i have never wanted to be so good to someone.
i could trace the outline of your fingernails onto my faced up palms as we
reached for each other,
slipping my thoughts into your back pocket,
and you'll hold me like a golden locket as
we climbed tree limbs into the heavy august air
to tangle our own until
the light turned us free,
like the spotlight on the faces of my
old high school choir -
my vocal cords were ready to bust at the
seams,
i just wanted to be heard and
you had the finest of skills in listening.
i could talk in miles or
explain in knots,
but the options were endless.
i chose to keep my tongue hidden,
as i feathered my lips on your unforgiven
past, not least but last,
the scars following your
arm.
i could see the matches
that burned
each thought on your elbows,
the love you misplaced
when no one gave you the
thumbs up or the acceptance letter,
that held back and pushed to
your toes.
circulate it,
and pump it through
your bones.
it will destroy the blame and
dispassionate habits,
like the way things hurt
and the anger towards the less than
pleased family who only suffer
because of their reputable
finished paintings might have
some water damage from
the storms.

i want prove that there is good in
the beggars and the pleasers.
there is compassion in the corners
and valleys of the longest of
highways.
it might be a far stretch,
but you gotta believe there's more than
just road signs telling you
where to go
and
people who can't love
anyone other
than themselves.
because even the lost ones
need love, too.

i forgot how blue your eyes were.
it's as if you used food coloring to enhance them,
and i don't know if that's true,
but they speak of cold breezes and tired days.
i could see the life inside of them,
struggling, juggling,
things weren't always so sick.
i could feel the color pulse,
as if your heart, (that is larger than the one
in "how the Grinch stole Christmas")
took turns with your grandfather's clock
hanging on the tobacco-ashed walls.
the depth of what you've done, i cannot compare with
a yard stick or the years i
cried for myself, over
the river and through the woods,
there was always another one waiting to take me.
you have something i wish i had,
strength to recover from the battles
on the sidewalks and needles filled with glory
and traces of your own blood.
the iceberg blue from your eye sockets are different from your veins.
crystalline. bright.
and if i could i'd take it all away, the desire
nagging at your fingertips and the
monkey
on your back.
but since i can't,
take each marble of faith and
save it for the rainy days
and rundown shading nights,
the minutes you need it most.

but don't forget to forgive yourself.

i was never right about you.
instead of questioning my motives,
i should have been questioning yours.
i should have, would have, could have,
it's never gonna change.

so why the hell am i still
caught up into you
when you are tangled free.

i'm wire walking from my museum to
the day i will cross over to our
smooth talked ******* and our late night
forget-me-nots.
wait, forget the nots (knots, rather.)
you knew the aches i woke up to,
i have never dressed so quickly before.

i found a scratch on my spine in the shape of a heart,
and i read into it with fortune tellers' eyes.
it meant that you still cared.

your body was the sea,
and i was the ship that wrecked in violent waves of rolling hills
and i finally found the path that led me to the explosions in the sky.
and they were so beautiful, but it wasn't the same without you.
i heard the orchestra build its wall of strings tying up the moon,
kind of like how i am ******* to you.
i saw the flickering of the stars, as though they were dimming
right before my touch -
like a heart skips a beat,
like the gas price jumps,
and the occasional glow
of a person you know
that has
stumbled
over love,
jumped over buildings to reach it.
and here it is,
velvet in my hands,
eroded like the skylines of ancient cities,
beggars grateful for a sip of water,
trees speaking to enriched soils,
with each bright light,
it shines a little more each day
until it is four million blinding suns.
and here it is,
in war zones and over your salty body,
flying kites and airplanes in
a game of tag -
you're it.
i almost blistered my fingertips,
i forgot how the skin could be so protective
like a barrier against
all bitterness, it can be shielded from
your pumping vessel.
somehow, my immunity didn't stand a chance
between your dangerous waves and
how small the north star looks from where you are.
my sails might be torn once i get through to you,
but i'm hoping the explosions above will bind this together.
the compass will tell me how far i am from the coastal lines,
the day i can finally touch the atoms
that make up a ghost,
but until then,
look up and you might see me there.

i have been trying to do some spring cleaning,
like brushing out the cobwebs in my head,
but i always get stuck in the intricate silk and the thought
that i could be something.
i could be.
with each particle, i spin a new letter that fills a
good part of my curriculum -
the ABC's of love and Compasses 101 and
intro to new culture,
just so i can prove that i'm well rounded,
like the tip of my tongue,
like the merry-go rounds,
and the pupils behind my eyelids.
i know there was always a glint of worry
radiating from my mother's
half moon smile,
daring that i won't make it.
she never wanted to curse me,
so she spoke of opposites -
opposites attract (but we both know that isn't true.)
but this isn't about her,
this is about the days and nights i gritted
the enamel off of my molars to
pull myself off the bandwagon,
i've never really been into Natural Light beer,
(some call it Nattie Light),
or the fact that not being focused is what
i should be focused on.
this is about the one night stands with
Microsoft Word and my book of notes completed
with equations i knew i could never understand.
this is about the the day
i found
i could be the person
i never thought
i would be.

we all have sorrows as deep as wells,
but i'm tossing them right out the door.
maybe this is where i shed my old skin like a cobra,
but i'm hardly as vicious.
i'm only as dangerous as you let me be,
with my bones as strong as glaciers and
my eyes could swim inside aquariums
or the Mediterranean sea,
like i have gills that could let me breathe.
i could make a home,
20,000 leagues under or i could
touch land with my sun shining shades
of affections
with the complexions of new worlds.
and did you know, that there are more stars
in our galaxies than there are particles of
sand on each coastal line -
i guess you can say we learn something valuable
when you least expect,
like how cats have one hundred vocal sounds and
we can relate because
our vocal sounds
are endless. we can use our voices.
kind of like our opportunities,
expanding like water turning to ice on our
puddles so we can walk on them without
rain boots or umbrellas that catch our tears.
instead, we wear our thickness overlapping
our feelings and
i just want to be naked.
if that leaves me vulnerable,
so be it as long as i can taste the glass half full
on my skin.

i just want to be happy.

your mouth speaks like fountains,
gray and cold and hardened by
the cement in your earlobes,
like when latitudes cannot seem
to find longitudes and
how nothing goes your way.
but i can't seem to place
your complaints, like the satellites
can search for landmarks,
how the light searches for the dark,
i guess you have worries
******* into a bouquets colored in
unfortunate crime series,
similar to nancy drew.
i always knew i read those books with
patience for a reason.
negative comforts you with
its energies and wide open
grace,
having its own race that will
love you and love you all over again
because you are uncertain anyone
else will but
i can't give you a stable ground to
walk on or an idealist world
you know you cannot have.
everyone else has learned to live,
working with the works and hands
they've been dealt.
you just constantly ask for it,
you aren't a king,
hardly a man.

things like this always take time.

i woke up today to the world
drinking tea and chaos,
as if nothing has changed,
like the ground hasn't collided and
caused the water to rise or the
fact that the government just may not
care about us at all.
the debt we are in could last us a century,
and i'm not talkin' about the government funds,
i'm worried about how luck is never on our side
of the dead green grass but,
we can get through this.
i've never been one for religion, so
when i catch myself saying that i have faith,
it's feels like marbles in my mouth and
the glass is melting to form
a sculpture of how we could be
little or we could be big,
but only time will tell in between the seconds,
and that moment we know which we are,
i'll turn to you and tell you if the faith
is still crashing on my bad days
and i hope you'll stick around if it isn't.
if you don't stay, the earth may quake
close to a 8.5 and it will go down in history of
how difficult it was to piece back
my grounds.
so even if the world stops spinning,
i'll still spin it for you like when you used to pay
for my admission and walk me to my doorstep,
like there was nothing more dangerous
than leaving traces of my footsteps across my dewy
lawn.
i'll spin it like the beer bottle with the foam
settling at the bottom, just so i can see
something fluid move because
sometimes being fluid is more beautiful than being
solid since solidity only has one shape.
so once you tell me that you won't be there to spin my bad days
to good,
i'll leave you alone, like i would the dead
carcass of the deer we hit two days ago in your rusty
volvo but don't be surprised if you ever
wonder if i dream about you
and when the answer is
only every once
in a
while.

my thoughts could run a power plant.
the electricity could sprint through telephone lines
in state lengths and i'm not sure if they would
stop there.
sometimes i feel lucky, like if i could dance enough
i could stop the earth from spinning like a halo and
whirl it from north to south;
maybe then i could find you again.
sometimes my thirst is so much,
my tongue flattens out to parchment paper and
i'm just waiting for your signature to guarantee
some water for a later date.
sometimes i can feel your heartbeat from
wherever you are, causing my own to hiccup
and man, do i hate the hiccups because
sometimes it hurts so much that i
retire to holding my breath.
sometimes when it works
i sometimes scold myself to
make improvements, not excuses
and with that i could almost
turn off and leave this position for
someone else.

the strangest thing happens to me when you are in a
50 mile radius of where i'm sitting.
it's almost like my tongue loses sensation and it is nailed
down to a board where signs can be hung.
and when i do speak, i stutter like skipping rocks and
broken records and lies, but
i never lie because my dad always told me to be honest.
so let me be honest with you,
and i'll let you into my mouth to take a look and see
the wasteland that holds the words like "hell"
but i was told soap would be my next meal if i ever would say it out loud.
now i can say such things because i'm not a little girl,
(i may be short with a short attention span and short patience),
but in my bones i'm taller than the empire state building
and you could always see the top like you discovered a new
love for star wars all over again.
and since i'm all grown up, i can tell you how i tangled things,
which i do a lot, because sometimes i get bored
or the timing is off,
but i hope for a comb to root up some of the knots.
and when my fifteen minutes come i will
shower you with light questions and
phrases that i want to hand out on a silver platter;
like, "i'm glad you are back in town" or
"i'm doing swell!"
and if you think this is about you, stranger,
it might be and we just haven't met but i really really really
hope this doesn't happen again.

but if it does,
please know that you provided the telescope so i could
learn how the body works and you may find that
really creepy.
it's not how it looks, i wouldn't lie to you.
so i level my eyes to peer through the belly of
a hot air balloon and the flame catches my
heart as it starts to flutter up
to the wires and fabric that delicately cradles the weight of
our bodies as if we are pink newborns,
thrown into this world with no knowledge of when things will get easy.
and i'll ask you politely to let me go, so no one will question
why i was with a stranger.

so i started this new hobby,
where i try to erase "bitter" out of every dictionary i
find, but sometimes it doesn't always disappear and it
sits there with eraser shavings in different shades of gray
like the collection of Polaroids i keep safe in my desk drawer.
in this occasion i will just take my handy - dandy sharpie
to color it in to leave it up to the imagination
or trial and error, like new cleaning products for the women
who are dissatisfied with being homebodies, but
i'm telling them not to be bitter, not to be this six letter word
because
28,835 days is an awful long time to carry
such an empty suitcase,
and if some of you don't understand that number,
an average woman's life expectancy is 79 years of age,
so i hope i calculated that correctly because i'm not so good at
math,
but i'm not saying all of us are average,
since sometimes we break too soon and the bitter takes
over the sweet like the winter takes over the fall, and
sometimes we are so free it gives us a few more days to really
feel alive.
i just don't want to be bitter, because the dictionary is filled with
so many other words like laugh and lust and flesh and
warmth.
so i think this book can do without just one word.

i guess i'm just a dreamer,
i've always wanted to fly to the moon
and swim with jellyfish,
just to say i never was stung by the globes
of the water but someone always told me
to tread lightly,
like there was broken glasses that
could get me anytime, but
that didn't stop the birds from flights or
landings as electricity pushed through their legs and
the weather never stopped the wars we
all soon forgot about.
we are forgetful people, misplacing our keys
and hearts in the rooms where we felt the most in.

so when i go about my business (and the times
could go slow), i will reenter each
book to find each word
that could
someday
somehow
direct me to "i'm sorry."

when i was young, i loved being alone.
i loved it so much, i used to lie to keep the girls and ghosts
out of my mother's head, like i could erase the
scribble marks on the piece of paper because i never thought
they could be permanent like the bloodline in our
family and the tattoos on your wallpaper skin.
i guess you could say my torso is a furnace, kicking on and off
when the time is right,
like the light of the strongest star circling the earth -
i always wanted to see the shadow against my feet,
we were connected by the needle but the heat just wasn't
enough to keep you occupied by the
lengths my arms could make.
you told me once that i had the body of the circus,
there was always something dangerous but sweet and you
couldn't stand to see one overpower another like
the smell that held onto your teeth
and how my temper could never flare when we were in trouble.
when i was young, i loved being alone
with the dirt underneath my toes as if i could walk cross country,
but really it was just my backyard, i just liked to pretend
that i had somewhere to go with a bookbag filled
with some gummies and my mother's favorite necklace.
i will never forget the quiz my mom had for me once i
got to phoenix and back before the sun hid behind the house:
did you see the alleys filled with bottles of cheap beer and
trash, could you see all the colors of the wind?
well, yeah of course.
even now, i love being alone
since the pollutions can sometimes get to be
too heavy, leaving me with little direction and a
map that read to follow the roles that have long been engraved
in the stones that my garden held so loosely,
so i won't accept an apology when  you never meant for it to be
this way, i want you to read to me
how sorry you could be if you would have known
the acceptance of being alone.

when i thought of you i thought of
how many years it took to put together a calculated metric system
that could measure the centimeters of how little we were.
i could see through the windows in your chest, right to the spot that was kissed
one too many times by one too many bees,
i could almost pinpoint the stings - they were so red,
it was like the color of your blush when i told you i could feel two thousand
suns gathering in my voice box,
and i wanted to shine the sounds i could teach to you.
i thought of thrift shop valleys and simple trails to the nearest mountains,
you kept a smile on my face for nearly five days,
but i knew i could not fall in the depths for you - the risk was too high, like
high waters and highway jay walking and heights.
i thought of your laughter like an allergic reaction, pollen swarming into
my nostrils down to the ovals that caused so many sneezes and salt pouring
through my tear ducts like it had somewhere to go.
maybe it did, drenching the ground to form the next sea and maybe it just
grew into a fresh water lake,
because even though the red lines developed in my eye sockets you always kept
me hydrated with sweet, sweet, sweet
glances as if we had something to put away to sell once it
turned up valuable.

and maybe i should have absolutely gave you the leisure to
take my thoughts and pick through them to enhance the
endorphins and forget all the complicated stuff,
since you have a way to levitate up through the mist and
let all the sun do your ***** work,
like the unnoticed trash collectors and the janitors who
wonder what it's like to have a choice.

but i didn't give the green light, as i drove through the yellow
in case the bees were following me.

you know, I have always wished for that kind of love
that fed the heart,
the one that I thought I had such a grasp on,
that faced people at face value in such a
eye-rolling, sea level way.
that could reach the stars and constellations and planets
at arms' length.
that opened my eyes and arms and mouth like a crash
bound to happen, leaving me open and scattered  in
public view.
the kind where I say, "baby, let's have a screaming
match 'cause we don't do that much and it will lead
to us touching and using words like 'baby...'"

The kind of love where when I find you and you find me
our two universes will collide so that the earth will see
the illuminated fires above.
I want to see your heart flutter against my eyelids to
easily say I'm not blind anymore.

I want to feel my body take flight, kind of like
dandelion seeds spinning, dizzying,
plummeting to the ground.
I could supply your lungs with oxygen
if my guard is down,
I will swallow air to inflate your cherry red balloons
til they pop,
because life, isn't simple like that.
we never take notice of how our bodies love the taste of
atmosphere.
I guess we crave it like nicotine and coffee filled to the brim,
but it's nothing like the big love theories and whale tales
in the depths of the ink night.

I always wanted to talk to god through the white holes
in that night sky, to ask him about the finances of this
sort of thing;
will I be in debt with loose threads and dead ends?
whether it has messy dynamics, I still wish for it.

and so I begin folding and creasing the small part
of one thousand cranes, but that's when I realized,
it was only a
myth.
with that, I ignite the paper ornaments to crumble
into our little universes gathering to the seams
and stitches at the wrists covered in hopes to
guide our emotions through the ridges of our hands.

so I put those cremations of wishes in my piggy bank
for a rainy night, where god isn't available to answer
my questions
until the next morning.

and i want to be that girl you wished you could make room in your current events without promising that you'll use "always" and the future tense of our existence; because truth be told, i guess i can't hold much in since i let my sculptured body weather against the rain and the wind and the storms you forced out of the calm palms up in the indigo sky, that you used to collide with my own. the pulse we felt was silenced, but the muscle located behind your enlightened eyes could pull the taste of my apple-core lips and ribbed fingertips against your spinal column with nothing more than the conclusion - "i ****** up." don't ever say i didn't give you a chance for change or change for chance, since i gave you all i had.
but don't get me wrong, i knew the natural games were
offered on a plate with steaming sorrys and sentences
spit up onto the table in a wine glass.

i used to get drunk off the atmosphere,
but now, i heave it back up to remain sober
to tell you,
i told you so.

I have always wanted elegance in
a vintage photo book with faded perfume on the
cover, kind of way.
I want to step on the strings of a robust
cello to feel the taut, bendable life
give out - replacement.
I wish for the herbal remedy for the life
I chose so long ago,
the risks; highway lengths ago.
I never thought I'd gain much from
wishing against the bigger plan for me,
but I lost more than I bargained for.

i guess i thought that electrical charges could
somehow make up for the lack of
similar interests and complications
of heart strings and valve stents,
but it officially meant that i couldn't really
care for you or myself.

so, what if i wanted to be alone with my
head held high to view the beauty rather than
the
cold
and
***** streets.

but instead, i search.
i use my instincts to walk without
thinking
and swallow my tongue with a
scream in my throat and a
burn in my eyes.

yet, i still can find the room in
between my teeth to admit
i'd rather be with you.

we try so hard
to fall in love
with ourselves,
that we forget
to live for something
more.

you stifled the surprise as honey ran down the dull, heated spoon;
i could almost see the glow come off your cheekbones when you molded your eyes against the grain of the coffee table.

you thought, but you didn't think.

so we talked with our dizzied eyes and danced with the idea that we handed each other nothing more than friendly gestures and unwritten secrets.

i just knew you didn't put your heart into it.

I ache for warmth
from the sun,
from days to nights,
from you -
for the second time today.

I saw their predictions as they rushed onto the snow top mountains,
feeling as though they were on top of the world
and no one could **** those thoughts
beating through their wet coats and misshaped mittens.
no one could shadow their footprints against the hills,
melting down the shame and words thrown out
to the afternoon sky.

they really thought the world gave a **** if they could
fly or not.

so they gathered their parachutes and fell towards
the grasslands as they hoped and dreamed for
something new.

we used to sit at your kitchen table,
with spices and leaves swimming in our mugs,
and talk about politics, the higher powers, and
disastrous events we spoon fed to our souls
so we could relate somehow.

(but those were silly conversations, just to get to the point.)

i  brushed the old leather straps of the
beaten ******* you found on your
thrift shop adventure and i could see
you had no sense of direction from there
on out.

i should have left then.

I began collaborating with the old western ghost towns,
constructing the basics to whip my luck back into shape.
Yet, I hoped to find guts and glory from
the time chasing stories played out on the big screens.
I wanted to talk to God from the pavement, so
I let my knees kiss the asphalt with the idea
He'd give me some sort of incentive to leave this
small hellhole called home.

I welded my toes deep into the road
maybe to come across some kind of faith.
I let my fists get a contact high with the rocks
gathered in piles on each side of me.

I made love to the ground, hoping it'd
love me back,
but then I focused on my ears and I couldn't
hear the hallelujahs anymore.

I felt the heavy air collide with my collarbone,
reaching and sorting each nerve and tying them together
with
your character; eloquent, mysterious even.

the fingertips roam and graze my skin with such ease,
flowing and fluttering like your tongue against my lips.

I have never felt so dangerous, touching the surface of something so raw,
and fearless,
and alive.

I could feel you wandering over the blades that meet my back,
giving me the chance to pull away, to preserve simplicity.

but I didn't.

the television blares with what you could have been,
soft and delicate or rough and bare.
i couldn't tell if you longed to have those features
swell with fierce magnitudes.

i turned to you, gave you some kind of initiation,
to graze the surface of what this was and what could have been.

whether it held proof or pure fabrications,
i swallowed the facts and liquid courage to
stumble out onto your doorstep.

I emptied my thoughts as you held my hair back,
but it didn't provide much of a conversation.

as i felt the words claw up my throat,
i took another sip on the way back to your room
to let my dignity build back up again.

She couldn’t bring herself to believe that you held your ground for her,
those nights you crossed the highways
and stoplights to reach her doorstep
only to tell her why you can’t use those dusty lungs,
filled with rust and waste, crushing the air you breathe in.

She didn’t have much to say.

You didn’t have much to offer,
just a lot of heart and a little dash of bitter biting your tongue with the ideas that your father put in your head,
the ones that tell you that you can’t feel the beat of your own heart
or taste the saltwater crashing down on your own weathered hands.

No, you gotta be a man.

She listened to your words and chewed on it for a while,
and gathered all her strength to pour the mason jar of alcohol you stashed in her cupboards for last two years down the sink,
as you yelled up to whoever might be listening,

“I never knew it’d go this far, I never thought I’d be this way.”

So she turned on the lights,
made your bed and you laid down to another restless night,
following and circling the cycle you have fallen for over

And over

And over again.

And we were stuck.

This year, so skinny and diluted,
I'm surprised we made it this far,
with the acidic aftertaste and misuse of
love
and
devotion
of time.

But rather than tiptoeing quietly into this,
I'll pour another shot of burning
hope
or
something similar.

Tomorrow is just another sunrise,
(if you could call it that in Northwestern Pennsylvania)
that I will see once again
some other day,
some other year.

You caused the cracks and creases in my childhood images.
The downpour of this sworn secrecy never quite made sense,
with your ***** hands folding up
and crushing my lungs into compact boxes.
Lungs in storage, collecting dusty atoms and rusting over,
fossils forever imprinted in my metal ribcage.

I lost my voice.

I promised I would never speak vowels, nor syllables.
But you never warned me how my suffocating
lungs would force me to split my vocal cords
in
two.

So, I spoke in soft rushing winds, knocking
the heavy air out of my aged chest.
I wasn’t strong hearted,
you focused on the limbs tangled together -

you brushed off the blood from the blows,
and I gathered the words and  
I went back to bed.

I covered with sheets of muffled thoughts and lead.

A rough draft between you and me,
swimming through the marrow of our bones.
The ink from our letters stain the carpet as I
fall through the lines of your misconceptions.
Your loneliness.  The ghost you encountered was that of false impressions.

I’m someone you want, but not really.

My veins fill with your realistic voice as I
breathe.
breathe.
breathe.
I am suffocating you out, ridding myself
of your syllables.

I’m someone you wanted, but not really.

I figured,
just an overnight amusement,
but I didn’t know it’d come to this.
An overview of your disarray and unconcerned nature,
I felt your heart slow its pace when you forgot.
I never forget.
I can’t say the same for you.

Tuck in the sheets before you go,
since I wish to clear the area.
If only it was that simple,
to wash this room clean with liquid
solitude.
Why did you come here anyway?

My personal accounts don’t count for much.
I guess I’m learning how to forget my respect on the front door.
I’m leaving it for someone new.
I just need to forget you.

Corrections spit at me in numerous directions,
hydrating my bone dry systems.
I’m not yours to choose.
I should have not been the one to hand this off.

But I was.

you guided my guilt down my shoulders into my
fingertips,
and i felt the worry wash my hands clean as you
spoke.

i am ever so foolish, the little girl who fell for the magical
stories,
of daddy building castles and fighting fire breathing
dragons,
the ones that held false images and beautiful
love.
the stories i gulped up at the age of five,
withheld the aches and ordinary routines of
adulthood.

yet, those misguided tales has filled my eyes once
again.

i haven't grown up.