You
Freckles That Are Scattered Like Stars
Ancient Ruins
Slow-Healing Wounds
You
Lonely Nighttime
Flowers That Weren’t Forced To Bloom
Flickering Fluorescents
You
Inferno Eyes
Gray Sunsets
Silent Admiration
You
Glow-In-The-Dark Passion
The Color Of Cigarette Smoke
Voices Of The Past
You

His favorite place was lakeside
But mine was by his side,
And don't tell me that "boys will be boys",
When he made me get on my knees
At my own mother's birthday,
Because what he felt for me was lust
Not love,
And although his passion was requited
His love was not.
My body was once a temple
Until he conquered and turned a once sacred place into ruins,
Like the true Spartan he was,
With armor strong enough to protect his heart,
And sharp enough to cut the hearts of others.
He didn't throw babies off cliffs,
But his glare when I told him "no" was enough to
Make me jump off of one into a pit of cold redemption.
I loved him more than words could fathom
And he loved me with please's and yes'.
My voice was hidden under darkness and low self-esteem
And every time he pulled my hair I plunged further
Into these waters.
I lied to everyone and myself,
But there comes a time when all these lies
Start to poison any reason you once retained.
What pulled me out was the will to restore the sacredness
To my desecrated heart.
His favorite place is still the lakeside,
But now mine is my inside.

I was sat in a cab,
A shell of flaking leather and jet-black exterior,
When I realized I loved you.
The immense and surrounding sound of falling rain
Incapsulated us into a sphere of warmth.
I was sat in a cab,
And I was leaning onto your chest,
You wrapped your arms around me and kissed me on the head.
What a simple act, an easy thing to do,
But I have never felt more loved, and more safe.
I was sat in a cab,
And I realized I loved you.
I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.
I never wanted to step foot into another space of existence
That didn't have you by my side.
There in that cab,
I wonder if you loved me too.

The distant laughter of my youth
seems to echo in the fogged caves of my mind.
I remember the sunshine and color,
slow and easy paces,
walking with my mother as she held my hand
and took pictures of me,
dancing in the waves.
wind chills and lightening storms
that illuminated the entire forest
were the only source of my tears.
I talked to the ghosts that haunted me.
my sister smiled when she saw my face,
and we frolicked in a meadow of rapture.
I look back on these times
and watch them flicker across my mind’s eye,
as if watching a film.
I smile,
for a moment,
and my face darkness with a crippling nostalgia

People write novels,
Paper leaves soaked in heart-quenching words,
About the kind of love I have found,
Or rather, has found me.
Lonely middle-aged women flip through,
Divulge, memorize, immerse themselves in,
The love story of a life that he has created for me.
Have you ever woken up in the buzzing blackness of 3 AM,
Searching in the stretch of infinity between you and the empty pillow,
Feathers floating in your head, but heavy,
Looking for, hoping for
The cosmic "it" that's plastered with wet paint images,
The celestial amor?
I used to.
I would harvest the angst and void for the loudest clock strikes,
And only then would I examine the truth of my heart,
And it's lack.
He has filled this void, he overflows it with his constant love,
His little "I love you" that accompanies every nighttime kiss.
Is it possible to enjoy the winding midnight
That once gawked at my loneliness?
He makes me green and vibrant.
His love is the sustenance of all my dreams,
The shimmering sheen of all growth,
And for this, I love him.

my fondest memory:
climbing into the bed of my father’s truck
with my sister by my side,
hands over our mouths to hush the giggles
and the cold metal on my back.
my mom drove to the fire station from home with us in the trunk,
my grandmother cooed in surprise.
I could see only the sky
the milky blue gray of mixed paint colors
like the walls of a baby boy’s room who died at birth.
the sky was interrupted by flocks of birds flying by
and I felt that I could fly with them,
green pine trees I could smell if I closed my eyes,
spindly brown branches
telephone lines and cracked street signs,
the ghosts of clouds stagnant in the air.
and I felt happy
despite the cuts on my thighs and wrists
I felt free
the wind didn’t chill my bones
and neither did the metal
I couldn’t feel cold
only euphoria.
the road twisted and turned,
I felt the ridges of the trunk roll over my spine,
I rode in the back seat on the way home.

- ck

the cold tiles my feet pad onto
when I take a midnight ****
have more emotions that I.
because this,
this nighttime of my youth,
seems to **** every drop of color
I once retained.
now I’m left with nothing
but cracked ****** lips
and purple bruises.
I scratched away my own essence
and am nothing but a wandering,
vague, and lonely void.
quiet and dull,
numb and painless.
it’s better to feel nothing
than to feel the heavy dark pain
that comes with my mind.

I used to think knowing God
Was sitting in church pews,
Reciting prayers,
And following rules,
That you could only find Him
In the shaming of the sinful
Controlling your thoughts,
Never questioning anything;
Not your faith,
Not your Pastor,
And certainly not Him.
But church pews tired my eyes,
And reciting prayers didn’t make my heart feel,
Following all the rules was restricting.
Shaming the sinful, well that was easy,
But it doesn’t mean it felt right.
Controlling my thoughts was impossible altogether,
And never questioning anything left me
Panicked
And scared.

But I still found God.

I found him in the city of New Orleans,
In a sea of thousands I never felt more intimate with Him
I saw him staring at me,
In the gleaming eyes of children,
And holding my hand
Through the trials I still face today.
I see him in eyes of the homeless beggars,
Walking on the streets with nothing to eat,
He's in my actions when I help the people
I have always despised.
I feel his presences always,
Filling me with hope and light.
I talk to him with tear stained cheeks
And white knuckles gripping the steering wheel,
And just because it’s not with my hands pressed together
And knees on the ground,
Doesn’t mean it’s nothing.
I have found God,
In places unexpected,
And that has given me light.

We were so young and our love was so weightless I could feel it's sparkling dew rest on my skin, singing sweet hums into my ear, every time your lips graced the valleys and peaks of my chest.

2. I wish I could have introduced you to my family as the Sun because it was you who gave me light, made me grow, kept me warm, but I told them your name instead and you gripped my fathers hand in a shake. Later when he commented on the nice weather I wanted to tell him that's how my heart felt whenever I was with you but I agreed that the weather was, in fact, very nice.

3. I lost my virginity at your lake house to the soundtrack of nature's calls and the brush of leaves against your bedroom window, I think the universe was singing for our love. You laid next to me that night, your lungs burning for air, and breathlessly told me that I was a cosmic kind of beautiful. I still write that on my wrist sometimes to remind myself of the vibrancy you gave me.

4. Our first fight was the day you were diagnosed. You didn't want me to stay and wait for you to die, but with tear stained cheeks I made a promise that I would love you for a thousand years after you took your last breath. I hope you believed me when I said that, because I've never been surer of anything.

5. I stayed with you your first night in the hospital, not because you were nervous or scared, but because I didn't think I could sleep unless you were next to me, with blood still pumping through your veins.

6. When you started losing your hair I never once believed you were ugly, and even though the blue of your eyes lost it's once luminous shine to me you were a beam of absolute light. I wish I had kept your beanies so that whenever I smell them I'm whirled back into this state of You.

7. Your funeral was mine too, on that early Thursday morning both our hearts stopped beating, they had always been in sync anyways. It was cloudy on your funeral day, the sunlight had gone. I stood there over your coffin, mourning you, and myself. It's selfish, I know. I'm not here anymore, and I just wish that would mean I was with you. But it doesn't.

8. Now whenever anyone asks about my first love I tell them with glossy eyes that it was with the Sun, and he kisses me everyday still when I step into his light.

Why am I so docile to the darkness?
It hinders my ability to breathe,
It snaps the fibers and sinews
In my muscles that allow me to flee,
Ignites a flame that runs down my spine
And burns within me.
Why do I let it seize my senses,
And **** my soul?
It’s power is so electric
And catches my comfort.
It grasps my lungs and crushes them
With an eternal force that comes from nothing
But my own mind.
It heightens and hisses
And cuts
And seethes the blood of my nightmares.
Loud and crashing and fast,
It makes me so dizzy
I fall and can’t get up.

And then it burns out.

The flame is extinguished from a fire of insanity.
All I’m left with is numbness.
The burnt ruins of my peace,
Charred and black,
Are the product of this madness.
Numb.
White noise occupies
The spaces of my brain.
I can’t remember anything.
I don’t move.
Numb.

you saw me,
dissolved and broken,

and loved me still.

I know.
I know the only way you know how to love
Is to control and frighten and scar.
It's okay.
I think we're the same in some ways.
I pray to God every night
That I won't end up like you,
And I'd like to make it clear that you're the one to blame
For a gap in my heart where love should be.
But I love you, still,
Despite your imperfections
And beer bottles
And smoke
And outrage.
I still love you.