i. this poem is not about that thursday afternoon
you spent holding me in your arms, swaying
back and forth in the middle of your bedroom
because i mentioned that no one understood me
and you told me you liked my dark hair and
my olive skin and the fact that i wrote poems about
confused teenagers in love and that i had a heart
that was just as confused as yours was

ii. we whispered sweet nothings to each other and
kissed under your navy blue duvet for two years
and the reason i still cry over that is because
you knew how much i detested dancing and that
i hated when my peas touched my potatoes and
that i never went to bed before two in the morning,
but you never learned that i am an iceberg

iii. i asked you to describe me and you failed
to mention that i'm afraid of the dark because
it reminds me of a sky without stars and that
my favorite song is skinny love by bon iver
because it reminds me of the relationship that
i shared with you and you never understood
why i liked sad things (it's because i like the
way rainy days and sleepless nights make
me feel something worth writing about)

iv. this poem is not about love or heartbreak
but it is about you, and i must admit that it
feels awkward to write about you without
feeling any ounce of admiration or hatred
pulsing through my tired veins. this poem
is not about me missing you, or how i wish
that you still thought about me, because i
am glad that i no longer float across your
mind whenever you watch a baseball game

v. you were like the titanic and our feelings
were the ocean that carried you closer to me.
you saw the surface of my being, consisting
of all the things you liked about me and the
things that you could put up with. but your
ignorance became too much and every
quality you failed to pay attention to came
crashing into you all at once and i
absolutely destroyed you and i don't know
whether to say i'm sorry or
you deserved this

it wasn't snowing yet, but they'd told us it would.
probably I said something infantile, about how
I could smell it, the frostiness of snowflakes in the
air, because you smiled that knowing smile of yours,
like you were an adult and i was a child and you
didn't have the heart to take my innocence away.

that look always made my heart smile, sadly, and
it also drove me up a wall, partly because it made
me want to hug you close and pity you the
burden of assumed moral superiority, and whisper
that you, too were a child. but mostly because you
were right— I clung to my naiveté while you, you
had already had the good sense to push it away.
it followed you around with sad puppy eyes, but
you knew it and you kept it at arm's length.
you brave, brave soul.

when it did start to snow I wasn't surprised. you
were. you didn't say anything. we were in
a deserted school hallway, listening, removed
from the other kids' cries. we were
delighted too, but the others wanted to run home
early, and we knew the definition
of home better than they. and I can speak only for
myself but it seemed we both wanted only to stay
forever side by side, tucked away in our corner,
me reveling in the softness of love and friendship
and winter, you trying to be there with me but having
trouble leaving your mind, where that sad-eyed
puppy snapped at your heels. it whimpered
but you held your own.

and slowly, we built up moments like this one.
we wallowed in each other and in the coziness
of cloudy days. we read good poetry and
heard good music and took photographs as we
discussed life from our  softer world.
there were moments of such pure white happiness
that they came full circle to being sad,
simply because I knew I would never be that
happy again, and I was not wrong, and I didn't
want to be. and we had
sad moments, too, never ever think I am not
happy to be sad with you.

and slowly, too, your innocence knew its
defeat, and sat obediently at your feet,
and we shared things.
but I was a child, and a weak one at that, and
God knew I was not as strong as you so she
gave me no great suffering to speak of, to
share with you. no way to reciprocate the
vulnerability you gave, and that in
itself was suffering for me.

I regret that I was not good at saying things.
that while
you had to be your own adult and push childhood
away, I clung hopelessly to mine as
I discovered me and watched it slip
from my small hands.

among the plethora of reasons I can give for
bitterly hating sunny days is the
way the sun slanted through the window and lit
up your eyes and swilled particles around
your face like fairy dust on the day you reached
out and pulled my lanyard over your own neck.
look, you said, content. almost proud.
I'm wearing a bit of you around my
neck, and you wove it through your
sunlit fingers, eyes bright. you tugged on it,
lightly. that's what love does, it strangles
you. and we all want it.

and I gasped at the way that word sounded,
so harsh in such beautiful sunlight on such
a soft face. but I don't want to strangle
you. I said that. thoughtlessly,
instinctively. I regret it every day. in that regard,
you gave me a strength, but it's no german shepherd—
you are so **** strong.

when your ache tugged and tugged at you,
tore you from reality, or brought you closer to it,
it slipped its finger into that lanyard knot. loosened it.
I could have reached out right then, as you had when you
pulled the sun-soaked string over your head, and
tightened it. tightened us. been a friend.

I didn't tug the knot. if you run.
when you run,
I know that two grown dogs
will follow after you, blocked
from the sun by your receding shadow.

i am not just a pretty face and i am not just my sadness.
i am a question that has no answer.
i am a more than a collection of mistakes. i am a collection of words and photographs and more than a few good stories.
i am laughter and sarcasm and tears. a rebel with a forgotten cause.
i am compassion.
i am at once caring too much and too little. the world has never been enough for me.
i am forever picking up the pieces, forever apologizing even when i’m right.
i am a collision of mind and circumstance. a million bad memories set on repeat.
i am one long, sad requiem. i am the soundtrack to my days.
i am dismal, haunting images of regret. i strive to be part of the beauty around me.
i am a writer. i am a free mind with a shackled soul.
i am no one’s enemy and no one’s friend. i am alone and always have been.
i am jealousy and fear.
i am disappointment to myself and to those who knew me then.
i am a wrong turn and a snap decision.
i am selfish and guilty and i don’t know why.
i am unconvinced of everything. i am doubtful, disheveled, and disproportionately hopeful.
i am a creator of life and a healer of ills. i cry every day for what i’ve lost.
i am forever searching and i’ll never find it. i take comfort in the thought of the universe.
i am but a fleeting phantasm in this brief reality

I want to write this poem
Like a band-aid
For a knuckle scrape the stucco frustration

The adrenalin shiver
Maybe you look at your fingertips
And know you'll never be a doctor

A poem that finds you peaceful

We go to exrtremes so often
This middle ground has leeway
Move around in it

There are things I need to say
Halfwritten letters
Stacked inside a gut-heavy dumbwaiter
And if I ever found the courage to pull the rope
I might choke

This poetry gets scared sometimes
I know you get scared sometimes
There are memories you re-live
Like a masochistic dvr
Or a photo album labeled
"Let's not go back to this place"

I want there to be poems in response to this

A literary anitbiotic
For the sickness we create

There is a reason chemistry makes use of the alphabet

And I find myself searching for the language
Like a child holding his head up to the rain with his mouth open
And wondering why he never feels a single drop touch his tongue
Like a scientists he decides that the water evaporates because of the heat in his breath
So he holds it

It has taken me years to finally understand
You don't need to hold your breath
But you do need to be still
And the reason you think the rain never touches your tongue
Is because your tongue is already wet

And you
Every moment of you
Already is poetry

you are a car wreck at 75 miles per hour
that i cannot take my eyes off of
on a saturday morning with lo-fi radio
speaking the sun
as it breathes life into this death setting:
i’ll grow stories wrapped with truth
because it’s hard to only speak truth when
we are both so damaged, tangled
wrapped in the backseat like a baby on it’s first day home

******* the way you
lace fingers in the tea-kettle black ***
coughing up a lung as sacrifice to the ancient gods who told me
on my 18th birthday that
you would taste so good across my lips
no matter how split, how dry, chapped, and hungry
they were -
******* the way you
split aching bodies in two
one half of pain seated on the devil’s tongue
one half of pleasure begging god
please let me get what i want
and i have to tell you
it is not a melody i have gotten used to

because you are still that car wreck i can’t pull my eyes from
even when life is sprouting from my own hands
tugging at my own silvery strings connected to you
and connected to everything
i unknowingly snip those silver strings of fate
and let you hang in the breeze
of the way i have been taught to say
please

I have these dreams that haunt me when I wake
and I'm not sure
if I believe in god but
I don't think I'm strong enough
to believe in nothing
  and survive it

I guess I should be
grateful that the pollen
doesn't make my throat itch
   like it does Naomi's
and it doesn't make my eyes itch
   like it does Naomi's
        but it does make me itch
to get out of this godforsaken place
            once-and-for-all

In my dreams I walk through
fields with needles where the grass
should be but when I wake the
crickets, birds, gossipy girls
whisper when I pass
and its so hard to stop listening
  (the streets swell yellow with the ***** of spring)

I.
Dear Mr. John, always the usual.
We go out every morning, greet
each other the way the sun greets
our skin. We let our fingers do their
own travelling on our palms. Like the
way the sun’s fingers set foot on our
skin. I am talking about the sun today
so that you may be reminded of warmth,
warmth, like the way you eagerly
take the cup of coffee to your lips,
and your tongue sets foot on Mexico
or Dubai. The desert’s sands flooded
your lips all too quickly the moment
you spew out that first sip of coffee.
I don’t recall being stifled the way
you expect me to be. My lungs are
bellowing to the laughter you had
brought me, warm, fuzzy, like it should
be. I find it hard sometimes to take
it seriously—to think that you are
in pain at that moment, first degree
burn and all of that. Smoke rises up
from your cigarette, why should I
worry? Languid as the air in the café,
we let the day stride itself, too serious
for detonation of seriousness, to the point
that even this poem or letter is a joke
worth some peso from your pocket.
It’s not hard. It’s hard to let this moment
sink in, melt like the sugar, granules of
coffee, and creamer on a boiling
cup of water. Boiling, like blood
that goes around our rooted veins;
we let this boiling pass through our
hearts, let it stay a little while till
languid takes it all away. It’s not
that hard, to be honest. Not that
hard to make your own coffee
at the morning’s call. I don’t understand
why you need me so much only on
sunrise due.  I fell tired of your voice,
high and low, as my alarm clock,
every morning till
the sun says we got to go
on our separate paths. I always find it
too hard, like chemistry had not taught me
to separate the mixture of water and coffee.
Too hard as it is easy to combine them. Morning
is easy and when the sun bows down at night,
I remember the whisper of the wind, how it is cold,
freezing what I thought as summer touched heat
of my cup. Cold and heavy like the block of ice
that is my mattress. I find it too hard to recollect myself,
lay bare and stay still as midnight whisper your name,
blew yourself into my window. And I wait for the morning,
heated like the coffee we enjoy. I wait for you
at that moment. But I realize my time is only worth
the length of sipping a hot cup of coffee,
and not a length of conversations worth spilling
on our tongue. I wish it was the words that we
spilled. And not the coffee.

II.
Dear Mr. John, thank you.
Thank you for the invitation to be
at your side every seven in the morning.
I find it warm, like the coffee that centered
between us. Between bellowing laughter
and languid awkwardness. The wind whispers
northbound as it should be. It says to follow its voice;
it’ll take me home. Alone. Like I was programmed
to do. The caffeine had lied enough. It’s normal
after all, for drugs to set in, form delusions and
whatnot. I’m tired, and perhaps I need
a little sleep, slumber for eternity without any
whistling midnight calls, no coffee smoke
to tickle my nostrils, no rising. Nothing.
That’s enough sleepless nights to think
you good. There’s the barista, I assure you
she’s good at what she does. Call her,
ask for the coffee you’d want at seven
in the morning. Converse with the newspaper
so that your mouth will spill not just words,
but important **** that you’ll never thought
worth a peso off your pocket. Spend the morning
not alone, but with the company of ghosts
that are too warm to even call a ghost.
And this time, when the sun had finally
heated your coffee, learn how to wait.
So that this time, a kiss on a cup
won’t burn your lips. Like how
it’s supposed to be.
So that this time, you won’t ****
your cigarette like you used to.
And this time, I can sleep
till noon.