And I would bite my tongue gladly
for just another taste of yours;
For the way my name glazed off your front tooth.
Each syllable sticking to my collarbones,
leaving red marks on both cheeks.

I want to smell the scent of your laughter.
I want to feel the waves of your sighing chest
kissing the shores of my spine.
I want, again, for you to hold the glacial angles of my jaw,
because you are the only one
who fears not
of the winter that lies beneath my lips.

And sometimes our teeth would kiss if our mouths weren't moving fast enough.
Your nails clenched into the clay spaces between my ribs,
hoping to hold on just long enough
to make an impression on me,
but I don't think you realize
how deep your divots run.

So let me carve my initials into the peaks of your shoulder blades.
Let me write poetry on your skin.
Let me cover you in the ashes of a thousand goodbyes that echo too hot to let go.

Just let me stay.
Let me stay amidst the oak and sage of your backbone.
Let me stay nestled inbetween the dusk and summer,
of what's to come and what's to be.

One day, you'll awaken,
with blood shot eyes,
scratching at a five o'clock shadow,
even though it's seven o'clock
in the morning, and
wonder where it all went wrong. Where she all went wrong.

When the arches of her feet stopped
tiptoeing across the room
to kiss you good morning.
When the parallels of her calves
started making diagonals
when laying on the bed.
When the crook of her elbows
no longer wrapped around you
like the beautiful ribbon on the present you gave to her last Christmas.

Do you even know where that present is?
It's there,
up there on the shelf collecting dust
along with all the "I love yous"
and other promises that you stash away for cold winters nights,
when you crave her warmth,
and long to feel the chill of her sapphire-painted fingernails.

But somewhere between the cicadas of summer and the apples of autumn, you lost her along the way.
You lost the way her hair finds its way onto every surface of your house.
You can't find the way her nose wrinkles when she laughs,
even if you turn over all the couch cushions,
and look under the rug.

You check your file cabinets for the way her chest heaves when she sleeps,
and check in the pantry for the memories of her propped up on her elbows,
looking out the window sill at the rain,

But all that's left are phantoms of her amber scent,
and ghost-smiles that have all but gone stale.

Nothing broke my heart quite like that time I read what you wrote to her.

It was from two years ago, but it still managed to strike quick like a bullet, even though the barrel was dusty.

If history repeats itself, then I'm the same lips you craved on different person.
You said so yourself. You can't breath new life into old love. Your lungs will collapse before hers start.

You've never been good with words, but I didn't know you weren't good with laundry.

Your words were still wet with her tears before you gave them to me.

You should have left them on the line a bit longer. Maybe the lye of their syllables wouldn't burn my face when I try to bury it in your shirt.

Do you realize what you say when you scream I ******* love you from your rooftop?

Who's ears will they reach first, hers or mine? Because where I hear a promise, she hears and echo as bitter as the wind on that rooftop.

That's why my hips curve in all the question marks I could never ask you.

In two years, will you mail someone else the screams from your piece of sky?
Will your heart still beat in time to that ******* song that you always play when we're in your car?

I'm tired of seeing blood under my fingernails because metaphors and ethers and ink marks can't stitch you up fast enough.

You need patience, but all I can give you are poems about winter, and the spring grasses that follow, no matter what.

You need guidance, but I give you comparisons of how the moon moves the sea, but gets jealous when she kisses the shore.

You need love, but I offer you poems that flow like water and taste like someone else's mouth.

My river songs can't fill the canyons she's left in you.

He kissed me like he was afraid of my mouth. He knew of the knife I kept hidden between my teeth, but he didn't know I only use it when my voice gets loud and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears.

I can hear my heartbeat now, but that's only because my hands are palm up next to my face as I lay back on the bed. I stare at him, left eye, right eye, and back again, but I can't tell which one is lying, or if they're even lying at all.

It's funny how someone can look at you and make you think back to the time you were seventeen and freezing in the back seat of a sedan because you knew how to take your clothes off, but you forgot how to keep yourself warm.

But you're not seventeen, and this isn't January, and you don't have to wonder if his finger tips want to keep you or if they just want to see how long they can stay on your ribcage without getting burned.

Either way, he kisses you again on the mouth, and once on the cheek, but not on your collarbone because he isn't sure if it's his to take or not.

And for some reason, you fall in love with him. Not for his lips, his fingertips, or his breath on your skin, but just because you want to belong to someone for a little while.

You want to let him think that he can map your caverns and carve initials in the mountains of your spine and maybe even let him believe that he's at home in the sea waters that stand between you, not knowing how deep they really are.

"I can swim," he says.

"But can you drown?" I ask.

My mind keeps me up with poems,
but my fingers won't let me write them down.

Little did I know
that I would spend
the majority of my time
trying to write a poem
as beautiful
as you say I am.

I wonder if my lover truly knows me.
I wonder if he knows that I'm made of sand,
and will slip through his fingers
if he lifts me too high.
                                    I wonder if he knows
that my caverns
contain oceans
that get every sailor drunk
each time they kiss my shores.
                                                      Does he know that I'm made of sugar?
That I'll crumble under the slightest touch,
but that he shouldn't be afraid
to stick his tongue out,
and taste me?
                        Does he understand
an entire field of dandelions
exists in my head,
and scatters my thoughts
every time he exhales?
                                        Can he see that I collected my eyelashes
from fallen pine needles
because I thought it would make me
beautiful?
                   Does he get that I'm not beautiful?
Nor that I'm not magnificent,
or something to be desired?
                                                Because while he's made of marble,
I'm made from sandstone,
and sandstone gets her marks,
from whichever way the wind blows
that afternoon.

At the center
of everything
there is a beat-
of a heart
of a drum
that carries all life.

It all moves,
fluxes, and flows.
a waltz, then a foxtrot.
It doesn't matter,
it's all the same-
                            same life force, same song.

I, too, hear that music,
and so I dance.

Four years later, and I still sit up in the same bed at night with salt-stained cheeks.
I wonder how many lives have been lost in between these sheets.
how many loves are still embedded in the fibers of the comforter,
how many rib pieces lay stashed in the pillows from those horrible, heavy sobs.

You know the ones,
Where the fire dies in your hot air-balloon lungs, and they collapse in on themselves.
You can’t say anything, or feel anything but the crushing weight of your self inflicted silence.
All you can do is gasp, and gasp, and gasp for breath, but nothing comes out. It never does.
No one ever knows how much your heart bleeds for the people you can’t stand.
You offer them olive branches, while they offer you bile, and spit poison into your eyes with each syllable from their God-forsaken lips.

Do you remember when Jesus loved you?
When His face shined upon you, and He kissed the top of your head telling you that the light you possessed was greater than the shadow it created?
He was right.
But you’re afraid of the dark,
and have to turn on every light in the house just to make it to the bathroom.
So what good are your heroics if you burn yourself from the flame inside you?

You were supposed to be great.
You were one of the chosen ones,
the Lionhearted heroine
with a heart meant to fit inside two people,
but it was stuck in your small frame by mistake.


You can’t dance to a heartbeat that powerful.
Your bones know how to waltz,
but they’re old and tired from the thousands of dances
from the thousands of lives before yours.
You understand, don’t you?
Your hips just don’t curve like they used to.

But when the song ends,
and quarter notes turn into full rests,
maybe then you’ll get some sleep.
We both need it.