And as existential doubt sets in,
I know that I couldn't want you
But I couldn't help the rush of rejection
And so I fell
A thousand times
Screaming drunk filthy
I swear you were the one
Until I sit alone with myself and I know what lies within
But I don't know what lies beyond
And my hollow eyes find yours across the church
You in your white dress or suit or whatever nightmare you picked out
Plastered perfection
I was not the one for you
Because currently eternity has been looking more and more like a graduation ceremony
And I watch as everyone I've ever loved or loathed makes their way across the stage as I am seated in the back
And it doesn't really sting
Until the curtain falls
And I hear congratulations
With a mouth full of hell and a head filled with wine I stumble out into the crowd
And I spill myself all over your gown
Church or school auditorium it's all the same now
It's all the same now
Let the curtain fall on this too as I say congratulations
Congratulations
Congratulations
I still feel the same.

8am solo endless drives in
Purgatory
Will you remember me?
Will you still say say my say my name
Or have I disappeared into all these varying shades of 8am
Have I become the way I looked at him?
Will I fade here? Or will I reignite only to show you up
Turn up and burn up I know you never wanted me
Just wanted the person you imagined me to be
Now all I see is the white lines of this highway
Purgatory
Will you remember me?
Will this be
Forever?
8am fade out good so slow
I'm nobody's baby so nobody needs to know
My glass bloodwork and hazy brain
I know you don't see me the same
Purgatory.

I loved you in the blue hour
Green eyes over the table
Clean laundry and winter haze
I'm obsessed with your half smile
Quiet intent this is fragile
But this is how I fall
Late nights spent wondering after your clean lines
Soft skin cold light and I cant get enough
Wonder where it lands in the morning
Tripping deeper under grey skies in the afternoons
And this is it
Catch up on various afternoons I get lost in your pauses
Rough around my edges you make yourself at home
We could live like this
And this just the beginning
As you tangle your hands in my spine we're tangling deeper into:
Disbelief lack of sleep as you're next to me
Sit back sigh in unholy feelings I'm green and gold to your touch
And you're dark blue and grey rolling in the wake of the year of instability
Well liked and rounded yet you're coming round me
The thought of you breaks me
And I'm six feet off the floor
We Clean up you take me out and tell them all I'm your girl
Summer nights and new wine tentative dependency is our world
And with every twist of your neck or subtle laugh I'm back at your hands
Open
Naïve
And brusing blush and wine
This is how I fall
Into your open hands
Cinematic and young
I can't tell where we're headed but I know just how I'll land
Even if I'm unsure of you I am who I am
And I'm yours for the blue hour.

and it's taken me two years but I think I finally get it
it wasn't the forced laughter or the radio silence
it wasn't that every time I needed you, you never picked up your phone
too busy talking to God as usual
while I was screaming his ear off about you
you
and your white teeth and ambiguous intentions
you caught me numb on your kitchen floor
laughing in your old clothes when we're alone together praying that this time this side of you would stay
and for once you do
until there's someone new to impress or I just need to talk to someone at 1am
apathetic until something in the way of my being applies to you
and just like a kid you'll sit me down line our pieces up and try to convince me we're the same
you shoved the pieces that wouldn't quite fall into place under the couch and color coordinated and combined with no true knowledge of the picture
just like a little kid hell bent trying to please a parent
you tried to fit your life in mine but you never quite realized that I am not a puzzle and you are not a part of me
and it's taken me two years but I think I can let you go
I'm done driving to your house
I'm done watching you on social media intently trying to understand who you are and why the hell you do what you do
and it's been two whole years of passive aggressive talk contrasting quiet afternoons on your floor or blue nights spent driving around the city
it was below thirty but you let me roll my window down and so I could breathe the frigid air and tangle my wrists in the power lines
it all boils down to a simple statement:
you were there until you weren't
until it didn't revolve around you
you didn't want a friend you wanted an adventure like the pictures you pin on your wall
like the mindless **** you fill your head with to appear tragic and interesting
and I understood when you brought your new friends to my birthday
unannounced
uninvited
cold
and I saw pictures the next day of them in all of the places we used to frequent in the summer when I gave up on substance and just wanted someone to be with
and I know that the world belongs to everyone
but those nights belonged to us
quiet
secret
hot blue in a sea of navy and gold
like words whispered into a lover's shoulder
and when I saw the pictures I just kind of knew
that you never understood a ******* word of anything I said when I talked about how moments like these inevitability fall through or the cracks of existence or whatever
and you left early because they wanted to go and I smiled and said it was fine
you didn't get it
but I think I do now
it's only taken me a couple years or so.

It's easy as a poet to turn yourself into the flawed broken ideal you so readily romanticize at any given moment
You adapt generational buzzwords like
"Pale" or "thin" or "depressed" or "bipolar"
To make up for the places you feel dull or average
You long for someone to write about you like you write about your lovers or friends
So you set yourself up like a john green character
Beautiful
Distant
And empty
You spout tumblr religion and intellectual quotes
You become as paper thin as the characters from those novels our generation can't seem to get enough of
Predictable
Sad
Romanticized to the point of extinction
You survive on maybe three good quotes and self inflicted lack of sleep
In pursuit of becoming the lie you loved youve become the truth you hate
Millennial icon
The cycle continues with you.

If I'm being honest
I'm tired of being a poet.
I'm tired of findig meaning in everything from the lines of the sky to the cracks in the side walk
I'm tired of using extended metaphors to explain how overwhelmed or angry or sad I am 
I'm tired of immortalizing the people I love or hate in half assed lines of poetry
For once I would like a good day just to be a good day or a bad day just to be a bad day
A landscape to hold no higher meaning than to magnify the glory of existence
For the people I know to hold no cosmic significance in the fabric of time
I would like to sit and be quiet
To write and be at peace
For the storm to pass over
And to find some relief
This is not a game for me this is how I breathe and I am tired of having to hold meaning in every crack and every crevice
My poetic nature has become a menice in my tired skin
I'm tired of letting the light in
But this isn't something you quit
This is something you breathe
This is something you are
This is something you need
Even if it doesn't make sense all the time
This is the one true thing I know that's mine
My sense of rhythm and my sense of rhyme
And it isn't easy all the time
Because these days life moves faster than I've even known
Faster than I can process what I've been shown
These days it's easy to feel the weight of all of my time spent alone
My mind isn't home
I'm chilled to the bone
These days I'm tired of being tired and tired of writing about how tired I am
Like I'm six feet under but I'm not yet dead
Using poetic devices to say what's already been said
I'm tired of playing this game
Imortalizing name after name
I still feel the same
Even though I still keep writing
So what I'm trying to say is that I need poetry like I need water but sometimes if you drink too fast or you drink too deep you feel like you're drowning
Out to sea in familiar surroundings
It's astounding how tiring being a poet can be.

the church pew thrasher
I'm stuck somewhere between what they say and what they do
communion cups and inner church affairs
painted faces and sanctified stairs
and though I once was blind I now can never unsee
this place has been a heaven for the rivers of hell that abides in in me
and I crossed all of my fingers
knocked my white knuckles on those pews of holy wood
but I found all was lost that kept me young, kind, and good
I learned quick that things never turn out just like they should
and still I cling to hands raised and a few honest bars
the musing of the man on the microphone and my quiet life on mars
If there were any walls they met my fists
if there were any rough edges they all met my wrists
drunk on the blood of my saviors fallen from grace
unable to understand but still a need to see the savior's face
there is no other explanation
there is no other reason

and you,
you couldn't practice what you preach
you,
you couldn't seek what you couldn't reach
you told me to wait while you went on a head
you didn't die to yourself because you were already dead
I should have known
I should have known I should have known
but still I press on in spite of the hell I was shown
still I reach out for the hem of the throne
still
still.

and I'll never understand how much death I lived through
in a place that boasted life for the pure, holy and true
milk and honey met blood and abomination
innocent eyes and tiny hands lead to the greatest devastation
the betrayal of trust
the bread and the cup tarnished with rust
I'll never understand
but still I reach for the Hand

If there were any walls they met my fists
if there were any rough edges they all met my wrists
drunk on the blood of my saviors fallen from grace
unable to understand but still a want to see the savior's face
there is no other explanation
there is no other reason

and you,
you couldn't practice what you preach
you,
you couldn't seek what you couldn't reach
you told me to wait while you went on a head
you didn't die to yourself because you were already dead
I should have known
I should have known I should have known
but still I press on in spite of the hell I was shown
still I reach out for the hem of the throne
still
still.

So I sing to the kid in me that never grew up
the once who's still tripping under the weight of that cup
be still
be still
be still
it was never his will
be still
be still
be still
it isn't your fault, it isn't your crime
don't let it consume you
don't let it poison your mind
just
be still

and you,
you couldn't practice what you preach
you,
you couldn't seek what you couldn't reach
you told me to wait while you went on a head
you didn't die to yourself because you were already dead
I should have known
I should have known I should have known
but still I press on in spite of the hell I was shown
still I reach out for the hem of the throne
still
still.

For a second I remembered your scent
And I retreated inwards once more.
You don't simply leave you linger.

It's supposed to feel this way
sitting quiet riding high
the slow burn
the weight of another's hand on my thigh
it's supposed to feel like this
tracing my forearm along the curve of the earth while the party rages on inside
I'm spinning fast
all orange juice and half smile
caught tripping on my own two feet
and you say that we're the same
white hot like the lines of your teeth
you were always so willing to devour me
copy paste impress
the effort of becoming effortless
it doesn't make any difference
because no matter what you say
I know you know what you're doing
so I hide outside
scrape constellations into my mouth
run ragged down your street in my socks with my closest friends
laughing numb about my aggression and burning bright with white noise
It's supposed to feel this way
picking fights with myself in the half light
tearing my teeth out just past midnight
it's supposed to come in waves
youth
forever in four years of closed doors beige walls
and all those fake friends
will burn out hot and fast like dying stars
you'll slip away into forever and I won't miss you even when I think about the blue days
on the edge of the city catching streetlights in my chest
I won't miss you
just miss what I thought you were before I realized that nothing is forever
and we are not infinite
not even a little bit
not even when you play that song or say that thing that you rebloged at 2am that you thought would make you seem deep or intellectual
we are not infinite
but you were apart of my forever even still
so when I climb out of your windowsill it isn't because I'm trying to look like the kids in the videos
I just need to catch my ******* breath
just need to walk with a couple of people who know me
just need to trace my forearm along the curve of the earth
don't worry about it
you'll burn out soon enough
after all
it's supposed to feel this way.

There is an immensity of life between us
in the cracks of the tar lining the streets of the new and the up and coming
in the cement foundations of  pieces of history torn down to make way for condos
in the luxury of the innocent
in the opulence of the well versed

(I was never brilliant or oblivious but I understood the weight of it still)
and still
there is life here
in the filthy river water we use to cleanse ourselves of modern day idealism
in the pedicured grass of the only wild space left in the city
in the eyes of the people who go unnoticed for years
in the hands of the business men devastating and deciding the price of our humanity
we swarm
we collect
we nest in this hive
we levitate and gravitate towards new heights and new highs
vowing to go up and over up and over until we revert back to the way we once were
nostalgia
a pretty word for dissatisfaction
tearing down walls only to romanticize their restriction ten years later
we build up to break down to reenforce what we already know
but yet there is a beyond
and yet still there is more
still there is life in the existential
still there in the thoughts between sleep and waking
still between the jump and the fall
still
and even still you take your forearm and run it along the curve of the earth surrounding this city
this coal eating monster washed with the dreams of a thousand drunkards looking for some other body to call home
and we call it home
with the austere buildings and mirror images reflecting bricks and soot
reflecting breath and sighs
reflecting life and death
and between it all
there is so much life
yes between us
there is an immensity of life.

Back on the loop past my old flame's house again
I sleep in and I show up late because I can't get you off my mind
Between failing friendships and endless gap years I feel like there isn't much of my heart left
But I'm still here
And I cry but I don't talk about it anymore. The people I love are a text message and 45 short miles away
But I'm too scared to cross the distance
Emotional or physical I'm too ******* scared to even ask for prayer
Singing out hymns to an estranged father imortalized in memories from last year and in the gruesome images depicted in stained glass windows,

Hallowed be this place in me.
Hallowed be the space in between my ribs.

 and my brother is a gospel singer to a basement full of people who are just as scared as I am
And He rides the crowd like Jesus walked on water
He lifts his hands caught in the same spirit that torments the angels and demons alike
And maybe god hears him screaming through the walls like I do
Maybe god cries too
But if he does he does a good job hiding it
And my parents are on the continent that I turned my back on a year ago.
I traded family dinners for a decomposing raft and tried my luck at the sea
Only crossing the water to drink wine and share the communion of post apocalyptic dreaming or political warfare we are so horrified and mesmerized by
The fellowship of the modern day saints,

Hallowed be this place in me.
Hallowed be the hole in my head.

Icehead baby don't you come to close to me
I'm friged baby I'm too far gone to see
And I've been dreaming about summer while I've been reading up on life in Antarctica
Cold tundras and odd communities I could work in maintanince for the price of living
Meanwhile I'm surviving my own tundra the endless night never gives way to sun for seasons on end
And my friends grow wings and fly into the sun
 a thousand variations of Icarus they're going to be dead and gone on while I'm still landlocked in concept
Or in orbit far in space
Wherever I am, I am distant
Living on the memories from years past
So I'm driving the endless loop past an old flame's house again
Connecting the dots between my ideas of dependency space and time
And I'm fine
In love with the seclusion of the towering trees
The security of a prolonged gap year
The warmth of the ice in my head
And as the roots of the divine cover my mouth and bloom in my lungs
I sigh and give into my year of hibernation.

Hallowed be this place in me
Hallowed be the expanse of this space.

The suburbs are growing all over the wilderness I used to watch pass by from the passener side
The glimmering dream of a generation reborn in the new frontier of romanticized  pop culture
The suburbs weren't made to live in
They were built to sing of and pine over like some lover changed with age
So in this new age
As the generation who swore to destroy them but now idly builds them back up again
We will stand tall in our lyrics
Dreaming of late night rides and sneaking out of our parents home
To distract ourselves to conceal the fact that we are all inherently alone
And I
In my young blood and bravado
Will put another brick into the walls.

I'm filtering you through the crack of light that universally seeps through all hotel room doors at the tender hour of 3am.
That is to say,
this isn't a sonnet of love
Or an overly romanticized image of a 21st century youth,
This is realism
In that I am trying to process everything around me like it will disappear tomorrow
Sipping tepid cola watching the day fade through the trees
Losing track of time or when the hell I'm supposed to be anywhere
Because lately I've been going no where
Tracing my veins and driving in circles around your block
Trying to remind myself that though we live in an infinite universe,
And though we are all alone in our own skin
we're still connected through the cracks in the concrete and the curve of the earth.
And I think about all the river water I drank in trying to get to your shore
All the time I've waisted hanging just outside your door
And I know I tend to get stuck on the little things like the songs we sang or the arch of your foot
But I'm just trying to ******* process you so I don't have to spend one more night on my best friends couch staring at my skin wondering where all the time went,
Wondering if I had cleaned up a little better
then my mind wouldn't be so spent
So I'm staring into the light coming through the hotel door at 3am so I can filter you out of my chest and onto paper
So if I disappear tomorrow
I can know your memory for today.

you are leading me softly
into deep blues and tangled sheets
quiet impressions of your past loves and their crooked teeth
while you, hang me in yours:
golden molars set on a house of cards
(This dissipates and collides)
and you don't breathe you smoke
pouring grey all out into the empty space
skin meets air meets time meets space
you spit ash and I reevaluate
the space between our hands
spiraling again
you tell me to open my eyes and take it all in
your hands on my waist
my hands turning tight
catch and combust
collide and spark your apathy
I burry myself in the face of the ocean
swirling slate hushed under the seabed
the wanting comes in waves as I'm drifting after you
this longing eats holes in my favorite shirts and breaks like the wings of the tender creatures of the night
wasn't their fault they were just drawn to the light in your teeth
and the feeling compels that as the waves break neither of us can remain
I'm just tripping after
deep blues and tangled sheets
quiet impressions of your past loves and their crooked teeth
just hang it and hang me in yours.

It's gospel isn't it? Your quiet complacency
Out sick in the bathroom but still you seem to laugh at me
Your imperial intent and millennial mind
Only seem to distance you from being anywhere close to 'fine'

You sold out your soul to a bipolar lover you
Swore off your friends and told yourself you'd never need another
You broke my heart there in your damp summer clothes
You said it wasn't personal but i know that I know that I know that

I'm not supposed to suppose anymore
That you might feel better if you just shut that door
You can give him your world but you can't keep me in yours  
So I won't come around if you knock on my door anymore

The summer you met were the coldest months I've known
Ice in your eyes winters breath filled your home
The mess that we made still hangs round my head
Thorny black crown of the words I never said

But now here we sit in a 4x4 bathroom stall
Tell me it's fine that morning will fix it all
Tears in your eyes your hands in your lap
But it won't get better if you keep running back

But I'm not supposed to suppose anymore
So you'll keep on going back to his door
You can give him your world but you can't keep me in yours
So I won't answer when you come to my door

I think I've always known that you were headed for the stars.
I saw it in your eyes when you were young on the front porch playing your junior acoustic guitar
heard it in your voice when you made your mother laugh at the party
felt it in your arms in every hello and goodbye hug when you held me close just like I always wanted.
so yeah,
I've always known about you and the stars
and I think maybe, you saw the same in me
I don't know.
it was just in the way you always begged me to sing with you even though I was shy and your parents were drunkenly laughing downstairs
it was just the way you always asked endless questions about my year
and everything in the way you listened,
stupid smile on your face like you couldn't believe I was in your house
or that I was looking at you,
or maybe it was the way that you were always challenging or pushing me to live a little
and yeah it was the stuff of kids
but in my mind the lighter you forced into my hand meant so much more than just the snap of firecrackers in the dark
meant more than just the prospects of burned fingertips and ash
or the way you always managed to get me up into some tree or on some rickety old swing even though I was so afraid of heights
and you knew you were the only one who could do that,
just like you always have.
Because maybe you knew that to get where I was gonna go that I needed someone to remind me
that sometimes you have to go beyond what you think you are capable of and do the thing that frightens you
I always admired that in you
and that maybe you saw me too
so yeah
maybe you knew about me and the stars
just like I knew about you
and we've seen the world of our youth together
through dinosaur days and saturday morning cartoons
our mutual love of laughter connected us and grew like ivy between us covering the spaces we had left uncharted by the innocence of youth
you wanted to be a comedian and I did too
only if I could make you laugh like that night by the fire
we were young and skinny and wild and oblivious to the true nature of things
and it was small but it was good
so yeah
I mean I've always been in awe of you
and after all these years on your front porch we've come so far
your mom gave up smoking and your dad is cancer free
your brother got a girlfriend and you bought a car
so you can drive
and drive
and drive
and drive away
leave the small town you've hated ever since you started school
so you can drive to find your dreams and some girl to take your heart away
and after all is said and done
when you've broken the charts
gotten your name in lights
and seen the world with a thousand scars running deep just under the sleeve of your shirt
you'll find yourself hung in the stars
just like I always knew
so yeah
I mean I've always hoped that once you were there in the stars
you might look around and find me there too
and its a roundabout way of saying things
and it's different for me too
but
there was this band that we listened to that one summer in your kitchen while our parents were laughing about some video in the next room
and in about every single song that this band wrote
there was this one sentiment that was echoed,
and that has been echoed throughout the modern world countless times to the point of abstraction or sickening obsession
but
the way it sounded that day in the kitchen with seemed really really great
like we were the first to pioneer this brave new school of thought
and that the simple lyrics were insightful and new
though I know you probably don't have any memory of this
but
I think I needed to just let you know


that
I think I've always known
(that you were headed for the stars)

We get along with each other so well in all our clothes
Why **** this thing up by taking them off?

And maybe it was just your short attention span that attracted me
The idea that if I could hold your attention for longer than five minutes
I could maybe hold it for five life times.

I don't know where it came from
Maybe it was the unusual warm air in November
Or maybe it was the need to be known
But at the mention of you
Or the faint glow of another window
I'm spiraling back into:
Blood drive river bank lace your fingers into my hips
Cold air nausea never even been kissed
But don't you know I want you more than ever
Don't you know I'd like to try?
But I'm only everyone's open arms
And you're their American icon
Strolling through winter wheat
Blond, strong and smirking at me
And I'm hiding in my skin
Insecure and inexperienced and I know exactly why
Petrified at the thought of another drive home alone
Tender at the thought of trusting
Be gentle with me
Only after I'm bruised deep blue
Walk home with me
Only after the lights are shot out and you've faded back to gray
I have no stomach to explain passion and no armor to field my family's questions
Just the burn of my chest under my thin jacket
And the warmth of your hand on my skin
And I met you at the blood drive and I let you under my skin
Deep red they bled me dry as I gave you all I had within
I'm alive but I'm weakened
And you put the color back in my cheeks
And you supported me all the way home
So maybe I spiraled into this
Maybe I'm still scared from the nights spent sleeping alone
But in the warm November air
I'll let you in
Spiraling again.

Dry heave quietly in the back room it feels like I've been coughing up blood for years
Warm house cold friends the noise is distant
Nothing lines up like it should and I can't find the pen in my own hand but I'm writing
But I'm surviving
I am learning how to live in the midst of my own hell
Fragmented relationships spit venom over cups of coffee collapse and repeat
Self defense class on Saturday and I didn't sleep for two days
Paranoid about anyone who could be out to hurt me including myself
And I do
Put myself down in my own head alone
Quiet chiding that I didn't have to let go of the love I used to know
I am a delicate soldier sitting out on the roof till the morning
Trying to get a feel for the light
Trying to get back somewhere in time when my own skin wasn't the battlefield
And my stronghold was my mind
This isn't easy but it's fine
I'm not yours and I'm not mine
Even if it doesn't make sense
(Which it never does)
I'm a walking paradox
Confliction even in the cracks of my skin
The optimistic realist.
The tired kid in the back of the room shaking with fear and wonder at the weight of the world.
What a beautiful thing to live
What a beautiful thing to be
Even when it comes in waves in the bathroom I am learning to hold it right and save
Every ******* bit of life around me
Take the bitter with the sweet and everything in between
I'm just in between the end and beginning
And I'm doing just fine.

Black nights and the sound of you through my bedroom wall
Sing about her so you can see past your own skin
Flaws and fault lines captivate and horrify so you pick apart what you can
Young man trying to balance civilization with the old magic you once felt in your heaven that soon after became my hell
But don't cry for them
In time we all change
In time we all rearrange our feelings and heartbreaks
We all figure out all role models fall
But it broke you
And down you fell into a sea of your own discontent
The winter of 2014
Quiet brilliance never one to avoid a fight
You kick and you scream where you should lie back
And I loved you for it
Millennial abomination that you are
Spit your voice and chase her off your chest
Drink away the excess feeling and burn the rest
Don't you know that what the fire leaves untouched isn't your load to carry
Leave her along the side of the road for someone else to burry and pick up your megaphone and preach your gospel of self reliance on the streets
Born of Walt Whitman you speak of dependancy like a curse
But I know you need the stage to breathe I know you weak shouldered boy better than you know yourself at times
Though I only know you through the wall of your bedroom
I've watched you fight demons and cowards alike
Watched you been bruised and forgotten for years
Disciple of your innocence you were ignorant to the faults of your fellow youths
Pinned them up like prize fighters on your walls
Don't you know I watched it all
And one by one they fell
Unfaithful, thankless wretches and they took the life from you while you washed their feet
And you swore off dependency and trust for years on years and let it all go
And now it comes out soft and sweet through my bedroom wall
Let down and hanging around you sing for every ******* that forced their way in to your chest
It's a wonder you survived the rest
But here we sit after all.

I spend my days moving slowly along the kitchen floor
Singing softly and sweetly of the love I've never known
And as my song rises to the rafters I pray that one day it might reach you and with long spindling fingers fill the cracks of your body with the feeling you've always known in the center of your soul
Down to that secret place where all knowing grows and I pray that it spirals along your spine and out through your velvet eyes as you cry for the honest days wasted and numb on a drunken night
I pray that you find through the atmosphere my lyrics and melodies and that even when we are miles away you might sing back to me
We may never meet but darling I feel you in the blades of grass that grow from between the ribs of the earth
I feel you in that secret place in my sternum in colors of green and gold
And as the days pass may sunlight touch your skin as it touches mine
Gentle and breaking
So tender it makes you cry
I pray that that sun will come and tear you apart
so that you may be free of your walls
So that your body is no longer night
So that we may both learn to blossom in whatever season may come
Through fire and through seawater
May the feeling refine us
And bind us
In the spirit that surpasses all new and old
So brother please hear this song through the cracks of your wall
Lover please come down off the ledge and find that we are still all that we said we were when we were swollen and small
That we are all that we hoped we'd be when we were naked and filthy in the garden alone
Our father was angry but we did not yet know ourselves and we did not yet know the mess to be made
We are messes made by the good intent of apathetic friends
But darling as I move in the doorway I can promise that this feeling never ends
I don't know you yet but I will find you and feel you through the wind in the trees
With the voice of the spirit rolling freely through me
Can't you see?
As I'm singing to you
Can't you feel?
After the damage is done and they say there is nothing left to do
I will come rolling and ringing through you
And the divide will be no more
Alone together at last
clean on the kitchen floor.

This is the holiest form of love I will ever know.

We sit up late and talk **** and glass box confessionals
Of fallen men and angels and the space between our hands
And though we spit different brands of fire,
we still connect in between the flames,
In between our overgrown youth and the cracks in the fault lines of our teeth
Between our separate worlds we meet open and honest in your attic and seek to touch the places we previously could not  reach alone
And I am breathless in return
And you, fire eyed girl, speak in sonnets to the dark
You take the circles around your eyes and string them into free verse
Spilling free from the patterns in your blood
You fight within to take hold of the love that is all around you
Because it lives all around you
Love follows you like a dog nipping at your heels
Chasing you into the depths of your being where it fights you up in arms at the immensity and grandeur of it all
Love fights for you
And you'll let it win
And so we sit and talk up the last four years of hell like it was nothing
Though we both know it meant everything just the same
And on the drive home I'm overwhelmed by the lights
Overcome at the light within you
Tangled beautiful girl
I was called fire eyed too but yours is a different sort of flame
A different brand of light
And it burns bright in my memory on the way home.

You sit softly back into the faded couch
rain spills in dark blue slate against my forearms
Pale ivory lines of my skin align tenderly with your tangled teeth
You tell me that this is how we'll end
Dim and quiet icons of our generation wrapped in grey
But we laugh it off anyway
And I sing gods and monsters into your warm neck
Humble moments of my velvet intent
I lean into you
And the rain conceals the rest

I can feel you laughing down my neck just like it was yesterday
I can feel those beige walls pressing in
Slow dancing on an open grave
Twisting the knife into my skin
           This isn't self harm this is processing
           This isn't nostalgia this is letting go.
Winter air wrapped in red so many layers I almost couldn't hear what you said
All draped in ice and grace  
The world isn't as small and snug as it used to be
The world is too near and is not gentle with me
I remember
The way it felt when you crossed the room
And I remember
How it felt to leave too soon
I am not my brothers keeper
And you are not the boy I thought I knew
But winter rises ominous and waking before me
and my hands are already turning blue
I'll hold you if I want to.

I was thin wristed and restless looking for another fist to bruise
Another wall to tumble down another coping mechanism to abuse
and there you sat dressed in black swearing on a filthy church pew
Talking of all the boys you almost loved and how all of me applied to all of you
Whirlwind summer whiplash stomach sick in my Sunday best
If the good Lord tries our patience then you were my final test
Raging lows to soaring heights I found heaven in the back of your hand
You stitched me up just to tear me apart no one can humble me like you can
An answer to prayer
A song unsung
The unspoken fear in the back of my lungs
A slight of hand
The long drive home
Another night in bed wishing I had left you alone

Gold lines and the light in your smile
Humid nights and spring intentions I can honestly say that it's been a while
We used to drive around this city until all light was gone
But even after all,
the light never left
Even when I slammed the door and you broke my ribs and the night swallowed us both whole
Just when you thought the distance killed me and that I had lost my soul
The distance only maintained the surreal beauty of it all
The evenings on that hill watching the city light up and the sunlight flee
The evenings I showed you the inside of my chest and you showed me your scars
The evenings we were so high above the city and the smoke that I thought we might go back down
But even angels sometimes fall from heaven
Even Adam had to leave the garden
And so fall we did
Far from the radience of our finest nights
Far from the comfort of each others presence
Far from the freedom of our adolescent dreams of grandeur
But the light lingered on
And it will never be the same but
Maybe we'll live to see the garden again
Maybe we'll go back to that hill
Maybe we'll drive around the city again
Maybe we will
Maybe we will.

Lately I've been thinking about becoming bigger than my body
I've been processing you through **** demos on my phone
Through grey skies and empty bottles
Through blank stares and perpetuated silence
( I used to need a rhythm to write but the white noise in my head seems to work)
I've been turning corners and changing lanes
Doing the dishes and doing my time tangled in empty sheets
And it seems okay
As long as I'm not by myself for too long
Because if I let the white noise in I'll be swimming in black till the weekend
I'll numb myself in neon shades
White hot and weighty
Glimmering image of the silver screen dream
Spent shadowed twisting out into the intersection until I remember that you are not the same as you once were
And I am not the girl you needed
I'm just processing
And working on becoming bigger than my body
More than my bones more than my skin more than my gender more than a character in someone else's life
More than a thin wristed timid thing weighted down by years of neglect and indifference
More than a pair of wide dim eyes
More than myself.
I'm sorry I didn't call you back.

I can almost taste you in the back of my throat
Like it or not you are in every word that I wrote.
And. I'm tangled up inbetween the place of wanting you and wanting the best for myself
But I don't know what's best for myself
Just do what's best for yourself
To hell with my mental health
So it's late nights early mornings deflecting warnings with half assed poetry
Most people I know trigger me in some sense of the word
But in case you haven't heard
They're saying I've lost my mind trying to find the love I used to know in myself
back when I knew myself skinny *** kid in the denim shirt
Beaming back at you before I got hurt
back before I learned that the parts that you can't see are the ones that teach you to be
The ideas that we could be inside of reality without fully hating ourselves
And me I just wanted to be something more than the walls I was born into
More than the **** I got into with the kids who turned me into the monster I have become
It's the people we know not the places we're from that define us
And I'm on that ultra light beam
Out singing with the whole ******* team about another man's god dream
The scheme that gleamed in their eyes so mean just trying to find they're own way
And what I'm trying to say is that I want you but I know that it could take me down
And I'm not about to drown in another wasted year
In another ocean of my own tears
This isn't coming out of fears it's coming from the place in me that knows that I was made for more
That I am more than another girl's page from her diary
That I am more than what the people are saying about me
That I am more than what I intend or intended to be
I was blind but now I see
And this is all of me
Ultra light beam
A god dream
Everything.
So yeah I can almost taste you in the back of my throat
And yeah I'm tangled up in that place but I ain't leaving a note
I'm standing up for me
And aI can almost taste you in the back of my throat
I'm tangled up inbetween the place of wanting you and wanting the best for myself
But I don't know what's best for myself
To hell with my mental health
So it's late nights early mornings deflecting warning signs with poetry
Most things I know trigger me in some sense of the word
But in case you haven't heard
They're saying I've lost my mind trying to find the love I used to know in myself back when I knew myself skinny *** kid in the denim shirt
Beaming back at you laughing before I got hurt back before I learned that the parts that you can't see are the ones that teach you to be
The ideas that we could be inside of reality without fully hating ourselves
And me I just wanted to be something more than the walls I was born into
More than the **** I got into with the kids who turned me into the monster I have become
It's the people we know not the places we're from that define us
And I'm on that ultra light beam
Out singing with the whole ******* team about another man's god dream
The scheme that gleamed in the eyes of the teen just trying to find her way
And what I'm trying to say is that I want you but I know that it could take me down
And I'm not about to drown in another wasted year
In another ocean of my own tears
This isn't coming out of my fears it's coming from the place in me that knows that I was made for more
That I am more than another girl's page from her diary
That I am more than what the people are saying about me
That I am more than what I intend or intended to be
I was blind but now I see
And this is all of me
Ultra light beam
A god dream
Everything.
So yeah I can almost taste you in the back of my throat
And yeah I'm tangled up in that place but I ain't leaving a note
I'm standing up for me
And all I want to be
And all that I want to be

Flickering
The future reads like an unfinished novel
Promising
Yet alluding still
I wanted to press myself within you but I can't seem to hold still
70 degrees in December
Tornado watch over the city
While the true storm brews within me
Nothing seems clear these days
What has been
What has yet to be
And the real mystery is what's inside and all around me
Shimmering nerves
Late night stare
You say you hate losing sleep but you stayed up just to talk to me
Maybe so I'll meet you in sleep like you meet me in mine
And I can't get the idea of your hands out of my head
Tentative yet reverent tracing the edges of my tender form
Warm to your touch
I am warm to your touch and it isn't much but
I can't stop writing your name
Trying to catch your curiousity through the mutual language of our entanglement
The constant question: affection
The weight of your eyes from across the room
or from across the concept of distance  manifested through the digital age
We're both romantics anyway
So we go as moths drawn to the flame
The light from another room
The candle left lit for a lover or child
The future
Flickering but promising
Uncertain as a tornado in the midst of winter
The future comes in waves.

The way you carry yourself is an art
Minimal clean and full of bravado
And as we walk through department store hell
I think I'm beginning to see you past first impression nausea
Past the want of my own skin
Last weekend came as fresh snow red wine and attitude
And though the roads were slick I couldn't keep my mind off of you
Grey green boy
Your scent lingers still even if you only stayed for an hour
I can feel you laughing in my ear light and warm
You quote song lyrics and smirk while the pastor drones on
I can feel you
even through the wall between our seats
I can feel you
And I wonder if you feel me too or if it's just another sort of sickness that comes with an overly romantic mind and a restless eye
Grey green boy I wanted you before you were mine
That is to say,
If you're ever mine
So for now you are art and I observe you
Through the museums of the millennial
Windows left open late at night
Longing is a mess.

We dont wear pearls anymore
We don't frequent the same places or walk in the same circles
We don't
And I am letting my hair grow like the ivy on the walls of my childhood home
And you burned that blue spotted dress that you've finally out grown
There is no crime in this tenderness
This too, will change in time
But these days time is taking all of me
These days I write of my sisters as lovers sent out to sea
The darkness and the waves shroud their faces in the growing divide
I lean into this
Over cups of coffee and matching lips I talk to you like I don't still feel the weight of the ever approaching after
Because now
Feels safe
Because now
Is easy
Black and red and faded blue
I know you've got somewhere to be and I do too
But I don't want to leave because I don't know what comes after this
I don't
And there is no crime in that
Imperfect holy bond of the shared years in some sort of purgatory
We grow
And we rise again
Only to stumble back to each other when heartbreak comes knocking again
We grow
And we rise again
Only to find that we don't wear pearls anymore
We don't wear pearls anymore
We don't wear pearls
We don't
But we remember that we once did.

spitting blood nearly dead almost passed out in an open field
freshly wounded bug bit I'm still reeling from your open nails
I wish you could see me now
I wish you could see me now
running from intimacy like you learned to run from your truth
strung out on self reliance a product of my loveless youth
I wish you could see me now
I wish you could see me now
rolling in the wake of the end of my self induced apathy
finally processing the hurt from when you laughed at me
I wish you could see me now
I wish you could see me now

and do you hear me now? Screaming drunk off my anger on my phone in the parking lot
finally unleashing hell on you for everything you're not
and all that you pretended to be
all that you said to me
like some godless lover across the pillow in your bed
all your sentiments sounded so pretty coming from the hole in your head
well you never followed up
so let me follow through
left hook to your pastel pride
and a right hook to all I thought was true
Your love isn't perfect it's bruised
Your grace isn't saving it's used
as you used me to use him to break back through
here's to you

wiped out in the backseat crying like I thought it'd never end
bruising restless and breaking I know now you're not my friend
I wish you could see me now
I wish you could see me now
Brusing my fists and biding my time finally awake
I realized in your hands I had had all I could take
I wish you could see me now
I wish you could see me now
and if you could you'd see that I'm not happy, but I'm finally my own
you'd find that I am not a queen but I never need a throne
I wish you could see me now
I wish you could see me now

and do you hear me now? Screaming drunk off my anger on the phone in the parking lot
finally unleashing hell on you for everything you're not
and all that you pretended to be
all that you said to me
like some godless lover across the pillow in your bed
all your sentiments sounded so pretty coming from the hole in your head
well you never followed up
so let me follow through
left hook to your pastel pride
and a right hook to all I thought was true
Your love isn't perfect it's bruised
Your grace isn't saving it's used
as you used me to use him to break back through
here's to you

And even at night I still wonder if it could have been you
all those lightning bugs and stars we chased
Burnt fingers and summer nights alone
It meant something
Even if they're nearly memories now
And I don't think I'll be able to shake it:
The thought of you
Quiet and pressing like I used to wait for my mother's attention
I'm still strung up on bottled affection
Don't you come around me
We'll never be small again but I still live on your porch
Won't you invite me in?
Won't you finally let the light in?
And even though I know it would never work
I still talk about you to god and my friends
Still wonder after your wide eyed innocence and boyish gate
Still moon after blue lips and mud encrusted shoes
I still wonder about you
Memories of dinosaurs and changing leaves
Bath time and the scent of cigarettes drifting off your mothers hair
And as we grew so did the distance
Traded dinosaurs and race cars for new addresses and opposing forrests
Towering ideals of the oddity we call home
But even this can be bridged by melodies sung at tender hours of the night in your attic
Only we can say we spent the last breath of 2014 singing a madman's hymns
Only we can tangle as we do through fumbled melodies and timeless sentiments
And even still
I wonder if it could have been you

I don't write about you anymore
 At least not like I used to.
I used to feel you through your veins
Used to know you as ingrained in the fabric of the earth
All saltwater and spit like the love you always wanted
Like the love you set on your brow
But I don't write about you anymore except when I'm trashed at three am
Sick of all your talk and the way you put on that shadow when you're begging to be seen
And I do.
I watch you and your perfect teeth talk **** across the room
You say you're happy when you're drunk but I know it isn't true
You're just happy to be apart of something that feels bigger than your skin
Petrified by infinity you don't let your finite nature sink in
You are a biproduct of your generation.
Pastel perfection and ****
Everyone's dream girl
Until you're alone with yourself
And I don't know which is sadder
the way you laugh just a little too loud when the joke wasn't that funny and wasn't directed at you
or the fact that I've been sitting on the floor for an hour and a half and the closest I can come to explaining how I feel is "*******
 you never knew me
and you never wanted to"
And it's all I can do to just be near to you at this point
Listen to your hot breath fill the room with bravado and your parents beliefs
You said that people should do whatever they want as long as they're happy
And then turned back around and voiced how concerned you were about your brother's new habits
Just as long as no one judges you or your drunk Snapchat stories you post with your new friends who you'll be tired of in 3 months time
Everything is temporary but nothing seems to stay constant with you
And sometimes I think about how I used you write about you
Your wide eyes and moon shaped face
Heart of the ocean I was reeling in the high tide but now I'm stuck on land again
And even if it seems strange I don't want to go back
Back to when I used to write this way
Back when I was interesting enough for you
I want to sit on the floor in front of you
Hear the words on your tongue
Watch the ivory of your teeth meet your forced smile
I want to be here right now and drink in every ******* drop of your apathy
So I can remind myself who Ill never be
And watch you disopate and collapse
So yeah
I don't write about you anymore
At least not in that way.

and now we are here
starring at each other from across a table
a healthy divide between who I am
and everything you thought I should be
all the idealistic pictures you used to paint of the pronoun you exalted as the fantom:
'we'
all the messes we made and the even messier nights are on the table too,
I didn't forget one word.
and I know you didn't either.
and I might be sorry for talking **** and trashing the way you seemed to adopt every part of me
I might be sorry for making you cry that night I pulled away because I was breaking and you couldn't see outside of your own skin long enough to realize what your use of the weight of your skull and who's shoulder you carelessly used to prop it up for no reason at all was doing to me
what it did to me
I know what I did to you, just because I did something for me
I listened to you cry from the bunk bed below alone and tired in your forand now we are here
starring at each other from across a table
a healthy divide between who I am
and everything you thought I should be
all the idealistic pictures we used to paint of the plural pronoun you exalted as the fantom 'we'
all the messes we made and the even messier nights are on the table too
I didn't forget one word
and I know you didn't either
and I might be sorry for talking **** and trashing the way you seemed to adopt every part of me
I might be sorry for making you cry that night I pulled away because I was breaking and you couldn't see outside your own skin long enough to realize what your use of the weight of your skull and who's shoulder you carelessly used to prop it up for no reason at all was doing to me,
what it did to me
I know what I did to you just because I did something for me I listened to you cry from the bunk bed below alone and tired of trying to understand my ever changing disposition
And I too, was tired.
I was tired of you trying to keep me warm
I felt like **** but it ended up okay because you returned the favor two months later at my 18th birthday party
only I had a shoulder to cry on
and I should have seen it then but I didn't forgive you all those times I could have sworn I did
on my knees in the sanctuary begging a higher power to take the anger from me
I swore I never wanted to hate you but **** it maybe I did
fingers crossed dressed all white at the funeral
I always savored your spirals
but I'm moving on from that
and after three good ******* years of on and off behavioral tendencies
reevaluations and disconnects and fear of all that you saw in me
I'm not afraid anymore to say that there isn't any 'we'
at least not in the way you said it would be
and I don't want to pretend that I'm heartbroken over it
though I used to loose sleep at night
I don't want to pretend like there's still something here
moving on finally feels right
as we ******* over a couple cups of coffee I can see clearly that we are not the same and that we will never be
but you just keep on talking about your job and about the road trip that we'll never take and how good it feels for everything to be 'okay'
back in the old cycle of recycling the same five conversation topics trying to grasp at a singular old flame
a spark of the easy days
but all I can think about is how I've changed
I'm not the same
and the divide is clear
but here we are anyway.

Rivers flow from my open mouth as I'm fallen back at your feet
Indigo and bruised I always come back to you
Sweaty and sick on a Thursday night
Wash me clean in dewy grass and light me up like the air planes in the night
The want will never end.
This want will never end.
And I've plastered up my body so that you cannot see the cracks
But I come spilling out anyway
Crucify me with your kind eyes
Resurrect my broken lungs
What a pretty thing to pity the girl who'd wash your feet
What a petty thing to want.

Real love is in the hazy curve of the earth lined in cities and streetlights
In men and monsters alike
In mountains and valleys real love finds you and forces its way into your lungs pushes out through your fingers and onto the page from your pen
Real love is in the depth of the action of feeling itself
Not in some petty lust or the need to be touched
The quiet yet resounding sentiment that if you don't find "the one"
Then you will be blindsided forever by the harsh hands of a thousand one night stands
You will be left empty in the kitchen sink
This I see and hear in the bodies all around me
And I've been ****** over as well as the next kid
Wide eyed and innocent young thing force fed brine and ****
I was in love with everyone and every thing that ever came near me
Blinded into submission in the ignorance of my youth
And I was taught that love was the feeling you felt when someone took you home or took you in
That love was an idea long lost in fairy tales and **** posts from your drunken ex at three am
And I got good at being let down time and time again by empty words or hushed sentiments spoken too hastely on the hardwood floor
I got good at learning to document a fleeting thought or moment just to try to keep some light in me so I didn't drown in the endless sea of my nights alone
And yeah the bottom of an empty bathtub became a second home but I have discovered that real love is as near as the grass under my feet
The cracks in the street the ice in my drink
There is a freedom and a weight in the weight of it all
so the feeling that they try to destroy when we're small finds a way
Through the pigment in our eyes to the countless times we are let down or let others down
The earth resounds that real love
Is in everything
And that you
Are apart of it all
And one day it's all gonna break

It's not that the snow isn't beautiful
It's just that my mind is somewhere else.

Cold air and frosted branches only drive me deeper back into my own skin
As world sleeps I do too
Trying to cope with snow banks and the screeching halt of society
Frozen interstates and losses of power
Dependency on the structures of man
Fragility

So
it's not that the snow isn't beautiful
It's jus that my mind is somewhere else.

Strung out on the memory of summer
The way it felt to lie bare in the damp grass
Naked and open as they come
Spellbound by the nearness of everything I am trying to remember the heaviness of the humidity of that one night with those good kids
Trying to capture the feeling of the reeling of the gentle breath on my skin
Winter may last an eternity but heat changes everything
Light changes everything
And we are thankless in return
Sentiment
A pretty word for apathy

So
It's not that the snow isn't beautiful
It's just that I'm trying to find the words to tell you why I never tried to reach out
Why I left so early and why I showed up so late
I am trying to articulate exactly what I needed when you were right there next to me and I couldnt muster up the courage to say a single word
It's alright
I'm okay
It was beautiful
The heat
The light
the front seat of your car
The fullness of youth.
The grandeur of your version of life
It was beautiful but you and I both know that it wasnt substantial enough to survive
And they called me the romantic

So
The snow is beautiful
But so was last summer

And
It's difficult but
I want you to know that I don't take it for granted that
The light we chased is strong enough to divert me from the present beauty
I don't take you for granted
Even with all that's happened

So
The snow is beautiful
My mind is somewhere else
And you are still all that you were the day it all fell to pieces
Beautiful and ignorant
Naïve and well meaning
Frosted like the trees outside my window.

Quiet light in your old T-shirt
It isn't often that mornings make me this tender,
But here I am.
Constant contradiction of charisma and brine
Hooked on summer nights,
Humidity softens and sweat grounds us in the moment
Dark leaves and drunken hymns- I need the memories to remind myself that there were simple days.
Days when all that mattered was who had the lighter and who would start the first song off
I am braver now
(But that isn't saying much)
I still cower at the gentlest touch
Messes of men beneath my skin oil spills and construction sites all the walls I build to keep myself in
They weren't meant to keep you out,
Just to ensure that I didn't give it all before I was ready
But I don't think I am
Or will ever be for anyone
And are you thinking of me now? Wide eyed child running through the tangled woods
Tender open and naked
Innocence embodied in the humble request that I stay the night
We don't talk about that part of me anymore
We don't talk about those days anymore
We talk about tours and albums and lyrics and time
And it's good
Until it isn't fine
So here I lie in my grandmother's bed wondering where the hell it all went
Innocence
The simplicity of summer
The honesty of my skin
And if it all falls away
I'll figure out how to let quiet light back in.

Late days weighted heads and moonlight
crossed fingers filthy feet and new wine
I'm in love with every part of this
talk it up tell me you got a lot to say
walk me home unsteady from the heavy day
You've got me in right your prize fighter fist
Old hymns bug bites and middle school
play it off while you fail to keep your cool
I don't know what to say
God's grass I'm reborn into a family
baptized in longing when you look at me
We're all formed from the same unholy clay

and I stay up and bleach away the excess emotion
stomach sick from this heady new ocean
of wanting your fingers on my spine
I sleep late and let the dust collect
a new mystery special, a new set of dots to connect
the weight of wanting to call you 'mine'
but all I say when you ask
is 'thanks for asking I slept fine'

Early days light linen and black coffee
bedheaded and bruisin you caught me
right at the base of my chest
jeff gordon god and all his parlor tricks
morning breath bravado I'm already sick
trying to keep these feelings in check
You're five hundred and seventeen miles away
and I'm seven months from finding the right words to say
that I'm happier in the cracks of your teeth
Common senses debates time and distance
enamored by your subtleties and fighter's stance
you almost negate my unbelief

and I stay up and bleach away the excess emotion
stomach sick from this heady new ocean
of wanting your fingers on my spine
I sleep late and let the dust collect
a new mystery special, a new set of dots to connect
the weight of wanting to call you 'mine'
but all I say when you ask
is 'thanks for asking I slept fine'

This is the church of the crooked and fractured teeth
These are the hours slowed by lack of sleep
There is nothing underneath this breath
There is nothing but the body you left lying cold on the concrete
Isn't leaving sweet?
And I'm pouring out at 12am all the words I never said
Painting bottled affection to fog up your head
Hours without sleep lying in your bed
I loved this even then
Into the lazy hours
The nights when you picked flowers growing out from in between my ribs
Little light we sit and swig as I wash your feet
Intoxicated by the pleasant relief of you letting me down
I escape the room without sound only to write of nothing but you for weeks on end
And these nothings float up into the rafters and I wonder what comes after this absence of you
What I wouldn't do to tear back into you
Into the gaps of your teeth
I don't get the release anymore
I watch the moon move along my floor
As I Invision all the knots in my spine you whispered into
The black and the blue and the bruised
I'm not broken just used
But I still dream of you and how I would have abused the touch of your hands
I never belonged to another man but you
What's a girl to ******* do
But pour it back out again
And maybe you will
Maybe you will too
Maybe you will stay this time in my skin
Wonder what we might have been
If you would only descend again
The wanting never ends
And I am bruised cold over you
And for the way that we moved
And I can't hold up for much longer
The waves come back only stronger
And maybe for a little while
I'd let you come back around
And we'd tangle again a union of unholy sound
For this is the church of the crooked and fractured teeth
These are the hours slowed by lack of sleep
I don't get no release without my tongue in your cheek
I dunno it's just been one of those weeks
Just one of those weeks.

We are biproducts of the same dust we were made of when we first began to exist
All the tiny mechanisms firing inside of us sending flashes of light contrasting with motor oil and ****
And I wonder where you are
cutting in red from the despondant blue cascading and coexisting with the atmosphere surrounging you
and as you light up you tell me that it's true
that even though I may feel it I don't need you
But we both know that I do
So we're out smoking in the backyard
Blunt hanging from your mouth like the icon that you are 
Sinewy and strong
But your own breath chases itself away from you and the feeling isn't far
The feeling that this,
This is all we are: meter and rhyme
And lately I've become increasingly aware of the pale in my skin
The ever present blush the need and fear to let the light in
The way that the clouds align with your eyes but I still get burned
You're dripping ash on me laughing you tell me lesson learned
You cant ever hold what you earned
So you hold me instead
And it's quiet lines chasing cars down the street
All the boulevards align with your ease and my crooked teeth
You tell me to love them anyway
You tell me what to do even if you don't know what to say
And I can't ******* breathe anymore
The garden is closing in
Flashing lights of neon green corresponding with red and blue along the arch of your skin
Tear me in two
While I tear into you
It'll all feel fine.

And still I wonder at the feet of some strange Phantom Other
of all the crucifixes and hymnals I misplaced over all the years
Hands unknowingly raised I found myself in the midst of an embrace I was so firmly braced against
I set myself also against you
But is it odd that I see it hovering over you too?
I hope you feel it too.
And all the mistakes I made I keep quiet in the back of my pocket
To use as reasoning against all the ways I could ever let someone close again
When all I want is for someone to burst in and tell me I was worth it all in the end
Self loathing embedded into me like some cultural progression of an unholy procession of higher self
But all I ever wanted was to be one with myself
Instead of hating my own skin
And still the holy ghost hangs over it all quietly watching and projecting pictures of all the people I'd come to love
Happy in their holy havens safe from everything I feared
Everything I feared that had been hiding in my skin
And the countless Sunday mornings I spent observing others fall out seem so distant now when I'm finding church in my bathroom alone
Safe from sanity safe from my darker self
In this is the only purity I will know
May I never be as the winter snow
And it's taken years for me to write in honesty of all the friends I've lost and of my personal heroes who have fallen
But it will take me many more to portray my 40 days of wandering in the house of the lord
Because 40 became 60 and 60 stretches on until I find my footing again
And know the Phantom Other as friend
And learn to let the light fully in
Because I know that you know that I am not too far gone
I'm just learning to move on.

I was not built to contain affection
Burning blue in my viens
Late night ambition of being the one you think of in the early morning glow
Chasing your sleeved arms through my dreams
Warm
Uninhibited by nausea or fear
Falling free under the influence of fragile beginnings liberated by a fearless tongue I was not built to contain affection
Churning ocean of my stomach and trembling hands
The waves crash I'm maybe three steps away from collapse as I careen into you
This captivation of you
The way you breathe etched in to the margins of my wrists
The wordless refrain hangs hollow in my head: EYE CONTACT CASUAL CONNECTION EXPOSE YOUR WRISTS
I'm lost in the wonder of it all
I was not built for this
I was built to capture and release the swell of this ocean
I was made to fit into the small of your hand rather than hide in my own
I was not built to contain the multitudes of moments I needed to cross the gap between your skin and my own
I was not built to contain affection

maybe it was the light reflecting off the water that made it all feel surreal
the long drive the slow dive
the weight of unspoken want
we shed our clothes and bore our skin out into the night air
and we told you not to look knowing full well that you would anyway
but anyway
here's another night spent in proximity to another life
secreted away in city lights and manufactured stars
you lifted me over the fence just to carry me until morning light
pale
open
blunt.
vulnerable in the dark water
flash junk imagery of your hands on my waist
gold and black and crystalline in the low light from the parking lot
your visual stimulation an ever present hum in the background of the moment
we broke in just to break out of routine
six of us small thin and brittle in exposure
connected by the weight of unspoken want
just don't leave it for too long
and I told you not to knowing that you would
you looked and I fell and they laughed knowing it was the slow burn all along
and I know that on the ride home you'll wait for glimpses of my figure illuminated by break lights
and that I'll search for your arms in the darkened car
but for now it's the light reflecting off the water
and your iconic longing
the type that sets a lover into eternity in photographs and sighs
thin wrists and thighs
this is the long drive and the slow dive
and six feet under isn't so scary in a swimming pool
dark blue and numbing the weight fades away only to resurface along the arch of my spine
reignited by your hands cautious and thin
and the waves tumble in
reckless son sick coughing up blood like I need this
nervous soul set alight in the waining darkness
you'll catch me before they catch us
and I'll be the first to confess
that it was the weight all along
exposed and half dressed faded in the wave pool
the long drive the slow dive
the weight of want in your arms.

Pocket full of Marlboros I don't know when you started smoking
But I do know
That you still know me
Here on this darkened street corner
You still see me
And it scares me
That I could have pressed so much of myself into your hands
And that you didn't let it go
Even though the back of your hand is all I know
And I know that you know me
But is that enough to bring us back to the people we used to be?
On that sacred hill or in your old house in the city
Apathy isn't pretty
But I'd like to try it on for size
Somewhere inside of me in the darkness cries for all that we once were
That smoke doesn't hide you it just blurs the sadness in your eyes
The weight in your sighs.
(I'm not angry anymore, I'm heart broken)

I don't talk too loud when you're with me unless you **** me off
Running your **** mouth as usual about something I've said or done
But at the end of the day you're still my ride home
You're still my long sleeved skinny thighed glass tongued *******
Quick fade slow trip naked in the front yard
And though you were quick to slam the door
I still advocate for your movement: slight reckless and agile
But understand this:
Even in your leaving there is poetry
Even in your exit there is beauty
And no amount of it's profound meaning was lost on me: even when I'm open I need you.
So don't worry kid
even if you slow down or **** up I'll still be home to let you in
Yeah I'll let you in so we can ******* about existence or let the light out on our skin
You thawed sandwich bread on the patio
And I cleaned my bedroom floor
You talk it big and I'll never ask for more
And I know she broke your heart like she broke my heart running off with the wrong one once again
But if you drive me home I'll be your home and we can finally start to begin
Again
This is for sitting on our mother's floor
Again
This is for i40 and our weekly commute
Again
This is for the days we spent running only to run back home again
This is for love
And this is for you
And I'll love you, you skinny ******* until the fabric of the universe breaks beneath us
And I'll love you until you begin to love again
And after all this time
I Guess I need you.

I know that heaven will be a summer evening
And we'll be back ******* around on that hill overlooking the city
And all our past lives
Will be dust in the wind
And all that will matter is our hands in the grass
And the skyline before us
But now all we see is the war before us
The physical and the unseen
And we are being shipped off one by one to the battlefront
I wonder if when they cut your hair you will still think of me in the front seat of your car
I wonder if you will wish for me on some distant star
Or pray to some god to bring us back together as if fate hadn't been gunning for us at all
I wonder if when home is only a memory you will take the time to remember the streets we used to drive endlessly
up and down
And back and forth forcing time to talk in all honesty about our changes
I wonder if your change will change me
If we'll ever even meet again
If we'll ever even speak again
All in all, I know I will love you till the very end
Even if I only love the memory of the hopeless ******* you were swearing quietly in the church
Smile on your face like you had something to say
Hands in your pockets like you'd never go away
Heaven is a summer evening where we turn back time and it all gets reversed and we get to stay together in innocence for the rest of our eternity
In truth, I'm not sure every eternity would be enough to lie back and remember with you
Heaven is a place where I look at you and I tell you I love you and you feel it in full
Where every cancerous thought of destruction is removed from your body and you are free in spirit to be as I have seen you can be
Heaven is a place where you look into me
And I look into you
Honest
Open
And innocent.
And I have loved you for the duration of our never ending Now, but I hear the Fates call that our portion of time together is now Enough
And it hurts.
Because Enough will never be enough for me.
Because for me, Heaven is us
back ******* around on that hill overlooking the city
Heaven is your porch in the dead heat of summer
Heaven is almost burning down your father's field setting off fireworks on the fourth of July
Heaven, to put it simply,
isn't on earth yet
and it ******* hurts.
Goodbye ******* hurts when you have to turn the page from the most beauty you've ever see.
Goodbye ******* hurts when your friends tell you it'll all stay the same even when we're thousands of miles away and all you can do is smile and nod because you know,
You just know that it won't.
Goodbye
*******
Hurts.
And nothing makes it go away except surrender to our individual up and overs
Giving way to the void of 'what happens next' in the never ending Now
And I know that now.
So I will watch you ship off to fight your holy war and I will fight the war within me to fight the Change
Because the Change makes us whole
The Change makes us new.
The Change builds us into who we were meant to be in the darkened theater of life by tearing us down to our core
And your core is something terrible and wonderful to see indeed.
You were a beautiful mess of man
But you have greater things to do
And I do too
So for the goodbye for this never ending Now
I'll see you when we meet again.

I don't talk about it much anymore but you know you broke my heart
Not because we were in love
Because we weren't
But I loved you anyway
Not romantically speaking but in the way that sisters lie together in the same bed
Or like brothers hold hands when they're small
Innocent
I was innocent and so were you
But things change and I have too
I'm not the same anymore as when you stuck the knife in my back
I'm not the same as the kid who didn't know how to react when you tore into me numb on the cabin floor
No I'm not the same but somehow after all these years you are
And you can't keep hoping that someone is gonna become more than themselves for forever
You can't stay up waiting for the same response you've been waiting for for the past two years
And I've been here for the past two years
Hands folded staring numbly at you and your changing personas
Yeah you can change your hair but you can't change your color
You can't change your heart
So yeah I hang back when you walk in
Yeah I leave early and I show up late
And yeah I've written you over a hundred poems trying to sort out the knife you left in my back
But I know better than to talk about it
I know better than to look you in the eye and expect you to honestly look back
I don't talk about it but you ******* broke my heart
And you didn't even try