your name was spoken for the first time and I lost my mind. I have lost my mind.

1.
You feel her as you walk into the room
you hesitate with every foot forward
turn around turn back now
you don't

2.
You decide you are fully comfortable
with your broken bones
and fragile hands
so you acknowledge this
and she doesn't

3.
You brush it off, but you run
and you look to yourself
and you think
am I ready
you're ready

4.
You need time, so you indulge
and you weep a blood bank
and you're not ready
you won't let her go
and you don't

"You're difficult to love." Who says these things? Like swinging on a broken swing or swimming in an empty sea. Any place you don't leave is a prison, and you left me like the breath of your very last sentence.

speak simply if you wish to speak at all
tongue tied lies keep me at your beck and call
sleep a bit of agony and I'm losing every bet
take me back to seventeen the satin colored net

that you tarped over me
roped me down
cruised me down the street

it's time to unload me
stay calm and listen
I need to be freed
I need to be slayed
beaten and prayed
I need to be saved

a fever isn't just a heated state it's a trance where an even temperature escalates into a dangerous smothering absorption of all moisture, health and grief like walking on a ceiling, I am confused and allured by your violent embraces and how they affect my fever the smile your back makes as I graze you I'm tormented by our forever through the time I've spent wandering I have gathered few things butterfly wings and summer soundtracks to sing

I'm flying
eyes closed
back arched
I'm wounded

self inflicted charms an over beating heart a piano plays through my fingertips my leg gets their heavy beating I do not own a thing I do not own my body I do not own this soul I let free the words I hold onto the moods I've always gone to
I am
I am
I am

*a figment

sitting ****** like a skipping stone
I feel the weight of your imagined embrace
and I can't think of a time that I didn't want this
I want to kiss you now

remember this: heated passenger seats
and electrifying moments
discussing broken feelings and
forgetting shattered promises

honesty breaks the string to my tongue
I speak and speak and speak
and I've misplaced my tone
but I'm so much less alone

I haven’t washed my hair in a few days.
I wiped off all of my makeup.
People ask me what my eyebrows look like without makeup.
I tell them that’s something I wish to keep to myself.
I share my bare face with lovers as if it’s a privilege.
When having that lover in the first place is a privilege in itself.
I’m on call tomorrow.
I have a psychiatrist appointment at 12 and it’s 30 minutes away.
I have a psychologist appointment at 4 and it’s 30 minutes away.
I bought things at Michael’s today to make glitter jars.
I want to share them with you.
Especially when you’re around big crowds in small spaces.
Especially when it’s a bad day and you don’t want to get out of bed.
I wish I had a jar right now, my feelings won’t stop swarming around.

I love her like I loathe tomorrow
a broken smile
a sauntering denial

I love her like a confused mind
a spoken rhyme
a bewildering crime

I love her like I don't know how
and I want to show her
I'll tell her now

there's a power off button in the back of my mind
and I'm swimming through my brain to save myself some time
it's blinking a dim ugly light
but it's mine

and there's a loud yelling in the middle of my heart
I'm pounding on my chest to shut it down and press re-start
it's pulsing a heavy sigh
but it's mine

but there's a simple ticking
and a broken watch
a time zone I'll remember
because it's a new year
and a new broken feeling
that I'm drinking to forget
that I once lived inside a dream

but maybe forgetting
isn't as easy
as you make
it seem

It seems to me that I love you
and I'll show you this poem in a few months
when you ask me how I feel about you
or if by then you love me too
but maybe by then you'll have better things to do


your eyes are glossy and I sneak
a look and I layed my head near your neck
and shook while I feel your heartbeat against my cheek
and hopefully you'll hear me screaming in my head

*kiss me
kiss me
kiss me

and on my own I know I'm grown beaten down by hammers and drills my mind breaks from the pressure it takes to cry every time you say goodbye we will never be together I lie because I know what really hurts is my heart but my head feels fine without you because I am my own person and that's fine but the punishment fits the crime

give me a pill to rid these beautiful dreams
because I'm tired of the morning heart ache
for a formed future that does not exist

a warm glass of milk running down my throat like the half full half empty season of regret when out of no where it is my turn to mourn and through losing myself I've lost you wake up it's morning and you have to live another day and you know what?

I'm numb

since you left I've been drowning in your depth looking over lost memories far too often
I keep finding myself aloof between tickets and legal pad paper and I know how easy it is to write you down when I don't need to but now that I have to I can't pattern words

a sweet relief is what I'm aching for some gentle words that exclaim that my future is safe in your veins tensing over not knowing a thing or knowing too much my car is breaking down and I need to see you now so I'll arrive in your city and you won't want to see me

my pattern and heart is broken for you please help repair me because my gutter-dragged heart is loose in my chest and my tongue-tied words are sent through texts I'm aching for a word from you I feel and know I am too much for you

I always think that when I'm at a loss I can read poetry and jump back in
but when you're drowning in a lack of words it's hard to see an end

when I am the most vulnerable I go to let you in
but you push against me, like the wind
and I stare into a breathing mass, a struggle made from heavy tears
I'm looking for a reason, but all I see are three long years

I am broken and when I go to break you down
you bring me down with you
so I am looking for a reason
and I found it

it's such a long way to you and back
but I will do any thing to just be a happy thought
in your head
or a beating break in your heart
any thing with a meaning
I dare myself to be it
but I'm every thing but any thing

I woke up from another dream where we were whole and home together
another world where I was irrelevant, yet we were all that was spoken of
and games were played between us as we pined for each other over seven full years
and you asked me that question of commitment four days before my birthday
and 75 days before yours

I fell asleep watching some sappy movie that made this world seem sweeter than it is
another world where love was relevant and endearing and that was all that was spoken of
and smiles and break ups were thrown between them for seven full years
and he asked her that question of commitment on valentines day
and I thought to myself
god, that's the ******* worst day to be engaged

1.
you told me you could mess up my lipstick and not my mascara
but then I woke up to a blush stained pillow case and a wrinkled comforter
and my pack of cigarettes were stuck between my bed and the wall
with handfuls of bad luck I can finger paint it all

2.
a white oleander beginning keeps the stars in my eyes like wounds from the sky
and I gaze out into the space in front of me at the books I've scarred and stung
without a mother and a father I am alone and I know
I can't smile tonight when I'm feeling so low

3.
so I'm thinking that a book for you will bring us back together
we'll share it between us like 50 chicken nuggets in the summer
and we'll challenge each other to find the deepest sides of the words
staying nervous I am speaking in tongues and my outburst occurs

4.
don't come to me with arrogance and smile at me with your anger
don't scare me again tonight because I can't ******* take it
and I think I'm done with our fights and pointed fingers
my love for you, it lingers

take me to your swing set
sit me down and kiss me right on my dry forehead
my bottom lip will hold on for a little too long
but you push me forward and I feel like an angel
about to take flight
but I'm gonna fall down
because I'm so **** clumsy

you're there to catch
my broken hands
and heart

a steady start

you told me to climb out of that well to reach your love
and I told you that mama said no
that the h2o would keep me pure and to let that water flow
and you said, hey beautiful, lend me that hand
to pull me out of the deep maroon land drenched with sand
but mama said no, she couldn't let me go

so I rushed in the suburban skies to find a star that points like you
to sew back the break in the love that we grew
but my well has got me lowerin' down
and mama's gonna let me drown

you screamed, just fly, give me that hand of rings I made for two
and grow with me again tonight, mama's got better things to do
so I plunge to the bottom to bounce up to the top and show you I've got plans
but mama sees a smile in me and makes me cry and grabs my hand

cause mama said I gotta stay down low
to keep a better show for the love you wanna know
and I said to mama, aint nobody gonna steal my love for you
not another day will go by while I'm stuck in your womb

and mama said no, I can't go
so I grabbed mama's hand,
dove to the bottom and kept her there
I said mama, the well is gonna bring you down
I'm sorry I'm your well, but it's time for you to drown

and this time mama didn't say no
cause mama couldn't cry
and mama couldn't moan
and I said, baby come bring me back to home

and that's where we are
and mama's all alone

I miss you today
when I'm struggling to parallel park
when I'm thinking of new tattoo ideas
when I get frustrated searching

for a lighter in my purse
or with my mother
or with the distance

when I spill giant cups of soda every where
and when I put on lingerie to enjoy by myself
I miss you that day, too

when I feel fragile and I paint sad things on my walls
when I cry in the darkness of my bath tub
with scalding water raining down on my fresh flesh

I miss you then as well

there is nothing more comfortable
than the bed in my sanctuary
in a light blue room
with the perfect amount of pillows
and warmth
like a giving tree
that keeps me safe
and lets me love
and keeps me whole

I want to love a radical chick
with brightly colored hair and tattoos on her arms
piercings under her skin and
doc martins stomping on the ground
smoking **** and dancing
in dark open fields
playfully doing somersaults
falling on her ***
and holding me under her arm
never without her beanie
or her sarcastically loving tone
I want a radical girl to call my own

I think I meant to say I love you
but all that came out was you too
and we all know that too is a danger
and that you are as well

see, I'm not going anywhere
I'll hermit up with you
and we can make love in total silence
or die in complete agony

cause you know I love you so good
distraught and disarmed as I can be
a broken hammer and nails count to three
I think I meant to say I love you

three blue trucks with discolored passenger doors
three huge steps to kissing under floorboards
three slighted moves to embracing under street lights
three backwards motions to remembering our small fights

four eleven two thousand
and twelve

placing you on those
three shelves

I need things explained
like why cereals cut the roof of my mouth
why I bite my nails too low too often
why my dogs bark at 3 am
why I want a partner so badly
why I'm stuck on old memories
why I've let go of every friend I've had
why a letter has to equal a number
why my parents think it's best to leave me alone
why I suffer from such severe depression
why I can't stick to a routine
why I exist
but I do not live

don't **** other men
don't let them *******

don't love another man
but let that man love you

don't dream for another girl
don't let them dream you

don't smell the scent of another heartbreak
don't let that take you

I don't want to count
but I know you were probably my 12th relationship

I hate counting
but I think you were my 28th love interest

But thank you for the *******
because it all lines up with the 11
and 27 before

2 cups of orange juice, a blue popsicle
and my dad says he's turning the leftovers into dog food
maybe I should never have told him what my birth father has done
and my mom snaps at him, maybe she doesn't want to be reminded of her past
he says he's reminding himself of how cruel a man can be
and she says there is no reason to remind yourself of that
especially in front of our daughter

she doesn't like her eggs like that!
she steals the spatula from dad's hand and slices open the yolk dad had preserved
I hear my name being called from inside the kitchen every three and a half minutes
briana don't forget
briana you have to do this
take us to the airport tomorrow morning
we have to leave by 8:30 am
dad what do I do about my car
take it back he says
and he yells at me
and that's how I know I am home
so I disappear into my room to light up a joint I've been saving
he gets a question right on jeopardy
two commercial breaks later he tells me a story
about bejing
and that's how he knew the answer to that question
and I said okay
and he said isn't that weird that I can remember that
and I looked away and thought
no, because you have aspergers
honey, don't forget to take your digestive supplement
okay mom
ok

second-hand smoke makes me sick
but I've always got a cigarette in hand
Egyptian tiles line the walls of my brain
thick mud holding down the structure that is diminishing
makeup smears across my face
small sayings line my eyelids
like heavy lashes peeling off
my thoughts fall apart
just as I do
without the attention

I think about you sometimes
and when I do it makes me ******* sick to my stomach
like you're the root of my ******* anxiety
and depression
you literally make me queasy and I can't ******* stand you
so I'll delete all of my photos with you
because looking at your face
feels like an engagement with the ******* devil

it's all that is
and all that isn't
that's keeping me here
but keeping me distant

I  can't remember the day I fell in love with tootsie rolls and I don't remember how long you stayed until you left home and I definitely don't know how old I was when you gave up on me.

I can remember waking up without you home and you hiding in your room "paying bills", but getting ****** and I remember the nights I spent outside alone, because I knew you had given up on me.

I wonder if you knew what you were doing
did you know you were making my insides raw
emotionally
and physically

and did you think that your daughter
would be reading ****** abuse memoirs
obsessively

and cutting her arms until the scars
hurt worse than the wounds themselves
did you know I would do anything to be
noticed

by anyone but you
did you know you would cause me to have
to see you with company

and did you know that you would
cause me to cry
at any
small
thing

and did you think that your abuse
was the best present you could give me?

thank you for causing me to hate
happy birthday
and big crowds where small things can happen

small things
that would ruin me in 5 minutes
that aren't small at all
*and many more

seclusion proves to be the only way
a chance to change the secret of all my hidden pain
and a misguided downfall of full moons
led me astray from my path of unhealthy fumes
and I know that it will be okay
and I know I'll see you in time
but I can't get you off of my mind
and how little I truly knew you
but how very much you meant to me
goodbye, green eyed beauty

when you die I'll get your ashes
I'll form bar graphs and pie charts
of how many times I made you laugh
when I helped you heal
how I made you feel

I could see when you were happiest
and when you were the saddest
I can see how much money you spent at Starbucks
and how many hours you worked
and how many miles were driven from our homes

how many times you left your things with  me
how many cds I listened to on my way to see you
how many haircuts you gave me
and how many poems I've written you

I like to wrap myself in the warm shield of your pillow
and overwhelm my pores with your scent
and your grace
I want you to stay around
but my slumber is having me cling to you
to stay safe

and I'm afraid I'm running you away