You hugged me today.
Which is fine I suppose-
There's nothing harmful in itself.
But I've heard it said
It's the principle of the thing that counts.
I am not afraid of a silly hug;
I'm not afraid of your touch.
I'm only afraid of this hug
Because a hug is a key.
Once you've hugged,
You've touched.
And touching is a dangerous thing.
Hugging is a dangerous key.
A key to open a door;
A touch that leads to more.  
A hug is vulnerable.
A hug is close.
Once you've been close,
Close becomes far,
And when close becomes far,
Close becomes closer
And far becomes further.
When you get too close
You begin to hurt.
And nobody likes to hurt.
So you see,
I'm afraid of this hug.

You know 
When you see someone
And their eyes are Hazel
Or their hair is strawberry blonde
And you don't know what name 
To give it or what color to say it is?
Well that's how I feel about you

You and I are piles of skin and bones
Wrapped in linens to protect us
From getting holes
I'll follow you through your ever venture
Blue eyes pierce me like the icicles we strolled past
As I fell marvelously in love with you
Golden tips to the nuts and bolts
Of a crying, perfect, hopeless disease
I'm calling this sensation what it is
(Remind me to tell you in the morning.)

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.

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.

Marry me.
I've longed for you so long,
My fingertips swell
As they reach for something
Untouchable.
Marry me.
I'm shedding dreams
Like the leaves
On my ginseng tree.
Marry me.
As the quiet months pass by,
My eyes droop;
I fall fast asleep.
Marry me.

Her hips were poetry 
When she walked,
Leaving the room hushed
And breathless;
Gazing in awe

Her lips were poetry 
When she sang;
Clearer than the birds
And prettier than the stars
And bolder than the moon
And softer than the night 

Her eyes were poetry
When her brows crinkled
In delight
And her lids fluttered
In fatigue
And her irises sparkled
In passion

And the way she spoke
And the way she did
And the way she was,
It was all poetry to me.

Everytime I hear that old song,
I picture the lyrics tattooed on your skin
And embedded all over
My every waking thought
Its like those calloused hands
Had more to say in the fleeting moments
That they held mine
Than I have ever heard in my life

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.

There are the kinds of friendships
You make in kindergarten
With the girl in piggy tales 
And a missing front tooth
That last for a dozen years, 
Through your parents divorce 
and your first heartbreak 
your awkward stage 
And all your embarrassing moments 
And those kinds of friendships
Are wonderful 
And can be filled with so much good 
Until you grow up and grow apart
And fade into nothing but
Used-to-be's
And leftover promises.
But the best kinds of friendships
Don't last til graduation
Or maybe even until the fall. 
The best kinds of friendships
Are spontaneous 
And free. 
The best version of a person is 
The one you have 
For the fleeting moments
Of hot summers in little towns
Rope swings and canals 
Zip lines and lazy hours spent 
Cuddling in front of the tv. 
The best version of a person
Is the version you only get briefly
The version you meet and probably
Only know for a few weeks at most
The friends that you make in 
Ten seconds flat
With your best friends cousin 
Or that girl at summer camp. 
Those are the moments 
And the people worth living for.

It's the way he walks, I think:
Always on his tip toes, like a child.
I remember the first time I saw him,
Sometime in the spring
In New York City,
I remember the lights in his eyes when the curtains raised
Our first time seeing Broadway.
I remember hearing his little gasps during the show,
And throughout the rest of my life,
I spent my whole life dying to hear his sighs.

Maybe it bores you
how I drone on about
my firm belief in
the oxford comma,
but I'll always care
about the propper maintenance of a tuba
because I know how you spend your days
in your grandpa's shop
repairing the broken instruments
but not your broken heart

The* world is to be filled with
The bravest of men
And the loveliest of women.
That's what all the fairytales say.
But real life is nothing like the fairytales.
Brave men don't climb high towers
Or fight evil dragons.
No.
Brave men fight for who they love
And never give up.
Real men,
Brave men,
Fight the battles they are given in life
Diligently.
With A smile on their face
That will never cease.
Brave men live without craving
The approval of others.
A brave man is a man
That embraces his own humanness
And knows he's nothing more.
A brave man sees God as his superior
And never something to put off
Or ignore.
I don't want a man that kills dragon
And climbs that high tower.
I want a man
Who wants to  love.
And be loved.
Admitting to that is brave.

I am strong when I am sad.
But this is not how I feel.
If my dust-speckled, sunflower eyes
Are your heaven,
Then you know the things I see
When I'm alone
Like grainy black and white films

You see, when I was with you
And we were alone
And the lights were dim
And everything had settled,
There was no time for dust to
Sparkle across my doubts
It was only us

Now I have only time,
Time to think about your cornflower eyes
Time to think about the way it felt to be kissed
Time to wonder if I'm wasting all my time
And I swore I needed this,
I swore I needed time

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

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.

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

Part of me believes it's all fiction, the way you touched the small of my back and pulled me in like we were magnets. And the other half of me walks the streets of my bare and empty pages, staring at unmarked trains, wishing I could fill those pages with our story and the trains with our initials tied in a heart. I want to be a character in make believe; I want your hand right in mine like a timeless saga. I want fiction to be real and I want the two sides of me to be pulled together in the spine of a paper back romance.

Sometimes you feel like you're
Absolutely free falling
And there is nothing at the bottom
To catch you.
What a frightening thought;
Falling forever,
The world rushing past you,
Constantly anticipating the moment
When your
Fall fall fall
Turns into a
Land land land
Or a
Crash crash crash.
When there is no stable thing,
Nothing standing still,
Except you,
Effortlessly cascading into
The so unknown.
At first, it's a beautiful, peaceful thought.
Then you realize you have
Nothing in the world to hold on to.
Nothing
To keep you from that inevitable plummet
Into nothingness.
What a
Lonely lonely lonely
Way to live.

I'm too tired lately to describe my emotions in full. But I'll say this: just know as I'm falling asleep tonight, I'll be thinking of your blue eyes staring up at the sky. And every winter from here on forth, the first snowfall is dedicated to you. Every time I see those dazzling flakes cascade through the foggy breeze, I'll sing Earth Angel in my head and think of your eyelashes catching the frosted lace. I'll think of those same lashes brushing my cheek and I'll think of your quiet laugh telling me how you love butterfly kisses. I'll think over you and hundred times over before I lean in and kiss you right in the wintertime madness, because there's no way I'm spending another snowfall without you.

I'm not one of the lucky ones
who gets to fill the void
I just sit and let it sink deeper
Some days I don't even stand
cuz I can't stand you not holding my hand
all I've got is this pen
and these words I've written.
And you've got six hundred lives
you could live
and the only one I've got is just pretend
Because all I want
Is to lay asleep on your chest
And spend lazy afternoons scratching your back

He's an ocean.
He gathers my worried thoughts and tosses them to the breeze;
He carries me through bumpy waves and tempest seas.
When he's near, my insides throw themselves against my skin,
Just to be closer to him,
Just to be closer to him.
And none of it is tragic,
Because when I'm with him my heart beats steady in my chest,
And none of it is sin,
For when my organs need rest,
He lulls me to sleep again.

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

This is me loving you. 
This is my love serving as a buoy
A little reminder
That you can never let yourself swim
Further than our tender hearts can bear

This is me loving you. 
This is my love serving as a life preserver
A little reminder 
That you can never let yourself drown 
When I am diving in to catch you 
(Always)

This is me loving you. 
This is my love attempting to save 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'm thinking about being pressed against you
Like the wilted cherry blossom between wrinkled pages in my diary
I remember being ten thousand feet up
On a silver plane to the sea,
thinking about the pressure evaporating from my ankles down to my toes as we descended to the coast.
As I see tall silver buildings make easy,
Fleeting statements
I think I feel the pressure in my feet again,
a pressure I never felt with you

You told me how my Polaroid works,
How the chemicals press themselves
Across the film
And how the light developes the colors.

You told me how to fix the AC
In my old beat up cougar,
And how to ***** on the broken door
That fell from my entertainment center.

You even told me I could fix myself,
As if you ever knew a thing about living
With a drum in your bones so loud
It awakes you in a cold sweat
Just when you thought
Monsters didn't exist anymore.

But you couldn't tell me
Why you can't mend your heartstrings,
Why your skin is always calloused
And scraped and rough
(Like a man's, you said,
Like a real man's).

You couldn't tell me the first step
To the easy fix of mending
Everything you've broken.
All you could tell me was
"I don't feel pain.
I don't feel pain."

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

The words seem to light up in my brain,
Highlighted neon signs
In dense yellows and electric greens,
A million ways to say the things that roam
From place to place inside the galaxies in me

The bright lights talk about the way you move,
The things I dream of you when I'm asleep,
How you call me by my middle name,
How you're always fiddling with a deck of cards because you need something to keep you from your nerves.
How I wait for days to pass until the time when my hands replace the cards,
And our ten digits make the difference
Fifty two cards used to,
And how soon, you'll hold my hand when you're nervous,
You'll hold my hand

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.

We spend so much time looking at faces,
Sparkling blue eyes like icicles
Dripping from rooftops,
Lips curved like crimson brushstrokes
Chins formed like the rugged edge of a cliff
But we don't talk about the quiet parts of ourselves,
The line that God drew down our backs
That separates the halves of our whispered dimesnsions,
Like how I want to stand beside him and let our arms brush sleeve against sleeve,
Maybe pinky against pinky
Because in this I feel wanted
And how you want to touch my arms
And my shoulders
And my neck
And all the space of my back
Because in my skin you feel wanted

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

If anyone is asking,
I remember being buried under bushes of leaves,
Arms outstretched,
Reaching for streams of dappled light.
I remember the glimpse of moon in his galactic eyes -

But we bend toward the light that heals us.
So when I felt the pull of a greater tide,
I gasped aloud and shifted sides,
meristems beaming for softer light.

Does it send shivers down your spine
When I tell you I feel purpose
Bleeding from the hand you use
To cling to mine?

Do you memorize the sky's particular shade of dusty blue
The cracks in the cement beneath your high top shoes,

Do you know how much I feel when I look at you?

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

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

I hope my skin was ebony
I hope the dust settles over you like white Sunday school chalk
I hope you keep me like religion
And hold me in your heart
Never acknowledging it on the surface
But Counting on me somewhere within

I'll never write like F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Maybe I'll never write at all,
Or ever again,
Because after the day I met him
The Stars parted like the Red Sea
And God let himself in,
Telling me it was His turn to take the pen.
So I laughed and handed it over
Knowing everything I had written was translucent and flimsy and meaningless

Things changed the night I cried on rolling hills,
And I thought of mauve and rosy skies,
Just like my favorite writer did,
Knowing the clouds would never the flower he brought me at my show,
And I cried and cried until the sun swelled up in the sky,
Reminding me I'm alive

It was six brilliant months and things all made sense.
I told him about how I loved pearls
And he told me he loved the ones his grandmother wore.
He told me about his favorite constellation,
And I didn't tell him I loved it even more

I wrote dumb poetry that rhymed and rhymed
Because everything made too much sense for it to not.
Every I matched with an e
Every heartbeat in iambic pentameter
And everything Made sense.

It wasn't until the ends finally loosened
And the strings broke
And everything fell utterly apart that I realized
I am not meant to be like F. Scott Fitzgerald, and skies are not meant to be rosy.

"Show me a hero, and I'll show you a tragedy."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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.

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 fell in love with
round around the edges
soft smiles
whispered and tender affections
hugs wider than the ocean
fresh kisses
tasting something so new
and that is why
now you've become sharper
firmer and worn out
your smiles are always the same
your hugs are weak
because you believe you'll never lose me
and i'm no longer in love

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.