Love isn't blind,
blind are those,
who never loved.

someone's in the next room over
having *** while we
are weeping
what a way to mark the occasion
the day my fingers found a wound
you let someone else doctor
it's upsetting see
the bible in drawer next to us
the way our hands still
fit together
like the torn halves
of a love letter
the way you got
all dressed up like the rain
and how we couldn't tell
the difference in the shower
it was the longest hour and a half
spent crying
the hot water wouldn't give up
so why should we
right?
even though it was scalding
neither of us touched the ****
we knew this was supposed to hurt
your hair
a black mess against my shoulder
my fingers
oil in the vinegar of your hands
our bodies
the great divide
all the sobbing
a river runs through it
without the courage
to carry or **** us
so we step out
and drip dry
down to a mute breakfast
composed of quiet
and last nights liquor
as we came back in
there were people in our room
at first i thought them detectives
dissecting things
to see who had died here
i had forgotten this
was a hotel
and they were only
cleaning up after us
i wanted to stop them
plead
that the sheets were still perfect
that if they clean the bathroom
no one will know
what happened here
someone has to remember
"please
i know
these cigarette burns
by name
i will bury the faucet
let me take the tub
i don't care how
if i have to
i will drag it home by hand"

There was this girl, not knowing where she was going.
At all times she wandered, she tried to forget.
What the real world tasted like—she did not know.

Tell her about the songs the sky creates; she'd like that.
Tell her you'll rescue her when she starts to drown
in them; she'd bleed down your name and not care
about the mess she would make.
As if saving someone, who rather have you deluge them
with more rain, was an offense.

One daybreak, the eighth page of my history book went missing.
The next night it flew into my window glass,
and then landed safely on the isle of my hands. It read:
*            The past is behind.
            The future is ahead and may never arrive.
            Why would you believe in them?*

She used to say there's something calming whenever
darkness wraps up the woods. And the silence that comes after it.
And something blazing bright—a cabin.
Never trust cabins, she once said, burn them before they burn you.
I should have listened.

you're chugging wine at twenty-three
"i get nervous when you sit too close to me."
after a few, you touch my hand
pull me across the street, "i don't think you understand;
i don’t like the way you love,
shoulder to shoulder, i hate physical touch"
i lean on your bony arm and sigh
sinking beneath me, you’re afraid to die
i should've told you that when i come round
i like them tall, skinny, not afraid to drown

so tell me about those other girls,
was that last one your entire world?
did you float through her rivers, sail across her sea?
did she build you a boat out of your shoulder, neck and knee?
did you let her fingers run through your hair?
did you make contact besides a brown eyed stare?

well i too have a ship full of lovers,
they sing me songs, they pull me under covers
they touch my arm, my cheek, my thigh and lip
they fill the gap where you refuse to fit
i would kiss your face and let you drown
but you’d only let me if my hair were brown

I am sun-kissed and I glow in the moonlight,
my eyes reflect like water,
and summer makes me speckle and freckle
and I crave rivers and mountains
and other things that make me beautiful.

I am long-legged like the spiders you hate,
my hair is red like roses and smells like springtime,
I am soft in a way you imagine clouds to be
and I no longer fear you or the dark.

I have grown out of sidewalk cracks,
I am a ******* garden and you can't step on me anymore.

I am too tall to be contained and too beautiful to be detained
and I will never again haunt myself with things I couldn't be.

I am too much to be too little and somewhere you always knew it.

So when you talk to me like you think I still love someone who made me believe I was just an ugly girl,
remember that there are flowers growing inside me,
and I washed the taste of your sharp tongue out of my mouth months ago.

I am an ocean with waves and depths and storms and beauty and there is so much to me that you will never get to see.

You were an anchor weighing me down confining me to one stark place of myself,

I am so much more than you ever saw, I finally know this now.