i'm sorry that all i can give you
doesn't include wanting you around

only missing the times that i did

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

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

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

haven't had it in me.

i can be the right kind of brave too.

last night, i slept in your
blue plaid pajama pants
and woke up with them,
and myself, soaked in
period blood.
i cleaned myself off,
cleaned my bedroom up,
and found an old towel
under my bed that we
used to use to wipe off
whatever mess we made
on top of it.
i melted in a bathtub full
of too-hot water and
scented bubbles while
the song my grandfather
used to sing to me as a
lullaby overpowered
any thought i had about
impurity and sin.

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

when i feel the dull burn of a car window rolled down in 50 degree weather, when i am showing someone else my favorite books and films, when a boy is holding one hand and a cigarette is holding my other, i will think of someone who tried to better themselves and that it's okay if it isn't because of me.

when i approach my first day of college and there is a hand held out to me in an attempt to meet my acquaintance or a nerve-calming crack at the teacher by an upper classman, i will take that as an invitation to get right what i didn't in high school.

when i find a friend that will take me to the hottest parties a suburban chemical factory can hold, but who won't sit outside and wait the 40 seconds i have left of my cigarette to keep me company, i will gently decline and decide that i deserve better.

when i hear a sound as demanding as a freight train cutting slowly through the calm small-town winter night, i will think of the conversations between me and an old dear friend, on a front porch lit by a giant christmas star. i will smile fondly and choke back the nostalgia.

when i think of my adventures through the year 2014, although achingly transient, i owe it to myself not to pull my hair over what could have been, but instead pull my arms around the people who deserve it, and hug a little tighter, love a little harder, and demand a lot better.

if you could see me right now,
you would ask me if i have slept in the 9 months that you have been away
you would tell me that i look like a store that won't close
you would tell me how different you are now and how much you've learned in your shaved head and caged windows
and when i reached to touch your face, you would say that you aren't there yet
you never belonged to me and you never will
but you still keep the guillotine in your bedroom
and the skeletons in your closet still have skin and hair and eyelashes that bat when you make a wish on one of your own
your laughter still doesn't travel like it used to and you don't smile unless you have to
and *******, i used to lay with all of the smiling parts of you
what a foreign memory

i sleep but not as well as i used to
i keep the lights on in hopes that they might catch your attention
and you're no different than you were
the last time you didn't belong to me

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.

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


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

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.

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

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

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.

earlier tonight, i walked across a busy street
with my hands in my pockets and my eyes closed
in such a desperate need to once again,
feel the weight of your body on top of mine.
about two or three different car horns
pierced through the atmosphere,
but i paid no attention to it.

it all just sounded like God laughing.

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.

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.

that feeling throughout your body
after soaking in a hot bath
where you're warm from the inside out
and your legs feel like they'd
collapse under any wrong movement

that's how it feels to be
in love with
the memory of you

but hell, it isn’t going to work out
and i’m not what you need
i’m far away, and full of dirt and bugs
but i want you
we’ll **** other people
and maybe even have fun
from time to time
but i think about your smile
and it’s stupid
but i curl up inside of it at night
pull my covers over my head
and dream bitterly about
of a life without such
distance

the summer i had you was the shortest
the first autumn without you was the hardest
that winter i wasn't sure was the coldest

i try to remember the spring
but only recall sharp teeth
and paper dreams
and the one time i let my breath hold me
and violently refusing to get out of bed
until the sky stopped bleeding
your blood was dark blue
everything you hated about yourself spilled a mess
and i thought it looked better on me than you
so pinned my hair back with a railroad tie
then i flashed a big smile to uninterested eyes
bottled every single one of your sighs
set it on my dresser next to my chanel no. 5
you had such a dangerous tongue
even being the gentlest you could be
every word felt like a paper cut
so i sharpened the ends of each bone in my body
and screamed till i ran out of breath
"i'm ready"

you bent your neck like you were trying to break it
as he posed looking contemplative, a little agitated
as if he wished he were somewhere else

and then it starts-
the race for "i cared less"
the emptiest chest
the slowest heart beat
no starters
no ready, set,
you'll know it when
you feel it

and dear, i know
he was a childhood home
he was warm wooden floors
and the view from your bedroom window
but he also feels like
ringing the doorbell to an abandoned house
and expecting somebody to let you in
you are the kind of girl who gets halloween flowers
you liked the part where he looked dead in the shower

*he didn't complete you, he showed you how to begin

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.

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.

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 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."

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.

i was a moment away
from texting you to ask
if it was cold outside today
in my south east texas town

it hit me all over again

every road sign, a sigh
to the fact that i am unable
to enjoy the weather
to enjoy your company

you make it clear that
you will not be coming back
to tell me how the weather
changes

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 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

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.

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.

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
*****

you said it was the weather
when i asked why it is i'’m so cold
what you forgot to mention is
that it was the middle of the
summer and whether or not you
would be back by the time fall hit

well, fall hit and the leaves
crunching beneath my shoes sound
like door slams and i stay up thinking
if you weren’t around to hear it;
did it really happen?
you don’t call the next day and
i know for sure it happened

you say i should move on,
i picked the boy with your fingers
and spent the night thinking about the
way he would look on top of me
and spent the morning hoping you
couldn’t read minds,
because mine wasn’t on yours
this time and im sorry,
you say you will call and i think about
the way winter will hit without you around
to see, because it's happened but
this time it won't leave bruises

i’m in love with my biggest dissapointment.

how does it feel, when you realize you break off and shut up the ones with the light to guide you home when you turn them out, always turning off the lights. what’s a map to a match in this big, dark, cave of nervous hands and wanting lips,
lets not talk about the kiss. slurred slurred liquor bottle, throttle down the angry path of your father, let’s not talk about this. don’t say a word about your mother and those black tar veins of yours, your heart of crystals, no, don’t go there.

don’t ******* go there,
you’ll be trapped in endless pit of stockholm syndrome and marlboro black 100’s and not eating for 3 days to still, never be good enough.

i’m so sorry i’ll never amount to romantically ruining your life in a room of people who couldn’t care less about the eyes that cry and the bones in your chest. i really am.

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.

I'm done bleeding blood, I'm way past that now
I'm bleeding concussions, hostile glares, and snarling defiance
I'm bleeding provocation
Radical softness has never been for me, no matter how hard I tried
I have too many rough edges to smile at you and pretend I'm not backed into all your corners
I've had too many guns to my head, next time I see one
It'll be me that pulls the trigger
I've heard the words "wrong number" too many times while listening to a familiar voice
You know I'm all for making mistakes out of old friends and finding mistakes to blame for my recklessness so it's no surprise I don't feel guilty
It's everyone's fault but my own and I'm not agreeing with you, I'm defining myself
By myself
Like Lisa when she said "I'm playing the villain, baby, just like you want"
I'm not crazy, I'm not insane I swear
I'm just interrupted
I'm bleeding growth, strength, in nothing less than what comes natural
An instinctive evil
And if the wound is the portal, I'm glad you aimed for my head and not my heart this time

it's been  t w o  years
so i  don't  remember
any  specific  things  i
used  to  note when  i
would lie   next to you
and  find  the   perfect
metaphors   for   your
perfect  features.   the
only  stories i  have to
tell now are  the  ones
about how  i  think  of
you every  single  day
s       t       i       l       l
but  after  t w o  years
i have   finally   started
to  address   the   pain
of being    second best
and   lately,   not  even
the thought of    y  o  u
r      h  i  p  s   pressed
onto hers hurt me more
than how i feel on days
i eat,    or the  sight  of
myself      in the mirror.