The girl with purple hair is sitting at my bar again.
I think she is beautiful. And not in a way that I wanna have awesome *** with her but in a way that I want to drink chocolate martinis with her
and go shopping for christmas vests that have tinkly bells and possibly polar bears with hats on them.
She is having a full-body cry. I am the worst bartender, simply
because I don't know how to counsel people without crying back at them.
She is crying about the state of women.

I know that we come from the same rotting wood, so all I do is nod.

"How is it that three quarters of the women I know have been ***** or molested?
What does that say about the men that I know?
**** is not a man behind a bush with a knife, she laughs
It's kissing you on the mouth like whiskey at a nice bar."
The girl with purple hair and I are holding hands now,
"I only wanted an apology,
an acknowledgement of what occurred."
Grappling as artists, as girls, as ships in bottles,
how do we change any of it?
I tell her I am going to write a poem.
She says no one wants to hear a **** poem.

And I know she's right.

Have you ever seen a stampede of horses?
Do you wonder what the hooves look like from underneath?
Have you ever tasted the blood from biting your own lips because you couldn't say no enough?
"I never fought back. I kept my thighs tight and
closed, but once he's inside you, you wish you were the streetlamp, the
store clerk, a street lamp, a bed of calla lilies-

anything but a woman.

In that moment, our eyes glaze over, and they stay that way for years.
That's when you've lost.

Sometimes I talk about you like you're away on a trip and you're coming back.
Throwing you into casual conversations as if the people I was conversing with felt everything you make me feel.
Pretending they understand the depths of my heart
and how deep you've fallen into it.

But not even I understand the intensity that is you.

Like gravity you pull me back and hold me down.
Trapping me in an illusion of a story never told and never to be told
but forever read in my head.
A never ending dialogue between love and loss, let go and hold on.

A love story.

A tragically beautiful love story.

If you keep your eyes half open half closed
Streetlights will look like stars
You will feel like you're in a different universe
The dark sky will make you believe
In magic

Go on a bus late at night
With music in your headphones
And let yourself disappear in the world
Of your own thoughts
And the beauty of the stars

You will feel weightless
You will feel nothing but love
You will feel ok

I have forgotten how this works
How people can form sentences
Of beauty, of magic
I'm not sure how to transform my words
And fill a blank paper with words
That gets heavy

The blank paper is much more beautiful
In some way I guess...
But the filled paper is worth much more
The filled paper is full of truth
Of honesty
Of guilt
Of pain
Of passion
Of heartache
Of bubbly feelings
Of sad mornings
Of terrible nights

All I can think about is you
I think I haven't written anything
Or to correct myself
I think that I haven't been able to write
Because I'm scared that it will turn out
To be another stupid poem about
Love

I don't need more of those
I'm fine
Thank you

Today if you had asked me
what love still meant to me
I would look at you,
diving in the abyss
of your brown eyes
and look at you look at me.

I'll tell you that I loved you
before the first spark
ever hit your armoured heart
to light an everlasting fire.

That the words which escaped you
cascaded down on me
like a million rivers unfolding
to reveal their anger they kept
hidden long enough
to allow the heat to die down on their own.

That the truth in things
didn't exist in the ways,
in people like we wanted to.

If love was an inferno
to walk through
you know I would.
That with every burning touch of the coal
beneath my feet
would be another step closer to victory,
closer to you.
That this was the painful esctasy of love,
and every ember was like the ones
that burnt in me for you.

And I would tell you
that you were worth it.
You were worth it all.

it was not much--
just a photograph
no story
no explanation
no context--
overexposed, dull
a nearly empty room
a plain white frame
a smattering of studio lights
perhaps she is leaving
packing her life into
carefully categorized boxes
or maybe she is
just beginning to let
her roots expand,
drink freedom, independence



this heart was accidental,
she said with a crooked smirk,
pointing at the wall


most hearts are,
he replied

frankly
I'm beginning to think that
everything is overrated
and I'm just sinking down underneath
the feet that have trod this path
a million times before
I was ever born.

I know we all walk the same way,
basically, and we all speak the same way-
diaphragm to lung to pharynx to tongue and teeth and lips
to ears
we are easily redesigned and programmed
to mimic those set before us
tweaking the most minute circumstance
and making it our own.
I know this, I know.

but what I want is nothing
something new and unbreakable
but what I want is overrated
and has been thought of.

we all have the same chances
the same mistakes
the same footprints,
essentially speaking.

we're all just bags of pulsing
muscles, bones,
blood and guts
moving forward, or backwards
(if you just squint your eyes and lean in
a little closer).

in a world where anyone can make it,
no one really does-

I know.