15, sitting on the edge of your bed,
you told me that you couldn't love me
because the small of her back
fit so perfectly pressed against your palms
and the pink colored thighs matched
the flushed cheeks, and it always,
always drove you wild to watch her
strip down, layers of cotton, denim,
lace.
i asked you if the weight of her own
existence kept her up at night, or
how she got that crescent shaped scar
placed delicately under her left eye.
the blank stare you replied with
made me wonder what the point
to seeing someone naked was
when all they take off are
their clothes.

6 months later, you tell me that
skin renews itself every twenty seven days
and it's been 4 weeks since
you last held her. you smiled
with full lips and said you felt like
you finally rid yourself of her.
it's been a year since
you really spoke to me and
i'm still wondering how
you could love someone if
all they touched was your skin.

sometimes, when i lay down in bed at night
i still think back to being 13 years old and
sitting in that lawn chair on your apartment balcony
and smoking a cigarette, listening to the song
"hospital" by lydia
and taking in the words
"i'll never ever leave there, i'll never leave."
i thought i wouldn't, at least.
nothing really mattered when
side walks and street lights at 11pm
and never being alone, always felt heavier
than anything else, in the best way,
and i miss that comfort.
you were the last thing i could honestly call home.
that means a lot when you can't remember
the last time someone meant to
touch you.


we like to think that we are
made of beautiful things until someday,
someone opens our mouth and
bats fly out and we realize
we’ve been empty
the whole time.

your mother used to
think of me as a street drug
but the bigger problem was
that she didn't treat you
like an addict and you
did not act like one.

your mother is gone now
and unable to see the real
street drugs you've been
hiding under your tongue
and in your pockets
but i'm sure she'd still
look at me as if i were
death itself.

the most memorable
first kiss i've ever had
was shared with you.
i leaned in, pressed
my lips against yours
and i put my hands on
your chest. you threw
your head back and
laughed like a God.
i've spent over a year
being confused as to
why you did that and
why you never explained.
i know now that it's because
you knew i was looking
for your heart and you
knew that you didn't have one.

unless she's given it back,
you still don't.

je me sens tellement
déconnecté de tout
ce qui m'entoure.
j'ai besoin que
tu rentres de
sorte que je
peux sentir
réel à nouveau.

we had a silent love
like a loose tooth
and no doors to slam,
just your rhymes
without any reason
and your pills made you
sicker than the season
we didn't speak a word
to eachother & i realized
that i needed you
right after you got tired
of chasing me.

i swear,
your eyes used to
drip honey when
you talked about
me, i swear they
did.

im addicted to the feeling
of emptiness in my body.
first, panic,
then comes comfort
in knowing i will soon be
smaller
than every conversation
weve tried to hold in the past year
and now that i can think
with my head clear, no longer
suffocating under the weight
i carried of the love i thought
was shared, i realize that nothing
that came out of our sorrow bleeding
mouths ever held any meaning.
the meaning lied in the dark
like i did all those nights when i
couldnt close my eyes and turned off
all the lights to pretend i could.
i will weigh even less than
what i meant to you and
maybe after that,
your weak, bruised,
needle loving arms can be
wrapped around me
comfortable enough
for the both of us.

lately
i haven't been able
to decide which is worse;
drowning
under the weight
of the crashing waves
or killing myself
from the thirst
of avoiding them.

your mother died before teaching you
how to deal with death
and the only way
to bleed out the sadness
was to wrap your hands
around my neck and i,
i ripped open my own *******
chest so you didn't have to get
your hands *****
and you told me
you wanted someone
with a little more

restraint

everything i say
is poison so i
bite my lip and
hope i never tear
a hole through.

lord knows you
can’t handle
anything with
a kick.

i remember
one of the times
i got scared and
called it off,
you found someone else.
when you told me
you still loved me
at 3 in the morning,
i asked you, in a
desperate attempt
for you to hurt me
more than i had
hurt myself,
"did you sleep with her?"
your answer still
to this day
leaves me wondering
if i want to break
her hands
or my own.

tomorrow morning,
i will brew up some coffee,
drink it black,
and lay in my bed with
waltz #2 on repeat
and i wont i won't
i won't
think
about it.

i've burned bigger bridges than you.

isolation called you
and passed a tunnel into
a bright world where
you can ignore the
wonders of existence.
my heart can be a
little house for you
to stay, but
everybody's scared
of this place.

"i'm sorry i can't
keep you safe."


                                                                                                           "i'm sorry i'm so
                                                                                                            clumsy that you
                                                                                                                 feel like you
                                                                                                                       should."

i'm wearing nothing
but a blanket and
the glow of my tv

and i wanna talk to you about
innocence
and fragility

consider this my
loudest plea

i saw an injured bird
making it's way
through the grass
in my back yard.
i didn't know
how to help it,
so i put out the
last of my cigarette,
went back inside,
and picked up my phone.

1 missed call

i called you back,
you didn't answer.

this morning,
i watched a bird
helplessly search
for safety,
and walked away.

that was the second hardest part of the day.

i know i've said that it hurts most at night,
and screaming into your pillow at 2am
is the romantic, glorified equivalent
of constantly feeling
cheated
emotionally bruised
and too far away from him,

but sometimes,
it’s 10am on a monday morning
and you’re leaning on the kitchen sink
waiting for the toast to pop up
and the smell of dusty sunlight and
chamomile tea makes you
miss. him. so. much.
that you don’t know what to do
with your hands.

somehow
between facebook posts
and blankets tied around my neck
drunkenly running through the house
i keep finding myself
playing the heroine
to your hero.

i
hold
grudges
like
my
mother
&
leave
first
like
my
father.

you had one job:
you had to read the ghosts
scary bedtime stories
to keep them docile,

but you fell in love,
and let them go.

i tied a cherry stem with my tongue
i fixed your tie with my eyes closed
but i couldn't quite tie you down
and that didn't **** me
or make me stronger,
but i would rather either of those happen
than spending the next year and a half
hiding in a grave i have come to know
as my own bedroom.

maybe i'm just balanced
perfectly, for the moment
until i lose my footing,
end up at the bottom,
while you're safe on the
other end of the rope.

maybe i have false confidence,
i thought you'd have to
show me the way
but i'm sick of always standing
in your shadow
i'm tired of your blown up ego
maybe i don't need you
at all.

i am made of sin,
you're the only innocent
god i believe in.

sometimes, i think you live here,
in my marrow, in my bones.
there's a squirrels nest of
broken heart pieces and mirror whipsers in the dark
shredded and stuck around my ribcage.
you haunt my esophagus and sternum.

usually, i think you no longer live here,
in my fingers, in my toes,
but, can love exist like ghosts?
faded polaroids floating in air,
like where there's not enough ink
and the words come out blurry and smudged
and grey like charcoal-dust-fingerprints
on the page?
can love exist like that?
shadows of tall buildings stretching across streets?
can love exist like that?
i think it can, because there's charcoal dust
at the base of my spine
that still spells out your name sometimes,
and smells of chai.
you still know my weak spots,
and i still know where you're ticklish
i know where you bruise like over ripe apples
my spine remembers curving against your chest,
and i know your breath against my neck
your hands on my hips,
your lips on my lips
if anyone ever wants to know you, let me tell them
the noise you make when you get a new idea,
or the hushed sound of your breathing as you sleep,
the way your lips curve into a smile slowly,
or rush into laughter, there's no inbetween.
i'll tell them about your eyes in the middle of the night
when they bore into me like twin drills into brick..
and they will begin to know you.
it is funny that people can fall off of you and away,
drift back into the coils in your brain
that hold distant, but important, memories
moments of pure bliss, trauma,
you forget the names and faces you used to see everyday
for all different reasons, the universe has different plans
than what we'd like to see, couples are forced apart
sometimes gladly
sometimes reluctantly
and sometimes sadly
but there will always be a thread of you that
holds something on the other end
and usually it hangs off of you unnoticed,
but sometimes it gets caught with other threads,
or looped around an arm or a leg
and you have to remember,
try to remember,
for a moment,
i am on the other end.

one tongue to live
and one to deceive
i see your eyes like waterfalls
and they’re poring over me
i feel your gaze
and it’s ******* me
sweetness in your mouth
and in your throat
down on your knees
you learned this by rote
draw the curtains
i want them all to see
this isn’t seduction
this is worship
this is rivalry
everything is a game
and no one plays it better than me

i prefer rainfall over
sunshine, and maybe that
explains why i'd choose
you over anyone else.
i always hope that
it's a beautiful day
wherever you are, and
all i ever want to do
is kiss your spine and
never apologize again
but my lips have yet to meet
the skin on your back
and for that
i am sorry.

i like to torture myself
with the crippling thought
that if i still knew you,
and not just who i made,
i'd love you even more

your 90's dress sense
leather jacket
and bad hair bleach job
is all a part of someone
i have yet to know
but your eyes that
sink in above your cheeks
and the tiny gap
between all of your teeth
are the parts of you
that i can recognize as what
i'm still learning to let go of.

hands which have touched so much
but have held onto none;
it is you that i'm asking forgiveness for.

i can hear his sigh in the hum of my ceiling fan
and i can taste him in my coffee.
this isn't depressing, this is love.
i just need to drink more.

all my friends loved drugs or liked to get ****** up
my boyfriend would shoot ****** and paint with my blood
i’ll sure as hell miss downing pills
but i think i want to live instead

i loved white nights bleaching my eyelids
i loved brunette boys who made me feel like jesus
getting ****** on rooftops watching the sun collapse
but i’m tired of waking up and feeling like ****

i had fun drinking ***** on hot, summer nights
and placing pills under my tongue until the world was vivid neon lights
holding hands with the boy who drank too much lean
but i think i want to make it past 2013

take me back
to when love used to be
holding hands in a movie theater
and sitting next to each other at lunch
and writing their name on your hand
where no one got hurt too bad

as opposed to getting drunk
and sleeping with all of your friends

we went out for coffee
as friends, to a place
we used to go to all the time
and i'd ask for the same thing
up to a point that you stopped
asking me

but after the long line and
under the warm cafe lights
i was thinking about how
this felt just like old times
until it was almost our turn
to order, when you looked
at me and asked,
"what do you want?"

i drank my coffee,
i stuffed the unpaid for
books in your bag,
i smoked two cigarettes
on the 5 minute drive
back to my house

and left you at the door.

once, i liked a guy
who was good with his words,
a poet, if you will.
it didn't take long
to realize that was all
he was good with,
and relationships
were at the bottom
of that list.
now i wonder
if those two traits
go hand in hand.

it's not hard
only to want love
to write about.

wouldn't it be useless
to ask you to take me back
after miles and miles of
missed phone calls
and 3 break ups

simply because i want you

it wouldn't work
because you just want a girlfriend
someone to hold when
the nights get too cold
and eyelids feel too heavy
you want comfort

i want all the pain
that is being yours

i want to show you how lovely my room
looks when i first wake up and the
light is pouring in through cracked blinds
but a picture doesn’t do it justice and
a response from you has become even
less frequent than a thought about
something other than you and your
tragically well put together writings
that never seem to be addressed
to me anymore but i think that
if i were to put a few more states and messy
goodbyes between us then you might
just find me interesting and worth
your time again

i've started writing so many ******* poems
and i can't finish any of them because
you took my ability to have closure
when you walked away.

on nights when you remember
can you feel my anger
through all of these years
and all of the miles?

everything that you touch
is luckier than i am