It started as a puncture,
but the seam slowly ripped;
a thimble can't protect
from a poison needle tip.

She tried to mend it
by making more holes;
the tear only grew
and grew out of control.

At the spinning wheel
her life would quickly dwindle;
frantic attempts to hem
were depleting the spindle.

What started as a puncture
of seductive sedation
fueled the abuse
of machined perforation.

"Don't mourn a living corpse"
were the last words she said
as she drew the needle
that held the last thread.

What price do we place on freedom
in a world of consumer slaves?
Do we measure it in the lives
of soldiers sent to their graves?

Do we measure it in the families
who lost dads, husbands, sons;
and trust the politicians
whose solution is always guns?

Do we measure it in the comfort
of never knowing first hand
the way that a child feels
growing up in a war-torn land?

What is the cost? What will it take
for us to wake and see:
if this were the path to freedom
wouldn't everyone be free?

If hate will only breed more hate
and if war only breeds more war,
it ultimately begs the question:
is "peace" worth fighting for?

Before you, I did not notice much. They say that when you fall in love, nothing and no one else matters. but that’s not true. When you fall in love, everything matters just a little more. Songs now make sense, all of the sudden you yearn for a dozen roses and another coat of mascara now makes a difference. When I fell in love with you, I realized that sidewalks are made for two, that two chair tables outside small coffee shops are meant for dates, and that ice cream tastes better when its shared. The sun, the stars, winter, trees, coffee, Chinese takeout, beer, long car rides, pools, walking, TV shows, funny movies, perfect fitting jeans, new makeup, curled hair, new outfits, and everything in-between, mattered so much more when I fell in love with you. Suddenly, home was no longer my mother’s house Sunday mornings with the smell of pancakes, home was anywhere and everywhere as long as I was with you. What I am trying to say here is that now you’re gone and I’m homesick and I don’t know where home is anymore.

she was a novel
with twists and turns
the kind shoved behind
library bookshelves
and under heartsick beds

she spun words
into velvet
and they seeped
right through her lips
and onto his lonely skin

and oh, how she loved him
with the passion of a sunset
and the bravery of a child
and her words craved him
even more than she did

he was the reason why
her eyes strained a torturous fog
and her words clogged her throat
and a dozen unsent letters
desperately cluttered her room
and her words weren't velvet,
they were just word
and just like her,
they were not worth loving anymore

I look at you and I see half-finished poems and words that don’t exist, your eyes are like indigo oceans I keep drowning in but somehow I don’t mind not being able to breathe.  I wish I knew more about why you are the way you are, what terrifies you the most about yourself, and why I find it difficult to catch my breath when you look at me as if I am a stolen daydream. You make up for a lot of things, really, like going through fourth period half asleep because last night it took me three hours to stop thinking about you. You make up for that, and everything else. You are made of electricity and good intentions stitched together with a voice that could shatter a million hearts, and I am just a lost soul wondering why I trust you with mine. And I do, I do, I trust you with my stupid old heart, and I want to memorize every single corner of yours like the back of my hand. I want to know how a heart like yours could love such a wounded one like mine, but maybe that’s what love is, sacrificing perfection for something tragically real. I look at you and I see fluctuating potential, like the morning sun peeking out behind tired gray clouds, and how sometimes that has to be enough. Ever since I met you, my heart has remembered how to beat, my hands have remembered how to hold, and you love me enough to make me forget how much I don’t love myself. Maybe you are temporary and maybe you’re an illusion, but I still cling to the hope that maybe, this is why I held on until now.

I often think about how and why our lives intersected
and how strange it was that we used to be nothing more
than two bright-eyed five-year-old kids
in the same kindergarten class over a decade ago
and how now we were lying down side-by-side listening to Hozier
through his beat-up headphones and stargazing in the back of someone’s pickup truck

and it’s strange how
neither of us had the courage to point out
the fact that there were no visible stars in the cloudy sky that night
because
that
didn’t
matter


all that mattered was the fact that for an eternity and a half,
I had felt more like a glass left half-empty and yet now I wished
that this moment would never end,
that we could just lie here in the freezing cold that burned my bones to the core
just because my head rested fine on his chest and that was enough

and I wonder why it’s so hard for me to open up to him
even though he unfolds himself for me,
opens up doors to his beautiful soul just so I am able to peek through
the cabinets where he stores all of his reasons to live, and
where he hides the parts of him that he would get rid of, if he had a choice

I want to tell him about the poetry I have found in the way he walks,
he talks,
he breathes, and
how staring into those ocean eyes makes me feel
like I’ve suddenly hit the bottom, permanently gasping for air,
but
I love it,
I love it,
I love it,

and as we stare up at the sky
in the back of an old pickup truck
by an old crumbling church,

my God, his voice matches the silent hum of the street lights,
burning in sync with our imaginary stars
and at this moment, I am no longer an almost-empty glass,
I am alive

i used to write about him
endlessly
in tattered journal pages
and in cheesy poems
but i didn't want to admit it

i didn't want to admit
the fact that he was gone
and writing him into paper
wasn't going to bring back
the person i once knew

i didn't want to admit
that i wasn't in love-
that instead, i was cold and lonely
for endless summer nights
in the pitch black vacuum of my room
when everyone else was sound asleep
and i should've been, too
i guess at that time
i just didn't want to admit
the fact that i was too busy writing
to realize i was just lying to myself

so this is me finally admitting it-
this is my apology letter
for blindly lying to myself,
for believing the miserable lie
that writing about him
would bring us back to life

because so far it hasn't worked
and i'm undeniably sick
of lying to myself
and ignorantly believing it will

After comfort settles in, you wonder if the giddy anticipation has already packed its suitcase and whether it has already considered embarking on the next flight home. Today, your hair is pulled back in a soft tousled ponytail and the two hours you spent getting ready for your first real date has since waned into a rushed ten minutes, bobby pins resting at the corner of your lips. No longer do you wait on the staircase, eyes cast through the dusty window at the curve of your street for his car. Instead, you hear the electricity of his footsteps come humming up your front step, reverberating memorized and familiar, a sound that still makes the edges of your heart rise upwards like something you mumble in your sleep. It is today you decide that this is normal. His socks on the floor, his shoes kicked off and remaining tied tightly at your front doormat. He smiles and it looks exactly like last September, like uncomfortable summer, melting like birthday candles and falling in love with a stranger all over again.
You know him now, his hands, little—but firm. Those eyes shining in the humid July, and you swear that if someone asked you to choose their color from a palette, you could find it in a heartbeat, with a nonchalant point of a finger. Yet there will always be something about him, something new and as fresh as a ripe apple falling from the highest branch, bright burning red that you catch with your bare hands before it has the chance to hit the ground.
And your love, though you have learned it by heart, is the apple, scarlet and dewy, that you keep your eyes gazing up at even after you have memorized the physics of its fall. His arms are a fire you have warmed yourself by long enough to feel safe forever. But you are both ruthless and young, burning in dangerous shades of potential eternities.

You have fallen, but you are still falling. Love has a knack for catching the hopeless.

When things go wrong as they some times will
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile but you have to sigh
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must but dont quit

Life is queer with its twists and turns
As everyone of us sometimes learns
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck out
Dont give up though the pace seems slow
You may succeed with another blow

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victors cup
And he learned to late when the night came down
Oh how close he was to the golden crown

Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you never can tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems afar
Hence stick to the fight when your hardest hit

For its when things seem worst that you must never
Q U I T.