My hands
Hold
All of the mistakes
I have made.

We have eighty years in a good life.
The moments will pass just the same,
Whether I'm traveling this road
Or warm and encircled in your arms.
Either way, I'm watching the sun turn
Into a stained glass window
As it slowly fades to night.
I'm looking at the constellations
Sprinkling across the sky
And the city lights distantly sweeping
The plains in glitter.
I'm miles away,
But you're on my mind.

It's like you wanted to drown.
You left the comfort of your shelter
And instead of gazing at the rain
Through the window,
You felt it through a different kind of pain,
As the rain of my seduction
Reigned over you
In the cold disaster of the storm.

You kissed me.
I tried to draw my figure
And mark with an 'x'
Which spots of my body
You touched yourself,
But I was covered in black.

I couldn't see any part of myself,
So I sat down and wrote to you
That this book was written
Just to remind me
Of the distance between us.

I'm driving fast down the freeway,
Wondering where in the world you are,
Thinking you're probably in the dressing room
******* some other girl,
While I'm barely getting dressed in the morning,
Wishing I was back in bed
With my head on your chest
And my ear to your heart,
Listening to your heart beat
Like the pulse of the still breathing.

As my chest rides and falls
I see the reflection of a clock
On the wall,
Haunting me for my beating heart
And God above is watching it all.

I lay here
Cursing my skin
For reminiscing the days
Where I forgot where I end
And you begin

All I want is to hear the palpatations
Underneath your ribs
As I lay on your chest,
Atop the rise of your breath.

Right now I'm afraid that
I loved you so much,
It took everything out from under me
And I'm left winded -
Perfectly alone,
Wanting to know if I can ever feel
Like a galaxy lives in my arteries,
The place your stars used to swim.

It feels good to sit with you
And watch the light bend
From the cotton candy sky.
The colors are bursting through
Their horizontal zipper.
You take me home;
I fall asleep
To the soundtrack of blurred colors,
And I dream about you all night long.
You're the only playlist
I can keep alive

Tell me how pretty I look
In my little red dress.
Tell me I am as bold and brilliant
As the Crimson on my skin.

Tell me you think about me at 2 p.m.,
When your shift is almost up
And you want to make plans.

Tell me the greatest sight
You ever hope to see
Is a small bump
Developing above my hips.

I don't want to play pretend

I've collected
S m a l l  b i t s
Of every soul
I've ever known
And sewed them
Together
To make my own.

I let you drive 100 miles per hour
Because I know what it's like
To want to go so fast
You might die.
I wish I was an atheist,
So I could believe if I fell asleep
In your arms tonight,
I might never be revived,
Never have to face the grace
That saved the twisted hopelessness
Of myself.
And as I held you,
I half died knowing
I was half asleep in borrowed arms.
For the rest of the night
I prayed to feel nothing at all.

I am not your throw pillow;
You can't just toss me on your bed
Whenever you want
To look nice.

She is a vessel
Provided to carry life
From the thoughts of God's mind
To the earth that holds its toes,
Under the sun that warms it's skin

She is a vessel,
A portal through which love and wisdom flow
Here to protect and create
To nurture and to care

She is a vessel;
Her heart beats the two syllables
Of purpose
She knows one day
What she'll become

We write it on walls,
We tattoo in on our arms,
Because there's nothing like knowing
You love me
More than night under the stars,
When I want you all over my skin
Down to my roots.

I can feel it begin.
All over me,
All over me.

let me ask you something raw and real
Like what it's like underneath your fingertips
And between your bones,
Where you're cut so deep
You begin to find the parts inside
You didn't know belonged to you

You were the poison in my wine
And I drank it just to feel drunk,
To feel like I was alive
Because the best way to feel alive
Is to know you're slowly dying

I want to play with your hands
And teach you how to dance
I want to kiss you in the morning
When I can barely feel my lips

All sixty-two of my spinal nerves
Are screaming, pleading
"Don't get hurt."

I took a walk through the crevices of my mind
That made my stomach churn
And my eyes wander

I colored this whole page outside the lines
Just to prove you can't keep me in binds.

My heart is not
Broken
It's only beginning to
Grow

It was not a pleasure.
It was sin
It was craving
It was 3 a.m. false hope
It was thinking I'd be okay
It was midnight stars
And blurred vision
I was alive the whole time
But it was not a pleasure.

I liked your voice
When it was yours
I liked your body
When it was full
I liked your lips
Before we started talking.

We let it harrow up our hearts
And shred them to pieces,
And we speak from the mangled shards
We have left,
After we've feverishly tried to piece
All the parts together.
We don't understand how we feel,
So we let the anger say how it feels instead.

Long ago I promised myself
That anger is a childish emotion,
That scribbles written in haste
And fists drenched in the color red
Could never solve the perplexity
Of real emotions.
We dig compassion into the ground
With shovels of fear.
But if we were to take a moment
To unearth it from its resting place,
Under our wrinkled brows
And white knuckles,
Maybe we would see that we don't feel anger,
We feel passion.

He is a Fire,
Burning so warm,
That each struggling passerby
Cannot help but rush to his
Glowing embers in refuge

I am harrowing my fear
And feeding my courage,
So I might be a spark of His fire,
Living in His warmth,
Adding to the shelter that may save somebody.

Love was never a success
Tattered with devastating loss,
But rather a loss
Bathing in thousands of
Glittery little successes

My soul ached
For his skin and bones
And all the beating somethings in between-
That nothing,
Perhaps not even time,
Could revoke the hormone-driven,
Empty-souled desire I had
For every participle of his being
To deluge me through my core
And past every withering remain
Of sanity or stability
I so feebly clung to.

They say there's only two emotions:
Love and fear,
So believe me when I say
Love can be so afraid.

Being told I'm pretty
Has ceased to be a compliment to me.
I've gotten it a thousand times.
I know, I know.
It's been told by his fingertips
As they dance along my stomach,
As they trace my hips:
Holding and keeping,
Grasping firmly,
Not letting go.
I know that I am pretty.
Trust me,
I know.

I want to scream it, but I'll never be
Loud enough for him to understand that
I can't breathe if I'm not being told
I'm alive

When I ask you how you sleep at night,
I'm really hoping you sleep alright.
When I ask you how you live with yourself,
I'm really asking what it's like to do everything right.
And when I say
"I never want to see your face again",
I'm thinking
'When can I see you next?'
I can't get these thoughts of you
Out of my head.

I'm sorry I made you the saddest person alive
But you made me broken inside.
I'm the saddest happy can be.
You touched my vulnerability
You memorized each part of me.
You ripped me open,
You dug in,
And I let you

I'm alright
I'm alright
I'm just fine;
Spinning madly through time

free verse
free as it could be
something inside me
is set free

Your hands linger on me
I can feel them
Why can I feel them?
Can you feel mine?

Where am I on your body?
Where am I on your heart?
Where am I on your mind?

it's all about your
                              bones
and I can't even  walk
without feeling   the feeling
of your hands on me

she's off limits
but im easy
that's why you want her
that's why you touch me.
it almost worked.
Don't pressure me.

sticky mess
sticky mess
we've gotten ourselves into.
raw arms
sick stomachs
bright red
peeling off
don't bring these things back.

my hands,
your hands,
same thing
my body
your body
different things
sorry I complicated things.
I wish I was different.
I know I'll stay the same;
I can't stay the same.
my body
your body
different things

Again, I am
Breathless
Worthless
Hopelessly falling
And I am
Breaking,
Taking,
Making no move.

How can anybody
Doubt
The beauty in your flaws?

I want to be so righteous,
I'm only looked down upon
Because I'm on my knees.

You were
          born
You
And nothing has
          Changed

My
    Wrists
Are
     Not
A
          Canvas

I'm trying to find the words
          To make you see
You're everything
          I'll never be

If you can't find a hand to hold,
Hold your own.
Your time will come.

I hope you learn how to say I love you and mean it
I hope you learn.
I hope you learn.
I hope you make it better for her,
I hope you remember you are not mine
And I was never yours -
And finally, finally
I'm ready to find
Exactly what I'm looking for.

A thousand times you tell me
You can't keep your hands to yourself,
You have to feel the opposing shapes
That make you fit in.
You have to remind me
(Remind yourself)
That you belong,
That you'll never be alone.

Well I don't mind being alone.
And you can take all the promises you made
And shove them down your throat,
Take everything you promised me,
Take everything you said,
Drown it in your drain pipes
And learn the meaning of goodbye,
Instead of I told you so.

I don't know what I want.
I want to change.
I want to feel a thousand things,
I want to feel everything at once;
I want to feel nothing at all.

I want to hold your hand

I want lazy mornings that last until dusk.
I want to run a million miles.
I want empty fields!
I want big cities!
I want towers and towers,
Taller than my doubts.
I want silent ghost towns,
I want emptiness,
I want to be whole.

I want to know you

I want to make things different.
I want to make things better.
I want change.
I want to stir hurricanes in the air above close minds,
And I want nothing less than to be contentious.
Silent and unspoken.  
I want to be part of everything,
Everything at once.

I want to belong only to you