when my words don't start as twelve point font
they tend to come out all wrong.
you said you're no good at words but you’re a liar
you said you’re no good at words, i'm no good at saying them.
the air was always heavy between my heart and my mouth.
and sick to say, i’m coughing up a confession
i pretend every poem you’ve ever written is about me
and i know it’s not.
but you make every line i write make sense, every clumsy lyric
in my head into a symphony
while i still feel like cacophony of contradictions:  
i like liquor that doesn’t taste like liquor
and love that doesn’t love like love,
i am scared of love and i am obsessed with it.
i think i could have everything i ever wanted
and it still wouldn't mean **** without you.
now my head is so cluttered, gutted out from missing you
and when i said give me something to remember i didn't mean a scar.
but i could never hate you
how could you hate somebody who bared their soul to you,
told your 2 AM confessions to?
i ran out of way to write you down poetically,
and now when i talk about you it’s just pathetically.
always kissed me hello like you were saying goodbye
and this poem is not about love, this poem about leaving.
go on, jaywalk your way right out of my heart.
because poets don’t know how
say i love you and writing is remembering
but living is forgetting.
so brand it in my memory, poetry is always cheaper than therapy.
all my friends took psychology, rooted around in their heads,
but i took anatomy; cut myself up and open.
some people pick scabs and some people buy band-aids.
guess which one i am?
i am terrible, i do not want a love that’s good for me.
i want a love that takes me over
and turns me inside out.
i want you even when you want nothing to do with me.

loving you was kind of like oversleeping.
quiet and so, so loud
when i opened up my eyes.
i spend all my time running late,
shaking the daydreams out of my head.
something about you
reminded me of all times i just wanted to sleep the year away,
wake up next september and have everything be okay,
and how glad i was i stayed awake for july,
a few months past my bedtime.
it’s the line running on repeat in the cracks of my brain,
there’s a symphony in here playing, it’ll never be the same.
looks like the conductor called in sick,
so it’s like some ill-conceived medley
of tchaikovsky and biggie
and if you don’t know now you know
to the backing music to the nutcracker.
every book i’ve read and every movie i’ve ever fell asleep to
are so tangled up that i can’t make out the lines
i actually wrote underneath them.
what i’m trying to say is that it’s all cymbal crashes in here
and i’ve run out of metaphors, i fear  
that i can’t seem to say anything at all right now,
i am writer’s block at 3 o’clock
and the afternoon has no right to feel 2 AM like this.
i used to think loneliness only happened
when it was the middle of night and i was wondering why
i couldn’t seem to take up all the space in a twin bed on my own,
or when i was in the middle of crowd
and i kept catching myself searching for someone who just... isn’t there.
and this poem has been in process
in the back of my head for a long time,
for about as long as i’ve known you.
i keep adding lines and crossing them back out,  
i keep opening my mouth and sewing it back shut.
you see, it’s very… crowded in my head,
often i feel like i’m exceeding capacity.
like a thousand word per minute,
like a thousand poems and i could never finish it,
i guess that’s is why i “write like i’m running out of time”
i guess that’s why when i perform i speak so fast
my words get caught and my tongue gets tangled,
i’m stuck looking for new angles,
i haven’t met a cliche i haven’t mangled --
what i’m trying to say is
that there’s a lot of ******* going on in here
and you make it all go…
quiet.
and don’t get me wrong,
i love myself, in the way you’ve got to love yourself
when you don’t really always like yourself.
but still, i spend a lot time wishing i had a better handle on myself.
wishing i could press pause
just to give me enough time unscramble myself,
wishing that i was less;
less difficult, less rough, less soft, less messy.
because sometimes i feel so ******' chaotic
and you...
you make everything stop for just a second.
you make everything about me feel okay.
and now, i don’t know about god
but i believe in love and i believe in poetry.
now, i’m not much for destiny
but i believe in the way you sometimes look at me.
to put it simply, you make me want to write poems
about weezer and way you smile.
simple stuff. good stuff.
and i like you because you never pretended
that you were too cool to know the words,
our lips moving just the same.
because we are stumbling, tumbling through life
and i want to spend mine with people
who aren’t so ******* scared of admitting that.
because i measure my heartbeat in drumbeats,
in what’s pouring through my headphones,
and the fact that you get that makes me feel so much less alone.
all the chords/cords tangled like our hearts on the floor,
i’m not going to write you love song, baby,
i’m going to write you an anthem.
because you and i, we we're composed to same notes.
and i could find a lot of ways to phrase this --
we’re made of the same stuff, stardust, kindred spirits
or something like that;
because i’m so good at words,
but my words aren’t near good enough to find a way to say
that you are the space between silence and noise,
where my heart goes to rest.

TO: icarus
i don’t feel anything when i look at you anymore
TO: icarus
but, sometimes, i miss your freckles like crazy
TO: icarus**
okay so maybe i lied
TO: icarus
i keep trying not to
i keep failing
TO: icarus
but i guess it’s just that
you are like no one i’ve met
TO: icarus
and it’s dumb to call you my first love
when you didn’t even love me back,
but… man, you were my first love
TO: icarus
i love(d) you so bad.
TO: icarus
and if i see you on the sidewalk,
i cross the street because i’m so afraid of brushing by you
and falling all over again
TO: icarus
i don’t think i’d be strong to crawl back out this time
TO: icarus
how dumb i was to think i’d be enough for icarus
TO: icarus
i loved icarus and he dragged me into the sun with him
TO: icarus
i loved icarus and he let me drown in the ocean,
grasping for the feathers of his wings
TO: icarus
you made me want to understand gods,
but i only knew about monsters
TO: icarus
god, you didn’t deserve the immortality
that i gave you
TO: icarus
you didn't deserve a single thing
TO: icarus
so if i’m ever the kind of poet they write biographies about
and whose work high schoolers are forced to analyze,
some underpaid english teacher
is going to have to talk about you
as the mysterious and slightly vilified figure
prevalent in my work
TO: icarus
you're in between every line

i am the sum of my worst parts.
i am best friends with my loathing,
i dress all my nightmares in sheep's clothing.
i tell my mother they're friends of mine,
i tell my mother i am fine.
we were terrible actors but, god, were we good at memorizing the lines.
but we both know that nothing’s worse than insincerity.
i think i was so lost i couldn’t stand being found.
it was all i knew, my old paint under the new.
you know what it’s like,
you get stuck in a sadness so sweet
you almost mistake it for something you deserve.
you become comfortable.
it’s a process, cut my losses
relapsed back into my sadness and all my bad habits,
begging you to lick the wine and water off my lips,
the way you grip my hips,
just press me down into the sheets until i don’t exist.
we wrote an album full anthems and we couldn’t carry a **** tune.
you’re just a big bleeding heart, an open wound of a person  
and everybody loves you
and everybody hates you
like the radio hit that made their favorite band big.
so this is for all the times you were told to bite your tongue
but you were so tired of bleeding.
this is for all the times you opened your mouth
but never spoke.
this is for all the times you talked to fill the air
but never really said anything.
you are what you think. you are what you say. you are what you do.
but, maybe most importantly, you are what you don’t do.
because what if icarus had been cautious?
what if icarus had never left the ground?
i guess one way to love somebody is when they're never around,
and i guess there’s people like that;
those who only want to hear songs they’ve already heard.
there’s people like that, those who don’t want to learn anything
that they don’t already know.
there’s people like that, those who don’t like to question things.
science and god sit at the dinner table as lovers.
they say their vows in verse,
in a thousand different languages.
neither of them have the whole story,
but together, i’m told sometimes they make a lot of sense.
science and god sit at the dinner table as equals.
art and wonder and the human spirit are their children.
love may be a myth, but it’s my favorite one.
we do not age at the dinner table
we do not know hate at the dinner table
we spit bullets and grow flowers into vases.
we knock elbows, and argue, and love, and reconcile, and praise.
we spill wine not blood.
we do not know hate at the dinner table.
and i find, at the dinner table, seated
between past and present
between heart-ache and hopefulness
between glory and insignificance
i am not so lonely.

she got a tattoo stenciled “tabula rasa” and could never see the irony.

'but suddenly, you're 30 and blasting the songs that you wanted to die to when you were 15.'

the marble stairs leading up the leaning tower of pisa
are worn down like lips beginning to frown.
this is result of 500 years of walking.

i know a lot of people who shrink into themselves,
arms crossed and shoulders hunched,
as if they are apologizing for taking up so much space.
this is the result of 15 years of walking all over somebody.

this is erosion.
this is the result of thinking that
if you wear someone down then they’ll fit better,
that you’ll find something different underneath what you’ve chipped away.
this is the result of thinking that you can change someone
or that they can change you.

and i know the dangers of thinking
you can find yourself inside of someone else.
it’s easy to lose yourself in other people.
and i had this terrible habit of being who ever you wanted me to be.

you only liked me quiet.
you only liked me when i was easy to hold.
you make me feel how the lovers in the movies do.
you make me feel the way it's silent in the theatre while the credits roll through.
you make me feel miles away even when i’m next to you.

and one day, i caught myself nodding along to opinions
i didn’t even agree with just on autopilot
and i was thinking to myself, my god, is this who you think i am?

i hate the way my name stains your mouth.
i hate the way you make me want to talk softer and softer
until i’m not even saying anything.
i hate the way you make me feel like i have to pretend.

i spent so long trying to be someone you could love
and i am so ******* tired of loving people who make me
feel ashamed of myself.

i am a ten page poem with no stanzas.
and if you don’t get me, then good,
i am not meant to be quantified and understood.
everything i am is right here on my sleeve
and i will not reinvent myself for someone who flinched
at how loud my impatient heartbeat
sounded in a quiet room.
i’ve spent too long thinking that people didn’t love me
because i didn’t make it easy enough,
didn’t sand myself down to fit into the edges of their lives.
i’ve spent too long feeling like i was intimidating, too difficult.
i have spent too long trying to make
myself smaller and smaller until i started to
disappear.

i don’t know how i ever gave you the power to make or break me
but i’m taking it back.
because i don’t want to give away myself,
i don’t want to be just a reflection of somebody else.
and i’ll admit, i do not want to be as complicated as i am.
i do not want to turn my wool black.
i do not want be fractured into boxes.
but i am bigger than your shadow and i am better than these bones.
maybe i am difficult and maybe i don’t care.  

because, baby, when you make me in your image
don’t you dare flinch away from
the reflection.