I DON'T WRITE LETTERS, JUST POEMS
BUT IF THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER THEN IT'S GOT THE ADDRESS
OF ALL YOUR HIDEOUTS, ALL YOUR GHOST TOWNS
TATTOOED ON IT

SO ******* FOR ALL THAT WE'VE BEEN THROUGH
I FEEL LIKE I LEFT ALL MY PIECES IN YOUR BEDROOM,
THERE'S NO PEACE HERE IN MY HEAD
LAST TIME I SAW YOU I FELT LIKE I RELAPSED
BACK INTO MY BEST BAD HABIT
I’M SO ******* STUPID, SWORE I WOULDN’T BUT I’M A LIAR

PAST BEHAVIOR IS THE BEST INDICATOR OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR
AND IF YOU'VE BEEN AN ADDICT,
I'VE HEARD YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE ADDICT
EVEN WHEN YOU'RE CLEAN
I'VE HEARD THAT YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE
ITCHING FOR SOMETHING
SO DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE WHEN I SAY
I THINK I LOVE YOU AGAIN?

I THINK THAT'S A GOOD METAPHOR
BECAUSE WE DIDN'T HAVE A LOVE LIKE NURSERY RHYMES
AT OUR BEST WE WERE A HORROR STORY,
AT OUR WORST WE WERE JUST AN ALLEGORY
AND THE SUN FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON
WHAT A ******* TRAGEDY, LOVERS WHO COULD NEVER BE
LOVERS WHO COULD NEVER EXIST
AT THE SAME TIME AND PLACE,
ALWAYS PASSING EACH OTHER BY LIKE SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
EXCEPT I'M NOT THE SUN
AND YOU'RE SURE AS HELL NOT THE MOON
WE'RE MORE LIKE COMETS ONLY DESTINED TO COLLIDE
AND CHIP EACH OTHER'S SHOULDERS
ON OUR WAY OUT THE DOOR
AND IF WE WERE A SHIP THEN WE WERE A SINKING ONE
SO WHY DO I FEEL LIKE THE TITANIC WITHOUT YOU?
TRYING TO BAIL MYSELF OUT
I DIDN'T THINK THIS IS WHAT LOVE
WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT
AND YOU KNOW WE HAD IT COMING LIKE A TRAIN EN ROUTE
INESCAPABLE,
I'M ABLE TO SEE LIKE HINDSIGHT IS 20/20
BUT I SWEAR I NEVER SAW A BETTER VISION THAN YOU

AND I THINK I'M A LITTLE SCARED THAT YOU'LL ALWAYS BE
IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD, AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS,
HIDDEN EVERY POEM I EVER WRITE
I'M SO SORRY THAT EVERY SONG ON THE RADIO
FEELS LIKE IT'S ABOUT US
YOUR VOICE  USED TO CRACK ON ALL THE HIGH NOTES
YOU'RE STILL THE BEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD

AND THIS IS A STORY THAT'S ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN
PLAGIARIZATION OF MY OWN DREAMS
I THINK THINGS ARE JUST AS OFTEN WHAT THEY SEEM
AS THEY AREN'T
AND I THINK SOMETIMES ANGRY IS JUST A STYLISTIC CHOICE
BECAUSE BEING SAD IS PLAYED OUT

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
because all stars are destined to explode
and the more light you give off
the faster you burn out
i guess this is why they say only the good die young,
i guess i’ll live forever
but immortality sounds lonely and most living legends tie their own nooses,
and the rest of us live just by making excuses
i'd count out all the stars in between us like miles
but you're half way round the world and i'm more than a few days behind
i'd count out all the stars between us, make promises and wishes on them
but i know they’d both be empty
but stars are always dead on arrival
but you’re too far away even if you're right next to me
we were looking at the same stars, just not the same constellations
and i'm so ******* sorry for all the things i let burn out,
all the things i let go ruined instead of dealing with them
i’m afraid of failure so sometimes i don’t try at all
i’m sorry you got the worst parts of me
i’m sorry you got my collisions instead of constellations

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
because you were afraid of commitment mostly because
you thought you were supposed to be and i said
i love you like a bomb going off too soon
my whole body is on fire,
you ignite me like lighter-fluid and bad decisions
and the best things burn out fast
the shortest lights burn the brightest
it’s science, it’s physics, we can’t fight this
we were doomed from the start, it’s inevitable
that we have to take things apart
somebody told me love is having the perfect opportunity
to hurt somebody and letting it go,
so i guess that’s how i know we’re not in love
because we hurt each other just to prove that the other one
still cared enough for it to sting
because i learned that you’re not real unless you make marks,
so i hope it ******* scars
i hope you can always see the bruises in the shape of my lips
i hope you never forget

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’ve been thinking about whether comets or craters are more important
whether it’s about the way you blaze out or just your ashes
whether it’s about what you do or what you leave behind
i’ve been thinking about why we treat
black holes and supernovas as opposites
when they’re really not that different at all
both catastrophes in their own right, yet one of them seems more poetic
but you don’t get to decide the amount of pain you’ve inflicted,
we are all afflicted with this thinking that we’re the only exception
i think we are all guilty of thinking
we’re supernovas instead of blackholes

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’m a mess and not just metaphorically,
sometimes i kind of think i’d be a lot happier without
all the things that make me myself
i am in a glass jar watching myself implode because
i kind of wish i was born with more serotonin and a different kind of motivation,
like i’m an observer to myself
and i’ve always viewed my own heart breaks
almost as the out-of-body experience, like a third party
investigating the remains of what was or what wasn’t
i am the medical examiner of my heart
and poetry is a lot like dissection
and love is a lot like hate
and living is a lot like dying
but regret is just a waste of emotion and love is just a waste of devotion
and going out with a bang
is much more glamorous than going out with a whimper
and nobody talks about slow burn, only the explosion
if you were a star then you were a shooting one,
and you’re always most popular the day after you die
but i’m done with that ****,
this is not a dead poet’s society
this is a society of poets who wanted to die but didn’t
because i think this might be a sad poem,
but i am not a sad person or at least i've been trying not to be
because we were all born to die, but we were also all born to live
measured by the blaze of our burnout, the trail behind us
i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’ve been thinking a lot about comets

a thousand eyes searching
and i still feel pretty ******* invisible
it’s a blessing, it’s a curse
i couldn’t tell you which is worse
and i’m swallowing magnets just to attract you
talking big and fast like
maybe i can capture your attention
maybe i can handcuff it to me
and now i'm emptying out my heart in the bathroom
just to save space
and it's always a bathroom, it's always a bathroom
because girls throw up their secrets there
making confessionals out of toilet bowls
because lonely kids hide there
eating their lunches perched in bathroom stalls
i think we’re all still more like that
than we want to ever admit to ourselves  
sometimes i think we mistake brutal for beautiful a little too easily
you're a disaster, you're a ******* train wreck
yet, baby, some how you got it together better
than anybody i know
and yeah, you’re ****** record sometimes
but i never could bare to turn you off,
because i know every word too well
and we all skip sometimes
and we all have our botched notes sometimes
and we all have misses instead of hits sometimes
but even scratched up records can still make music,
and even cynical people can still write love songs
you’ve got a smile closer to
a painted-on sunset than a true blue sky,
but don’t look now; your paint’s peeling off
like cheap nail polish
and we don’t like to talk about it
because then we might have to think about it
and it was like getting exactly what you wanted
then having to return it
you are the best and worst things i’ve ever written,
poetry personified
no one ever got me like you did
because i know you best which means i also know you worst
so now i'm like new orleans after the levees broke
every hurricane has a name and i’m trying to forget yours,
there are universes inside of you
people will never know because no one will ever
think to ask about them
and there are storms brewing in you
that no one will ever see coming until they hit
and not everyone can see the brightest of galaxies
with a naked eye
but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there
and i’m searching with a magnifying glass,
a careless kind of precision
i’m just near-sighted with a vision
i looked so hard for you in the stars
that i think i created new constellations there just to fit you in
i accidentally immortalized you
and what's a girl to do when she loves somebody
too big for a twin bed, larger than life
and you know me, i always want to be the last thing i saw on tv
and i know you, you’ll only be famous in your downfall
because if this is a big fish in a small pond type of situation
then you’re a whale in somebody’s kitchen sink,
too big for this **** town
and i couldn’t ever bare to hold you back or tie you down
life’s like a fistfight, right, and you can’t stop
somebody from throwing
their own punches even if you’re just thinking
about saving their unscarred knuckles with you best intentions
and i’ll never stop you from leaving
even if i don’t want you to go
i understand losing everything that you’ve ever had
just to gain what you’re looking for
better than you’ll ever know, better than i’ll ever let show
because i want so bad i’m burning up in the atmosphere
i want so bad i’ll let it destroy me without a second thought;
i just overdosed on my dreams in my bedroom  
and we are not on our deathbed
we’re trying to claw our way out of our open casket
we’re already in our coffin, we’re already buried ten feet under
we were dead a long time before we ever even arrived
and my knuckles might be unscarred
and there's a thousand better ways to word this
but i don’t believe in anything the way
i believe in you
and i guess it makes sense:
somebody once told me that  
either you die for what you believe in
or you live for what you don’t

time’s going really ******* fast today,
always in all the wrong ways
it’s running out and it’s running away
it’s 10:52 PM and i’m trying to start over like
i’ve got a revolver to my ribcage
it’s 11:00 PM and i don’t want to see anyone i know ever again,
i want to get a car and keep driving
down I-70 until i learn how, until my hands never shake again
it’s 11:14 PM and i missed 11:11 again
it’s 12:01 AM and as i’m fine now, i just don’t want to talk about it
it’s morning now and the sun sets in your eyes
and it rises in another’s
and it’s funny how things change
and it’s funny how things stay exactly the same
this is the difference between a collision course and a test run
and a poem a day keep your demons at bay
or it draws them close, up under your skin and lets them in
a poem a day keeps insanity away
let me repeat: i am only as good as the demons i defeat
and if the monsters make me one of them,
i am only as good as what i’ve become
i am only as good as what i’ve done
i am only as good as what i haven't done
sometimes i think when you bet against the world,
the world bets against you
it’s just how it is
it’s probably karma or something like that,
but i’ve given up on reasoning for reasons and i guess
when you’re a non-believer sometimes no one wants to believe in you
i kind of think i’ll be desperately lonely no matter who i’m with
i think i’m on of those people who was born a little bit lonely
i think i’ll never be completely okay with that
but i think that’s okay
i’m just a stranger in my skin
and nobody really makes me feel at home anymore
and i think some days are longer than others
and i think it’s just never the ones you want it to be

lately, we’ve been talking about the way things change
we’ve been building cities with our mouths only to blow them out
as if the future is a candle, with trails of smoke like lace,
just the murmur of secrets across the grass getting
softer softer softer
until they disappear, until everything disappears
everything disappears

lately, i’ve been think about the way things change
like seasons and lovers
i’ve been thinking about how
the only thing more permanent than forever is never,
and everybody thinks it’s going to be forever until it’s not
i’ve been thinking about whether it’s a good thing or not
because all the rock stars whose names
we were screaming at concerts are middle-aged parents now
and it’s weird, but i think it’s kind of cool too

times change and things change and that’s okay
you can’t be sixteen forever, and why the hell would you want to be?
being sixteen was kind of a ******* nightmare
growing up isn’t inherently bad,
and if you’re gonna be peter pan
then you’re gonna be lonelier than a lost boy

and maybe i’m the kind of person who expects
everything to fall apart, but life is equally destruction and rebirth
everything disappears, everything’s gonna be different
everything’s gonna be awesome
everything’s gonna be awful

think of it this way:
everything’s gonna be wonderful
just like everything’s gonna be terrible
that’s just the way it is
luck of the draw, life is a crapshoot
and sometimes your hand is ******, but you’ve still got to play it anyways
or you’re just gonna fold over like house of cards

think of it this way:
even in the darkest of nights the moon is always
hiding out somewhere in the sky
and the sun going to come up tomorrow
i couldn’t tell you why exactly because i didn’t pay any attention
in science class, i was too busying doodling in the margins of myself
and looking for stars,
but the sun’s gonna come up tomorrow
it always has, and the sun’s reliable like that
and i know that only thing that’s certain is that nothing is,
and i know i’ve got no proof, but i’ve got a hunch
that everything’s gonna work out
and i know “you’ll be okay” always sounds kind of hollow
but it does ring true

and we’re still young enough to be dumb
and we’re still young enough that we’ve got so many possibilities
it makes me ******* dizzy
and if you’re lucky enough to have
the world in the palm of your hand, don’t clench your fist;
don’t let it slip through your fingers
don’t let go
don’t let go

you were a mistake worth making

we think my great uncle eddie
was on the assembly line that built the atomic bomb.
my aunt mildred said he could never tell her
exactly where he was or what he was doing,
far away in the desert
back when he had to take trains to visit
back when manhattan was just place in new york,  
he could only tell her that he loved her.
we still don’t know for certain,
there are some stories that are taken to the grave.
but i wonder, i wonder if my aunt ever looked at his hands
and thought of the destruction
that could be so carefully hidden in his palms,
explosions under his fingernails,
the shells of burnt out cities in his fortune teller's lines
when he touched her delicately,
brushed her hair behind her ear.
but she probably didn’t;
most people only question what they want to question.
everyone thinks of what their hands have built.
not everyone stops to think of what their hands may have destroyed
in the process.

question is and always will be:
am i dead when my heart stops beating
or am i dead when everybody forgets about me?
do i matter because people tell me i do,
or do i matter because i say i do?
i think therefore i am, i over-think therefore i wish i wasn’t.
because existence is a tricky thing;
you don’t want to die but you’re too scared live.
and maybe it’s futile, and maybe it’s pointless
maybe i am struggling with
my gifts and curses, poems and verses,
looking for a meaning that just isn’t there.
and maybe it’s ironic,
how we waste our lives wanting to die
but just because you have
doesn’t mean you don’t ache for what you haven’t
and sometimes being grateful is hard
when you’re supposed to
and you know, this world, it’s rough all over
and everybody gets cut up at little.
nobody wants to grow old but nobody wants to die young.
i want to make a mark, but i know it’ll be forgotten.
and i don’t want my marks to be blemishes
and i don’t want my marks to be scars
and i don’t want my marks to be footprints on the beach
and maybe there’s no meaning,
and maybe there doesn’t need to be.
all i know is that most people don’t think that
the vastness of the universe is something
to tell bedtime stories to,
but i’d tuck myself in with the stars even after
they reminded me again how small i am in comparison.
so either i’m too stubborn or too smart to talk to god,
paint me anyway it fits
paint me any way the lighting hits
i am open for interpretation.
because you’re semi sweet and i’m completely bitter
you’ve got an altar i don’t know how to worship,
you’ve got faith in all kinds of things.
and i’m cynical, i’m altered,  
i’m ****** up in the best and worst ways.
i write poems just to keep my hands busy,
i write poems just to keep myself from writing eulogies.
and i know, what a ******’ contradiction
the dreamer who doesn’t believe in anything.
i am the only one inside my head,
so would it be classified as a tragedy
if my dreams bled out with me?
nobody knows me like i know myself
and if i die then a library full of words crammed
inside dies with me, and dying young
is only a shame if you had something to live for.
maybe i am the end and beginning of my own legacy.
i don’t know about our ghosts and past lives
lurking behind our eyes, i don’t know
if you’ve got somebody else’s smirk on your lips
or if i’m loving you out of a second-hand heart.
but i think, but i like to think
that while my bones may be borrowed,
matter not destroyed or created
just redecorated, that my soul’s not recycled.
but i’m not looking for a dictionary definition
sometimes we’ve got to stop and cut the ignition
before we crash like waves,
i’d rather going somewhere slow than going nowhere fast.
and it’s not like i’m a visionary,
it’s not like i’m even really much of a poet;
i’m just a ******* kid with a thesaurus
and too **** much to say.
and i’m trying to tell you a lot of things,
but i don’t know how to phrase anything.
so maybe we’re old souls
and maybe we’re brand new,
maybe i’m borrowed and maybe you’re blue.
and maybe it’s all random and maybe it’s all planned out,
and maybe fate is for suckers
and dreamers drowning naïvety
and maybe fate is all we have.
maybe we’re looking at the world through
totally different lenses
but maybe somehow we’re seeing
the same things.

like everything else,
you never see the collision
until you’re already crashing;
all the coins in your cup holders raining down
to be suspended like copper stars,
our hair floating around us like we’re underwater;
we are drowning in mid-air, we are just a car upside down,
headlong towards the water
rushing to a date with destiny we had wanted to cancel.
we are just an airplane shot out of the sunset,
blazing down like a comet.
and if you have only seconds left,  
have you lived a life you’re proud of?
would you change your regrets?
who are you thinking of as it all goes dark?  
who would you call to tell that you love them
two minutes from the carcass of a plane crash?
why don’t you call them now?
but see the thing is, most people don’t start living
until they’re afraid of dying.
we are creatures of comfort and comfort is in habit,
and until the car crashes
until the plane falls from the sky
until the bank is held up
until death’s staring us down,
just trying to see who blinks first,
most of us aren’t going change anything.  
we all know that the sun is going to expand
and swallow us whole,
but we won’t care until it’s singeing our eyebrows.
we like to talk about death
as if it’s not inevitable,
and we like to ignore the last page
until we’re on it.    
we are all the in between, we are all in transit,
we’re all nomads and lonely hearts and wanderers.
we’re all bandits, we’re all thieves in the night
illuminated by our emergency flashlights.
we’re all stars destined to be either
black holes or supernovas, imploding or exploding.
so maybe we’re all destined for destruction,
but i don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
not to me
because it’s all about the drive not the destination,
it’s all about the story not the ending.
and i don’t know if i believe in any god,
if i think he’d be the clockmaker or the caretaker,
and i don’t know if destiny damns us
or if we ***** our own selves over.
perhaps life, perhaps the end is predetermined
and we’re all stuck in our circuits,
we’re all mice in our own mazes.
but there’s something to be said for the middle, isn’t there?
the story doesn’t stop meaning anything
just because you know the ending.
and perhaps each of us is the director of our own existence,
and perhaps we are the chorus member of somebody else’s
and perhaps we’re just caught up in the details of it all.
what i’m trying say is,
we’re all a little ******* up
and we’re all a little messier than we let on
and we’re all just trying to figure it out.
because i have at least two existential crises a weekend,
i’m just trying to beat the world to the punch
i’m just trying to unravel the universe
before it unravels me.
i’m trying to unravel the universe with
my tongue like a cherry stem.
the hand we are dealt is not a choice
but the way we play it is
and i don’t know much about fate
but if you’d tell me, i’d being willing to listen.
i think too much about the past,  
and i can’t tell you about the future,
but on the off chance the fault is in ourselves
and not our stars, i just want you to know i love you.
if i don’t say it i’ll have no one
to blame but myself.

if you listen to album enough on repeat,
you can almost hear in the intro to the next song
in the last notes of the one still playing.
if you talk long enough, i can almost hear how the disjointed points
you’re making flow together in the same way
with their stitches still showing,
you were never much good at sewing.
you’ve got a mouth like a rock ballad, sweet in your bitterness.
crooked chords that still sound good with the way you smile.
you’re a record-breaker and i’d never skip a single song.
i’ve a got a list tucked in your pocket of songs that make me cry,
you are at the bottom of my list and the top of my lungs
you were like good music;
your notes didn’t always sound right
but you always made me feel something.
a number two pencil drumming,
tapping out at the opening to some love song on your desk
like the steady beep of a heart monitor,
proving that you’re alive with every hit you make.
you never stop moving.
once you told me that you kind of think
if you sit still too long you’ll never manage to get up again
like an old, out-of-date computer
that might never turn back on if you switch it off.
an object in motion tends to stay in motion
and an object at rest tends to stay in rest,
and sometimes if you get into to bed you never get back out.
procrastinate your way out of your problems
and into to bigger ones.
sometimes to get your life together, you’ve got to take it apart.
a butcher with a butter knife, a knight with a wooden sword.
i’m scared of taking apart things i don’t know how to put back together,
and i’m **** at reading instructions.
because i guess sometimes when i write you poems
they're more about me than they're about you.
i don’t have cold feet, just cold toes, and sometimes i think
if i paint my toenails ruby red then my feet might magically take me home
to the house i never wanted to be in when actually i lived there.
life’s funny like that.
you never want what you have until it’s framed in your rearview mirror.
so i snuck out my bedroom window and i fell through the roof,
and when peter pan told me to fly, i just fell.
the sky was too polluted to find the second star to the right.
i guess i just didn’t believe hard enough.
and if believers never die then maybe cynics never live.
it makes sense i guess,
you were born out of a coffin, you were born in an abortion clinic.
even you can see the irony,
but i think you just were too stubborn not to exist.
you were a mess way before you ever learned how to clean yourself up.
birthmarks on your ribcage, consolidated rage
i memorized every piece of that you let me.
you told me that you’re not a shield, you’re just a bullet.
you’ve been a long-standing fistfight with meaning
ever since you were old enough to throw a right hook
and get your tongue tangled up in the chorus.
past your prime and still throwing punches,
i guess i respect the tenacity and pity the lack of self-awareness
at the same time.
you never knew when to bow out of the ring.
you never knew when to give up.
you never knew which fights were losing ones.
and you say “i’m no good” and it just makes me wanna get to closer
to find out for myself
and you say “leave while you still can” and it just makes me wanna stay
to prove you wrong.
guess i’m a glutton for punishment, i’m misery’s permanent tenant.
the only one dumb enough to leave behind roots in the riverbed
and expect them not to get washed away.
now you’re always on my mind,
i keep seeing cars like yours drive past my window.
you were lanky and you hated ******* that word when i said it,
laughing into your mouth
but you were all limbs, and now i’m missing you like one.
i go searching for addresses to buildings
i know that are probably still abandoned just see
if any part of you still lives there.
the neighbors tell me it’s haunted,
little kids cross on the other side of the street to avoid the chill.
but i’m stubborn, and i’m not afraid of the ghosts.
a foreclosure sign is still in an overgrown front yard.
a mailbox with the flag still up.
furniture all covered up in blank sheets like the paper.
it was all over before it started, you moved out before
you even unpacked all of your boxes.
i think you left some behind.

you sent me a love letter, a message in a bottle
but when i cracked it open i cut up my hands.
i guess i’m the same way;
i wrote you a love song
but i forgot i didn’t know how to sing,
so i yelled the words at your window like
i was flinging pebbles and you told me to put down
my boombox because i was going to wake up
the whole **** neighborhood
with my teenage angst,
my painfully naive i love you-s.
i think my heart is too loud for suburb lawns
and white picket fences.
and i guess that’s the trouble with us;
we were always
controlled chaos, a dormant volcano
and all the kids counted down to the eruption
like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop  
and numbered their calendars for a date
that should’ve been on a unmarked grave.
and we’ve just got short fuses,
kisses and bruises
because when someone is the pin to your grenade
when someone is the oil spill to your wildfire
you’ve always got to be wary of explosions.
and we were always going to ***** each other over,
we were always going to
burn too bright, burn out too fast.
because i was just a pretty girl in a sundress,
and this is just a memory you’ve been trying to repress
hand clenched in the fabric of us,
so determined to not let the inevitable happen on schedule.  
and i love you so i’ll ruin you, it’s inevitable
and i love you so you’ll leave, it’s inevitable
and i love you so it’s not going to work out like i want it to.
it’s just... inevitable.
there’s no avoiding it the future unless
you take your own away.
sometimes i have to remind myself five times a day
that destruction, that implosion,
that falling apart isn’t as poetic as i think it is.
and now, i’m biting my tongue to keep from saying
baby, bring home the wreckage
maybe there’s still something there for us to salvage
and if we're a sinking ship, i'll go down with you
and if we’re doomed, i’ll be ****** with you.
because i’m still thinking there’s an off chance,
because i’m still thinking that maybe if you still...
i’m still thinking that all this time
i was just wishing on the wrong star and there’s still a chance,
there’s still wishes to waste
and coins to throw in the fountain
and eyelashes to count on.
but you know somebody once told me
that the stars aren’t really there, we’re just seeing
footprints of where they used to be.
we’re always looking a galactic graveyard, a sky littered
with the star-studded remains of supernovas.  
always thought you were more of a black hole than a star,
but maybe there’s some truth to every cliche;
i see everywhere you used to be clearly,
i can see your presence in every absence.
because i miss you terribly
and i know i’m not supposed to.
but i still wonder what you’re thinking about sometimes.
i still wonder about the stars
you’re looking at sometimes.
i still wonder if we see
the same constellations
anymore.

my church doesn’t take attendance.
my church just wants to know what color you see the world in.
my church won’t fight your battles for you
but it’ll patch up your knuckles, it’ll cheer you on
from the empty bleachers.
my church is full of repentant pickpockets
and former ****-ups and kids with crooked teeth.
my church coughs up the word religion,
my church doesn’t believe in anything bigger
than its own two hands.
my church has never needed to.  
my church ain’t trying to fix you but
it hands out bandaids and lollipops for free.
my church doesn’t ask questions, it just holds hands.    
my church doesn’t exist until it’s 4 AM and you’re all alone,
coming out of your skin.
my church doesn’t believe in sinners or saints, just people.
my church doesn’t focus on the after-life, just the one we’re in.
my church doesn’t have pews,
my church has hiking boots and ***** feet.
my church doesn’t want your worship, just your love.
my church dances barefoot.
my church writes songs about you.
my church is open 24 hours but it ain’t a liquor store.
my church is the radio, my church is every song you’ve yet to know.
my church listens to heavy metal and bubblegum pop
and always sings the wrong words.
my church is anxious, my church is tapping toes,
my church hates public speaking but loves to be heard.
my church is the first day of spring after a winter so long that
you didn’t think you’d find your way out of it.
my church is crying on your best friend’s shoulder.
my church is reruns of the shows you grew up on.
my church is your mother kissing you on your forehead.
my church is dr. seuss is snuggling up
between shakespeare and j.k. rowling all on your bookshelf.
my church is poetry, my church is finger paints.
my church is i’m sorry and my church is i forgive you.
my church is in love with you.
it always has been.
my church can't jump high enough for a leap of faith.
my church is the last kid picked in gym class,
my church breeds underdogs like they're laboradoodle mixes.
my church has overgrown front lawn full of dandelions.
my church has neighbors who talk **** on it.
my church doesn’t always finish its homework on time
but it finishes every story they’ve start telling.
my church doesn’t give a **** about your GPA,
but my church wants you to learn everything you can.
my church wants you to always ask why.
my church is late with the rent check this month
because it bought tickets to a show,
my church regrets absolutely nothing.
my church is still figuring it out, too.
my church is falling apart,
and sometimes the congregation watches
and sometimes they pick up the pieces, keeps ‘em in their pockets.  
my church is home to anyone would believes in
friday night and sunday morning with the same intensity,
my church has its doors open to
atheists and holy men and godly women and those who just don’t know.
my church is home to the non-believers,
my church doesn’t like to tell them they’re wrong.
my church calls them baby
and says that we don’t believe in much here either.
my church doesn’t care who the *******’ve been praying to,
my church doesn’t care if you never have.
my church is honest, my church is choking.
my church is broken, but it
believes in you.

when i met you,
my bones screamed
“do not **** this one up,”
and every molecule joined in the chorus,
and i sure as hell tried to listen.
and now we’re in a staring contest with time;  
you don’t blink and i don’t flinch, not anymore
we’ve already won that war.
and i’m just itching to get out of this skin,
i’m just trying to fill up my absences,
i’m just trying to lengthen my short-comings.
i’m just full of empty promises.  
and now we’re on the couch too busy unraveling
the universe with our tongues to try talking,
everything we have have getting lost
in between the couch cushions
like loose change and secrets.
i always want i’m afraid of
and i’m always afraid of what i want most.
and now we’re in the car going everywhere slow,
and you can’t keep your eyes on the road.
you keep glancing at me in the passenger seat,
and i’m too busy sneaking looks at you
and your wild hands gesticulating
us into near miss car crashes
and almost run red lights to care.
you said it was reckless of you,
promised me sheepishly
to keep your hands on the wheel next time.
i thought it was terribly endearing.
but maybe i’ve just confused reckless passion for love,
i guess it wouldn’t be the first time.
and still, i don’t know who’s closer to the truth.
we were just rattling past the intersection
a few missed turns ago,
and you looked away before you could see me staring
but just like tunnel vision, you are what i paid attention to.
you see, i don’t believe in much at all,
my only church is the passenger seat next to you.
maybe i’ve forsaken any altars in my haste
to be realistic, substantial.  
so i only believe in **** i can see,
and i was still looking at you like you were
the sun coming up.
and i’ve always been more like the moon
and it’s so very hard for us to exist in the sky
at the same time.
but the sun sets in one person’s eyes
and rises in another’s.
and i have told this story before, i bet you have too.
we all have those kind of ghost stories
tucked in our back pockets,
because loving the wrong person hurts
it hurts because it matters even if it’s wrong
but do you think all the lives we’ve lived
before this one matter?
maybe our pasts only dictate the future
if we let them carry weight
and you know, sometimes i think
that we are only as unloved as
we want to be.

the first time i went to a real concert
i thought my heart was so full it was going
explode all over the speakers.
it was a ******* patronus moment,
you know the kind of **** that’s gonna drive away
all my demons like thieves in the night on buses out of town
when i think about them now.
and you know how hard it is to find somewhere
where the people don't make fun of you
for singing the wrong words?
because listening to the same music is sort of like
instant camaraderie, all of us singing off-key
to the same beat,
even the jaded twenty somethings
who complain about how all the music theses days
just has less words and more synth.
we’re all hearts without ribcages tonight,
and i didn’t care what they said because
i swear i didn’t even feel the broken bottles
under my shoes when i was walking home after that show,
i was so far on cloud nine.
it was like the best kind of high
only i was sober as **** and i didn't need to
take anything i was offered
because it felt like i already had it all.
and i knew what to do with my pain now:
take it and dress it up in it’s friday night best,
make it into something everyone will know the words to
and suddenly it’s a lot harder to hurt you
when it’s not still rattling around in your chest
like parasites disguised as butterflies.
and maybe i’m not punk rock
enough to rock a mohawk,
because to be honest the only band
i’ve ever been in is the marching band,
but i still got **** to say even if it doesn’t have a chorus
and my pen’s bleeding ink all over my kitchen sink,
because i’m not afraid of myself anymore
and i’m not afraid of being alone anymore.
and i never had a punk rock john
or any type of pete wentz guru in my life
patching up my knuckles,
just the music
and it was enough.
so i think i’d rather watch people cough up
their hearts onstage
and come home smelling like *** i didn’t smoke,
X’s still on my hands,
than cough up mine in the bathroom,
in my bedroom, all alone like i used to.
just because i’m not afraid of being alone anymore
doesn’t mean i really want to be
and kids like me we want immortality so bad,
why else would we write?
why else would we go to concerts,
spend all our money on experiences?
so maybe that’s why
i’m spending all my money on concerts tickets
because i know we either grow up to be rockstars
or parents sending our kids to their shows.
there isn't much in between.
and i want to scream myself hoarse
before i run out of breath.
because tonight we’re all just kids at a concert,
pressed in on all sides and dancing even though
no one has enough room.
we’re all just singing about the same things tonight.
because life is a lot like crowd-diving,
it’s scary and i’m not sure i’m cool enough for it
and you can’t be sure anybody’s going to catch you.
because when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
getting the hell out of their veins at one time or another.
when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
disappearing at one time of another.
and i think inside we’re all kind of still fifteen sometimes,
whether we’re twenty-one or forty-five.
no matter who you are, sometimes you wake up
and you’d give anything to be somebody else.
and sometimes we’re all kids about to get trampled in the mosh pit,
but you know the rules:
when you fall down
somebody’s gonna pick you back up
if you don’t get back on your feet yourself,
i promise.

i have had people say to me,
i don’t want to die,
i’m just not sure how interested
i am in being alive.
i have had people say to me,
i don’t want to die,
i just want to sleep and sleep
and never wake up.
i have had people say to to me,
i don’t want to die,
i just want to press pause.
i have held a lot of shaking hands,
begging them to drop
their knives and trying to
hold their wrists.
i have said the same things.
so i’m not saying
that i’m always better
and i don’t if you’d still call me
a good person
if you could see behind my eyelids
because sometimes i am terrified of
the demons lurking
in the corners of my own mind,
but then, if you got to see people inside out
with all the ugly and unseen
and we-don’t-talk-about-it
then maybe nobody would dare to
call each other good people.
and sometimes i don’t want to keep going;
there are days when we all feel
like the universe is pressing down
on top of our shoulders,
crushing our lungs.
but gravity's just doing its best, and so am i.
and even though sometimes it feels like
i’ve running on empty for the last thousand miles,
i’m fine, really, i’m fine.
most days i wake up
and i’m happy, most days i wake up
and i am not thinking about unzipping my veins.
i am thinking about
all the songs i haven’t heard yet,
all loves i haven’t loved yet,
all the poems i haven’t written yet,
and *******, i want to be alive so much
more than i ever wanted to die.
i swear, there is universe is out there waiting for you
if you’re willing to go out and find it.
the world won't wait for you
but it's always going to be there.
and i swear the darkness isn’t
too distracting,
i swear i can still see clearly.
happiness isn’t a destination
or a journey,
it’s a fistfight with sadness
and i want to keep getting back
in that ring even if i keep getting the ****
knocked out of me every single time.
getting better is uphill battle,
but at the top there is peace.
at the top there is reason.
at the top there just might be
what you’re looking for.
and maybe it’s stupid
but i believe it’s not all hurricanes,
and i believe it does get better.
i believe that twenty years from now
i will wake up and look at my beating heart
and be thankful i didn’t **** myself.
and i believe that you will be too.
i really do.  
and i’m not saying that there won’t be days
when getting out of bed feels like
scaling the grand canyon
and even tying your shoes feels impossible.  
it isn’t going to be an epiphany,
the universe shaking your shoulders
in its steady hands and telling you to
cheer the **** up, kid.
because sometimes the universe’s hands
are shaking just as bad as yours,
sometimes there is no reason for it.
it will be more like a gradual realization
that world can be ugly and cruel and brutal,
but that doesn’t mean that
there aren’t things out there
worth living for.
it’s not always easy to find
any ******* sunshine bright enough,
and sometimes i am so scared
i might die before
i find anything worth living for,
and i don’t always have a good enough
reason to get out of bed
in the morning, but i promise
that i’m looking for a better one.
i can’t give you a reason
but i hope you can learn to look, too.
i hope you can learn to look at the sunset
and see all the colors in the horizon,
a sky painted with temptation,
and not just see another day ending.
there’s a difference between
living and being alive,
and i hope you
stick around long enough
to get to know that
difference.

my mother is a journalist
and my father is out of work
she’s spinning stories
and he’s just staring out the window
you are recording my mistakes
and i am selling yours onstage.
so i’ll give myself to strangers,
and flinch away when you touch me
it’s always too much and not enough.
i’ll plaster my heart all over the world,
and refuse to read you anything.
i write too much and i don’t speak enough,
my entire bibliography a tour de force of silence
and the things i wish i’d said.
you could cut out my tongue and
not notice the difference.
sewn shut lips with a poem slipping out,
i'm too scared to read it out aloud.
but i’ve been learning that being scared
just means that you give a ****.
words have always been easy,
saying them is so much harder.
and i’m not looking for anybody to color me in
but i’ll keep writing you poems until you feel something.
i love like somebody’s always
looking over my shoulder
and i know, i know
that’s no way to live.
how should i expect to bare my soul
if i’m still scared of it,
don’t i know that half-truths will
never compare to it?
cause and effect, expose and protect
i’ve got a notebooks full of ****
i wish i was brave enough to say to you.
but i'm tongued tied;
half of me is still in my head,
and the other half is stuck in my heart
and i’m trying not fall apart,
i’m trying to keep my ******* head
separated from my ******* heart.
i’m trying, i am, but i think there will always
be part of me that sees you
and memorizes everything new like a line in a poem.
it’s a song without a chorus
it’s an anthem without a single verse
we are actors with no lines to rehearse
we are missing everything we were supposed to find.
but if i tried to tell you this
i’d just stutter my way through
and all the sentiment would get lost in the  
“um, but, uh, like, i, er”
on its way to you,
my nervous system’s got anxiety
and i want to be seen but not scrutinized.
i am in the room full of my mistakes
and they are telling me ghost stories about you.
i’m stuck so deep inside my own head
i can’t find my way out,
i’m just hiding out in the ruins of my own life.
my mouth’s not good at small talk
when gravity’s holding me down,
these words are loaded but the gun is empty.
and i remember the way
you used to talk about your dreams
like you’d forgotten them, tongue heavy
with nostalgia as you told me
about all these bright-eyed ideas
that you now called delusions of grandeur
with a shake of your head and a grim set in your mouth.
and i remember how you looked at me;
i don’t want to be just another thing you regret.
and i’m tired of being less afraid
to shed my skin onstage than in front of you,
i’m tired of choking all the things i’ve never said.
a penny for your thoughts and
a dollar for your heart
ask me what i’m thinking,
i swear i won’t flinch.

if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.

time is going kind of slow today
like it’s waiting for us to catch up to it
and i guess that’s better than how it used to be,
when time was running out and away from us
you checked the time every five seconds,
you're afraid of showing up late to your own life,
and i tipped over hourglasses just to watch them run out,
just to feel like i was in control of something
and i'm always told
that time won’t wait for me
but if time is just something we created,
if it’s just a concept, then i’ve been thinking
that maybe it doesn’t have to scare the **** out of me
maybe i don't have be counting my hours
like they're finite
because i’ve spent a lot of my life afraid of time,
afraid of it running out, afraid of there not being enough of it
i'm stuck in my head like a shut-in,
never got out because i forgot to let anybody in
and i don’t write poems for people, just figments
and it’s not lonely inside my head, it’s just crowded
you just told me to stop thinking so hard,
it’s only monday and it’s too early in the week for me
to be so far down the rabbit hole like that
and i guess i stopped counting hours for a while there,
just let them roll by and drag me under like the tide
and when i looked back i’d lost a year of my life
or something poetic like that, something pathetic like that
and i guess i stopped writing for a while there,
pretty words with no substance
didn’t do me **** when i was ten feet under
and still searching for your heartbeat
when notebooks that were full of you were empty
and you and me, we’re just the ones who didn’t make it
and you and me, we’re just the kids who couldn’t fake it
yeah, we could’ve been a song but then you left
without a note
and i don’t know what went wrong
and i don’t know what went wrong
and i don’t know what-
and i don't know-
and i don't-
but i guess i do
obsessive, i go searching for people in snippets
to make them whole
so maybe i should have expected
that when i held too tightly,
clutched my curses close like they were gifts,
it was all going to shatter
in my hands
i missed you when i didn’t know how to

we were in the bed
of your truck,
the two of us so close
but not close enough,
just two mismatched hearts
trying to get along.
i was trying to memorize the stars,
so i’d be able to redraw the constellations
we looked at that night  
for when i get lonely,
for when you’re not longer here.
and it was like
you could hear all my
over-thinking-this thoughts
buzzing around in my too-full head,
it was like you could see me
bleeding poetry out of
a borrowed heart;
it was like you could tell
that i was already preoccupied
with months from now,
too worried about
what comes next to even
be here right now
because you turned to me,
and you said,
“i’m right here. you’re right here.
so just… be here.”
because i’m the kind of person
who’s always waiting for the fall out,
i’m the kind of person
who’s got all
the escape routes mapped out
before we’ve even started driving.
because i’m the kind of person
who just kind of expects things to have
an expiration date,  
expects things to crash and burn
instead of fly,
expects things to fall apart.
because you of all people know how
easy it is for those of us with the
dreamer’s disease
to get caught up in all the lights.
and when you smile at me
with your not quite crooked teeth,
sometimes it can be so bright
it’s blinding.
there are a thousand unwritten poems
hiding in my shaking hands,
there are whole universes
hiding underneath my skin,
and i swear,
i would give you
the ******* grand tour
if you only asked me to.
you of all people know i don’t
believe in much.
and maybe i could believe in the way
the stars looked that night
with a little persuasion,
but i already know
i believe in the way your eyes
looked that night.
darling, no bible needs to
convince me of that.

she was lonely in crowded rooms

you’ve had your whole future mapped out
since you were 16, sitting in homeroom
and hand-picking your life.
me, i’ve got no plans to speak of,
still trying to figure myself out;
everything major still undecided and undeclared
because pandora’s box is
always really pretty until you open it,
and the future’s really alluring until you’re in it
and you’re wondering if it really fits.
and i know it’s stupid trying to
plan for a car crash,
to plan on ******* up  
but i’ve been trying to take precautions
in case i don’t grow into who you were counting on.
i keep your promises tucked in my pocket,
you make vows just to talk about it.
and i don’t know much about fate
because once my horoscope actually told me
that i’ll be alone and unloved forever,
born under an unlucky star,
so i’m not placing my trust in the stars
even if sometimes i get the sneaking suspicion
they might just be right.
i’m trying to dictate my own future without having a tongue,
i’m trying to find a future i’ll be content living in.
people are always waiting for time to run out,
and i’ve always been waiting for the fall out.
because i know all good things have to end
all bands have to break up, all stars have to explode,
all slow dances have to still, and eventually
all loves have to run out in one way or another.
and i’ve got front row seats to
the inevitable explosion
because you’re a heart attack and i’m totally doomed
we’re just bombs going off too soon
we’re just strangers dancing in a crowded room
we’re just ****** up and wishing on the moon
we’re just racking up casual causalities
we’re just reading our fortunes
in the coffee grinds and tea leaves,
half-joking and half-a-little-too-honest
when you peered at yours and said,
“it says we’re gonna grow old and grey together,
and move out of the city and have a bunch
of loud mouthed kids with your eyes.”
i don’t know about the future
and i suppose you’d like to tell me about it,
after all you’ve had your whole future mapped out
since you were 16, sitting in homeroom
and hand-picking your life.
but it’s an affliction, all those ******* predictions.
don’t tell me where you want to be in five years in from now;
tell where you’re actually going to be tomorrow.
because i was dying for this week to be over
and then i was dying for this year to be over.
and i can see it clearly,
my whole life lived in transit
on the way to something else.
i was dying to finish high school
and then i was dying to finish college
and then i was just dying,
and i forgot to live in the present in my rush
to get to the future.

sometimes when i am trapped inside my own mind
and feel like i’m drowning in the taste of air,

suddenly i am eight years old years,
bobbing up and down in my wimpy life jacket
my legs unsupported

and there is still a chip on my shoulder
a mile wide.

sometimes i am still the five year old who balled her eyes out
when her parents accidentally forgot and were late
picking her up from preschool,

sometimes i am still sixteen years old and in love with you
sometimes i am a person i never thought i’d manage to grow into,
sometimes i am a person i’ve yet to become.
  
i am juxtaposition of a thousand different versions of myself.
i am equally the eight year old girl still afraid of the water

as i am the almost-adult you so naively believed to be fearless,
my self-assurance a really good halloween costume.

i am a newborn at the same time
as i am frail ninety year old grandmother.

i am brave and i am terrified
and i am naive and i am jaded
and i am clean and i am ruined;

i am a blank slate and i have been scribbled all over,
my skin is smooth and untouched
my skin has laughter lines and stretch marks.

i am the creator and i am the destroyer,
i am everything and

nothing at all.

i am the ocean
and i am the desert.

my lungs are failing as i’m breathing fine,
and i can see the end and the beginning in equal clarity.

sometimes i’m too old for my skin,
weary like i’ve lived a thousand lives already

and sometimes i am four years old with
my knees hugged to my chest.

sometimes we are two and sometimes we are twenty,
sometimes we were nine and sometimes we are ninety.

we are young and dumb and reckless at the same time
as we are old and wise and careful.

sometimes my father is still a gap-toothed five year old
and my mother is still a tired old woman

with shaking hands,
and my brother is still an angry teenager with a bad hair cut.

we are existing simultaneously
and growing up is just getting really good at pretending

that you’ve got your **** all figured out
when you still feel like a lonely middle-schooler
without a date to the mixer,

alone in the middle to gymnasium floor.

but that’s the thing, isn’t it?
when you are cut open, when you are bleeding,
when you have gaping holes in your nervous system

your flesh heals over
it scars, brand new.

we are bleeding and we we are healed,
we are ******* up

and we are doing just fine.

did you know that when icarus flew
too close to the sun
it was because he was so tired of being cold
that he’d rather die burning up?

did you know that when andromeda
was chained to her precipice
she hoped for mercy,
not salvation?  

i suppose you didn’t;
these aren’t the kind of tragedies
people like to write about
these aren’t the kind of tragedies
that are beautiful in spite of it or because of it.

we hate narcissus for loving himself more
than we could ourselves.
we **** aridane to the maze for
leading us out of it.

still, she weeps for those
who fell in love with the gods
and for those who fell in love with those
who could never love them back.

she weeps for the gods that did not weep for her
and her tears become the sea
that drowned tomorrow’s heroes
in their own stories.

we love the sun
and its warmth,
but one day it’ll expand
too far
and **** us all,
blotting out this world
with fiery blaze;
maybe that’s just
human nature,
we love what will
destroy us.