i wonder if i'll ever see
anything as breath taking
and self shrinking as the
sight i caught, looking at
the sun hiding behind her
with it's rays surrounding
her figure, highlighting her
champagne bubble laugh

the summer and i both
have a crush on her

i am skin stretched over seashells that refuse to break
trying to make room for the things i should feel has been rough
i know i was angry with you the other day, but today in the car,
the CD you gave me played the song that you found, with the lyric
"if you think that i'll wait forever, you are right"
god i hope i'm right.  i hope i can learn you like you learned
me after you got sober. i want to spend however long i have
listening to your heart beat, that's less of a heart beat but
more of a death sentence. i know you can paint a sunset
on my body in the form of bruises and i know i can tell myself
that i like it until i do. the next time i see you, i will wrap the
road around your neck like a tie and tell you
"you're not going anywhere and neither am i."

i  base  my  worth
off of how my friends
treat  me,  how  many
beers i can drink before
the taste makes me sick,
and how many times i can
dial your old phone number
and listen to a stranger
remind me of how
disconnected
you are.

i have been living off of
black coffee and celery
for the past 4 days and
i want to blame it all on
the fact that i'm young
and stupid and i will do
almost anything to like
myself again.

i can grow out of this,
right?

i've been slamming my fragile little fists into dry wall for so long
i get angry at myself when my knuckles aren't bleeding
my mind isn't the cleanest it's ever been right now, but this is what feels like home.
there's stains on the carpet, the curtains in the kitchen window are ripped at the bottom, and sometimes the sink gives you cold water when you ask for hot.
i'm in love with my own faults and failures.
one time, i set a candle too close to the couch and watched everything go up in what looked to me like a southern sunset. next thing i know, they're calling me an arsonist.
the pills they put in my mouth to clean up all the ash made my home more like a hotel and everything smelled like a hospital.
i am sweating alcohol on a wednesday morning, i am gasping for air with a cigarette in my hand, i have been crawling in broken glass, don't you dare talk to me about holiness.
i want to tell you that in spite of all of that, i am free, but i'm not. i'm just used to it.

i've spent too many
days
        hours
                minutes
trying to feel things
that the cracks in my ribs
from when my heart broke
free from them, won't allow
i'm hoping
         wishing
                  praying
that someday i can
sit next to someone
capture their essence
in warm lights, warmer
l a u g h s
and finally understand
the difference between
desperation and
connection

when i feel i'm lost,
i look for you
instead of
myself.

maybe that's my problem.

the golden month of summer
we're recovered from the semester
we spent making fun of each other
i know this because of the way
you are holding my hand
in this moment, i am begging
for someone to ask what love is
so i can tell them something like
"you know when you hold onto
something for too long and your
palms get a little sweaty and so
you let go of whatever it is?
i feel like that right now, but
it's more like his hand is
sweaty but i'm grabbing tighter
like a plead from a door frame
begging for the slamming to stop
yeah, my palm is sweaty but
i cannot let go.

2 years later, here i am
my hands are clenching themselves
into fists, my palms are sweating
but i've developed this habit of
not letting go of anything
and i miss you.

i've found myself awake to see the sun rise for 3 days in a row.
i want to believe it’s allowed me to remember there is still
pureness around me but it only exhausts me.
purity is something i never fall asleep alongside.
i keep eating strawberries before 7AM.
there is an empty carton of eggs on the counter
that i didn’t cook for myself.
someone told me i look very beautiful when i wake up
but i think that depends on the amount of heavy dreaming i fell into.
when the sun rises tomorrow morning and i catch it, as i most likely will,
i have a message for it. i want to tell the sunrise that first impressions are everything.
if it mattered in the first moment, it matters now.
my sheets are twisted in the way you could never mess them up.
you can tell me the same thing over and over but it’ll still sound new.
everything still tastes like you. you are still the pretty boy.
you are still the sunset i nap right through every evening.

does she even start forest fires when she blushes?
"she sets the whole world on fire"
i'm going to be sick.

i am only fragile in the
hands of someone i love
that explains why i can
come home, call you, and say
"i'm tired, i need to be held together"

that's when you wrap your
words around me like the
warmth of my favorite blanket
and i wither into nothingness,
return, and repeat the process

i woke up this morning
wishing i hadn't
and the sky wept for me
then revealed one of the
most vibrant rainbows
i've ever seen.
i couldn't look at it
because every color
is someone i used to love
and god, red is painful

you said it was strange
you thought someone in your body was telling you about what you couldn't remember. it was nice sometimes, and others, not so much. i didn't tell you that it was me. i wanted to stay there. a fraction of someone you used to be. a shaved head, a green jacket, a cheesy smile, a feeling you get when your heart breaks and you think "this is just the beginning."
you told me you're trying to be a better man now. you've been telling me that for a while. i see it, though.
you blamed the pills when you came back to see what state you left me in. not that you ever really left, nothing is ever permanent with you. that's what i love and hate most.
you're a silver tongued devil with one of the biggest hearts i've ever held. you said you felt bad for all of the girls you hurt when you couldn't feel. i asked if you were talking about me. ironically, you said, you weren't.
a while ago, you called me "the best thing since cable **** and beer" and i laughed. last week, you said i had **** eyes. i stopped wearing my make up that way.
last night, i had a dream where you were a preacher at a church, i sat in the front row, but instead of preaching the word of God, you just screamed at me about how sorry you are for all of this.

sometimes you just have to
drink yourself to sleep and
hope you don’t get ill seeing
all the smashed hearts
on the sidewalk
in the morning

ever since your mother told you not to talk to strangers,
you stopped looking at y o u r s e l f  in the mirror
but if anyone at all were to ask me about you
i'd have to tell them how you love the sun
or how you'd whisper in the morning
allthough you are a bomb to me
you told me once that you swear
you had died with me in an attic fire
in a past life that hurt even more than this
that's when i realized i could scream my name
into your mouth, and hear the echo
coming from your chest
that was the closest i could ever get
to your heart
i'd sleep next to you as
you cuddle with your dreams
while nightmares are fended off
by the better parts of you
the ones that put a pin-sized hole
in your heart every time i
cried for you, and you couldn't
return the favor.
every single morning, you'd wake
and the nightmare would return
it turns out that's what was
holding my hand the whole time
i memorized the words in your eyes
it hurt and i
       suffered and i
                  bled and i  
       cried
but at least i did it
now they rush through my veins
out of my fingers, through this pen
i can't let go of it now

last night, i was forcing the last couple drops
out of the bottle and into my sinful mouth
sitting on the floor of a kitchen that had
Christ hanging on the walls like he
******* died there or something.
in the morning, you arrived back in
your home state where you and your
morphine eyes will haunt my
ambien bedroom.

i've made a home
out of untied shoelaces
in the morning
and crowded bedrooms
filled with smoke
and laughter

you've always been the type
to pull stitches rather than
throw punches
i've always cried
when you whispered but
stayed curiously sober
when you'd scream.
it was the end of the world,
we sinned so severely
your halo fell around your neck
became a noose, you became my
muse but the only poetry you
wanted to know was what
i could make in the dark with you
when i could forget myself.
without you, the weight of me
is unbearable
i only ever dream of you
in different shades of blue
and remember you as
the feeling of drowning
you left too soon
the loss of you grew in it's place
pale and inevitable
i realized i love that more.

i am soft and lovely
fragile frame, pressed
together loosely
keep your hands
behind the rope
unless you want to
watch me shatter

i want raspy screams
hollowed eyes
dismantle the parts of me
that bleed golden
i want to drip black tar
watch me rot

it is until it isn't
it does until it doesn't
you are until you aren't

three statements i refuse to believe
one idea pressed into me like
hot metal on a wrinkled shirt sleeve
discouragement is a word
from which i am free
sixteen is a number
i will not let hold me

i don't think i'll ever forgive him
for choosing me to suffer without you
you were ripped from me
i have been at the bottom of the sea
he thought an ark would save everyone
i'm still here, i am drowning
i am the prodigal son,
confused, setting fire to every pew
that made me believe in him
more than my own self
i don't need him like i need you
i will baptize myself in your name
i will crucify my body and let
my soul find itself your way
until that day comes, i am
waiting for you to join me
let's tessellate.

you used to sing to me
but it's been days since i've
heard anything from you directly
and i completely understand if
your world is crashing down
under the weight of my sadness
but the one thing i have to ask is
to please, take back this
agonizing pain that you gave me
on your way out of the door.

you are the difference between
the salt and the honey
you both pour on my wounds
you are the way i feel
after 2 cups of coffee and
the first cigarette of the day
you are the purple, red, yellow
you are the blue in the
pigment of my knuckles after
biting them, waiting for your
sweetest replies and
your most bitter neglect
you are the gold glitter
my heart is so fond of
you are the realizations
i make and forget by morning
you've waited so long for this
i don't know how you handle
being the center of
everything i cannot

i bet even after all this time
that if my chest were to
ache with emptiness enough
like it used to i could go to your house
and find the outline of our bodies
on your dark blue bed sheets
i have spent the last year
both trying to run from you
and find you at the same time
but i left everything i knew
about falling in love
on that mattress and
it's still settling there
like dust and
all i can do is write about you
until it comes back to me,
or by some kind of miracle,
you decide to.

2 years ago
i was sitting on an old, ***** love seat
in a musky garage
that belonged to your mother
taking hit after hit
from a pipe made of tin foil
holding hands with you
on that love seat that had me
laughing 'till i didn't know
if i actually existed
and other times, it had me
wishing i didn't exist at all
but that first time you
pressed your lips softly into mine
it didn't feel like a kiss at all,
but more like a trigger being pulled.
for the last 2 years,
i have been stuck on that love seat
not knowing how to exist
in any other way besides
trying to find you on it but
you left a long time ago
and i don't know if i've finally
found my way home
or if i am just disappearing
as the months pass and i
forget more and more what
it felt like to have bullets
for a tongue, sitting next to you
on that old, ***** love seat

and what's worse is that
i couldn't go back if i wanted
and it may be that my life
is getting duller and greyer
every second that i
am forgetting how
to miss you.

dear father,
i'm so sorry
that my mother
does not understand
mental illness
or that it
doesn't make you
an unfit parent.
i wish she hadn't
made me so
afraid of you.
if you would've stayed,
i might not be
drowning in self hatred
and desperation
for someone to
understand just enough
for someone to
give me a
break.

i'm so exhausted lately.
it's getting harder to speak
and laugh in the right places.
i used to know names,
now it's all mashed into
one big blur of things
i wish i could still care about.
i will spiral out of control
until i crash into a
helpless, stubborn, ball of pity
which i will be buried
and remembered as.
i haven't ate much
in the past few days.
i feel like i'm
rapidly deteriorating
but i don't want to
go back to the hospital.
i don't want to do anything.
i don't even want to die.
i'm just in this perpetual
suspended animation with
no negative or positive progress,
i'm just hanging in the world
without anyone, i am so alone
in this recess of frozen time
that i have completely lost
all human characteristics
as i evolve into this
monstrous, out of control
being of sadness.
this is more than a lack of identity,
it's a lack of feeling.

lately, i've been jealous
of the attention handed out
by people who shouldn't
matter to me

he didn't have me
sweating on his
bedroom floor
he didn't have me
crying with my head
in the toilet
he didn't have me
locked outside
my own rib cage
he didn't have me
like you did he didn't
have me like you did
he didn't have me

i look at you
the same way
you look at the
7:30pm sky
when it's lit up
in bright pinks
oranges, yellows,
instead of blue --
full of wonder
and melancholy

i forgot to say
you're not allowed to touch me
without dirt under your fingernails

this is me
S C R E A M I N G
i need more attention than i've been getting
since ***** been hard
and i am
absolutely
anything
but okay

sometimes
i worry that depth of emotion
is a finite resource and i've
wasted all of mine on **** like
being so lonely i can't breathe.
but it's sunday,
i don't go to church,
instead, i painted my panic gold,
and wore it on my head
like a heavy crown.
no one bats an eye
when i say that i'm too embarrassed
with this life that i want to end it, but
thank you for being so lovely,
kind, and supportive.
i am not shaking.
this is shame.
this is it for
a prayer.

i thought i used to be pretty once
but back then, you weren't afraid
of anything, and i know
that you thought i was pretty too
but you stopped when i found out
you're just as afraid as i am
tell me how the drugs made it okay
i used to think you were pretty
i heard that you're looking hideous now
your skin's made of scabs, such a shame,
i guess some people might pity us
but people don’t make it okay
now i drink almost every night
i try not to think about much

i guess that i’m glad we lost touch

you were so angry that
you couldn't even speak
and i got so upset that i
ran to the bathroom to *****
and as i clutched porcelain
you rubbed my back
then walked me to the kitchen
to refill our cups with more
coke and whiskey, and we drank
and never talked about it again

i'm trying to figure out
how many times the words
i can't do this to myself anymore
will run through my head
before i give in to the voices
fighting back with, "you're so alone."

you'll see him again-
different face, a different name,
same situation allowing you
your make believe fairy tales
starting with an innocent smile
and ending with empty veins
spilled on the bathroom floor-
you can't clean that up, but
at least you got to be held
during all the chaos.

this is me, learning
what the space between
never and again
really looks like.

all i want right now
is to write something
heavy enough that you will
collapse under the weight of it
so i will be left with pieces of you
like the way you pronounce the word "milk"
or what your hands do
to the inside of your arms when they're bored
and i know they cut your hair and threw you in a cell
but i hope you feel this as i'm writing it
i hope you collapse
i remember all those different moment
at random when someone would say your name
or smirk like you used to
like you knew something about me no one else did
but i'm bad at keeping secrets
and i want you to collapse
and i want you to feel this
and i wont pick up even one piece of it

and i still love you so ******* much

give your body to a winter's boy-
he'll lay you down, strip your clothes
and you'll undress even further than that
but he'll leave you in the cold
and push your so far under his bed
he forgets he ever had such parts of you
in his own two hands and
never gave them back
you're frozen, now,
and you wait all spring
to find summer's girl
and all she does is hold your hand
and you're standing in a pool
of the ice melted around your skin.
next thing you know,
you're in a palet she made on the floor
on her balcony, overlooking the railroad
and the greenest forest on the other side
and it's 3 in the morning and
you're smoking a cigarette
to get rid of the taste of alcohol and sugar
but then you kiss her and
she tastes the same way.
you don't want the season to end
but you're still watching yourself
glow from the inside out.