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.

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

concealing the smiles
to seem less eager to please
in a smoke filled garage, you're holding
a can of beer that seems to be
sweating even less than i am
maybe it's nervous to meet your
lips, too

this is a night that leaves you
weak in your knees and begging
for just one more hand to brush
against your shoulder as it's
trying to route around you
to find the perfect spot on
the pool table, and that's
the only form of in-the-way
you're going to be tonight

they like you
don't worry

i write all day like an adult,
i am learned and i use big words
and i know how to accurately craft
a metaphor about pain and harm.

but at the end of the day
i return to childlike phrases,
“it’s not fair,” and i feel more
of a release from that than
a composition notebook
filled from cover to cover
with a million different ways
of saying that i still,
despite everything,
am not happy.

i used to listen to flatsound's album
scotland, i wish you had stayed
in the passenger seat, back and forth
between home and the place i wanted it to be
where i couldn't ignore the winter
and the dull pulse of abandoned laughter
throughout houses that look like
what i feel like on a bad day

and today was a bad day
i want to travel backwards
to a time i can remember actually trying  
walking the few streets home from school
anticipating telling you how my day went
so you could call me and say,
"i'm happy for you, princess"

i don't try anymore and
it's been a long time since
you have been happy
about anything except
******* me

i was 6 years old
and he told me that
i wouldn't dare tell my mother
about what happened
when she went to sleep

i never understood
why it's called "making love"
when all i ever wanted to do
was crawl into a deep dark pit
and erase my existence
from everyone's memories.

so the second time
my arms were held beside
my shaking body
as i whispered "stop"
into a boys mouth
with hate so heavily
coating his tongue
and teeth
it rubbed off into me
i didn't say a word
in the morning
because that's how i
was raised.

love is a foreign word
to the people like me
who didn't just
lose their virginity.
i threw mine into a well
and never looked back

it was a love,
so sudden and fierce,
it scars your palms
when you press them
together to pray
and you only prayed
when his sad, tired eyes
looked at you
when he said your name
and it hurt the both of you
for different reasons.

don't talk to me
about holiness,
i've been on fire
for a year now.

he didn’t pray,
but he took a few seconds
to catch his existential breath
and when he did that,
he closed his eyes
and the doctor asks him
to read the bottom line
and it’s the name bullies called him
in the 6th grade.

that’s when you put
your head on his chest
and felt his heart beating
all the way inside yours.
then he tells you he feels like
flowers are growing from his knees
because they get weak
when he thinks of her,
but he didn’t mean
to say that and
he’s sorry.

he’s sorry and so are you,
and things start to burn,
like that time in 3rd grade
you put the candle
too close to the curtain
and watched your life
turn to ashes,

except it hurts
3 times worse
when it’s a beautiful boy
you didn’t know
was capable
of liking
someone
like
you.

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.

my body shatters upon impact with any
innocent glance belonging to someone
i feel is capable of the damage
i have become so fragile under
sometimes i feel like the dishes
you smashed against your walls
and other times i feel like the
dripdripdrip coming from your
bathroom sink faucet, it's there
but you don't notice it.
the point is, all i am are fractions
of you while the real me is
trapped in every empty sigh
you released every time i said
"i love you" in hopes you'd repeat
but knowing you wouldn't

your teeth are still dug into my
shoulder, your nails have made
a graveyard of my back
i am going to pull every single
one of them out and i hope
i hope you feel it

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.

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

maybe that's my problem.

i remember the way love used to taste
it crept up my sternum, crawled up the back of my throat, strangled my tongue, and leaped out of my mouth with a trembling, shaking "i don't know how to feel like this anywhere else so please let me stay"
although there was an eviction notice stuck in between the door and the frame but i didn't open the door, to leave, to see it
and i used to look at people who could find something good and run from it and wonder how they could possibly do that when i ran to every doorstep, pleading for someone to let me in and planting my feet firmly into their ground as soon as they did
there are pieces of myself in every corner of these rooms, every crack in these walls, clumped in bathroom sink drains and i understand now
the more love you give that is unrequited, the less you have to give out again

and i'm only a few drunken, empty i-love-you's away from running dry

section 1: the part of me that is ready and angry
thicker, calloused skin, sharper teeth, a louder voice to yell at you when the day comes, although
i am not decided on whether to scream "WHY?" or "*******"
this part of me doesn't care about the judge or jury
i'm there to serve red hot rage on a silver platter
i'm burning with enough emotion to be proved an honest victim
why am i on trail?
force me into something to prove it's happened before, it's not fair and i'll punch and kick until everyone in the ******* courtroom regrets doing this to me

section 2: the part of me that's soft and terrified
i have been naked for months
everyone pretends not to notice, but i see the way they blush when i walk into a room
i hear them whispering, "if she didn't want this, why did she ever take off her clothes in the first place?"
i've said it before, and i'll say it again: i didn't have a choice
i'm transparent, therefore, afraid that the second our eyes meet you'll know that i feel like i've done YOU wrong
what a laugh, in the face of anyone else, but you
i'm afraid that when i open my mouth to tell the judge what you did to me, it will sound a lot like me asking you not to be angry for telling
for someone who was taken advantage of, getting "justice" feels
a lot like
being
*****

there's a slam of a front door
that sends a signal to my lungs
to tell them that they need nicotine
and another to the dry throat that
says it's time for a cup of coffee

i conduct a symphony of
slowly getting out of bed

taking the first sip of coffee
always reminds me of that
first kiss we shared on
new years at midnight,
i knew i would regret it

lately, the drinks i pour in
the evening feel worse than
a burnt tongue, because it
slides down my throat, into the
into the stomach, into the veins,
into the brain that usually tells me
do not think about this tonight but

i am drunk
i am obsessive
i am harmless

i have grown so exhausted of
always being the wrong kind of
brave

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.

this is about letting myself be happy, about falling in love and forgetting the rest. doing this for myself because nobody else will, because nobody else can. because the nights won’t be lonely anymore with you there and there are some things that only happen once in your life and this is one of those things, you are one of those things. how extraordinary it is to even sit in the same room as you.

just no, god, really, you should know that you made the colors bleed out of my clothes and onto my floor when you wrapped your arms around me. or that if you rolled up my sleeves on my shirts pink roses would probably grow out from underneath. start from the veins in my arms and break out. gradually turning into stems. turning into flowers. i’d say the same for my legs but i’m weak at the knees, weak at the knees getting out of my car. take a deep breath and kiss him on the lips, close my eyes and put my hands on both sides of his face. do you remember how this felt? your eyes are shut do you remember? could you time travel from now to the first time this happened because i did. your eyes were shut then too just like this. you’re back, you’re back, you’re back. i can see you again. and when i’m back in the bed i handed over my heart in, would you know that i’m better now? that you never had to worry. this is better because we need it.

and we’ll go on a date to the movies late at night and i can rest my head on you the whole time while you hold my hand and let go only so i can move my fingers up and down the inside of your palm while it rests against your leg. let’s be the last to get up, sit in the dark with the credits so i can tell you how i feel about you just a little bit. tell you like i tried to tell the complete strangers who would sit at that table in that little diner in my town because i wrote your name on a window ledge. so when they look out at the cars, at the people, maybe they’d notice, maybe they’d know i needed them to know i was happy.

you make me feel is what you do, you bring back the constantly fading parts. you’re the one and if i had to explain the way you’re beautiful it’d probably be like the pocket watch necklace i found at a secondhand store the morning after you texted me. the battery is dead and the time is stuck with both the hands over the one roman numeral, and the lady who worked there said it’d need a new battery but it doesn’t need to be fixed for me to love it. you’re beautiful like when i hold your hand i want to know every line. i want to trace veins in your arms, i want to run my fingers over the back of your hands on the knuckles.

you’re a lot like when it rains at night when i’m in bed, and i just lay there instead of going to sleep and i miss nobody in particular but i just miss places, moments. it’s coming down so slow and gold cause the street light is shining on it. i’d want you there, could i hold your hand while we watch it and could you please try for a second to know that i feel that way about you.

you feel more like images than words, like my favorite sounds or like movies that changed my life, i’ll meet you in another life when we are both cats. there aren’t so many stars here. you’re beautiful like knowing they’re up there, anyways. you’re as beautiful for as sad as i get when clouds hide them. you’re as influential to me as my suicide attempt was, and i hope that makes sense because i mean it in the best way because it changed my whole life.

i can feel you changing my life when i got out of my car and walked up to your door it was like i knew right then you can’t go back from this, and it’s scary and it’s so hard to be alive again because i signed all the papers, i signed away everything it’s all gone it was boarded all up and forgotten, and you’re dusting everything, taking all the sheets on the furniture off, and tearing off the bad wallpaper. just let me in, let me try and i won’t go anywhere, i just want to live inside you almost. i just want to do what you’re doing for me for you too, you are so beautiful in ways i will never be able to tell you but god will i try.

i just wanna lay in your lousy arms, and feel real little. i feel little already but you can’t function in the world by being how you feel, but i want you to let me be what i feel and i just want that to be something that’s okay, and i hope you kiss it all away, all the parts that i pretend i am. could you draw in my hands with your finger and push down my fingers when they try to curl up, and could i stop you by holding your hand and kissing you on your neck, just soft, just really soft cause i’m really small and let me lay my head on your chest so i can tell you i can hear your heart beating, and it sounds a lot lamer in words here than when we’re there under your covers, than when i’m feeling like i just opened up your chest and climbed inside, cause it feels like you let me even if you didn’t let me. i just want to honestly believe for a few minutes that i don’t have to ever leave that moment, how we let ourselves believe anything like that i’ll never know but i want you to try because things would be better.

i was like a bird that flew out in front of your car in the morning that didn’t get hit, i was like a ghost but you picked me up, and your hands didn’t fall right through me. you picked me up and the way you said my name didn’t hurt. it’s like we were driving on the highway in the dark with our headlights off but we made it home. we made it home singing. these are the kinds of nights where you close your eyes and you feel like they’re never closed, i’m just staring at your beautiful ******* face with the glow of the tv on it. stuck in this memory with the right soundtrack. you were just smiling, and there i was becoming real, and i’ve been trying to tell you, you make me feel real. and everyone’s been telling me to stay away from you, but how could you love someone who never hurt you, who never made you prove how much you wanted it, how much you wanted them. you’re supposed to chase him, why didn’t you chase him?

i guess what i wanted more than anything was for you to see youself the way i saw you, to know that i love you in this bizarre unreal way where i don’t even know everything about you but i want to. and all i can feel is how closed these doors are. i find myself so desperate for any part of you, even the parts you gave no one because they aren’t important. no one watches for those kinds of things, the number of freckles on your arm or the way you squeeze my hand twice, but here i am in love with you, in love with your quirks, in love with how utterly human you are, how nobody appreciated the most appreciatable things about a person. this is all the b footage that i can’t stop watching, i am drowning in the parts everybody saw but nobody watched. that’s where i fell in love with you.

just oh my god, i really am so in love with you and everything makes so much sense when i’m with you, and that sounds so stupid and cliche but it really does,  it makes sense because you’re my other half and it feels like i’m done making the pieces that never fit fit, your hands were really meant to hold mine, i think i really believe again in this childish way that i threw out months ago that soulmates are real, because you are mine in every sense of the word.

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 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 used to pace my room
in confusion of why i couldn't get over
the single month we spent together
sharing coffee, kisses, stories, bodies
i barely knew your middle name
but we talked again a few days ago
and i asked you, "do you think
if the people we are now were to
have met eachother before the
people we were then, we would've
had a chance?"

inthe moment it took
for you to reply
i finally figured it out
me and him, we are the
connection, as opposed
to the attraction i have
mistaken it for, he taught
me how to love softly, he
talks like he still knows me
and i still don't trust it but
i have never experienced
anything like this and
now i am pacing my room
again, caught on a simple
text message, sent 11:29am,
that reads "yes, i do."

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.

i've never been to
a confessional but i
told you i loved  you
while you held me in a
dark bedroom and i
think that's close
enough.

unhappy man with the rottweiler grin
find your shadow's darkest part and
tell it that it does not own you anymore
and this hurricane of a 16 year old girl
is not the reason.

a million poems later and
i have not written anything
that could convince you
to love me back.

i wanna sleep in
spend the weekend on my back
my bed is a grave

i will not be nice
i feel lousy all the time
i can't stand myself

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.

your sharp jaw
your inordinate blush
the way you put yourself together.
if i could make dreams out of cold hands and dark tresses, you'd be my winter palace.
but when all of this is over,
when the sky lays dark and stormy,
i will run.
i will run home with no shoes on,
pound my fists into the pavement
till they're black, blue, and ******.
i will hold them open for you and say
"this is it. these are the most vulnerable parts of me,
and this is what i'm trying to give to you."
i will scream my own name
into your mouth
just to hear the echo in your chest.
it feels like you've tied my hands behind my back,
sucker punched me in the nose,
and i'm spitting out, "thank you,
thank you. this is all i want."

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.

you’re a lot like the second shot of whiskey,
warm, burning, has anyone told you that your hands
they are are firecrackers, taking off into the night?
and i’m a lot like coming down from the high
and the thought that you and i somehow
ended up in the same universe was the only thing
helping me fall asleep peacefully in my own sheets

but the moon has said goodbye to me,
and the sun comes up to welcome you another day
and i am burning my tongue on my coffee,
desperately hoping you'll text me

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'm fine when i can feel someone next to me
when my words lazily roll off my tongue and into heavy air
when someone's subtle and quiet gestures suggest
that i am somebody they like to be around
i'm fine when the world feels warm
from the love that swarms in and all around it

it's the spaces between that get me
the 53 seconds of time it took between
my thumb pressing the "send" button and the reply
hearing the laughter coming from the other room,
but not the joke preceding it
eating cheap dinner alone in my bedroom
while watching my favorite 90's sitcom

these gaps, these pauses, they are the ugliest parts of me
there is not a second of these moments that go by
that i am not wishing for a reassurance, a validation
a reminder that i am heard and noticed and loved
and that i have a purpose here, and reasons to stay

i need to be reminded that i have reasons to stay

yesterday
we got lost in the woods
(i thought we were going somewhere)
but you didn't kiss me back
and then you told me you liked me.
i don't know
what i'm supposed
to do with that.

last night
you threw me on your floor
and dug into my back
like you wanted to hold on.
then you walked me to my car
opened up the door
and said "drive safe,
call me when you get home."
you never answered and
you haven't texted me back
and i still don't know
what i'm supposed
to do with that.

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.

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

don't talk to me about addiction
when you can still brush your teeth sober
act like you're too troubled to be a friend to me
when you're getting high, you just dont care

when you call, i get that feeling
like i just finished sobbing
choked up and dried out and exhausted
i get drunk and want to talk to you anyways

this is not about me being angry
this is not about how i used to see us
naked at the west end of humanity
the last two living souls, me and you,
naked in the wreckage of the world,
the opposite adam and eve

i should've understood sooner
that there's nothing romantic
about being the villian, no matter
how very much in love you are

this is about me, asking you to let me tell you
about the times i almost jumped off mountains
and then let me tell you why i didn't

there's more to being human
than embracing the mistakes you make
building a home out of apologies and
"i've been ****** up"s and
"you don't deserve this" -
when they tell you that it's okay
because you're only human,
they're reminding you to embrace
not only the bad, but the good too

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.

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

some days i'm depressed because i don't understand myself.
i don't get why i wake up angry most mornings, or why the world around me feels so loud when i don't even get out of bed.
some days i wonder why your absence makes me want to *****, when i'm not sure i even miss you.
i'm trying to find the connection between the two.

there's this moment, every morning at about 8:30 when i'm smoking my first cigarette of the day, when i feel every cell in my body collapse and rearrange in strange ways i don't understand just at the sight of a patio chair that you could be sitting in.
there's this single sigh of desperation when i almost wish you were out of jail so you'd call me over to make love with such incredible intimacy and passion, then forget to follow through again.
you haven't done that in a while, i think you meant it the last time you said you didn't want me and you never have.
i still think you'd like me better if i were still in your bed.
i think i'd like me better, too.

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.

there was beauty, love, fire, stillness, and i gave it all to you
you put both of your hands around my neck
had a grip on me like your favorite coffee mug
mouths never moved, just trembled

when you went home, your "i love you" started sounding like an apology
now every car crash sounds like the last time i heard you say my name

i am sitting on my back porch with you
more satisfied from your presence than
the nicotine between our fingers, and i'm
holding back laughter to hear yours first
because it's cold out and the sound of it
puts the warmth back into the air and
i can breathe again.

until your leg brushes against mine
then pulls back faster than i could notice
it was even there in the first place

the space between our bodies is a purgatory