When you left my house
I almost offered you a receipt
Because you left me like
Tourists leave a hotel room

I look back now and
Know why I lost so much weight
I was trying to make more room for you
So that you could fill me with your love,
I thought

Really, I just made it that much easier
For you to rip my heart out
Without even rolling up your sleeves
It was that easy

“Going to stay with a friend”
Felt like you stole the kingdom’s
Jewels and left.

That’s why I stay up so late
I’ve realized that it’s always when I let you in
That you let yourself out the door

So I fall “in love” with
Grindr profiles that remind me of
Pieces of us that I’m still picking up
Sorting out which pieces go to which
Of our puzzles

I just wish I could tell myself
Apart from you
I’ve inhaled so much of you
Like the smoke that burnt
Every time we touched

It had to be that way
Because I was playing with fire
And I didn’t realize that
We may as well have been
Slow dancing in a burning room

I write letters to you that I’ll never mail
In secret languages, I tell you how stupid we both are
Knowing **** well that what I’m really saying is
That parts of me are still confused

Confused as to whether or not you actually
Ever loved me or if
I was more like the lab specimens
We hung out with

I want to be the fire that burns
Against the skin of lovers who speak in secret tongues
Not in notes I tear up in the dark
But in gasps and croaks

Instead of croaking
Like another dissection frog
You experimented with:
**Even though you earned an A for your work,
I failed you because you never appreciated the class

Mentally, I started titling my poems
“If you only knew…”
the minute that you left

See, we were more like
Mother Nature’s children
Than we thought

Both of us polluted
Like the Ocean, I’m so full of this
Trash that everyone seems to leave me with

You were like poisoned vines,
Twisted and full of thorns
And roses you hide from the light

We built a garden though,
psychedelic and shining through the nights
we always stayed up
late for

Three psychics told me I’d love you
And one of them
In a dying breath told me you’d be
A rose

Boy was he right
I pricked myself just to
Hold you and adore you
Every single time
And I’d do it again

See, gardening takes work
So I cultivate this imaginary love
I hold something fragile every day and
Practice moving slowly enough
Not to break it

I listen to strangers talk
Until I’m bored and I keep….on….
Listening
So that I never miss another word
Love speaks

I look at myself in the mirror
And I find something beautiful
So that I can try to grasp
At how it felt the few times you
Actually looked at me like
I was (AM) a flower too.

I AM A ROSE TOO, ******* IT

I breathe you in like the fragrance
Of these roses that bleed my heart dry
And I wish you cut yourself on my poetry
Half as hard as we both have cut ourselves
Wishing we could bleed out whatever
Makes us undesirable

If only you knew
That I hungered for the few times
You came and watered me with your tears
Nourished my roots with your lips
Rolled around in the dirt
And loved our garden

….More than you loved her.

These nights,
Like heavily molasses,
Fall on me
Sticky and thick

Lost lover, I wonder if you wish for these nights...
….Rough and paradoxically soft in all the right spots…

Laden with memories
treasures
I long to have again

….You smelled of tobacco, musk and spice…

How fast
The simplest
Gifts become
The most sacred

…You always held me when you kissed me…

These nights
Where we wander memories
Both misty eyed and longing
Yet smiling

…I am afraid I’ll never feel that close again….

These nights
When we toss and turn
Hoping to relive
sweet pasts again

....Only the stars know if you stare off into the darkness too...

These nights
Wishing sweetly
that our same dreams

...I still wake up hoping to see you in my underwear...

lived in the arms of
lovers that no longer
entangle us
like molasses

*...On these nights

Fruit ripens on the vine
Sweet
They tasted wet
Smushing on my lips
Like you did, do, always will

The first time I tasted you, I bit
Peeled. Tore. Ripped.
Into your flesh, heart, (soul?)
I was too rough, now I know
...But so wet.

You had to pop, burst,
when your skin slid against my tongue
your eyes on my heart, I was just as vulnerable.
We were both open, damp, nature, natural, raw,
Gushing. The sound was wet
The sound ran like tears, like truths, like
Juice running, running, running….
I remember how it dripped.

How full your softness
yielded to my thumbs which grabbed you,
cradled, worshiped, wanted
to pull words, truths, adoration and
mysteries to my lips.
To consume you. To eat you.
To invite you to become
a part of me.

But the summer ended too quickly
The harvest begins to yield
We watched as vines, now entangled, withered
hibernated, disappeared, napped in the sunset

As full, firm flesh
yielded to silence, darkness, fear
I searched through thorny bramble
to be cut on your thorns
that guard an
innocent heart.

I am hungry. I yearn to know your
sound, sight, texture, explosions
As the nights get cooler,
My summer is leaving.
I pull my blankets closer
each night
wishing they were skins,
caressing skins, hiding bliss
in entangled fingers, glances
and hearts that
I dream of

Sweetness, sticky like honey
comes in summer and lasts
year after year,
bite after bite

strange fruit that
I never thought I'd
find while wandering
misty, drunken twilights
that you've claimed
with nectar that
burns so good into
dark, wooded places.

Lost in misty woods,
you've become what I
crave, desire, long for
cherish

I'll wait to pluck you
from green thickets
the scrapes of thorns,
difficulty finding you,
nurturing exploding fruit

The effort is worth all the work,
With glowing eyes and sweaty palms
Like a child, I am patient
for the first time.

Oh, strange fruit!
I dream of summers
lost in your grove
The mysterious copse
where vines cradle,
thorns please, moons burn
and suns hang above the horizon
drunk from a fruit so
dangerously sweet,
wet and supple with morning's
cool dew.

True love, the kind in fairy tales - ya know the ones with witches and knights, strapping princes and tarot-reading witches - is unexpected.

Don't listen to your mother and her love stories, or those cheap dime store romances. Love is not a teenage dream, or the flings on the soap operas (winning your Lucas back from that ***** Sammie, always my grandma's favorite villain in Days of Our Lives). Grandma, the life, love and days i want are different.

Love is fluttering butterflies. The uncertainty of knowing if this moment lasts, seeing a rainbow. The feeling always has an unspoken expiration date. It is rare. So rare that we pay psychics to find it, and whole forests have been lost amidst writing out our collective fantasies.

I guess it's a good thing my ideal love isn't grown on trees then. Supernovas can't be purchased. Trading hearts isn't easy. In fact, it hurts so much that Shakespeare's ghost considers revising Romeo and Juliet any time he thinks of what love has shown me. My love burns like a broken heart might sting if you shoved it full of stardust.

The ancestors knew love is a mystery. The sphinx doesn't know our riddle, and if spells worked I wouldn't be reading this poem. I can't waste anymore hope on tarot cards which have become worn out, bent, and far too familiar since I met you, love. Here let me explain:

The smell of you is a kind of mystic vapor. The oracles at Delphi would trade in their visions for one of yesterday's t-shirts. Don't be embarrassed or confused, I'm not here to play The Fool. I've already proven that we both can be The Magician, High Priestess and The Emperor. The magic of love is bigger than either of us.

My love comes with keys to my kingdom, sit on my throne, direct my armies, and borrow The Chariot. Hell, you can have the castle! You know that's what fairy tale sweethearts do.

This kingdom has known no Empress. That seat sits empty. Think you're man enough for the position? In a future fantasy, you'd inspire the nation, just the way you'll inspire me. We'd leave a legacy. Pyramids, empires, new eras, and new faiths would rise in our names. Pharaohs would envy how the Hierophant pronounces us inseparable. In my fairy-tale, letting down walls is easy. Love knows no labels, no limits, no bounds. Love is fairy dust.

In my 3 part epic, love and romance are no burden. See, this fantasy is one we read through time-to-time and I'm only just learning how to trust wishes made on shooting stars and genies in bottles. No one before has ever made it past the dragons, soldiers and that Minotaur. Believe me when I say, you appeared out of thin air and I trust in fate now. Thank you. I know you aren't the one. I'm learning to let you go.
I hope I do you justice. When you showed up, I prayed to my fairy godmothers for the first time I can recall. The last ******* ran off with Excalibur, the unicorns, and my scepter. "Oh well," you said. "That isn't what counts."

I've been a hermit so long, I forgot how to smile. But when I wake up in this new fairy-tale called life, I don't notice the treasurer, my wars, and problems in the kingdom or even that all my favorite princes still dream of finding their princesses most nights. Even that doesn't scare me. This is all too authentic and the heart gets used to being rejected. Stamped return to sender so many times, I can't count.

My happily-ever-after doesn't have to be perfect. I'm a realist, and besides, we've both gained so much that it feels like we finally landed a spin on the jester's wheel of fortune. Writing poems is something I gave up when I put aside these stories I grew tired of envying. Now I am writing my own. You currently don't fit the part of Prince Charming. Ironic since you inspired him.

Ya see my physical wants are just side effect of the real bliss that I find when I am myself beside you. I don't need ruby rings, or magic slippers to feel at home here. You give me the Strength to fight my own nightmares off. That’s a gift no elves could forge into gold.

It's the way you make the world explode into color that is worth any cost. It’s your honest caring that neutralizes the occasional tragedy. Besides, the drama, which is less dramatic than any of the past “once-upon-a-times” I've fallen into, only makes the story more exciting.

You broke the spell that a Black sorceress and her 3 sister put on you. I first felt like a hero that day at your side. Hearing you renounce your former desire to be the Hanged Man, or to desire Death, is still one of my favorite chapters of the story we wrote.

The love I dream of isn't easy, as I've said. It isn't always epic or fantastical. Sometimes it’s about finding the Temperance not to push potential princes off the balcony too often. There just aren't enough magic carpets these days. I've discovered that learning not to expect change is its own school of challenging wizardry. Luckily, I'm not bad with rare wands.

My love has its risks. I get it, love is usually a surprise! Love like this is easy to deny, fear or resist. I don't want a proposal or their parent's permission for a hand! I just want my prince to be the first person willing to face down The Devil for me, the only one who climbs my Tower and really ruffles the sheets, the one who outshines The Moon.

I don't want to be "that prince." I'm no former-frog; I'm no good with a sword. Honestly, I had given up on magic until you asked me to eclipse the moon. It wasn't hard. If I have to extinguish the Sun, my tears would swell and blacken the sky. I am glad I don't need to shed them anymore.

This love, rare and mystical, is like a leprechaun. Everyone wants it, nobody seems to find it. I got to the end of the rainbow though. It will go something like this, "once upon a drunken, Vegas night..." an Urban fantasy at its finest, if I do say so myself. I just don't want the *** of gold. Give me the dark, mysterious knight. **** the prince. I know it sounds crazy. He and the princess can take the *** of gold, the baby unicorn, and my Judgment too!

My love is risky. It has no chains, guarantees, or Geico lizard to vouch for it. No time-turner to fix it when I **** up, no love potion to make you stay. In my fairy tales, the dragons are our wounded personalities. His shining armor is a defense mechanism, and my damsel-in-distress routine won't work if we let the spark go out.

In my timeless romance, The Lovers learn to enjoy the moment. **** castles, I'd be happy to get a studio. I don't have a unicorn. My chariot looks the same after midnight. I can't promise riches, fame or immortality. And yeap, compared to the princesses, I'd better resemble a toad some mornings.

But I have a love that can put Shakespeare to shame. I'm more complex than Tolkien's Middle Earth, braver than Harry and just as scarred, smarter than Gandalf though I lack his beard, more patient than any of those damsels, and I bet I cook better. No, I know I do. Somehow, this quest has taught me self-confidence.

Unlike those fairy tales, I'm no finished masterpiece. This work in progress has a heart of gold, is on a quest, growing up daily and aims for future royalty. I'm looking for love, ready to leave Neverland, and all i have to offer you are my best effort, this worn deck of cards, myself, and all The World I can bewitch for us.

WANTED: one prince charming who can see themselves in this real-life fairytale.