One
Hello, it's nice to meet you.

Two
I've been meaning to say
How I love the way you look when you're
Tired
On the train home and at your desk
And I think I could help wake you up

Three
You look good in that shirt
Hello, yes I'm right here
And I don't mean to stare but
That shirt
Matches your eyes when the sun hits them through the window

Four
Do I know you? Have I met you before...no.
Are you sure?
Because when I look in your eyes as you breeze past me
My breath catches as if there's still one string attaching us
Together

Five
I miss you.

I smoked a cigarette once,
Twice
Maybe three times.

I do not crave one now,
Even when I have nothing else to crave.
But,
Sometimes I wish I did,
Perhaps then I would know what it was like to need something, someone.

I smoked a cigarette once,
Twice,
Maybe three times.
And I wish that I never had.

Midnight
I climb into bed and wonder,
What are you doing in your room so far away?
I hide under the fabric hoping that my thin sheets can keep the
Monsters
Away from me, I don’t like it when you are.

1 am
I switch sides, hoping for a new perspective,
As if this wall will lull me to sleep better than the last did.
My skin itches, remnants of old Laundromat detergent,
Irritating me, making me cringe as I squeeze my eyes shut
Again.

2 am
I count the ceiling tiles, starting from the door.
If I can’t have the answers to the important things,
I might as well get the answers to everything else.
Right?
There’s 24.

3 am
My phone buzzes and I trip trying to reach it.
It just the boy from last night
I roll over, pretend it was you.
You told me you loved me, and kissed me before you left,
I climb into bed and wonder,

What are you doing in your room so far away?

Each night I await the moment of darkness,
With the flick of a switch I am
Awake.

In the light I find that I must be
Attentive
Talkative
Active
Responsive
Robotic.
Surrounded by nothing of interest or consequence except for the rest of the world

In the darkness I am awake, finally
Alone
With myself with my thoughts and I think,
I think about everything.

The darkness does not critique my silence
The darkness does not scoff at my wandering thoughts
I am awake, for the first time in hours,
When the rest of my world sleeps.

April 27th, 2014

Five days, 120 hours, 72,000 mins, 432,000 seconds

I count until I see you next.

40 days, 960 hours no -

I forget how long since I last did.

4, 3, 2, 1 day

24 hours until your body touches mine for the first time in what feels like forever

He drives.

I stare at myself in the mirror touching my face my hair my skin

Will you know me?

Of course even strangers know love,

But who is stranger after all these days

I do not know

He drives.

I pace, back and forth like a ceaseless wave crashing

Through doors unlocked waiting and I wonder -

What is it you think of on those long stretches of highway?

Me, I hope

In a tunnel, my eyes like a clear light at the end

And I tell myself you did not think of me when you

Crash.

He drives,

Right into me, right into my soul;

I dream it, I must because I know you're not here, you're not in the tunnel you are

Nowhere

Everywhere

I wake,

In sweat and tears your body next to mine for what feels like the first in forever

May 5th, 2014

3 days, 72 hours, 4,320 minutes, 259,200 seconds

You have been home and yet

I still have the nightmare

Terrorized

By the idea

Of you not being

Mine.

I am a woman.
I am a daughter and a lover and a friend -
I am a student, a poet, but not just
         the body I occupy,
I am much more than the photo on the wall.

I am the laugh traveling down the hall
I am the pull of a memory as you walk by our spot
I am the beat
                of your heart
                              as you hear my words

And I will still be, even when I am not.
   mute, but echoing
   invisible, but lingering
   gone, but so far from forgotten,

Because I will not let myself become just a name on a yellowed sheet of paper -

I am the stars and the rain and the dust in the beam of sunlight streaming in your window and I,

I am human, and so I will always
                                                         be.

It's not my fault,
That the winters are cold and the summers slip so seamlessly through our fingers
When the wind whispers through our hair and into our ears
I do not lift a finger
And as the blades of grass send shivers down your spine
I do not sweat or fluster
I cannot blush when you tell me that my eyes match the blue of the sky for
I did not choose them
And just how I did not teach the birds their song,
I did not teach myself to love you

I did not choose to see the way the sun creates a glimmer in your eye
I did not force the smile upon your face as you look across the land we lie on
And I certainly did not
Choose
Force
Make
You leave when you leaves turned to brown
And fell to then ground like my lips when you kissed them for the last time.
Just as we cannot stop the seasons from changing,
I cannot change how I feel about you.

It's thundering a lot,
And I'm wondering a lot,
Why whenever the lightening strikes
I think about the first time we kissed.