I loved him and he loved poetry
he loved me and I loved the rosary
around his razor-nicked throat, I lit a candle for him
below the window, and I let him in
just as god told me not to, I let him in
through frosted windows and blood pacts
he found sick ways to keep my heart intact
guns and langer's lines, his lips and poisoned wines
he slid his hand into my pocket and took the church key
wrote about a girl with blue eyes and told me it was me -
and that night I had dream that he let me die
he let me die, just as god had told him not to, he let me die.

I am a challenge, your own personal jigsaw puzzle.
You scattered my pieces all over your dinner table, sorting them into rough edges and smooth centers, completing me slowly from the outside in, until one day you decided that your fingers were too worn to continue.
An incomplete project, counting it as a loss, of interest and time and space in your too small, already cluttered world.
A picture that could have been beautiful, a landscape of somewhere you had only dreamed of, but instead discarded as simply a silly distraction, something too childish for your mature mind.
You left me fragmented and dispersed, disorganized when you knew I needed everything to be in one place, together, whole.
You never finish what you start, and I knew that from the beginning. I just hoped I could be the one thing you stuck around long enough to solve.

Before I met you, I was a hurricane of a girl.

I was full of burning hot lava and made up of not just star dust but meteor showers.

I was the moon and the sun and every type of sky in between, the purple and blue of a whirlwind storm and the orange-pink hues of a tired day.

I could create waves as high as the boats that sailed my waters, then calm them just before they sank.

I could put every ******* natural disaster to shame with the power I held inside of my gut and my heart and my soul.

Now, I am the aftermath. I am the battered towns and the sunken dirt.

I am the cloudy night that conceals the evening lights and the defeated sea that seems to submerge into itself under the weight of the sinking sky.

I am composed of the residue of every catastrophe you have thrown my way, but underneath the rubble is the same girl from before, alive and whole and full of every great storm and tsunami tide the world has ever seen.

Start digging.

What I would give
To wake up next to you
Bodies tangled vines
Legs wrapping around backbone
Skin stained from the previous night's hunger
From eager lips
What I would give
To have you run fingers down my xylophone ribs
Every morning
Play me into routine
Sing each note that leaves my lips
Each breathless hello
Each half whispered stay
Each please don't go
What I would give
To know the exact shape of your palms
Have them folded into memory
Making home in the dimples of my back
In the curve of my spine
Not allowing for goodbye
Reading only welcome
What I would give
To run hands through your hair
Through the saltwater aftermath
Through sand dusted in from the wind
From a day spent in beach sun
What I would give
To bury myself in the vacant parts of you
And never leave
What I would give
To fall asleep next to your mumbling
Next to your 3am curiosity
With your breath against my ear
And toes weaved together like the silk from our bedsheets
What I would give
Is not enough to shrink the space between us
Is not enough to turn distance into nonexistence
But boy,
What I would give
To have you next to me

I would give everything from the arch of my soles
To my abundance of freckles
To be with you

In order to be with you
I would give
All of me.

When you capture a pinprick of light
And let it glitter in your hand
the seconds you can keep it burning
Are so much more precious
than
       what
comes
        after.

After months spent counting raindrops
On two panes of glass,
We met in a twisted café
full of young women
And I swallowed my tongue.
and hoped I could listen
To you talk
of the ropes round your hands
When all I needed was time.
of your dreams and your plans.
When I
      just
wasn't
       Fine.

I saw you cycle away.
The silhouette of you, black under streetlight.
Is my dreams every day.
       Yet a part of me knew
It was just
   a silhouette
     of you.
And id spent far too long
      chasing shadows.

The ghost of a dying flame is
Smoke that exists for a second.
    But it explodes into
          something
  Brighter.

I came to a fork in the road
I took it
for a few steps
then wandered back to where the road split
I wondered about the repercussions
how each affected life
finally I took the first
which lead me to my wife

Today I told a doctor that time heals all wounds
he said no that’s aspirin
and if  you have have allergies
you’ll need epinephrine

Today I told a priest that time heals all wounds
he said no that’s God
also prayer and hope wouldn’t hurt
if I was no fraud

Today I told a psychic that time heals all wounds
he said to get a reading and I’d be fine
and he’d throw in a magic ball
for only $9.99!

Today I told myself that time heals all wounds
as I looked in the mirror staring my body down
It better I whispered
because in this pain I soon will drown