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

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

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.

golden tints in a darkened room
a deceased flower, wilting after bloom
ears sheltered from a visitant

separation from a lust abandoned
desperation for a calm awakened
weakened by a loose grip

frowns permanent on a year
a tear fallen down
a love all the same

a world under construction
consoled by illusions
of a desire you had proven
to have faded from the strain

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

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.

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

loving me is misery
a decade's worth of a mess
and a color stained shower
and a clothing covered bedroom floor
and a makeup cluttered desk
and it's just a ******* mess
loving me

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

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

I've spent so many late nights and early mornings writing prose in my head
under the pressure of the shower and the heat of the volcano shedding lava on my skin
I spread the wash on my body thinking of you being there as we take turns in the water
my skin burns when I step out and my head rushes as I remember all of the times you passed me my towel and wrapped yourself in yours
I can't think of a time when I haven't wanted you deep within me
whether you were writhing inside of me or pulsing beside me in your sleep
most specifically I can't remember a time when you weren't
in the deepest ventricles of my heart

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

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

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'll write about you until my fingers cramp
until I've cluttered my nightstand with empty root beer bottles
and filled my ashtray with the butts of "candy" cigarettes
and I've listened to "Summer 2009" until it replays your final words
in succession
I was never here
was never here
never here
here

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

in a brief symmetry
in a quiet crowd of us
two is too many
so I'll go
but it's you
forever mingling
and scraping my lungs
against the pavement of
my poetry

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 want to fall into the virtual arms of another
To sing with a dove over days up ahead
I want to steal the vibe of a single yellow flower
To create a vibrant aura of love and humbleness

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

spending time figuring out the stress lines of your face
the dimples in your eyes and the straightness of your teeth
finding a way to touch you in the right way
spending time moving my arms in every embrace
to find the one that fits perfectly
like the way you fit on my mouth

I'll bake my cookie dough like you know I hate to do
and I'll watch reality tv like I know you hate I do
and I'll sit alone at the kitchen counter like I hate to do
when I'm wasting away over you

I'm stuck
in a coin pouch of conscious
In a brain of confusion
overwhelming anxiety

I'm sick
of a diagnosed state
of a mental stability analysis
of a dosage upped after every visit

I'm alone

I remember false hopes
They bloomed within my wrists
Stripping down my veins to nothing
How easy it may be to cut those hopes

I remember heavy boots
How they pulled me down hard
Like thick soled Doc Martins on cold concrete
The cement I have spackled with is weighin' me now

I can't remember the letters I wrote
With song lyrics decorating the envelopes
A letter full of words that run together in font
My commitments to you on every other line

I just can't remember

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

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

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

one day I promise to be less fragile for you
I won't take every kiss on my forehead too literally
and when you hold my hand I'll know it doesn't mean a thing
but I hope that one day it means something again
maybe as much as the handfuls of goodbyes you've spent on me
or the dumpsters full of hellos you've saved

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

I write you poems when I'm high and I sing you songs when I'm sober. I listen to heartbreak when I'm low and watch the leaves fall in October. I read great books when I'm alone and I take warm baths when I'm wholesome. I take long naps when I'm anxious and short walks when I feel numb.

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 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.

I want to smile again
hold your head to my heart
Smell your scent on my sheets

I want to pick up a trail of your left belongings
unravel your belt and remember what you left with me
a choice of life or death in nights
you left me alone

Keep me in mind when you lie in bed
with another girl
who you want to hold your heart
but she can't, she can't
because my tortured soul is holding it captive
until you come back to the broken mess of me you left

We've fallen apart
but not in pieces
in shards of a globe
that will lead us back to home

These poems are my heart's tribute to the heartbreak you didn't cause, but you can repair.

I went back to make my bed
Making beds makes for a better night
a better day a better heart

My luck has turned around
Leaving me with a pro
when I was prepared for every con

and as I mourn the loss of you
I can only imagine you as a memory
as a dream of *******
and a ghost of goodbyes
so let me mourn
it is not the same

it's easier to lie to myself and say
I'm not falling in love
because it scares me so badly
it's easier to fall out

I'm just a bear cub
following your ways
to see what's okay

When I'm alive, I hate you
And when I'm dead, I want you around

I'm done with stolen hearts, I hate you
and when I'm dead, I want you around

I'm exhausted from this broken mess, I hate you
and when I'm dead, I want you around

you**
with your fake smiles and your broken words
with your hair done perfect and your heart full of curse
casting spells on your victims, reeling them in and spitting them out
now I know it was all a lie, nothing worth talking about

give me something to do
other than pining over you