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

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.

In the loss
Do you grieve numbly
Or with the weight
of each day
each year
Each moment
That was ripped from your clawed hands
tight enough to spasm your muscles
tight enough to leave your forearms aching
tight enough to retract into your skin
crescents in your palms
but not tight enough to keep hold,
not tight enough to save anything beloved

do you grieve numbly

blotted out the words that didn't make sense;
you made the blots into depictions of our baroque mindset

It is not to abandon reason.
It is not to rip through calloused leather;
If it is a release,
It is an exhale.
Truth, in any realm,
Is not to wrestle with my conscious.

It's easy to romanticize vampiric love,
The kind that eats at your flesh,
The kind that drives you wild with anticipation and hunger.

But somewhere in your midnight,
Love shouldn't break your skin;
Love should walk you home.

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.

You were the first to see me so exposed.
It was innocent then -
Or maybe it was just foolish.
Either way it was raw and real;
The way love is supposed to be
And the way love is
Before we dig out our masks
And dance it in masquerades.

You used to look at me in the eye.
You used to clutch me
In the palms of your open hands.
I was naked
And yet I did not feel vulnerable;
I felt seen.

Now you paint over my eyes.
You paint beautiful things -
You always were an artist -
But with your paint you cover me.
You cover me so I cannot be seen.
You cover me with your colors
And now I do feel vulnerable.

Whispered in a still darkness:
I can always tell you love me
When you'd rather wrap me in blankets of warmth
than allow your flickering eyes to be
smothered by drizzling rain,
Sealing them closed by morning

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

Tucked in quiet corners,
I'll keep you locked in spaces
My mind makes up
To convince me to go to sleep.

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.

feel like my story was written for you to read
I don't want to separate you from the parts of me that make me breathe
And I kept feeling like you were somewhere in the world
I had no idea that the world was actually somewhere inside you

Well they'll tell you my skin was so white,
I should've been an angel

And I guess they're right,
But it was never too hard to put my
Heart in a cage

I was ravenously looking for love
I was ravenously looking for love

He said he could tame me by scratching my back
Because behind the layers of skin and bones
There was a lot of emptiness looking to be touched

I was ravenously looking for love
I was ravenously looking for love

Well I found it where it shouldn't have been
And I felt things I shouldn't have felt
Now I find myself in all the old places
Feeling like I lost a hundred parts of myself

And I ravenously lost my love,
And I ravenously lost my love

Breaking clocks
That's what it feels like
Even when I'm with you,
I wish it were still seven am so I could curl under blankets and feel comforted and weak
I like flying kites
I like picking wildflowers in varying shades of mustard hues
I like resting on the pavement of a church parking lot
I like being with you
But my body feels old and tired
Even wintry kisses and hot chocolate runs
Fill me with dread
I'm afraid of the changing seasons,
Sacred of old cafes giving up and becoming shimmery, glistening electric complexes
I'm afraid of Virginia,
Afraid of everything that isn't the great Tetons
Or old faithful
I'm afraid of being alone
Being without you
Being with you
Being anywhere but hiding on my bathroom floor
As the thunder shakes the ground I rest on,
I wish I were running freely under open skies
I don't know how to do anything but rest

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

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

The first of April;
The epitome of spring.
I see the life unfold around me,
I feel the dewy green below.

For a moment
There's a skip in the tape,
And I see scraggly branches
Break up the sky like cracks in the pavement;
White, twiggy claws
Scratch at the Celestial,
Begging for air.

I feel the oxygen seep out
Through my dry, wintry skin.
I become the branches,
Scratching for life.

The first of April.
A raindrop greets me at my nose.
My eyes turn up to the Celestial,
I see the life unfold around me,
I feel the dewy green below.

And oh, the leaves on the trees
And oh, the leaves on the trees
I feel myself breathe,
And oh, the leaves on the trees

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

I won't be any fun tonight.
I know everyone wants me to come home thrilled to see them, crying at the gate.
But the truth is, I am waiting for my delayed flight,
I gazing out at the California mountains thinking of the night I first landed in Brussels,
how the trees and grass
looked just like trees and grass
and not like anything foreign.
I am begging the mountains to take me back to Europe
where I could see all the foliage
that made me feel at home.
The desert here raised me for eighteen years but I find there's no longer any tumbleweed that satisfies my need to belong.

I want mountains I want oceans I want valleys I want canyons I want city skylines I want tropical jungles I want beaches I want the Great Wall

I don't want to settle.

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

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.

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

You were mine, mine, mine.
I found you with hope zipping about,
Your eyes had energy,
A soar flare before departure.

I gave you the stars and hoped you knew
How to use them.

It has been eighteen months since your
Wandering eyes found change,
And your hands met electricity.

When I left you,
Your stars had disappeared.
You looked at the world with cold and bitter eyes.
Still, the moon eclipsed the sun,
And I was the only one.

I wanted to show you kindness
Because nobody else did,
But you will always be
The case I couldn't solve,
The problem I couldn't fix.
In a lifetime from now
When the issues are just a list,
I won't think of the million ways
You couldn't love me.

I'll think of the million ways
You did.

I never told you about Holden
I never even finished The Catcher in the Rye
And actually all I wanted to tell you was
How I related to how bleak he was
And I think you got the point,
I think you got the point when I told you
I might die
I'm esther greenwood
I'm Holden
I'm every broken character
I'm a walking classic novel
Manic depression

And you told me if I died,
That would be the worst thing
But I can't help if I'm falling from the weight
Of falling figs from my hope tree

Will I see you In every starry night?

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.

My heart is our hands
Tied in a knot; intertwined
Your hand in mine

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

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.

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.

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

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

It would feel right to be near you and hear the little drummings that carry life under your skin
I'd like to belong where they fit in
Will we ever be satisfied or is it too hard to believe that were blind?
I don't know where your mind turns in alleyways of abstract thought but I want to be there with you. Its all I've ever wanted, to understand the cadence of your skin

I am the peace beyond reason.

I heard you passing out sincere apologies
Hoping one of them would get around to me
I lie awake at night
Without you on my mind
But I have four years worth of excuses
If you would say sorry
I might find a place to store them

If I could write everything I'm feeling
On the tops of the walls in acrylic paints,
Would the words drip down the wallpaper
In silence,
Reminding me that emptiness
Is only relative,
That whatever magazine cut outs
And indie band posters I've hung over the years
Can dissolve into the vastness
Of my memory?
That somewhere in my organs,
There's pictures of you drenched in
opera house pinks,
Van Gough sunflowers,
Georgia dirt reds?
That the paint ran down the walls
As quickly as you ran to me,
A four minute mile of I Love Yous,
Paint dribbled bursts of joy
concaving over the stillness of the pavement,
Blissful evenings where the wallpaper
Was hardly a bother,
Just white noise blurring the rest of the world so I could focus
Focus on nothing but you

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

You stir the oceans inside me.
We just got settled into a dream,
And we keep falling deeper,
Deeper into the sound waves
As we play telephone through the wavelengths
Of our consciousness
I want to be the one to open your insides
And make them glow with the patterns of light
In my eyes
When we wake up,
I'll tell you the dreams that I dreamt
You tell me the hopes that you've kept
We will lay motionless until dawn

I remember 
I remember the way you'd speak, 
Eyes reaching for the sky
As if there were something up there
Worth stretching for. 

I remember the way you'd touch, 
Holding me so tightly,
All the shards of my tattered soul 
Seemed like they'd never break again. 

I remember how you whispered
in my ear - 
Always in it's fullness and never lazy- 
I love you.

I remember footsteps asking why,
My crippled hands gasping for air,
Counting losses with each Breath,
As if there was anything
Worth reaching for.

I remember your touch so gentle
The way only Mean can be -
And all my pieces floated in air, 
A silently screaming silhouette 
Feigning defined. 

I remember whispering in your ear
As honestly and with as much fullness
As I could bear
I love you.
I wish you hadn't asked me why. 
That's the only thing 
I don't remember.

It's one thirty p.m.,
And twelve hours ago, 
I was half-asleep on the couch,
Wishing I could be more
Than one foot in
And one foot out.

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

The lines I write in my head make sense
Until my tears smear the ink
And muddle all my musings.
I let them bleed out of my fingertips
Til I'm left with ink blots and a tired heart

Hold yourself up
Even if you've lost your spine

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.

Sorry you grew up feeling lonely
Sorry you had to cover up the fact that
You're so desperate for love,
You'll find it in any blonde
That treats you like you're worth nothing

You were worth something to me

I'm going to get married you know,
I'm going to see the world like you told me to
(But not for you)
And I'm going to get married,
But not to you