the tears began to flow when you least expected them, making an unwanted, unwarranted appearance. they caught in your eyelashes faster than you could blink them away, glistening silently like dew drops on daisies or rain on the roses your grandfather planted in his garden when you were just a little girl. they flowed in steady, shimmering lines down your face; tiny hands seeking to wash away the makeup left on your cheeks after a long day of battling the world. they connected each freckle and finally settled into a crystalline pool on your knees. weak. vulnerable. nothing.

accept those tears with grace. smile, though you can taste the salt on your lips. you are worthy of more and worthy of much. you are a daisy, nodding its head to the sky, fed from the dew drops that laid so heavily on your petals. you are a rose, reverently tended to by a worn set of kind hands. you are a flower, created to bloom for no one less than the sun. wipe your tears and begin your journey.

do you know what hurts?
do you know what eats away at you
until you've been completely consumed?
leaving someone.
leaving someone you love.
leaving someone you care for so deeply
that the simple act of walking away seems to rip your heart in two.
leaving someone whose entire existence shaped your life
for one year,
two years,
ten years.
maybe you know that the life attached to him
wasn't the life that was best for you.
maybe that's why you're ending things.
maybe it's not.
it hurts and it tears and it burns,
but the one glimmer of hope to hold onto in the midst of all this pain
is found within a quick smattering of words.
they slip out before he's thought about them.
the saltwater they're mixed with only makes them stronger
and the gasping breaths they float away on only send them quicker to your ears.

                                               'i still want you in my life. i have to have you in my life.
                                                 even it it's just as a friend. you're the only one i've got.'

do you know what hurts?
do you know what re-ignites the pain
that sunk its teeth into you the day you had to say goodbye?
it's the moment he realized you weren't coming back.
the moment he realized you weren't wrong.
the moment he realized that the golden days of
******* you
were really and truly over.
after that enlightenment, friendship didn't matter,
history didn't matter,
you didn't matter.
suddenly, he didn't see any reason for you to be in his life at all.
you were far from best friends.
you cried and you bled and you mustered the courage
to be selfish for once in your life,
to let go for once in your life,
only to realize that you were nothing but a placeholder.
nothing but a body.

that's what hurts the most
and what will never stop hurting.

i may not always be in tune or time,
but i sure as hell
don't need two lines of coke
or one too
three too
five too many shots
to make me
feel the music coming from my lungs.

what does a poet write about when the skies are blue?
when the war is over, the storm has passed,
the water sits as still as a painting on a gallery wall?

what does a poet write about when sticky summers
turn into crisp, cool autumns?
when garish winters make way for the flowers of spring?

what does a poet write about when the holes in her soul
have been delicately stitched by a steady hand?
when a gentle heartbeat beneath her ear
closes her eyes at night and opens them in the morning?

of course the poet writes on.
day after day the words still find their way onto blank pages,
the urge still fills her chest to bursting,
desire still guides her pen across the lined paper.

only when the poem comes to its close does she notice that
'love' changed from past tense into present
somewhere in the cursive loops and dotted i's.

yours are the only eyes
i want to see
- half open and misty with sleep -
when the sun peeks through the curtains
to remind us
that the window is still open
and our clothes are still on the floor.

i was relieved when i found that the pillows on your bed
could soak up the heat that stained my cheeks
when i woke up and realized that there was nothing my fingertips
would rather do than map out freckle constellations
and count the wrinkles around your eyes.

and so we write.

we write words filled with sadness;
words that flow from our pens like trails of salty tears
from beneath closed eyelids.
we write words bursting with joy;
words that appear on the page
in brilliant cascades of blue ink.

words that speak of love.
words that speak of loneliness.
words that speak of unfathomable bliss
and unimaginable pain.
words that no one wants to hear.
words that we wish would be heard.

onto clean sheets of paper,
we release the words that have scarred us -
words that have cut their way
through layers of skin and muscle and bone
and burrowed deep into our being.

we transcribe our innermost thoughts.
we describe our innermost desires.
we inscribe our stories onto countless pages
declaring,
'i may not be much,
but, i am here.'