If love is in the air,
I must not be breathing,
If love is in the eye of the beholder,
No one is looking at me,
If all is fair in love and war,
I have no battle to lose,
If there's a brighter tomorrow with everyday,
I am stuck in the past,
If the spark is gone,
I've never been there,
If it's love,
I'm not in it.

You say you're there for anybody
& only a phone call away

But where were you at 3am
When I couldn't breathe
& held that blade to my wrist

You care for everyone else
Except the one person who needed you
I needed you

You did nothing
Walked by me crying in the halls like I was a ghost
& if I choose to put this blade
To my neck instead of my wrist
& end it all tonight

I'm sure you'd laugh
& be perfectly ok
With the fact the ****** ***** is gone

So don't say you care
When you've made it obvious you don't

Coffee stained sweaters
swollen bit lips
mistakes that stayed forever
wounds that never healed
apologies told
relationships mended
now that I have you
I'm reminded by how it ended

I search for tones in your speech
quivers in your voice
hints in your texts
movements in your body
I can't forget how we failed
how we might make it this time
and why either is
just as likely as the other

Do I love you?
Or am I just used to you?

Helpless
A friend is in pain and I can do nothing
Tears flow of indecision…straining life, staining life
My heart breaks in two…then shatters on the salted dreamscape floor
Coming out of my own skin, ripping the stitches, molting along hollow tree branches
Miles between, so many miles, so much time falls from grace
Breathing is hard, tethered at the moments lost, the suffering imagined
Pacing the floor…finding worn carpet and hidden questions beneath a shallow basement
Wishing the words, those **** words, feeding the solution…would come
Hoping for anything, something, even the tiniest of splintering compassion I can offer
To help ease this weight resting squarely on the shoulders of the weakness that engulfs her
I have no answers, useless, like a block of wood in the offering plate on a Tuesday night
My mind is a vacant lot of empty parking spaces…handicapped and no hang tag
My eyes blur of forced darkness amidst the crowing raven circling overhead
I pound my fist into this meaningless existence breaking every bone of contention
Drowning in my own fear, treading water beneath the surface
Clenching my teeth in a vice like fashion
A friend is in pain and I can do nothing
Helpless

this is a series of brief letters to the pieces of my body

dear body,
we don't always work together very well,
but i swear i am trying.

dear hands,
the callouses and crescent moons in your palms
will not be for nothing.

dear knuckles,
aren't you tired of painting yourselves black & blue
every time words fall short of the fire burning behind my sternum?

dear feet,
you know better than to follow roads that lead to dead ends.
there are better places for us to go.

dear eyes,
you have sunken so far into my skull
it shocks me you see anything at all anymore.
you're fixated on shades of gray
but i promise the world will regain its color soon.

dear knees,
stop crawling.
this broken glass is from his bottles.
get up. no more blood.

dear shoulders,
it was never your burden to carry. let it fall,
and try your hardest not to feel guilty.

dear neck,
his hands will never make a home here,
and you are worth more than one night of empty bruises.

dear spine,
stop waiting to be warmed by fingers
that would reach for another body if they could.

dear tears,
do not waste yourselves.

dear ears,
you have been filled with ghost songs for too long.
stop listening for things no one is saying -
it will make life much simpler.

dear mouth,
i know these secrets have been threatening to break my teeth
but please do not open your gates. i am not ready.

dear skin,
we have never been close friends.
i am sorry for the scars.
i am trying to learn how to be comfortable in you.

dear mind,
if i could wish you into an etch-a-sketch
and shake you clean of these bad memories i would.

dear heart,
i hope you can forgive me for being so careless.
i feel how tired you are. rest is on its way.  

dear body,
you will one day see a grave,
but it must not be by your own hands.

- m.f.

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

I cling to him,
Mascara stains his shirt
Like ink blotches on a left wrist.
Oh, how deeply, deeply
Sweetly –
Completely I feel this pain
Burrowed in the most hidden corner of my soul
Patched like cancer on the walls of my lungs
And Oh, how deeply, deeply
Sweetly –
Complete and utterly
Did we weep and wail through the darkness of that night
Tears cried by dull-ember fireside
This hurts more than we ever thought it could
Crocodile eyes ooze wet and hot
Figures entangle themselves in desperation
Words are few yet heart-wrenching
The strongest among us are bulldozed into flat implacability
Sorrow inhabits the cracks in my soul
Like chalk smeared across concrete.
Weep dear children,
Not ready to grow up
Weep dear friends,
For the depth of your love
Weep dear graduates
When morning comes you’ll have to leave
Weep for this country, that stained you and changed you
Weep for the institution, that burned you and bettered you
Weep for the people, who loved and supported you
Weep for your childhood, that carried you from birth to here
Weep, sweet alumni for all that you’re losing
For all the departure
For all the uncertainty
For all the promises that will be broken
And friendships that will not be kept up
Weep over the map
And curse the dividing waters
Weep my beloveds,
Deny yourselves no tears
Weep deeply
Weep deeply
Weep sweetly
Weep completely
Weep utterly and totally and whole-heartedly
Weep because this matters more than anything ever has
Weep because this has been the most beautiful and devine gift
Weep because you’ve been pierced to the core,
Debilitated by the most far-reaching love imaginable
And weep because
The world is expansive,
The oceans are deep and the lands are wide
The people are numerous and the cultures are diverse
The opportunities are endless
The combinations are infinite
Your life is long
And your future is full of immense possibility
But you will never have this again,
So weep.

ii.

It was a promise;
Not to leave
before you arrive.

I believed.
You didn't.

It wasn't a longing.
If it was, I could
just **** it in a blink.

I waited 'til late;
You overslept.

You said you loved me but I don't think you know what that means

What kind of love would leave me on the ground in your tshirt with teary eyes?
What kind of love would listen to twenty seven (literally twenty seven) voicemails of me crying and begging you to reply and not respond to a single one?
What kind of love would kiss me today and leave me tomorrow?
What kind of love would listen to my past without the intention of being in future?
What kind of love would just let go?

You said forever but I don't think you know what that means

I'm trapped.
I can't escape.
It's getting hard to breathe.

Darkness is overcoming me.
I can't speak.
When I try nothing comes out.

She holds me down.
She keeps me here.
Her lies empower me.

I am broken.
I am trapped.
There's no one to hear me cry.

this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.