Timid smiles
Soft hellos
I loved you,
And I told you so

I love you every day
and every night
and all the spaces between the moments that I breathe,
Through the system that my heart uses to pump oxygen to my body.
I can't help feeling you in the rose on my cheeks.
In and out of consciousness,
whispering through the phone.
I loved you all along,
I loved you all along

You are my every waking thought
I swear time collapses when I think of you
Melting me down
Memorizing parts of me I forgot
All I want to do is be with you

Card tricks.
They're easy: create a diversion, hide something behind your thumb, snap your fingers.

I’ve always been easy. It's not hard to manipulate a girl by a slight of hand. Put her heart out from behind her ear. Tell her she's worth something, just to create a distraction so you can get what you really want.

But you, you were different. Your hands made things disappear: rings and cards and twenty five cent coins,

And things like the way I always felt used and the way I always felt like I was never good enough and the way I always felt insane for wanting something more than distraction.

You weren't a diversion. You were the real thing.

It's one fifty three
I'm half asleep in a hostel in Paris
He tells me
"We'll see how we feel"

My words don't sound half hearted
When they come from my hands.
When I want to make everything better,
I'll write to you.
Just promise you'll be okay

Hearing the fuzz of the static between the lines as you laugh nervously: It feels like waking up to a child who has found your acrylic paints, who is brushing hasty strokes of posey on your cheeks -

Like half-heartedly composing your poise on a river rock, holding your center, knowing if you lose your steady, you have to fall,

Fall into something that feels like first breath of air you breathe when you step off a train, knowing yesterday is gone, knowing the person you are now is ready to embark.

early morning,
quiet runs
feet on the pavement,
as quiet as the warmth
I made for myself

You and I are stuck in the liminal space
Between once and again
You are everything and everything
You are holiness and sin
You are everything and everything
(Always, and always again)

I never got to tell you

you opened doorways
inside of me, pathways
candlelit hallways

I know I deserve better.
Trust me, I know.
But I don't want better; I want you.
And I don't drink, so I can't drown you out of my bloodstream.
The last thing on my breathe isn't *****; it's your kiss,
And when you kissed me you held me so close I wished I was an avalanche.
The way we pushed each other so much, if we got any closer we'd collide into a million pieces of stardust.
I cringe every time I see you in my wake,
My dark blue sunbeam,
stopping to hold my waist and collapse into me. It's like we're a hundred miles away but I can feel like gravity tugging between us,
And I'm afraid to lift my feet off the ground because I'll be ****** up through the air and into your arms, right where I belong.
If I ever see you again I know I'll die, carrying inside me what used to be organs and bones
But is now a block of charcoal waiting for you to set ablaze.
You're a fire and I'm freezing,
Debating whether or not I'd rather lie down and sleep, slowing dying of the cold, or walk right into the fire and feel it caress me until I don't realize I'm dead.

As I stare at these oceans and cities
And vast complexities,
I think
I know these algorithms create the pathways in your brain.
I know your mind can create space
I know that nebulas and galaxies
Are the day to day functions of the fusions in your mind
You are something so much greater than you settled for.

I wrote to tell you your eyes
Aren't quite blue
My mind isn't quite neutral
I am a tidal wave,
A thunderstorm,
I awoke your nightmares
You found sublimity in my chaos

I feel like you could scar me
Like I've never known an entire ocean
And I feel alone
I feel like my insides are made of cold water
And broken matter
I feel blue like I've never known.

There's too much air in your mouth
And you've got to fill it with something else,
So you fill it with the girl whose eyes are green and pale grey,
You fill it with her lips and her words
You breathe her in while she's still intoxicating
You let her fumes suffocate you,
You let your eyes wander from her
Alabaster collar bones
To her china doll skin.
She's unraveling you and you can feel yourself lifting up high, high, higher
You can feel yourself crashing
Down.

Does she know the static on station 100.7
Makes you anxious
Does she know we used to kiss in your parents basement?

I will awaken your nightmares.
I will be kind
I will be gentle
I will be the human touch that awakens your dreams

You're going to feel loved.
You're going to feel needed
You're going to become addicted
To the tight jeans and pale skin that takes you over
You're going to fall in love with my naked body and my naked soul
You're going to feel things

I'm going to make you feel better
And when I have to go
I will awaken your nightmares.

I am the peace beyond reason.

I want vanilla pink linens
I wanna love so hard
I can't feel my toes
I don't want to decorate a dorm
I want to make a home
I can feel a band around my stomach tingling
Nervous excitement
The way you feel when you know you want to commit

You were seventeen
You wanted to badly to be loved,
To be noticed,
And I wanted to give that to you.
I still do.

I want the stars to warm and guide you,
To take you home.
I want you to laugh
And not feel empty.
I want my love to ring in your eardrums;
I want you to hear birds chirp,
And really listen.
I want the sunshine to feel like gold
As it fills the pavements of your mind.  
I want you to feel
everything everything everything.
And when it's all gone,
When it's all empty,
And you feel likes nobody loves you,

I do.

I'm looking at a photo of me.
I am thirteen.
I have never been kissed,
Never been touched,
Never known love.
My hair is bleached blonde
And I know nothing of sorrow.

I'm looking at a photo of me.
I am sixteen.
His lips have kissed every part of me;
Every inch of my skin has been touched.
I have never known love.
My hair is bleached blonde,
And now I know sorrow.

I am looking at my face in the mirror.
I am eighteen.
My skin has been kissed by the sun.
I now touch only to show affection,
Because I know it now;
I know love.
I'm letting my roots grow out;
I know nothing of sorrow.

She made rivers feel alive
When they washed her hair
She made boys feel definite
At her encounter
It was all she could do
To let the art rush out of her hairline
And grace everyone in sight
She was infinitely more than beautiful
She was everything

I feel sadness in my skin.
You used to make me glow

You are a Smashbook.
You are lists of hundreds of to do's,
You are your top ten favorite movies,
You are pieces of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
You are the trees you prune in your back yard
You are a garden you still have to plant
You are mornings
You are evenings
You are everything in between
You are light and love
And when the world comes and tried to shake these things from you
Remember every thought is tied to another,
Every piece of you is connected through roots
You cannot be broken
You are whole

I want to hold you inside my hands
And carry you with me.
I want you to see mornings in full bloom
I want you to see open fields of tired harvesters,
Wiping sweat off their brows.
I want you to smell the dirt and rain and feel the mud against your calloused hands
Because you'll never have sunflowers without the sunburns.
You can't wait until August for basil and herbs to stem from fictional roots.
You have to wake up at 5 a.m. to move pipes,
You have to blister your toes on the hundred degree concrete,
You have to work through pain and anxiety to feel warmth
To feel new
To feel anything at all.
If you want a garden full of roses,
You have to plant them.

If I gave you myself,
I'd get parts of you in return:
Your breath in my ear
Your hand on the small of my back
Your heartbeat in sync with my own

Only difference is,
I'd still love you in the morning

When I was ten,
It didn't matter that my legs weren't hairless;
I was just a girl -
It was shameless.

That was the year it all ended,
And suddenly,
I was supposed to be a woman.
Suddenly my legs
And all the spaces in between
Weren't mine, but his.

When I turned fifteen,
I thought he wanted my new hairless legs;
I thought being a woman
Would make him love me
And the woman I was going to be.
But I was a girl.
I was shameless.

And it was easy to pretend I wanted it,
Easy to pretend that I wanted what hurt.
It was easy,
It was shameless,
Until I was crying on the bathroom floor,
Missing a period.

And that was just the thing -
That my own blood was a sin.
I couldn't bleed,
Because being a woman was wrong.
And I thought that's what he wanted,
I thought that's what he wanted all along.

He wanted me to be a woman
When it was his hands on my thighs,
His hands on my waist,
His hands covering my eyes.

He wanted me to be a woman until I was:
Until I had hair on my legs
And all the spaces in between.
And suddenly I was supposed to be ten,
I was supposed to be a girl,
I was supposed to be shameless.

I wasn't a woman;
I was small.
I was young.
And it hurt.

As I near twenty years,
I think of being ten,
I think of being fifteen,
And I feel no different.
I'm still small,
I still curl up on my bedroom floor.
I still have pink walls
And red painted toes
Because I'm a girl,
And that's the worst of it all.

And I want hotel rooms
I want gasping for air
I want paisley couches
I want vanilla pink linens
I want to feel the soft burn
of you taking over
I want to feel like I'm always in overdrive
And I am I am I am
When I let you in

Six weeks ago if you'd asked me
What was the best day of my life,
I would've told you it was the night
We watched Groundhog Day

And it's funny
It's funny because my life is just the same
That every day I'd wake up
And nothing changed
It was six months of stagnancy;
Six months of every day angst
Never worrying about
Change
Commitment
Time

All we cared about was togetherness

If you asked me today what I think
Love means,
I'd tell you time
I'd tell you time

I want to write it all down.
I want to write it all down;
I want to get it out of me
Because I am so full of empty spaces,
You could run a river right through me
And there are lines,
Lines that trace all over my body
Some of them point to my limbs
To my extremities,
My fingertips
My hairline
Some of them scribble around
The holes that cover me,
And try to fill them in.
I'm covered in scribbles
I'm covered in holes
They cover my mouth
They fill the air.
I just wanted someone who would take them away,
Untangle my lines
Untangle my hair

I'm so sorry I grew up here
I never knew a thing about danger
And the more I read about towns that weren't home grown and sugar sweet,
The more I wanted to cry
And I felt so scared
I'm sorry the static on the radio
Reminds you of worse days
Drifting through the sand
Oh, I wanted to save you
Oh, I wanted to save you
Still do

I used to cry at night,
Thinking of all the girls I know.
Id go to dance class,
And hug the tiny bunheads to my chest
Telling them their pirouettes were beautiful
Telling them they were worth something

I'd sit on the porch at my fathers house,
Watching my half sister make mud pies,
And feel protesting tears fall down my cheeks,
Knowing one day she'd look at her brown eyes
In the cracked bedroom mirror
And sigh,
Wishing they were ice blue like the girls from school.
I wanted to make her feel worth something
So I would play her Brown Eyed Girl,
And her chocolate irises would sparkle.

I'd think of all the girls who had confessed to me
In early morning, up all night, quiet, cracked and almost crying tones,
How their uncle, how their brother,
Their boyfriend
Their cousin
Their best friend
Their boss
Their dad
Had touched them and kissed them,
How they'd kept the secret buried in their chest,
Under a lump in their throat
And I wanted to tell them they were worth something.

I used to cry at night,
Thinking of all the girls I know.
I don't cry anymore,
Not because uncles and brothers have stopped touching,
Not because brown eyes became blue,
Not because the sin and the anger and the pain is gone,
But because I know girls -

I know pink ribbons.
I know pirouettes,
I know brown eyes
I know rom coms,
I know sleepovers,
I know red lipstick.
Because I know girls,

I know strength.
I know resilience.
I know bravery and anger and fight,
I know warmth and sunshine
I know love and nurture
I know waking up at seven a.m.,
Feeling capable
I know smiling my braced teeth at all the girls at the orthodontist who feel ugly for not being perfect,
I know holding hands in cinema parking lots,
I know friendship.
Because I know girls,
I know strength.

I hope he doesn't make your hips burn
And your stomach churn
I hope he keeps you safe

If it means nothing to you,
It means nothing to me.
And we can both carry on,
Like we just outlived a tragedy

Press your feet against the glass
On your windshield
Let your mind wander
As the snowflakes grace your toes
Really feel the cold
And know that you're alive

Take me back to my porch
So late that Saturday night,
Sunday morning poured
Through the cracks between our lips,
The sun burning my skin
Your taste burning my lips
Alive like my mind
Burning through the sleepless night

Take me to the first breath of day
Waking to memories of endless glances
On a rusted tailgate
You staring at me
And me staring at the stars,
Starry-eyed in a hushed moment

That's all that mattered.
Quiet moments where I could be me
And you could be you.

How could anybody
Doubt
The beauty
In your flaws

All night, I thought about
Calling you on the phone
Because your voice saws me open
And breaks all my bones

Like the May sky,
Pale blue and
Unwavering and
Unraveling me

At least
You scratched my back
Before I watched you leave
Maybe if I scratched yours,
You would have stayed

Drink it in
While the though of his lips
Still makes you drunk

Lover,
You know I
Breathed you
Like the sky

I am the parts of me nobody sees.
I am sleepy eyes
And little words I try to make sense of,
I am trying to make sense of God
I am late nights
I am alone

She sat and held my hands,
Promising she would always be there.
But she wasn't.
No one ever is until they understand the hurt
The stabbing I feel in my chest
The chest that extends beyond the surface he craves
To a heart no bitter friendship could ever mend

Hold yourself up
Even if you've lost your spine

It's fine with me
If all I'll ever be good at
Is keeping my head up

I knew this was the beginning
Of a manic love story.
I tasted you in my mouth.
I had to touch you
I had to be with you
I missed you so much
All my systems got sick.
I had to see that angel face

I hope you love
The way your voice feels
In your throat.

I want to feel
Something
Without feeling
You