I used to end all my prose in exclamations.

When I was a kid,
I would clench my fists
And tighten my jaw so hard,
the veins in my neck would buldge And sore by morning.
If I could close my eyes tight enough,
I could pretend I didn't hear the screams from down the hallway.

I don't want to end my prose in exclamations.
I want sprinkles of rain on my nose,
Not hail.
I want to lay in a field of grass and never once check my watch
And while were making requests,
I want to breathe in pine and lilacs,
I want to recall but not remember the bruises on my back.

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.

It hurts worse to feel
the ache Of your bones
Than to feel
The crushing cravings of my own.

Late afternoon
Train rides
I tell myself
If I could be anything right now,
I'd be fine

when nothing is certain,
he is

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

Where is the place where the numbers begin to change?
Tell me why the small of my back is the only open space
The place where hands find themselves
Hands dance fine lines
Hands dance intertwined
Hands in tangled hair
Hands open to fill the gaping spaces in the air
Hands changing numbers
Hands changing names
Where is the place where the numbers begin to change?

Teach my nerve endings to breathe,
That it doesn't always have to be
Static shouts from one anxiety
To another.

Teach me to set my palm on my chest,
That the warmth that fills my body
Can be enough.

Teach me that it's okay to whisper,
That I shouldn't have to scream
To be noticed,
To be loved.

You are the hell
That ***** me in
And spits me out.
You are the pain in my chest,
The piercing scream,
The fistful of doubt.
We are not the elements
That chemically combine.
You are not the one
Who sends shivers
Down my spine.
I'll never love you.
And I never did.

I wish I could 
Crawl inside her ear
And tunnel through to her brain
And remind her everyday
How much she is holding in her arms.

I wish I could
Swim through her veins 
Pulse inside her like blood
Rush through her heart
And make a place in there
For all the love you've given. 

I wish my words
Crawled through your ears
Filled your mind with thoughts
Of endless wonder
Pulsed through your veins
Touched your heart 
And made you believe.

I awoke to nothing but white and
The sound of my mother calling my name
Smoke, I felt it in my lungs
It burned me as it came

I awoke to nothing but white and
The sound of the phoenix calling my name
A bird and my mother
Their call was the same

I awoke to nothing but white
Cleansed by fire
I arose from the flame

I'm tired, honey
I want to kiss you in the bottom
Of my blankets
Make you bloom like the sunflowers,
Palms open towards the sky
Singing "I'm ready for you, life;
I'm ready for you, life."

I believe in keeping my eyes closed.
For when the pain is uncovered,
And starts to seep in
When the secrets are whispered
By paper and pen
When the nightmares arise
In monsters and men,
I can look at each wound
And close up the skin
I can lock up my safe,
Whisper "never again".

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.

"It's eight thirty," she says,
Her feet crossed and hair falling out of a braid
A French eight thirty means glittering lights
On the Eiffel Tower,
Street venders selling champagne,
Couples on the street corner,
Wishing you were here

He's my everyday love.
He meets me at the brink of Maybe
And carries me back to Certainty.
He is enlightening,
He is lightning.

He's my tomorrow.
The time evaporates,
Leaving nothing but soft yellow light -
Slow dancing, shadowy silhouettes on my skin,
Dappled warmth,
Lightning.

In hushed breaths
He tells me I am safe,
And I am.

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

I didn't mean to make the stars
Glaze over their dull eyes
And bound a lifetime of regret in me.
I didn't mean to concoct a remedy
Of my own brewed and sugar-coated blood.
I just wanted luster
Without the sky screaming
I must have lust

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.

I didn't mean to make the stars bleed from the palms of their hands.
You just touched me so gently,
I forgot what it was like to tip toe
On the shoreline
Where my wrongdoings match the tide of my indifference.
And I'm sure somewhere inside the caverns of my chaotic senses,
There's an image of you that stirs the wavelengths of my consciousness,
And gives me the breath that revives my sleeping pulse.

I've found that I never want to sleep. This is nothing new -
I just miss hearing your voice 
In the early hours of the morning,
So deep in the night 
Even the wind ceases 
To shake the trees
And stir the quiet leaves. 
I miss having someone 
During this hour, 
Someone to remind me 
There is life beyond my wide eyes.

I want to live inside your velvet dreams
I want to conquer you,
Unravel your seams
I want pillow fights and pillow talks
I want to open your eyes,
Provoke your thoughts

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

you opened doorways
inside of me, pathways
candlelit hallways

It's nights like this
When I'm alone in bed:
There's no stress and nobody around,
Nothing to pretend to be.
I'm just me: nocturnally silent
And scared to death of the future,
knowing you're out there in the world
Couting on me to make the right choice.
This is when I know I'm ready.

I don't even know who I am anymore.
I used to count on my hands to do
The right thing,
My tongue to say
The right thing,
My heart to feel
The right thing.
Suddenly everything is jumbled;
I realize maybe it was months ago
When things started to change,
When the vines began to wrap around themselves
In my head.
Nothing quite makes sense the way you do.
I don't know how to verbalize my thoughts
Or even analyze them so I can tell myself
What would be
The right thing.

Underneath all the things I say
And underneath the facade of it all,
There's part of me that finally feels like it fits in
With the other parts of me
After being lost for probably years.
I like the way you scrunch your nose
When you smile,
And the way you laugh when you kiss me.
I'm so used to being focused
I forgot that sometimes being interrupted is
Precisely
What I need.
I don't want to be frustrated anymore,
And I'm realizing I was frustrated
For far too long.
I was right back in September when I said
You made me feel like I wasn't so tied down.
And your laugh,
It's like I'm waking up from a dream,
Remembering that things are better
Outside of my head.
Out here,
With you,
This feels like the right thing.

I'll sneak around as much as I have to
I'll break my back and bury my bones in the backyard
So long as yours are buried there too.
When I was a kid I thought love was this empty thing
I'm letting the words come to my page as quickly as I think them
Not pausing to be rational
Or plan my escape like I always do
I don't freaking want to go anywhere
I want to freaking be with you

Chesapeake Ocean waves thump
In my newly-beating chest.
Above the madness of my memories,
I think I can hear them swaying
To and fro,
Like my steady heartbeat.

Damp winds untangle the curls behind my ears.
My thoughts steady on September,
Where I picture brick walls,
Sitting nicely in a plaid dress,
My mousy blonde braid
The only consistent twist or turn.

I am the only one without a ticket
to the cinema.
I am a hologram;
A mirage
Thinning in and out of old reruns.
Which blank window panes
Share any foggy truth?

I'm sure leather messenger bags
And nice wool skirts have their place
Somewhere in the anatomy of the past,
But for now my wristwatch
Ticks and tocks
And waits for a time
When my skin is not the same shade
As the dates on my radio:

A new person passing anxiously through her old life.

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

The siren sings her lullaby
Pulls me by my hair
I reach for the surface
Kicking, screaming
She drags me under
Bleeding, Dreaming

5:16 pm
First I'm thinking of roadside adventures
Parked out on a hill,
Somewhere out where the snow is melting
Where cars don't drive,
Where there's no speed limit signs or
Traffic lights
There's only railroads and grain silos
Places where we used to watch the stars
Places where we were young and reckless
Places where we watched the moonrise
5:19 pm
Now I'm thinking of slow dancing
In a high school cafeteria
I'm thinking of you kissing my shoulder
You writing my name in Arabic
You holding my hand when we're walking
Up to your house
You
5:21 pm
I keep thinking
maybe if I remember these all vividly,
You'll remember too

it
still
hurts

If only you knew
About the things I put myself through.
If only you knew
About the nights I lie awake,
Wondering if things will be okay.
If only you knew
The way it feels when you push me away.

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)

Ten pm,
You're brushing your teeth
In preparation for bed
Have I said I love you yet?

Maybe I loved the stars too much
And I fell in love with damaging 
My vital organs. 
My lungs for my loss of breath,
Choking back months of tears. 
My mind for distorting thoughts of you,
Thinking you were the stars themselves. 
My stomach for the inflammation of butterflies,
And subsequently their disease. 
And you know how you broke my heart.

I'm ready
Hands shaking
Blood racing
Unmistakably steady

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.

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

"Its a long story."
A story that is only his and mine
Unspoken under covers,
Hiding under the lid
Of an empty bottles of pills.

"He didn't mean to",
A mantra I don't trust
But remind myself
When my eyes are closed.
He is mine, and I am his.
He tells me I am important to him,
That I mean something
So when he tells me,
Voice trembling over the phone,
"It didn't happen,"
I stay on the line.

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 hate that my pain
Is so easy for you to dig
Your hands into
I hate that I write poetry
To spread as much good
As hurt you've given me
I hate that you can preach
About forgiveness
When you know more
About my body
Than Christianity
I hate that my life
Will always be a reoccurring nightmare
I hate that I cannot silence you
Because you are still
The blood inside my mouth

I want to be yours.
I want to be the light that makes you bloom at the end of the day.
I want to be the sunflowers on your bed sheets I want you to know that it's easy for me to love you
Did you know that?
Did you know that the only thing grey about us is the growing roots in our hair?

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 far away as I am,
I only want him to feel definite.
So until the moments in between time blend into the crashing tide of eternity,
I'll be there -
Scratching love notes into his back on lazy Sundays