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

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.

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

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 never got to tell you

I am the peace beyond reason.

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'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 you love
The way your voice feels
In your throat.

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

Pink.
Soft pink,
Sot milky pink
All around me
Withering away
Unworthy doubts,
Uneasy minds.
Blinking soft, careful truths;
I am kind.

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.

You were always my favourite
I knew how you wanted to kiss me
And be with me
I felt each flare you sent ablaze into the night sky
I felt it sting me and I felt the burn
As tears crept from my eyes
There's so much about you
That I never wanted to lose;
So much so that I nearly let you
Break my knees so I'd never be free
Even tangled in your snare I asked to stay
I just wanted to stay
I only wanted to stay

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.)

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

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.

Hold yourself up
Even if you've lost your spine

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.

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.

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.

"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

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

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

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 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 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.

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)

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.

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

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

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

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

If I feel the dread sink any lower in my stomach,
I might shipwreck,
Still so dizzy from the mess he left

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.

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.

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.

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

I will love you with all the blood my heart pumps in my entire life
I will love you through every moment I feel my sternum shaking
My eyelids blinking
The entirety of my being quaking
You're as blue As the dark I feel as I fall asleep

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

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

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

We're all wondering where we went wrong,
Thumbing through our files
And putting old records on.

Did we spend too much time on the road?
Are the lines we dread the ones we wrote?
Would it have been easier if we had considered
Growing old?

No love is little,
even if it was short lived.

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

You cling to God like he will save you
But he will only tuck you in
to the bed you made of filth and sin