There are still days when I think of you.  
When the air smells like afternoon walks,
and the blue sky looks over me with kindness.  
When the wind wraps an arm around my shoulder and walks me to class.  
  
There are still times that I see you,
wearing your heart on your sleeve, and concern in your eyes because love is just your style.  
When you open your chest but close your eyes, to hide the vulnerability in your tenderness.  

And you laugh the loudest just to catch my eye.    

And there are nights when I no longer hear you
howling to the waning moon,
because you’re scared that she’s leaving too.

And because you were never a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
just a pup who’s bark should have been worse than his bite.  
Nights when you hide in the caves that I dug for you in the sides of mountains when they refused to move.

And there are still days when I think of you.
And I think of how you built me castles out of sand.
How my tears brought down walls like the ocean around me and exposed me to a cold I never knew.
And how you were gone, a bandit in the night, with the broken pieces of my trust.

These are the days that I wish I could sleep through,
but I can’t sleep forever.
Some nights, I can’t sleep at all.
So those nights I wish, in the biting cold, on the stars that shine over my fallen castle.
And I howl at the moon and I hug the breeze and I hope you ******* feel it.

I hope there are days you want to call me.
Like the night she finally kisses you hello,
so you can tell me how she fills your days with laughter and your nights with warmth,
Or the morning you wake up and finally find the courage to tell the world your truth.

And when you do, I hope you realize how long its been since you had my number.
I hope you can’t remember what my voice sounds like, howling to the moon together until the sun chased us down.
I hope that it hurts a little
when you taste the venom on your tongue.

I hope you wish you’d swallowed it,
because I can’t bare sting.

And because I’d like to think you think of me some days,
when the wind is at your back and by your side
keeping you company on your walk home.

There is a soft throb to this.
All my poems have long names.
My heart is always racing; it's also
always aching.
Beats like a clock. Tick. Tock.
Emptys me like a bottle of wine.
His kisses, like nails, like teeth; against
my spine.
heat, like heavy breathing, like unbelievable pleading; pierce my mind.
His memory. Like sand paper. Like pierced lips. Like skinny dipping. Like unmade memories. Like a life I've led before. Like lies, like keeping score. Like being scorned.

Like cuddling before dawn. Like being safe and being warm. Like being scolded and being  warned. Like being allowed and being torn. Like being kissed.
Like being missed.
Like being kissed.
Like being kissed.
And kissed.
Like heat.
He's, like promises of enjoying defeat.
Of relaxing into new sheets.
Like being kissed.
There's a soft beat to this.
Like being scolded. Like being kissed.

You never said you were scared, you never needed to.
You never thought I cared, but you and I adhere like super glue.
You have yellow teeth like a sunrise and you curse like caviar and I crave you like candy.
Can I be your desire? A drunken phone call on a Friday night,
You never said you carried the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Your eyes showed more truth than the circles we chased around the subject of who’s who.
And can I be with you? – I don’t need a train ride at midnight or a candle lit calling I just need your dry throat, coughing out last minute lies about not needing another hand in the darkest parts of the night.
Your soul has the shaping’s of something that sounds like heartache, beats like butchering romance and hurts like needles marking up my arms like foot-steps rushing away from what’s really going on in my mind.
You never spoke the words I wanted to hear, but here we are.
I never said I wanted to drench you in kisses.
Cover you with caresses.
I want to cater to your bad behavior and serve as a substitute for the sugar high
I never said that I kissed you in the rain, and again and again.
I never said we stood outside of that man’s house and held hands in my head.
I never said the space in my bed, could have been filled with you. – I didn’t think I needed to.
Maybe I do.

Your tongue could start forest fires
With the songs you sing, you could spring winter forward.
You could taste like tomorrow, your trials could all be amounting to counting sheep next to me.
Your little words wrinkle foreheads and cause the catastrophes of nations.
You with little breath bring forth the wildest of worries from the wandering minds.
You of little touch take armfuls of truth and tackle the tortured.
You with mostly full mouth make magic when you tap your tongue against the roof of your mouth
Your rough and ragged hands rust around the edges like the sounds you make when the laugh escapes your raging soul.
You hold onto hope like masters picking up pieces, you could make peace with your mouth piece.
Picking at the scabs on your fingers, focusing on us.
On the ground they avoid you.
You with the sunken skin and swollen eyes – ******* on the end of that cigarette.
You’ve convinced yourself it’s all a good dream.
Days musty like the back of your car when we drive on the high way wondering which way we go.
You with time tattooed soul – sulking about the little time you have.
Holding onto the fear you foster under your ribs.
You with the smile I’d rush rivers to keep under my pillow
You twist your tongue around my image – wake to find me further from grasp.
Smoking grass holding onto the hash.
Hoping you have an interest in me.

Paint me pretty, paint me bright,
Capture me in this adoring light.
Wish as you may, wish as you might,
Thing will never be as they are tonight.
Baby blue, cotton candy pink,
A yellow that pales next to my smile, you think.
Never a portrait, always a scene,
Easier to forget if I'm just a color scheme.
Lavender because it's my favorite scent,
Green to reflect how my irises glint.
Willows, weeping, for all that's been lost,
A field once vast now covered in frost.
When they look at the paintings what do they see?
Water lilies and bridges, never me.
Try as they will, try as they might,
only love makes you wonder at this sight.

"Writing?" you might ask.
"What's it about?"
Everything
I wanna say
Nothing
I wanna say
Misunderstanding
Like the look you give me while I try to explain the poems that spill from my lips
Before I've even got a grip
On what it is
I'm saying.

And no, I don't want you to read what I've got so far
When my head is busy dancing circles around my pen.

I wanna write.

It is my one selfish need I will never give up.
It is my freedom of speech that you will never corrupt
With your requests for ballads
As you **** inspiration from me like it's chocolate syrup
And you can't get enough of those
Semi sweet words.

But poetry
Is not fuel.

It's oxygen.

And you are ******* at the air from my lips as I recite these
So-called rants. These
"Depressing chants" of First World problems.

Well, welcome to my life,
Where First World problems rain down on my adolscence.

Because, my hands?
May never have to wipe blood from my loved ones.
But, my cheeks
still know the hot sting of tears.

We've all got First World problems
Hidden down dark corridors.
Or, sitting as eye-sores on street corners.

But poetry is a metamorphosis.
Where we lock away our ugly.

Its purpose?
To emerge from our throats like butterflies.

And with our pain set fluttering free,
There is nothing left stopping us from helping those far or near
In need.

And the world will make poets of them yet.
Whether they know it or not.

Whether our breath ever shutters in the same way or not is not important.

I surround myself
With artists of word who can sometimes tell me
What I want to say in ways more beautiful than my tongue could ever shape but

I
Will never
Stop
Writing.

Never stop
Fighting
For what I believe in

So,
Don't read.
Just listen.
And I will write you a duet.

I know that I can make a poet of you yet.

Someday.
Somewhere.
Somebody
will write my biography.
I will never read it.
It won’t be about me.
It’ll be called, '1001 Days That Shaped the World'.
(Volume II)
There will be a bright eyed,
bushy tailed girl
mentioned on every page,

Because they told me I could do anything,
Someday.

But back then,
My hands were too small.
My plans were too big.
My climbing trees were too tall.

Anything, seemed so unlikely.
So overwhelming.
Sobriety told me to hide under my covers.
To stargaze at the impossible but only from the safest places,

Last night I discovered that if you keep your eyes open through the dark,
you could watch your dreams come alive while the sun rises.
You can leave your mark in history when they least expect it.
You can protect your memory long after the last person you knew is gone.

And today,
For the first time in too long,
anything finally feels
Real.
And present.
And possible.

Sometimes I wish you would just be real.
That you would be more
Than a phantasmal image of
Everything I want to be.

Sometimes I just want.
Sometimes I just want to pretend that I didn't know,
That you were joking.
I want you to see,
See the person you're acting to be.
The hazy image of a being
That you project into the fog.
Into the fog of your own breath.

I see you.
Sometimes you tell me phrases,
Moments, glimpses of who you are
Behind the mask of a jester's guise.
The joking face that isn't distorted with 
The scars of other's lives,
With scars of the days gone by
But now I suffer, yearning for them
Selfishly.

I know I won't burn away my facade but
Sometimes I wish
That you'd take off your paper mask
Just for me.
The mask that holds the blades
Away from your face.
That you'd feel the danger 
Of a close shave,
So I could hear those phrases.
Those honest phases.
Before you flicker back out.