You are everywhere
And everything
And I miss you.

I knew you were
Too good to be true.

Like a sunflower
Turning its head to follow the sun
I turn my gaze
Across this world
To follow the smiles

I've always said you were my sun
And I stand by that,
Ves como nada puede tocar el sol?
So I always wondered how I,
Your lowly earth,
Could have done so much damage.
And that's when I realized
I'm not earth.
I never have been.
My soul has always been a fire's greatest enemy
Fluid.
Capable of drenching you to the bone.
I don't know how I missed it
You can even see it in my eyes
My soul flows like the blood in my veins
Like rivers through the country side
Like the water from the firefighters' hose.

Always moving
Always adapting
Slowly changing those things with which it has
The most contact.

Once
When I was a kid
My dad and I were walking and
We turned down a street that had the setting sun
Directly in my eyes.
I asked my dad to curse it.
He told me
We can't do that, for
Without the sun
We'd cease to exist.

Now
I sometimes find myself wishing to curse you
And I find myself
Unable to do so.

If I'd never had you
I don't know who I'd be.

Day one,
Hour three
I don’t know you
You don’t know me
But I already have a question.

It went downhill from there
Questions coming as fast as the seconds passed leading up to my parents
Departure.
You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you said I could count on you
And then you let me follow you home
Like the lost puppy I was.
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into
When I said
Let’s be friends.
Because now all I want to do is trust you
When all my head says is keep it to myself,
Baby, I came here with more than just clothes in my baggage.
But I can’t keep myself from saying too much
And I can’t keep you from saying too little
And I can’t keep myself from wanting to save you.
When I need to save myself.
Because I can’t do this
Again.

I’m supposed to forget my past
But her words were dragons that continue to rear their heads
At inopportune moments.
For every question I ask you, I ask myself fifteen more
And the answers?
Well they’re with the slippers I forgot to pack.
I’m in love with a bunch of letters.
Little pieces of paper that make me nauseous just to look at.
Words that used to mean the world are now just contradictions.

So please don’t ever write me a letter
Because I’ll take that to mean you’re leaving me too.
I know her actions don’t have anything to do with you
But my past isn’t gone
It’s just been put on a shelf
Somewhere else.
And I’m trying so hard to forget where.

You deserve more than this.
You deserve more than the cheesy clichés and the useless words.
You deserve more than the part of my past I won’t tell you
And the rubble that I’m left with.
And for you I want to be more.

I’ve given you my heart on paper multiple times before
I want you to know
That for you, there is no door.
Forget my shoulder,
Let my lend you my spine.
And please if you ever need it,
Let our fingers intertwine.

Friend,
I want to be your windowsill.
I want you to know I’ll always be there,
For you to put your crap on.
I want you to know you can open up my head and look inside and rummage around for a while
If for some bizarre reason you would ever want to that.
I don’t know why you would ever want to do that…
But anyway.
I want to be the notebook that you can write your secrets in
And know no one will ever find them.
I want to be the magic eight ball that you turn to for help
And that has the courage to tell you what you don’t want to hear
Because I know you need to hear it.
I want to be that sticker you put on your wall.
You don’t always look at it,
But you know it’s always there.
Most importantly though,
I want you to think of me as a bottle of glue.
It doesn’t matter what you throw at me,
I’ll always stick with you.

You became my sun.
So easily and quickly.
You’ve always been one to light up a room,
And when this started up again,
My heart was empty space.

But even before I saw you again
You were so intense
Even if only in your mystery.

Mystery…that sounds more like the moon.
But I always kind of imagined myself as a moon
More in the background,
Coming out to play once those who shone had gone to bed,
Changing faces throughout the phases
Never able to decide who I was
Only sometimes disappearing.
The moon – always perceived as cooler and calmer,
An esoteric symbol of reflection and transition,
In a constant competition with the sun,
But with you I have changed.

You tell me I am sassier than sassafras,
An unambiguous product of the land,
And that I keep you grounded.
Does that make me your earth, my love?
Benefitting from your warmth,
You melted my ice caps when I was numb to the core.
Growing from your glow,
Your light refracts,
Illuminating,
You brought to life the parts of me that were forgotten,
Allowing the caged soul to sing.
No matter how I stand, I can feel your presence,
Even when you’re far away,
Enveloping me, encouraging me
Your heat preserved in my atmosphere,
My very aura.
With you, I have become my best self.

The attraction is tangible,
Me pulled towards you, you pulled towards me,
An everlasting orbit,
A never-ending dance.
One without the other,
Just doesn’t make sense.

You are my sun.
I might be your ground.
In any galaxy,
Any universe,
I’d want you around.

It’s funny,
How meeting someone new,
Can redefine a concept
You thought you knew.

I was doing so well
Holding myself upright
And then I tripped and fell
For you.

"x" is just a broken "l"
Split down the middle
And hanging on by a thread.

She doesn't inspire poetry.
She demands song instead,
The way a breeze calls forth a melody
From a glass bottle's rounded lip.

You’re still here.
Every day, you’re still here.
I broke up with you but apparently that changes nothing now.

Some days you make me so mad I have to leave the room
And some days I leave the room because
All I want to do
Is kiss you

When will this stupid feeling go away.
Can I ever stop loving you?
This isn’t fair.
To either of us.
And now she’s involved.
Someone else is falling in love with me,
Hoping that she can trust that I’ve fallen out of love
With you
And here I am
Stuck in the middle
Still with no idea
Of what I want

And you’re still here.
In this heart that insists
On still beating.

You know
The movies never show
What happens to the other person.
The person who gets left.
The person that your protagonist realizes
Wasn’t what he wanted after all.
They never show the destruction caused
The avalanche of hurt and self-deprecating thoughts and low self-esteem
That they become.
They never show how that person is left
Thinking they weren’t good enough
And they never will be.
The movies show you that leaving
Is ok.
That it’s fine to flip from person to person
From side to side
They don’t show you how to deal with it
When you’ve hurt someone
Possibly beyond repair.

I'm afraid of how easy this is
And how well we align.
If we don't have to fight for it,
Is it even real?

Every moment hurts differently.
Like a crippled butterfly
Traversing a hurricane.

Do you ever think of me
While you do the exact things we used to do
With someone new?

There are so many things about us
To be afraid of
But when I look at you
All I notice
Is that our eyes
Make love.

Our eyes make love when they meet
And you never look away

I had someone once.
Someone I'd give up dreams for.
Someone I'd think about kids for.
Someone for whom I'd change my forever.
I do not have her anymore
But now
In this fear that my forever
May be drastically changed
From some other power's volition.
In this terror that my body and my brain
May have turned against me.
In this land of unknowns
Of maybes
Of "we'll have to see"s
She is still the one I want to tell.
And the one who might not even care.

Through everything you said to me
Everything you did,
I still blame myself.
I still see your pain.
I still worry.

You've always been more important
Than myself.
'Always' extends to now.

Don't worry, love.
I forgave you a thousand times.

Notes, melodies, beats.
Words, thoughts, stress.
Directions, vocabulary
English, Italian.
Nonsensical, repetitive.
Over and over and over
I never know silence
Until I’m with her
I never realized how loud my head is
Until I wasn’t with her anymore.

Staring into space trying
To keep it together.
Eventually focus on the memory your eyes
Have rested on.
Pain seeps through the nothing that you had been working so hard
To keep.
Thoughts flood into the void that you had just
Emptied.

Driving back in the pouring rain faster
Than you should.
Slightly more reckless
It's a miracle you're alive
Half sad, half surprised,
The half that's kindofgladyouguess
Mixed in there somewhere.

Testing limits allows you
To breathe.
It's hard to remember how when your brain is a broken record
Stuck on all your recent failures.

Stumble in late
As has become usual.
Making it home to your roommates reminds you
What you haven't lost yet.
Keeping you going
For another day.

My heart keeps pumping
Blood keeps flowing
Feet keep stepping
Always moving
Because stopping means paralysis.
When I sit I'm stuck,
My brain on repeat
Loop after loop
Of memories from the last year and a half
And phrases out of a letter written
From the depths of ultimate sadness,
This is all my fault.
And I can't get past it.
I feel like a living contradiction.
How can one hurt so much,
While feeling so numb?
I can't tell if my heart keeps skipping beats
Because of the power of the love I still have for you
Or the pain it can't handle.

If I've realized nothing else
I've learned that love is real
It just rarely has
Good timing.

Some days
I am so over you that
I could look to the sky and thank it for
Relieving me of the extra weight
Finally.
And then sometimes I'll hear a
Five note sequence come on the radio
And it's like it played the keyboard that is
My heart and
Opened the door that
Always belonged to you and
I can fall to the earth with
Memories
And longing.

I never knew
How love could be.
How it could catch you off guard
And wrap you in a sense of security.
Like waking up in the middle of the night
Disoriented
And realizing she’s still next to you
And in her sleep she sensed your distress
And curled into your arms.
How it could hit you so suddenly
Like looking around at the world one day
And realizing you want to hand it to her
On a silver platter.
How it can make you feel like you belong somewhere
Even with all your flaws and crooked edges
Like a puzzle piece that finally found its mate.

I never knew
My missing piece would look so different.
So different from what I predicted.
So different from my puzzle.

I never knew.
But I suppose that’s the beauty of it.
I’m certainly not complaining.

Love hits me with everything she does.
Love hits me every time she breathes.
Every time I wake up next to her
And want nothing more than to kiss her shoulders for the rest of my days.
Every time I want nothing more than to kiss her for the rest of my days.
Every time we fight.
Every time we sit next to each other doing nothing more than reading.
Every time we’re both too stubborn to admit we’re both wrong.
Every time I’m drunk.
Every time I’m alone.
Every time I breathe
And my heart aches with every inhale
And every exhale
Because there’s a set of stitches
Where she walked in and took a piece of my heart
And replaced it with a piece of her own.
And that space is more sensitive when she’s gone.
It feels twice the pain of her absence.
Mine
And hers.

I never knew
How love could be.
But I sure like learning new things.

I have not fallen out of love with you
Or even us.
I have fallen out of love with myself.

Sometimes minds change and
Forever
Isn't always eternal.

But I have felt your heart
And she is very much alive.

You feel like a song that
I grew up knowing and loving
But haven't heard in years.
I can remember every word
If you give me a chance.

The feelings I had with you
Are tattooed into me far
Deeper
Than the ink on my skin
Can ever go.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so completely hated
By someone I so completely loved.
Maybe if I stare long enough
Into the curve of this spoon
It will take me into the past
So I can change the things that now lie behind me.
Maybe if I stare long enough at my reflection
In the windows of this old dilapidated house,
The weights I feel on my shoulders
Will become real
And I’ll actually be able to shrug them off.
Maybe if I keep pretending I’m fine with the goodbye I left you with,
I’ll actually gain the confidence I said it with.
Maybe the things I said will be true.
And I will at least
Have
You.
But the spoon is in the dish-pit,
And the windows are being washed.
The surroundings are new,
There is no you
Here.
Why can’t I clean you out of my head
Like I cleaned you out of my life.
Why can’t I forget all the times you told me the opposite
Of that one sentence you left me with.
Why does that one sentence,
Get to be the ruling power
Why does that one sentence
Get to fill my head.
Why does the one sentence
Erase an entire summer.
Erase upwards of 20,000 texts.
Erase my smile.
Why do you believe her
When all she’s done
Is tear us apart.
You didn’t even hear my side
Before you cut the final thread.

I hope you feel better.
I hope hating me is doing things for you.
I hope you’re channeling all those thoughts that made you feel like a dying flower
Into an anger at me
And I hope you can write again.
Because your best friend is gone,
And now I’m gone too.
There was only ever so much I could do
And now my time is through.

For a little while there,
You were the stars in my sky.
The sun shone out of your ***,
And my shoulder was your eternal tissue.
You made me a better person.
I wanted to be a better person for you.

Emotions are a funny thing.
I’m trying to shut mine off.
I think you’ve lost yours.

When your brain knows an edge isn't safe
How do you tell your heart to back away?

I used to feel.
Harmonies sung from the tips of my nerves
Anthems ran through my veins.
Hurt crunched like leaves underfoot
Fire could burn on for days.

I used to know
That everything was real
I had no doubt in my mind.
Like was like
Love was love
Passion quite often defined.

And then everything stopped.
I put it all in a box
Because frankly, crunching can get quite annoying.
I tried to recall it and air it back out but
The air hung thick this summer and
Nothing ever really got completely dry.

Mold grew
Tainting everything and now
I can never tell what's clean
And what's a fabrication of my mind.

I feel like I
Lived a thousand lifetimes with you.
Yet we are apart, and
Have been
For a while.

Do you think in another plane
Our trajectory continued?

You were always a point of interest.
Ever since the day you walked into the student lounge
When you were the only one I hadn't met.
I was always absorbed with other things

I tried to make time to get to know you.
Between band and classes and activities
And everything that was happening
I always felt like I was failing you

I couldn't pretend anymore.
I tried to push her away
And make room for you in my life.
Nothing ever worked

I couldn't take it anymore.
The stress got to me,
I ended with you.
I regretted it immediately.

I came crawling back.
Laced with a trail of Smarties,
I always wanted someone as smart as you.
Thank God you took me back.

I made it just in time for summer.
800 miles,
Twelve and a half hours.
The ultimate test

I had faith in us.
I had made my decision,
I was sticking with you.
Did you feel the same?

We made it through.
106 days apart,
Made up for with 144 days together.
It seems meant to be

We talk about the future.
But the future will forever be a dream
Unless I get my **** together.
I have always been a coward

We are perfect together.
I just need to tell them
That I'm not who they think I am.
I will always be afraid to tell them

I have made plans.
So many plans
For so many aspects.
I just need to tell them

I want to spend my life with you.
Dancing, cooking, researching,
Testing all the furniture in the store.
Just one thing left to do

I want to travel the world with you.
This trip has been wonderful,
But it hasn't been the same without you.
It is long past the time to tell them

You are the only thing that I want.
You can make everything go away
You make the world bearable.
You make me strong

I'm almost ready for it.
They need to know soon.
I will make it through.
Which rejection would be worse?

I love you.
You will always be the best thing
That I have ever had.
*Losing them would be worth keeping you

Taking in air around you is this
Small-city-bred,
Red-haired-and-freckle-covered,
College kid's version of
Breathing dreams

I want to write you and say
That I've never stopped loving you.
I want to write you and demand that you see me so that
I can see that
The love I have for you now is stuck.
Is the love that I had for you
The last time I saw you
The last time you saw me
The last time we kissed.
I want this to be over.
I want to know that I can stop writing
About how I can't let this idea go.
The ship has sunk and
Part of me watched it go from the safety of shore but
Part of me is still inside of it
Sitting
Comfortably, albiet a little fidgety,
Listening to the clock tick tocking away my years,
My loves,
My partners,
Envisioning that one day you'll come scuba diving down
Down
Down
To find me here, where we both know I've been
Waiting.

I want to write you and say
That I've never stopped loving you.
Maybe putting the message in a bottle
Releasing it into the water that surrounds me
And watching where it floats to
Will set me free from this sunken ship too.

You hate it when I stare at you
I know.
But you don't understand that
When I look at you
The world
It just...
It just stops.
It stops and nothing else exists except for you
And my eyes looking at you.

There is nothing else.
The people in the room
Melt away.
The worries I have?
All *******.
There's no yesterday
No tomorrow
No differences that can tear us apart
Or tear my eyes off you.
You make everything else
Distant
And insignificant
Compared to the magnitude of my
Love
For you.
And the beauty and depth and wonders
Of the soul that I see
In your eyes.

I see your pain
And your joy;
I notice your laughter and your struggles and all the things that intrigue you
And all of it fascinates me.

I want to know all of it.
I want to know what turns you on,
I want to know what makes you click,
I want to know what you think about
When you have long car rides to yourself.
I want to know what infuriates you
I want to know what on earth could turn your beautiful eyes into fires of hatred and loathing,
Or melt them into pools of the softest adoration.
I want to know your future,
And what you see in it.
And I want to know if you prefer blue Jell-O or red.
And do you ever wish you were short
Just so you could always win at hide-and-go-seek?
Or maybe as tall as a redwood so that you would never have to wonder how a bird sees the world.
If you could go to the moon, would you?
Or would you stay here, in mock safety, to welcome home those who went in your place?
If you could have one super power
Would you care to hear everyone's thoughts
Or would you want to be able to run
Fast as a speeding bullet
Away from here.
I want to know your wildest fantasies
And can we make them a reality together.
I want to know your past
I want to know what makes you who you are
And what brought you here
To me.
I want to know everything
Hold back nothing
But not until you're ready.

When I look at you
I just want to talk.
Forever.
About everything and nothing
And when I look at you I want to sit in silence
Because that's comfortable too.
When I look at you
I want to spill my soul
Because I know you'd catch it.
I can see it
In your eyes.

When I look at you
I draw from your strength
I refresh from your smiles
And I remember who I am.

When I look at you
You are the only thing that exists.
You
And my eyes looking at you.
And it is truly beautiful.
You are truly beautiful.
And that
Is why I stare.

You have never been a rebound.
You've always been the original.
Everyone else is an 'after.'

I could write you
Five hundred poems
To explain to you what changed in me.
But that would require
Me
To understand
Myself

I trusted you,
You lied to me.
I've known for weeks.

I no longer feel bad about re-finding your tumblr.
Both times.

Perfection
Is constant.
It’s everywhere
And in everything.
But our perception of it is not.
For us,
Perfection is fleeting.
It comes in small doses
Like a shot of tequila.
It shocks on impact
Then warms from within.
Perfection lingers
For as long as the good feeling stays.
The problem?
We know that shortly
The liquor will wear off
And the world will again be *****
Smelly
Ugly
Imperfect.

But you…
You stay.
You stay past the buzz
Past the next-morning feeling
Past the hangover
Past the fog.
You’re still here.
You’re still perfect.
Because what people don’t get is that since nothing is perfect,
Everything
Is perfect.
Perfection isn’t a shot of tequila
But a long
Tall
Drink
Of water.
Perfection is a breath of fresh air,
Or maybe even stagnant,
Because perfection
Is everywhere.
Perfection is that tree over here
That lake over there
The crazy blue streak
In that girl’s light brown hair.

Perfection
Is constant.
It’s the waves crashing
The river flowing
The clock ticking away every moment we spend together,
Glowing.

Perfection
Is your mother telling you it’s time to come home.
My father telling me to hang up the phone.
Your best friend taking a year long vacation
My history suddenly obtaining clarification.

Perfection is learning
From stupid mistakes.
Perfection is holding hands
Through all the heartaches.
Perfection is black rivers flowing down your gorgeous perfect face
And perfection is knowing there’s nothing we can’t shake.

Because perfection is there
In every code-name fight
And perfection is there
Through every sleepless night.
Perfection is present
On the drives along winding lanes
And perfection is present
When we hide from cars in vain.
Perfection is you
And perfection is me
Because through all our flaws
We’re as perfect as perfect can be.
Yet the world still doesn’t understand that
Nothing is perfection
So perfection
Is everything.

Sometimes I feel like my heart
Beats in another person's chest.
Like I bleed
From someone else's wounds.

Our existences have to be on the same wavelength
To excite my heart like a photon
Absorbing the energy of your love.

Why is it so hard
Not to love you?

Up to this point it felt like
Even thinking about this abandoned lake
Would create sound waves that would
Disturb the ozone.
Now I'm left wondering
If your tone of voice is
The equivalent of dipping my toe in and
Realizing the ripples I see are
From two peoples' toes.

You coated your hands in hairspray and
Let the sand of my hourglass
Filter through them.
Glancing at it,
It seems only a hot minute has passed with you
While in reality
Four hours just flew.

When you get here
It will be like my missing piece has finally come back
Raindrops rejoining an ocean.
I like to think you’ll come in gently
But knowing us
It’ll be a storm.

In your den, late one night
With no music,
You asked me to slow dance.
I didn't realize,
I should've known,
That was you asking
Me
To take it slow.
I was too busy
Falling for you.

Some people drink
To numb.
I drink
To let myself feel.

Before....I couldn't afford to like you because
Part of me seemed to know
That liking you would mean giving you my everything
And I didn't have enough of me
To sustain us both.

And then she's back
And she's there and it's normal and you're
Talking and you can breathe again and
The world has colour again and
Music makes sense again and then
You have to remind yourself that
It's not.
There's nothing normal about this and
She isn't yours
Anymore.

You kissed me and
We departed and
I walked around seeing nothing.
They tell me it was a beautiful day
But my mind's eye is elsewhere
Nothing has changed.
Nine months later and I'm still
Addicted to your lips.

Three years later
I finally answered the phone.
The still recognizable voice of the 14.5 cigarettes a day that she's become said
"I'm sorry."
Nothing else.
We sat on the line in silence
For a time.
It was all I'd been wanting.