you are city buses
and rain slicked streets.
and your neon heart pulses a mile a minute
but i have never seen someone so captivating.
youre an old apartment
with concrete walls
and sometimes in the winter the cold creeps in
but you never know whether to smother it with blankets or to leave.
youre midmorning traffic jams
but instead of anger you accept it and you sit in the car and you soak up life like a wildflower and ive never wanted to be the sun more.

I think I knew you in another life.
I'd recognize the palm of your hand before my own mother's voice.
Your heartbeat has been steady for centuries,
a constant hum,
leading me to you.
And I love you.
I will always find you,
in every life I live.

And he is sunshine.
He warms me from the inside out,
like drinking wine straight from the bottle.
He smiles and a dove coos,
He laughs and I cry.
He whispers his dreams to the stars and they play it back to me like a record on repeat,
But at night the needle scratches and all I can hear are my own whispers of I love you,
I love you,
I love him.

My heart is like a brush fire,
she's burning, cracked open, a beginning.
I spring between happy and sad like the flames from tree to tree.
I burn brighter in the sad.
The ashes of who I used to be pile up on the branches of who I could've been.
when I suggested a fire extinguisher,
my heart laughed so hard I watched another acre be devoured.
She's starving,
been without touch for so long the screaming of the flames feels like a caress.
The heat feels like a kiss, and who am I to deny her?

I’m 14 and it’s my freshman year and I’m so scared the rest of my life is gonna feel like this.
I’m 16 and I’m driving by myself for the first time and it takes everything in me not to just keep driving.
I’m 18 and I’m finally walking across the stage and all I can think of is how I look on the screen.
I’m 20 and I go to the carnival with my friends and I hope the rest of my life is gonna feel like this.

Sometimes I wake up at 3 a.m.
Body shaking,
and the phantom beat of a drum beating under me.
I saw my favorite band,
you saw her in my smile.
I wonder if you were ever mine,
if you ever planned to let me in.
Or if I was always destined to be a hazy month,
Something you remember only when you have nothing left.
Nothing about you was hazy.
You were clean cut and hard pressed,
pressing on me like a rib on a heart,
Unbearable at times.
I hope she's not another hazy May.
I hope she has so many lines and hard edges,
that Picasso himself rolls over in his grave.
But I hope you cut yourself on her edge one day,
and get swept away back to my hazy May.

it feels like theres a weight on my chest and i never really knew what to do with my hands when they werent folding myself back into place but lately it seems like my seams are tattering and i dont really know how to sew but its not like you do either. you were never a place holder but suddenly there's a space where you arent anymore and i cant really fix it but call me crazy for the crazy glue and im still trying to stick me back to you.

im not good with my emotions,
i give too much or not nearly enough.
i dont know why my expectations are so high,
it’s a constant juggle between letting them down or having my heart sink with the titanic.
im not rose and you arent jack and its been 84 years and i still just cant love you back.
i want to be kissed like the whole world is sinking,
like we dont have a choice between life and death,
and i dont want to admit to myself that sometimes,
sometimes i’d choose the latter.

and my heart aches;
it feels like a hole has been punched out that is just suspiciously the size of you.
i yearn to be in love;
i want to give part of myself away, asking for nothing in return.
you make it easy to want you.
i want to spend my life crawling my way out of your existence, out of the way you make me feel.
i want to wake up one morning with my face tucked into your neck and wonder why i ever thought i was going to explode.
i want you to love me back.

i was never fond of grand gestures
until i had you looking at me from under your eyelashes
and for something that seems so insignificant, it left me aching for something i never even knew i craved.
but i do
i crave it like i crave your hands on my spine and my hands on your lips.
i crave it like i crave foggy mornings with my hand in yours and coffee in the kitchen and the promise of you
still
being there.
i was always warned of pretty boys with knobby knees and spidery fingers
but i was never one to flinch away from marble smiles
the coolness refreshing on my overheated cheeks that can only come from the rush of affection that the constellations inside of you impressed upon me.
your elbows sprouting daisies and i would want nothing more than to weave them into my hair but you arent a garden and the soul living inside of you is too big for your body and instead of withering it spindles out and it wraps around me and i am so
thankful.

I read the signs wrong.
Got so caught up in the possibilities,
I didn't consider the possibility of you not wanting me.
I was just a warm mouth, right?
An ****** to drown out your own emtions,
it felt like a new beginning.
I should've known.
You're an inherently selfish man,
emotions don't come naturally to you.
They come effortlessly to me.
Your thumb on my wrist, your hand in my hair, it felt like a sign.
To you it felt like a favor, an IOU for being your friend.
I owe you nothing.
I owe myself everything.

the first time i got drunk i was 16 years old.
the burn of ***** in my throat reminded me of how it felt to say your name and every time i see your face i can feel the bottle against my lips.
the first time i got drunk my friends and i were camping on the beach.
i havent spoken to you in months and this is the most rebellious thing ive ever done and i was used to sharing every moment with you but this was the first significant one without you and it felt amazing, so i took 6 more shots and threw up the last words you ever spoke to me.
the first time i got drunk my friends asked me to share my biggest secret.
what was i supposed to say?
that i havent spoken to you in ten months but i can still picture the way your mouth moved when you said my name?
how the box of cranberitas smelt exactly like your breath that one fourth of july i would do anything to forget?
or how about the fact that i don't miss you any more and i don't know whether to be relieved or terrified?
instead i told them that i liked to watch ****.
now i'm seventeen and i haven't been drunk since but your name still burns my throat like *****.

you were never just flesh and bones to me.
you were snaggle toothed pumpkins on halloween and socks at the foot of my bed.
and it used to be hard to unlearn you but now your secrets are unraveling and leaving me threadbare.
and i never knew the way my lips were shaped when they weren't crying out your name but now my cupid's bow sits high and i cant even remember how many syllables your lips have anymore.
and i found it funny then, how the hurricane hit on the anniversary of you leaving, but then again i figured it was just your soul trying to claw it's way back to me.
but shutters were made for a reason, and you never did know the difference between "enough", and "not nearly enough".
sometimes i get flashbacks of the way i made you laugh but then i make myself laugh harder and realize that even though you left,
left when all i had was you,
i am still ivy on a tin roof, stardust in a bottle and you,
you are flesh and bone.

you were always equivalent to the sun on my shoulders but now you feel like the autumn air in between my fingers. i never let myself feel how to let go and now i feel my fingers winding around your wrist and i can tell you want to leave but i cant lose another piece of me. your eyes always felt like home but now someone turned the porch light off and ive never felt so unwelcome before. i dont know how to ask you to stay especially when i know you want to leave and my soul is sinking but i cant even bring my legs to kick to the surface anymore.

i like the way his beard looks when he hasnt shaved in a while.
rugged.
broken in.
but it feels like a solar flare on my cheeks and he kisses me like the world is ending.
the world is ending.
im not who i was.
all i can think about is his hand in mine and my hand on my heart.
everyone says you should see fireworks when he touches you,
but what if i see the whole ******* world exploding?
cities fall in a chorus of "he loves me, he loves me not" and i still havent figured it out yet.

The Silence is louder than anything.
It drowns out my thoughts,
holds me hostage until I can only see you.
You're not one for words,
expecting me to know how you feel while you brood.
I'm exhausted.
Every time I open my mouth, all I hear is white noise.
I swear to God I heard your name in the feedback.
Please come back,
i'll sit in Silence if it makes you happy.

I don't know what to do to make you miss me.
I look for you everywhere,
in dating apps, the grocery store, my heart.
You were easy to be with,
right as rain on a good day, glacier-like on the bad.
I didn't know what to do when you closed off from me,
but I knew not even the jaws of life could pry your vault open.
I got no where,
like I was trying to saw out the version of you I needed with a nail file.
Now you're gone, I'm here,
and you still don't miss me.

My chest aches with it sometimes,
The way others love so completely,
The way I can still see your name blinking on my phone from the last time I called and you didn't pick up.
Did I love you?
Did I love not being alone?
What do I need to do, to be so in love, that my pulse feels like it's on speed?

He breathes like he needs me,
but he sighs like he wants me gone.
He's a hurricane, and the way he says my name feels like the eye of the storm,
But there's never enough rain to wash her kiss from his mouth.

He looks at me from under his lashes and I melt.
He makes me want to take shelter,
hole us away in some sleepy town until all I remember is him.
I'm not selfish, except for when I am, and right now all I can think of is him.
He is the before,
the after,
everything in between.
We walk a tight line, he and I.
Always saying what we don't really mean,
too ignorant to admit that we are It for each other.
Ignorance is bliss, and we are so happy.

I want to feel your mouth on mine.
I want your kiss to start The Push.
The Pull.
The Lust.
The Longing.
I want your tongue to run across all the words I don't have the courage to say.
I want so much.
I need for you to try.
I need for you to trace your fingertips across my eyelids and not leave me while my eyes are closed.
I need to feel your mouth on mine.
I need for you to want me.

I'm tired of waiting around for you,
tired of knowing I come last but still hoping to be picked first,
like a child in line for kickball who never makes the team.
My heart feels like your kickball,
discolored red and rubbery from the trauma.
I just want to be the team captain for once.