You are the glowing coal in the bonfire-
The one that stays hot and bright
Never to burn out or turn to ash
But to thaw frozen fingers indefinitely.

We are entwined and entangled
Bright eyes locked, greedy for each other.
Bodies held together like a Chinese finger trap.
You smile. I unravel.
Your lips put me back together.

You are the earth, the grass, the sun.
Revitalizing and calming, fantastic and real.
I breathe you in and I begin again.
With senses in overdrive and nerves in flames,
I take you in and we are one again.

I stopped loving you on my birthday. Did you know that?
It shocked me out of that confused numbness I'd been living in
Momentarily.

Like a twig snapping
A candle, quickly snuffed.
All the other cliches people use to say that what was,
Suddenly isn't.
Can't be, anymore.

But it was sudden
And it was shocking
And I didn't know what to do.

So I tried to pass it off as ***
Or stress, or distraction. But I knew what it was.
I knew what it wasn't, anymore. You didn't.

I wonder when you stopped loving me
Because surely you've stopped loving me
And I'm glad you've stopped loving me.
It's all I hoped for, from that day to the end.
I hope it was before the end.

For my birthday, I made my cupcakes
Drank my liquor
And prepared myself to remember how to love you.
But I knew I couldn't, anymore.

hands too soft
lips too hesitant
him, any him any one- never enough

push me grab me bite me
anything

anything to make me feel
something
again

Blood rushes to your head
And takes over, controls you.
The buzzing left in your ears from his mouth drowns out everything.
You try to move but your legs go weak;
Bone is not bone, but more blood
Limp and liquid.

You let him hold you up so he'll hold you down later.

You discover swollenlipsracingheart is not a cliche
It is a medical condition and you are a victim.

The cure is more
-more hands, more tongues.

Breathless, you breathe him in.

I wonder if it's harder for you
Or easier, or nothing.
It's hard for me.

Awake: alone.
Phone: silent.
Home: not home.

It comes in waves
And when I think it's stopped, the cat looks at me like that
Or you say "you can take the bed"
Or I see others, being what we were, long ago.
They won't stop coming.

Out of no where, torrential rains attacked
Leaving class, on the public bus
In the shower where we made love, once.
Twice
Three times.
It's over.

Floating, adrift.
Like a speck in a kid's book
A dandelion seed in the air
Minus the grace.
A purgatorial lack of gravity
Empty.

I guess you were my earth
And now I'm lost in space.
But it's time I made my world,
And stop abusing yours.

Acidic, buttery purple
Baby pink half-moons
Cleansecalm my aura

I shall be the conquerer and the conquered.

melt me down
condense me to my base elements
make me what i am inside

melt me down
burn that layer of filth outside
and let my core breathe

melt me down
see me, me, me
see my insides and yearn for them

melt me down,
against my will.
against my better judgement.

if you want to see, see.

Strong hands, big and warm
Covering, comforting and caressing me.
Smoothing my skin.
Erasing my erosion.

In wide strokes of blackboard Braille-
*It's all going to be ok.

This noise is acid on my brain
burning straight through
leaving none in its path.

I feel it-
the loss
the pain
the sizzle.
The empty hole it leaves
running straight from my skull to my breast.

I wish it would spread.
Leaving one with a hole is cruelty.
Destroying the total is a gift.

I don't want to lose nights under your arms
Dusks in your eyes
Mornings in your hands.

I do want to lose those nights lying alone
And those dusks observing what I would never be a part of
And those mornings, feet away from you.

I don't want to lose you.
But I do want to lose missing you.

I'm just afraid the two must come as one.

I can't be this alone, with you.

If I'm to be alone, let me call myself alone.
Don't make me suffer this killing hope.

Wrapped in your sleeping arms, let me not think
"alone"
Watching you laugh, make me not think
"alone"
Feeling your lips on mine, force me not to think
"alone"
I can't be this alone, with you.

I think of you by the minute. Can't you think of me
sometimes?
You say you know, but if you know why don't you care?
If you know, why don't you try?
I can't be this alone, with you.

Free from expectation and hope, I can survive.
But this, this drains me. This will leave me dry.
Choose one and let it be that. Just choose.
Because I can't do this with you.

I am free in the darkness.
Free from your eyes,
Binding and infuriating.
Free from myself.

I am safe in the darkness,
For unknown danger is no danger at all.
Blindfold me to comfort me.
Whip me to awaken me.

I am strong in the darkness.
Convicted with conviction,
And only in the present tense.

I am blind to everything in the darkness,
And I don't want to see or believe.
I am empty in the darkness,
And I don't want to be filled.

Impatient breath
Hands erasing, smoothing all ridges.
Skin to skin becomes just...skin.

You cover me and discover me
Your fire singes any thought I may have had
And all that is left is you
And me
And your hands on me.

As my desperation grows your movements slow
Until desire is all there is.

This is more than you and me.
This is us as one.

Perhaps I have not been careful enough.

Perhaps I wanted you to consume me.
Perhaps I wanted to consume you.

Yes, I love you.
Yes, I want you.
But reality's setting in
And the sunspots are clearing from my eyes.
The solar inferno weakens.

I had built you a statue of emeralds and golden thread
But it's been crumbling.
The emeralds are turning out to be moss-covered stones
The golden thread, stiff hay.

I knew you were only human.
Maybe I didn't believe it.
I did not love you because you were immortal.
I did not believe
-With him, with him, I shall love forever
  With him, I shall touch the moon.
   We shall be created and destroyed, created and destroyed
   Forever, and together.
   Beginnings and ends in two become one.
Perhaps I thought it
But I did not believe it.
Don't worry.

I will adjust to your humanity
And I will build you a snowman, not a statue.
A snowangel, maybe.
But I am done trying to turn myself to silver.
I am done trying to become an inferno.

Yes, I love you.
Hopefully love is enough.

He and I
Are oil and water.
He is cigarettes and ravioli;
I am cranberries and ramen.

The great benefactor?
Yes, a factor
But not the end.
Not the root.
I shall never be a beggar.

Hark, calls reality
Indifference is aching for you.
Threatening, forcing.
Beware, or it shall overcome you.

I was never good at chemistry
And what is painting but a solution?
What are we but unstable?

Perhaps we are just allotropes.

It's kind of bizarre how totally in love with you I am.
I think about you and me, about us.
I think about what we could be.

I wonder if you'll have Santa eyes too
And what stories you'll tell.
Tell me, will I be there?

I want to be with you, now.
Forget school, forget work.
I want to lay in bed with you for hours
And feel you and me, connecting as one.
I'll feed you candy, you feed me your thoughts.

An hour, a day, a year
Let the seconds pass, but let them never end.
You and I will be two, but united by flesh, by breath.
I am in love with you-
You, yes, are my hourglass.

I find your chest in the clouds
Your torso is made of cumulonimbus
For you are as powerful as the strongest raincloud.

Your eyes are created with moonbeams
And I will soon have your hands in the stars.
The wind will create your body and push it,
Tight, forming to mine.

Your voice is not the thunder, or wind
But the rich hum of the smoldering sun,
Warm, intense.
Your footsteps come closer, quickly
Softly stepping as that same sun through the clouds.

You are the earth and the atmosphere
You live in yellow grass and rain
(For see, that's the landscape inside me)
The breeze through these hills is the breath from your heart
And when it touches me,
I know it can only be you.

Summer burns out, becomes fall
And you are still here.

I want to watch fall fall with you
See the cedar trees turn to pollen
And the sun cool to a new amber.

Winter will wither,
And I will want you with me.
Warm me in the cold, shield me from the wind
I will do both for you.
The year will change,
And so will we.

And when spring springs no more
And we shed our safety nets
I hope you will stay.
I will stay.

The changes will come.
I want to watch you change.
I want to watch the world evolve.
I want you to see me evolve.

Covered with your arms,
I feel your pulses-
One of your heart, one of your soul.
As they rush through you
I too am filled.

Safety, warmth,
A vise grip, but without pain.
Tightly wound, but never tense.

In fact, melted
A molten creation
In which we are just are.

That is not blood in our veins
But the ichor of the gods.
You are my ambrosia
And as I devour you
I will be strong forever.

I've been thinking that I'm kind of awesome lately
You know, in those quantifiable ways
The ones that don't really matter?

I've been kind of kicking *** at life
And I haven't really done that before.
It's an interesting sensation.

Apparently I can only write well when I fail, though
So that's kind of a shame.
Maybe once this high rides out
Maybe once my days aren't full
Maybe once you aren't amazing
I'll be able to do that again.

I don't really know what I am or what I want
I just know that I'm kind of proud of myself
And I don't know what to do about that.

You are more poetic than Donne
Smoother than Shakespeare

You are more romantic than Austen
More mysterious than Doyle

You are stronger than Neruda
More interesting than Vonnegut.

You are
Wasted.

You
and
I

become sweetgrass
become riverwater
become cryogenics

Not
Frozen in time
Not
Slowed, stopped, surrendered.

A new field
With hope.
Timeless.

You? And me?
Yes.

I love the sound of clicking keyboards.
Of beating hearts. Of waking up next to you.

I love the steady, the whole
The more than I thought I could have.

The sounds of you and me, at night
In the morning
In the afternoon, skyrockets flying.

I love the sounds of your lips on my shoulder
Of your fingers in my hair.
Of our skin combining.

I love the noises of now.

My shallow breaths
Not in enough, not out enough
Drown me in oxygen, not h20.
Forgetting what "slow down" means
Is a dangerous thing.

And my hammering heart
Too fast, too hard
Pounding out an imprint on my shirt
An engraved bloated pear, for all to see.
Does it starve when not in love?

And you, there.
Slowed down, not as time
As an individual. A marker of time.
A maker of metaphor.
Remind me to breathe
Remind me to
s l o w d o w n.

And me, here.
Too fast, too slow.
A potato imprint
Of changing, of change.
A penny for a thought
A nickel for a word
A quarter for a second
Stolen from my mind.

I
Don't
Need
You.

A beautiful thing, really;
Security for you.
I must want you then, if I stay.
I must be there by choice.

The thing is, right now
I don't really want you either.
I know I will again soon.
I always go back to it.

But you keep pushing me farther
And I'm a quick learner.
You would be wise to remember: I am not a guarantee.

So maybe sometimes
I dig in your eyes
Half-believing falsehoods are physical things
And if I just look hard enough, I will find them.
I can pan them out, like gold in Oregon Trail
But really more like bugs in my food.

So maybe sometimes
I breathe, in/out/in/out
Before I tell you I love you
Because maybe I'm still a little afraid.
Because I don't tell people that
And I don't like to be vulnerable.

So maybe sometimes
If your arms aren't a vise at night
I wonder if you are trying to give me the option to escape.
And maybe I wonder if you need one.
Maybe I wonder if I should treat you like a genie:
"I wish for your freedom."
The problem being I don't wish for that, at all.

So maybe sometimes
I want to remind you
That you aren't chained to me
And there's always an out, if you want it.
Not that I do.

It's just that maybe sometimes
I have trouble believing in you
And it's not your fault
It's just in my head
It's just in my history.

But maybe sometimes,
Like you said once,
I don't like myself enough to believe
You would want to stay.

Maybe sometime I'll feel like you want me too
Because I know it's all in my head
But you're not very good at helping
(No offense).

I would never stay mad at you
But I probably could.
I think it's because you don't mean to do what you do
Which is actually nothing at all.
I guess that's the problem.

It's hard to feel anything without writing it off when you're so self-aware
But it's hard to feel some things all the time
So I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't really matter what I think.

I just wish you wanted me with you
Or you wanted you in me
Or really that the words "want" and "me" (or you?)
Would ever go together at all.

I don't blame you
As in, I'm not trying to accuse
That's just the way I feel
But it doesn't really matter what I think about that.

I don't know the terrain  of my soul.
Am I a desert or a mountain?
Do rivers run through me?

I want to see the deserts I could be.
Climb the mountains and see if I'm there,
Sitting on the peak.
I want to swim the rivers
And see if I'm underneath those rapids.
How else could I know my geography?
How will I know what I'm made of?

Yes, I may be made of hills and cedar trees
But I might want to be an aurora borealis.
I might want to be more than dry dirt
Or at least be able to try to be.

There is too much, too many possibilities.
Highlands, valleys, oceans, skies.
Open, open skies...
I want to see it, I want to see it all.
I will be satisfied with no less.

I want to know: What do I see
When I am reflected in the Thames?
Or the Yangtze River or the Mediterranean?
Would the Nile show me my insides,
As an X-Ray machine from the gods?
That girl in the Arctic ice-
Can she get out?

Killing me, or parts of me
       But only in the best of way.
Ever strong, ever open;
       when at the worst, the best.
Variable, voracious, vital
       even victorious, occasionally.
In time, consideration. In time, concern.
       Affirmation, creation, recognition.
Now only this; nothing more, nothing less.
       Now, only us.

I like most to feel your skin on my skin
Flesh to flesh- a holy palmer's kiss, but body to body.
I like next to feel your heartbeat connecting to mine.
An iron rod, bringing me to you.

*** is not, when your body heat is missing
Or when your breath isn't in my ear
Or giving me goosebumps.
I need your eyes, my eyes, locked together
Like a Chinese finger trap.

Sure, vibrations are nice
But I prefer to get them from your voice
Not from batteries.
Batteries are cold, but your voice can burn me.
And when the heat waves and sound waves combine
What other vibration is needed?

I need your warm, your hard
Strong, insistent, wanting.
Or I need your soft, your kiss, your love.
Either way,
I do not need my plastic
When you allow me that.

Like the forgotten birthday
Of a dead girl you knew once.

Like the time of a tradition, now fallen apart
With no family left to keep it together.

Like the twelve days of Christmas
Where no one notices the first eleven.

The anniversary of past love
Recently deceased.

The warmth
Of steamed, solids turned liquid
Thaws my frostbitten throat.

My solar plexus heats
Recalibrates my needs
And diverts resources.

Coffee provides what I do not receive
From a warm body gone missing.
My core solidifies, as clay in a kiln.

If I cannot have a hand to warm mine
A mug will do.
But if I cannot have you
Liquid is a poor substitute.

An open invitation-
Bring me the warmth of your skin
The vibrations of your voice.
Bring me your heart, pounding in my ear.
Bring me my release and my comfort.
Let me fall into you, into me.

The heat of a body is better than the sun
It is a sun, indeed
For why else would I feel these flares?
A black hole of comfort and contentment-
I want it to swallow me whole.
I want to fall into it
And be consumed, completely.

Perhaps inside the sun,
The black hole sings with fire.
Intangible, unknowable fire.
Perhaps inside a black hole,
I can be as hot coals.
Perhaps I can become whole.

I want to know what your favorite is
Because I think it would tell me lots about you.

Whether you care most about intent
Or style or diction or timing.
Or if meaning is your all.

And then maybe I can use that for us
And see what you notice most there:
Intent, style, diction, meaning.
When our lips touch, do you judge it by the repetition
Or by the desire?

Slowly, I will come to understand you.

An oral fixation
Perhaps falsified, as an excuse-
Skin, turned to hard rubber
Lips, turned to lust
A tongue, turned to love

A caress doesn't have to come from hands.

The way you hold me in your sleep
The way you mumble through your snores
The way you always make fun of my noises
The way I can make fun of yours.

Your eyes, your lips, your smile, your touch.
Your hands and the arms that reach.
Your height, your sandals, your silly t-shirts.
How easy you are to teach.

The way you can always make me laugh
The way you don't make me embarrassed to cry
The way you make me feel like everything
The way you never lie.

Your thoughts and your mind and your heart and your soul
Your fantastic spaghetti dinners.
Your hair, your beard, your manly features
How you let me be the winner.

The way you make me hope for the future
(I hope you hope for it too.)
The way you allude to it, on occasion.
The way you refreshed me, anew.

Purged of poison, but still not clean.
The aftermath has left weight
Hot, liquid lead swimming in my mind
Hardening onto my shoulders.

I could never hate you,
Could never even believe I could try.

Ideals should be made of spun gold,
Not cramped into twisted iron.

I just want to be free.

It's kind of funny when things fall apart
Especially since that's supposed to be an idiom.
But you were a ****** builder, so all my foundations are shaking.

A father is supposed to be something strong, stable
Consistent and comfortable.
Maybe that's why you had the sign-
"Anyone can be a father
It takes someone special to be a daddy".
Turns out you aren't really either of those.

You never wanted me and I never wanted you
At least, that's what I'll tell myself.
It'll make my life easier
And apparently easier is always better, in your eyes.

I want to burn that desk you bought me.
It doesn't hold my computer anyway
And now I think it's ugly, not classy.
Just like you.

You built this bed and you fixed my car and you taught me about computers and for years, for years I just wanted to be enough.
I wonder if she'll be enough.
But apparently you've ****** her up too.

I wish I could understand what kind of person you are
And I wish that there wasn't proof
And I wish, I wish, I wish when you said you were going fishing
You would actually go fishing.

My ceiling has asbestos
And my tiles are moldy
And my wood floors are rotting, falling apart.

You shouldn't have even tried.

Broken
Shut down
Demolished and destroyed

Brought down to her knees
Literally, literally brought down
Face to face with porcelin and water.

Purge, purge, purge
Empty the empty
Break down and out
Out, out, no way out...

Betrayed
Dismissed
Returned, replaced, retried
Falsify your family, break it down
Let it out

Praise thee, mighty nothingness.

I know what I should be writing about
But I can't.
Not yet.

I can't think about it.
I can't feel about.

I'm afraid of what will happen if I do.

I'm just glad you'll be there
When I have to.

You know you can make me forget
So please, just make me forget.
Make it go away.

Whisper through my screaming thoughts,
Kiss me through the blood in my mouth.
Hold me through the steel bars I'm feeling surround me.

Make it go away.

Just kiss me, kiss me please!
For when our lips meet
The world melts.
I melt.
Liquid can't think, either.
Liquid can't be tortured.
Liquid can't cry.

Envelope me with your body;
Make me believe in man again.
Or at least let me forget what I know of them.

Desperately me body needs a distraction
A release, a vent
It needs you.
I need you.

I need you.

I guess I need to remember that we are young
And most young love ends like that.
Sometimes I forget that love's supposed to end.

It's funny how your needs wane when my needs wax
Or at least stay the same. In stasis.
I still prefer just us two.
I understand that you're the opposite. Your needs wane.

And I still want you twice a day. I guess those needs wane for you too.

This isn't a poem. This is just a break-up letter, before it happens.
You seem to like preparation.

I wonder if you'll still read these.
I wonder if you'll still talk to me.
I wonder if I'll still want you to.

Since I was young I assumed I'd be alone. It wasn't something I thought about. It just always seemed the way of the world. I was always fine with it.

I'd rather be with you
But you say young love ends like this.
I say-
It doesn't have to.

Your lips may be my barbiturate
But your words are my poison.

I need you to dissolve me
Liquidate my mind
So I no longer must suffer from the toxins.
You cannot hurt a liquid.

Quick, put your lips to mine!
Crash them together to calm me, sedate me.
Your kiss will melt my thoughts
Allowing me to pick out the solids.
To pick out your crystallized contamination.

I need to build up a tolerance
An amount of your fatalism that I can take.
But I cannot do that right now-
Your poison has sent me to a coma.
Your poison is coursing through my bloodstream.

I am not the night.

Mine are not the stars and moon
Or the black holes or the planets.

But I can't hold the dew drops and morning glories either
Or the sun or the blue or the twilight.

I am not the day.

If I could choose, I'd be the night.
The poetry of the night calls to me
Saying-
Christine, I am made for you!
Christine, I am all there is!
But I cannot be the night.

However, I see both in you.

I've taken to piercing my body, when I'm at my worst.
What, you've never felt like losing a little flesh?
It's a little bit of loss
A tiny death.
le petit mort
The death of skin cells is the sweetest.
Just ask the vultures-
Why else would they feast on it so?

They are not war badges or battle scars.
They are circles attaching myself to my soul
A minute weight and reminder
To forget, to remember, to be.
To be as a vulture
To relish in what is found
Not beg for what is not needed.

They are not true predators, vultures.
They rarely ****
Rarely cause harm to the universe.
They are performing a service to you, sir.
Would you prefer to eat your dead yourself?

They never come for me.
They do not care for my skin
They do not care for my tiny death.

Pierce is the perfect word, for the action.
Pierce, meaning stab cleanly.
Pierce, meaning penetrate.
Pierce, meaning sharply, shrilly, briskly.
That's what it feels like.
All-encompassing, for a few sweet seconds.
That's probably the true reason.

Flesh is overrated.
Overabundant.
Perhaps the vultures will come
And take a little from me.
Someday.

It feels strange when I don't write
But stranger when I have nothing to write about.

I could write about new starts
And how I'm feeling near-adult these days
Or about how nothing's the same as it was two months ago.
But writing about events always feels wrong to me.
Forced.
Artificial.
Desperate.

What if writing was just a summer's phase?
A passing fancy
Disempowered with the start of fall
Disempowered by my attempts at improvement.

Maybe I only had enough poet in me for these three hundred.
Maybe I've used myself up.

Maybe I'm just not letting myself be inspired.

I wonder if they were ever in love.

I've seen one picture of them, together
Before me.
It's their wedding.
Yes, they look happy.
Did they know what they were getting into?

I bet she did.
I wouldn't be surprised if she had planned it all.
I don't blame her, judge her, admonish her.
She needed a way out; away from meaner men
A home for her children.
I think most of it was for them.

But he didn't know.
I'm sure he didn't know.
He wanted to be in love, I think.
He still wants to be.
I hope she didn't trick him.
I hope she did it honestly.

I hope they were in love, once.
I hope they thought this was forever.
I want to believe that they believed
Because there's nothing shameful about that.
I just don't know if I can.

Eight years ago my grandparents had their 50th anniversary.
All curled hair and black velvet
I danced on my uncle's toes.
He's been married more times than I know.

I know they were happy, sometimes.
I'm sure of it.
But I don't know if they were ever as they wanted.
I don't know if they were ever in it for real.

I don't know what kind of flower you are
But I like how you landed in my hair.

Dry, and therefore you must be lifeless
But saturated, vibrant, brilliant.
How can you be both?

I like your contrast
And I like how smooth the limbs you grow on are.
I like how you got trapped in me
And didn't really mind.
I didn't mind.

They say a flower in the hair makes a girl prettier
But you made me feel like more than a girl.
Natural
As in, part of nature.

Maybe your limbs were once a woman, too.

I kind of want to delete everything
Because maybe then I could forget who I am
But with my luck it'd make me forget who you are too.

I need to believe that I'm good enough
But rereads make me think the opposite
And words in bed are too dangerous to believe.

You see something in me
And apparently I'm blind to it.
I've been trying-your words don't scare me as much these days
But I think I might be showing it more.
I guess I trust you, is all.

You scared me, bad.
Or I scared myself.
All I know is I had to retreat.
It wasn't intentional
Without defense mechanisms, war would be much faster.

Maybe it's a cycle.
I'm not sure which is the starter, my writing or my self esteem
But they both seem to fall terribly every few weeks.

The limelight is unflattering to everyone
Because lime green is such a horrible color.
I think it's the worst on me.

I don't think you can realize how big of a deal it is for me.
I don't know what I'm so afraid of
But nothing you say seems to help.
I still freeze
I still petrify.
It still makes me want to run away.