Everyone you have lost is gone forever.  
If you try to call the dead, the phone won’t ring.
You won’t hear their voices.
The ground will shake like your wrists.
You will realize this sometime, when you’re in the bath and every nerve in your body is screaming at you to put your head under and count to a thousand.
You are more than a suicide note.
You are more than a suicide attempt.
You are more than cuts and bruises, and friends that abandon you and don’t even say hello in the hallways anymore.
People will leave you, daughter. People will leave you alone and shaking.
You’ll find solace in the most unexpected places, in the boys that look like they belong in the 1970s and in the vinyl that whispers to you while the sun is going down.
Eventually you will find the people that will bend the sky down to you so that you can touch the clouds.
They will become your motivation, they will become the glow in the dark stars on your bedroom ceiling.
You will forget that they are plastic, and often mistake them for the night’s sky.
Memories do not always hurt, it’s okay to be nostalgic but do not drown in it.
Do not drown in anything but love, daughter.
Love every leaf, every lover’s vein.
And every single time you think you’re going insane.
You’re not.
Remember that the door is always closed, but always easily opened.
Remember that you can leave.
Remember that you can take the next flight out, start a new life.
Remember that the world is in your piano hands.
You’ll meet someone and call them love because they don’t know the difference between the dull and sharp edge of a knife.
You’ll write poems.
Lots of them.
You’ll write enough poems to fill the walls in all of the rooms in all of the houses you have ever lived in.
You’ll scrawl them on the tree stumps you find temporary homes in while walking in the forest.
You’ll engrave them on someone’s bones after they tell you that they would rather die a thousand deaths than go a second without your energy warming their cheeks.
For every accomplishment, erase five shortcomings from your mind.
Be yourself before you forget who that is.
Be, daughter, be who you want to be;
Be who you know yourself to be.
When the world is sleeping on your shoulders at 4 in the morning, don’t wake it up.  
Take a deep breath, rock the earth into a deeper sleep.
Tell the walls your secrets because they don’t whisper.
Don’t tell anyone with a tongue something you wouldn’t want to end up floating back out of their mouths like a catchy song.
When you’re standing up on stage, waiting to start your poem, do not avoid eye contact.
Make everyone nervous with your metaphors.
Make everyone nervous with your passion.
You are the strongest soul you’ll ever be.
And when I die, shall we not meet again,
Remember that I am your mother, daughter.
And mothers, *always know best.

Can we get much higher than this?
When all I can hear over the old dial up phone you use is the sound of nicotine exhales
and big sighs caused by silences I am too scared to fill.
Can we love any more than this?
I can hear you humming the song that's spinning and it makes me love you more.
You laugh at my nervousness, how I twitch when you say my name.
I always ignore you because I'm scared you'd say goodbye.
Can we get more tired than this?
Four am, your favorite albums crooning me to sleep.
Could you be more mistaken?
You thought I was scared of your darkness, of the shadows beckoning to you from every corner of
homes you did not own, and people you did not really know... yet.
I have a permanent dent in my ear from piercings that were too heavy for my fragile skin,
and everytime I run my fingertips over it, it reminds me of you.
You are bent but never broken, never broken.
Can we get more distant than this?
It's been months since I could honestly say that I thought you loved me.
So many miles, so many miles, so many



miles...
You're 874 kilometres away from me.
You are universes away from me.
And now everything tastes like goodbye.

Before you get lost in the unfinished maps of her veins
the ones like yours, but not stitched up too many times to count on the ticks of a clock,
make sure that she trusts you enough to tell the truth.
Make sure that she loves you enough to know how you lie.
Remember that every single time you open your mouth, she's wishing
you're saying I love you.
Remember that on Fridays she doesn't want to cook.
And she sure doesn't want you to cook anything that was slaughtered.
Remember that she prefers cheap whiskey over champagne.
And when you're opening your ribcage to show her how fast your heart beats
when she grabs your wrists, make sure the butterflies are set free.
Make sure they find the window.
Make sure they find a home.
Remember that every living creature is just that, living.
Remember that they have a heartbeat.
And when you stop breathing when you see her with her hair down,
when you're thinking about starting a religion about girls with flowers for eyes,
tell her she's beautiful.
Tell her she's so full of the future.
Get her a telescope so you can show her the moon when it's bigger than both your thumbs.
Take her skiing while it's Summer in Australia even though you curse the snow as if it
were born out of wedlock.
Let her know she's not the first but she's definitely the only, and you're so scared of dying.
You never know what you have until it's locked firmly in your grasp as if to not let it run away.
You might lose a lot of blood but you'll never lose your way home.
I don't want to hear the dial tone.
I want to hear your voice, I want to hear you scream.  Tell me to leave.
Tell me that I am the only road that leads you to a purpose.
That in a world of blindness I am so technicolour.
Even though I can't promise you that, I can give you my words, thrusted from my lungs
like wildfire.
Searching for the way out.
Talk to me about religion, please please convince me that there is something out there other than
rotting in the ground for all of eternity.
Bible scripture doesn't whisper of your lips like my pillows do.
I never really thought about pillow talk until they started speaking me to sleep.
I find myself found by the curvature of your spine, of the shadows that take up residence on your shoulders like they have lived there all along.
I want to kiss away every bit of pain that has ever stopped you from smiling at strangers
and let you know that I'm coming home and I will always find your hands.
Let your ribs shake when your heart has had enough.
Let them shake.
Let the rain come through your window while you're sitting there in your makeshift darkroom.
You are the only thing I know about consistency.
And before I get lost in the unfinished maps of your veins,
I will be making sure they lead to me.

Love letters to every person who has ever seen the stars as someone's freckles:

1. You were afraid to love him.  It was okay, he did not know much except for demanding what he wanted despite the word "no".
I want you knowing that you deserve better than half *** apologies and snowstorms for white blood cells.

2. She was your first girlfriend.  Her hair reminded you of your mother's curtains in the living room.  Burgundy.  
She loved you but she had to go, I bet you wish you never hung that rope in your basement.

3.  Everything was set on fire, even your lungs.  You started finding ashes everywhere but in your shoes.  Walk away
before she gives you a new meaning for saying grace.

4.  By now you've had enough of religious boys.  And Oh My God, how your hips felt like heaven.
This is all ******* and he always went to church hungover.

5. This time you've forgotten how to sleep without his breath in your ear.  I think his name was Noah or something like that.
It was ironic how he didn't have two dogs, two cats and oh yes, that's right.  He had two lovers.

6.  You went crazy with him, he was so full of water.  You thought you'd drown when he touched you, and you did.

7.  You were so pale that I thought you were dying.  This is a letter to myself to remind me to never fall in love with a boy who cares
more about putting his cigarettes out in public ashtrays than asking me how I take my coffee.
He was extra surprised to learn that I was vegan and only drank water when we sat in cafes.

Lungs burning with affliction, no prayer can help you realize that you are on fire.
Help me, open my ribcage and read the encryption that is my heart.
This is where my ideas form; this is where the magic happens.
This is where trees become homes when I turn to prose.
This is where love becomes tangible.
Take the helm from my chest cavity and steer me home.
Sew me back up and pretend you didn’t figure out how my mind works from studying my heartbeat.
You can keep my memories there, keep my stanzas there.
But you cannot lock up an idea.

Do you realize that every single time you open your mouth I’m wishing I could have a lobotomy?
I don’t want my brain to miss you when you leave.
I don’t want my heart to miss you when it realizes that it no longer beats in sync with yours.
You can take yourself away from me.
You can make me cry so the salt water stings my face like it’s a burning map.
You can take my poems from my veins and scatter them in the river.
But you cannot lock up an idea.

Oh Captain my captain, I think we are going down.
But everyone is just an arm’s length from drowning.
When life preservers are anchors and every single thing is whispering for you to sink.
The Bermuda triangle is just another place where sailors go to pray and what kind of god ***** you in and tests you with a tempest?
You and I are so much more than child’s play.
Tell me to stay.
Tell me my ideas do not belong on the ocean floor.
Because you cannot lock up an idea.

If the sun shines through your blinds, think of me.
Think of the morning.
But without all your leaving.
Don’t think of the bags packed, of the plane tickets bought.
Of the ferry setting off its horn for you in the middle of the night.
Think of the morning.
Without all your leaving.
With the coffee, with the metaphors that were leaking through the walls as you blinked.
You wanted to keep them for yourself, hold them hostage in your bones.
But you cannot lock up an idea.

So next time you think of leaving, think of taking the ferry across the ocean.
Next time you think of whispering my secrets into the waves that kiss the rocks like they are not hurting anyone, think of me first.
Without the poems.
Before I even started writing.
Remember how I chased butterflies and the sunset.
How I begged you to let me climb up on the roof to watch the sun rise again.
Remember that my ideas are my prayers to a god I have not yet found in the curve of your spine.
Remember that I want nothing more than to not have to miss you.
Remember that every time you dismiss my words, my art, my need to chase the sunset; you are diminishing my creativity.
Remember that you cannot lock up an idea.