A piece of my heart will always be locked away in your chest cavity
I started using words like chest cavity when I met you
Because you taught me how to face reality head-on with all it’s porousy entropic beauty
But now I’ll speak in metaphors because the truth hurts too much when it’s unveiled

I tumbled into you tripping over my own feet and my own past and scrabbling at your amorphous grip until you became my solid paperweight
My edges held carefully into place with leaden stability
And we reached such great heights together, skipping two steps ahead of everyone else
We whispered forevers under shadows of lashes and I still believe in the power of a first true love

I want to dig under my skin and scrape out the indifference and pour salt into the raw, deeply-seated pain
I built you and held your heart and our souls intertwined
I began to unwind
I frayed because I am no saint
And I ****** with a heart that I cherished
And **** me.

I’ll leave an empty page at the end of our final chapter
--the one I never thought I’d reach.

Maybe in time we’ll scrawl in an epilogue
Between honey sweet days on a tapestry in Saratoga
Woven like loops of a three ring notebook
A convoluted beginning met a harsh end.

We swam into the deep end
Sputtering and gasping for oxygen
Our lungs ¾ full and drunkenly heaving
To the beat of spoken word and Astronautalis.
I spanned my globe with you, measuring pieces of my soul like sugar cubes
In careful bits, we rationed out our hearts
Bartering for love through semisweet jaded eyes.

Your head in my lap on a Central Park afternoon
Your words imprinted on my neck, wrists, back, *******
Our fingerprints sealed together
I’ve never been more naïve.
So glad I didn’t die before I met you.

she says she likes to be alone
until she’s seated at a marble counter,
pitting open a grapefruit and
smiling fondly at its pinky-orange nectar,
refrigerator hum echoing
in the dimly empty house,
she welcomes the acidic trickle
seeping into her day-old papercuts,
her slurps rudely remind her that she is human
and cannot become unhinged
because bones are nothing
if not persistent

Hunched spines slouched with an air of indifference against backs of rigid chairs
Anxious toes tapping on linoleum floors
A generation of Attention-Deficit-addled youth, subdued with medication because they think our eyes dart too quickly
Minds fluttering more rapid-fire than individual thought can account for
             What is “unique” when everything stems from mimicry?
We think ourselves philosophers (only because we’re naïve enough to make assumptions like that)
All that our naked minds can bear is a sliver of the reality we suffocate in
We reject conformity by conforming
We discard typecast by creating stereotypes
We critique and self-doubt and are relentless in our own auto-denigration
Yet still, we see ourselves as infinitely superior
              Because we’re the sum of earth’s 3 billion year journey
              We’re the product of every galaxy and star-birth
              We’re a shred of every molecule of humanity
              We’re the chosen ones, we’re evolution.
We’re ragged, fraying edges
The living definition of a walking contradiction; hypocrisy in motion
Our pens are still doodling in the margins of our notebooks
We march to a syncopated beat with heads held high but eyes cast low as we count our steps and avoid stepping on cracks
Our heels drag with the showmanship of nonchalance but the eagerness in our fingertips betrays us
We’re all just kids caught in the purgatorial limbo of high school
We’re all just trying to pretend that we’re more than we are
We’re mostly hoping that someday we’ll prove our parents right

Rules disintegrate between midnight and when dusk hits horizon

Ask someone, anyone, to run away with you. I dare you. See if they’ll say no
Shrouded with the gentle miasma of sleep just out of reach, a half-step towards the unknown doesn’t seem so risky
Only when the sky is swathed in dull orange does logic start to kick in, 70 miles from home with nothing but a broken compass and a fond companion

Spit bitter regrets at a nameless former lover
The one who scoured every inch of your body and eagerly delved in every crevice of your fragile heart before you even knew the true definition of naiveté
Naiveté: (noun) the scared, nostalgic hands that innocently cling to a forgotten yesterday while prodding us towards the blind plunge of tomorrow

Declare love to that unrequited forbidden fruit
Sleepy vulnerability cracks away at the protective walls we build
Besides, what could the ramifications possibly be when come morning, faintness of memory won’t be able to distinguish fantasy from reality?
So seize the opportunity; be horribly candid and nakedly honest
Feel the transience of the night and relish the fleeting moments that rest between your fingertips.

You came like wildfire
Indistinguishably incendiary
Struck my butane skin
With phosphorus fingertips

Clouded myopic eyes
Saw the ashes to ashes
Flushed lackluster lips
Whispered dust to dust

What you left me with:
A collection of burnt bridges
A drawer of regrets
A heart of hieroglyphics