"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.

love's apostate
a former demise
I bloom a fervid admiration
a hatred never heard
commensurable to my own
a soul never alone

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

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

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.

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

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

do you see the nights like I do, here?
a warm glow of heartbreak under cautious streetlights.
a rush of fallen leaves flowing past me as I try to take a moment by myself.
a suspense in the air of broken promises and aching wrists.
with old bruises and scars from the adventures we once knew.
do you see me like I see you?

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

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

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

I want a future with a husband
a bouquet and a broken heart
I want a smile and some roses
a family and a fragile start

I want a present with a partner
a routine and a pill case
I want a laugh and some kissing
an open heart and a stable place

I want a past with a better scheme
a lover and not a fling
I want a commitment and morality
erased mistake like a bee sting

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

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 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.

swimming in a dropout ocean
drowning in disease
scented waters sleeping in
discussing bended knees

swelling ear drums underwhelmed
living in a giving tree
standing under shadowed rainfall
continuously breaking keys

taking time run out tonight
climbing my own refugee
single spirited willow jars
sorting through debris

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

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?

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

you ran me over with your ways
I'm ill over the treatment you find to be endearing
leave it to you to think I owe you a **** thing
I'm buying the first plane ticket out of the world you live in
I don't owe you anything

I'm just going to leave you behind

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

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

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

I saw you last year this time
I can't believe I was the last person of my family to see you
I can't believe I never saw the letter
I can't believe your belt was your last way out
I can't believe the way I cried at your funeral
I can't believe that I chain smoked outside
and saw so many of my mothers and fathers
as they all hunched over to cry

I just remember loving you dearly
watching you dance for sobriety
and win
and I remember the photos of mom in her old salon
your hair was so big
well, that was the 80s
and I'm sad I didn't live it with you
I can't believe I was the last person to see you
I can't believe you killed yourself
I still can't believe it
So I'll visit your tree in Piedmont Park
and think of all the things I can believe

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  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.

give me something to do
other than pining over you

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

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

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

my head is humming from a lack of you
like a constant headache from the wrong prescription
a pounding in my fingertips from cigarette withdrawal
a stomach ache from
far
too
many
pills

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

and I like you like a paved street
an empty hallway
and a hall pass

and I want you like a refresher from Starbucks
a new scarf
and used books

and I like you like a full battery
a new musical in theaters
a book that we share

and I want you like thick mascara
a new haircut
and change

so stick around

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

you remind me of clicking a pen
a substantial lack of ink
a relaxing sound of consistency
remarkably calming
and missed when long gone

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 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

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 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 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 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

you call yourself an acosmist
walking around believing nothing exists
filling window sills with forgotten promises
and burnt out joints
spending every minute high and out of your mind
it's a comforting delusion if nothing disappoints

well, I think you've forgotten the hair I cut last summer
the weeks it took to get you out of a slumber
the nights I spent a room away
brooding over ways to have you stay another day
spending early mornings smoking cancer sticks
sorting the magic in my bag of tricks

see, I have yet to forget the pain I felt against your hip
the countless songs sung together in harmony
the way I fit above your voice, like a symphony
how come it's bitter if I'm better and it's lonely when I'm not
a disease that will surely make me forget her
it isn't something I could be taught

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

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'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

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

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

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

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

for years I haven't been worthy
I've never written on the left side
I've never counted the right amount of rungs on the ladder of my life
I'll always overestimate
I'll always be underestimated

my legs will fall asleep sitting indian style
I'll lie to myself so many times
I am a thief

my ashtray is overflowing with my secrets
***** ashes of who I used to be
smug butts of forgiveness and regret

you'll never see me as solid
or balanced

I'll never see myself as anything other than the deepest wanderer
and that is an unkempt mess to you

a rushed maneuvering of the wheel