If I were her and she were me,
perhaps nothing would be different
about that time the two of us met.
We would each assume with a touch of pity
that the other was adorably naive
in her opinion of you and her together.

If I were her and she were me,
she would find three strands of my hair tangled in your sheets
and her chest would sting with regret as she hashed and rehashed
every imagined detail that began to crystallize.

If I were her and she were me,
she would not be able to look at you for very long at all
without the consuming thought of
you looking at me (in an identical or different fashion)
bleeding in.

If I were her and she were me,
she would never touch the subject,
never approach it, never cross it;
instead, she would let her heart fill up with you anyway,
and I would be smart.

My names twenty two
and these are the things I never said.

The telephone wires above my roof always remind me of the nights where we'd lay on our backs on the roof of your old Ford and just look out at stars
nothing but love between us.
The storms outside remind me of our fights
beautiful, and desructive.
And the pillow I lay my head on reminds me of your chest
soft, quiet, and a holder of secrets and makeup smudges.
That pin you gave me when i first told you that I was suicidal I still wear sometimes to remind myself that you loved me once.
That you loved me once like
stars in the sky
eternal and never ending.
that you pledged your life to me at a mere seventeen years..
I still love you you're still my star
and
I could tell you twenty two reasons why you're beautiful
as I puff out smoke signals to try to make you come back to me and just hear me out
if you tell me twenty two reasons why you left me
In the noon of the day
as if
the stars were too much for you?
Did i shine too bright or not enough?
Where we ever forever or did i believe too strongly in us.
Regardless
my name,
is twenty two
and
You made me the happiest girl in the world.
full of spring flowers
and April showers

Because on the twenty second you told me you loved me.

I hate how empty I am
because I thought
I had the universe inside of me

but I cried all the black holes out of my veins

the volcanoes inside of my rib cage erupted when you told me you loved me but didn't want me and
the lava flooded out, burning my skin alive and hardened me until I
couldn't close my eyes to sleep

I had stars in my brain
shining bright
but I've burned them all
with all the drugs I've been taking
just to burn you out of my mind

the garden growing at the bottom of my stomach is dead because it seems to be that I can't water them with alcohol  

I had the sun above my head always following me but it's been covered by the gray clouds with no rain making my thoughts turn into darkness

I had the planets at the tip of my tongue but you took them all away with you

leaving me with just myself

I was everything
and then I met you
and you were everything

but now you're gone with all of me
and now I can't find myself in this universe that I thought once was all mine

j.f

last seen with mass amounts of tenacity,
bright eyes that glow whenever she talks about the moon,
she's just as loquacious as bodacious, and always seen with friends (a pixie, a well-dressed waif, a girl who speaks the language of skeletons and blood). she's deeply enamored with a certain mexican grill, and often writing or taking a nap on public transportation, or smiling really widely while texting certain person(s) unnamed... also, she knows a hell of a lot about pokemon and the way the human heart works.
oh, and her laugh--you'd notice it. when she laughs you just know something's hysterical

where is she now?

she's a little reclusive
her smile's a little restrained
she stares too often at hourglasses and writes fervently in a leatherbound tome given to her on her 17th birthday.
she's waiting for the storm to pass but for now she's writing about it
don't tell the news i told you this though, cause i know they'll find her and force her to feel better as soon as possible. just give her this clock necklace and put it around her neck and tell her that time heals all things, she's learned this before.
tell her to eat some sour gummy worms and go to bed earlier, and stop feeling so sorry, to listen to a little less john mayer.
tell her it's okay to miss ghosts and that it's okay to wish to not be alone.
tell her to call tonight a night and stop rereading old stories or knocking on enemies' doors.
tell her that it'll be okay (even though she already knows it will)
and i promise you-
this is but the fairy tale trail of breadcrumbs that will bring you the old girl back.

I wondered for the first time today
about the man that will capture your heart,
like I never could.

You'll meet him at some Friday night party
in a dim living room among wafts of pale gray smoke
and stale vapors from a shared hookah.

Some morning later, when lights stab your eyes,
and every sound tosses your stomach, you'll scramble
for scattered clothes, twisted and turned,
inside-out: your heart, confused and excited.

You'll say it was all unexpected, unplanned—a flight unmanned.
I'll hug you like a friend, and I'll mean it when I say
something vague about being happy for you.

At some white-clothed table, sheltered away
from twisting hips and unkempt ties,
I'll slide my fingers down condensation
of an abandoned, unfinished drink.
I'll look at you, and we'll recount the nights,
circa summer 2008, on my bedroom floor
and hanging from monkey bars,
dreaming of cool ocean nights and Hollywood lights.
And I'll pray he will love you like that.

i always thought
you were thru traffic
that you were just jet lag
background noise
the kiss in the rain
i've never had
but what if you aren't?
what if this
was the thousandth time
i have loved you?
what if this is just a fresh coat of paint?
what if god
keeps a handkerchief
soaked in the day we met
next to his bed?
maybe theres a reason
i reach for no one in bed
the way i would
if someone used to be there
you know, they say
the road behind us
is littered with things
we couldn't hold onto
i wonder how many times
you've slipped through my hands
like hour glass sand
do you know
how much erosion you've caused?
i heard cupid
stopped keeping count
of how many times
we came together
just to come apart again
maybe it was just a rumor
it makes me think
about how many times
i've almost had you
like if all this talk
about history repeating itself
endlessly replaying is true
i wonder how many times
things have happened already
like the time
i tried talking you
into loving me back
back fired
or the time i could have sworn
jesus & lazarus were playing chess
with my heartbeat
but it was only you smiling
how many times
have i tried to tell you
how many times
have you read this poem
how many times
have i tried not to meet you
in my dreams anymore
it's like sleep tries to warn
me of what's happening
before it does but
i keep having this dream
where i tell you bedtime stories
and each one
is a different way you die
and in every one
i can never save you
it's like you're this song
i have on repeat
and every time it starts over
i forget the words
it's like you picked up the book entitled "us"
and the back cover
said you'd leave
so you never bothered reading it
tell me you aren't
going back in that bookstore
just to do it again
or will you tell me tomorrow?
or is this the time
you don't say anything at all?
if this has all happened before
if we call it quits
before we begin
again
from the beginning
i just want to ask you
to be my fire
because i am tired
of these old lives
and i'd like to see them
burn

i always seem to be sitting
in the middle of intersections
like a traffic light that hasn't
hung itself yet, always
seem to be waiting in the
middle of the ghost town
of where our love was first
built. there's a hospital
down the road where the
waiting room chairs are
much more morbid than
the hospital beds and
every electric heart rate
line sitting on the screen
of the heart monitors flatten,
make long beeping sounds
like an alarm clock, like a
wake up call; they make
long beeps like the ringing
i hear inside of the phone
when i call the owner of
the voice mail i've seem to
have made a home out of.
they took every place
we kissed and turned it into
a church that closes on
Sundays and holds a choir
full of people that lost their
voice in their own war. i've
been in the line for the
confessional for about two
years now because every
time i go up to say how
badly i want you to feel it
back, i let the girl wearing
your t-shirt cut in front of
me. the sidewalks only
seem to crack when they
remember how it felt
when you walked on them,
when you gave the ground
its purpose. one of these
nights the traffic lights will
come to their senses,
drop into the intersection
and crumble right next to me
because it's not like they have
anything to stop or at least
slow down because this is
a ghost town, & nothing is coming back.