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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 can't even talk,
like the movements could
liquefy my only thoughts
for some sort of evaluation
of how time can
sprint at full velocity to reach
nothing at all and
how minutes can drag more
than that of lips against
cigarettes that hold
messages.
i can't talk,
yet i feel with my eyes,
like i have microscopic nerves
flowing in my vision,
and only i can formulate
the ***** words on the
clothes line in the
backyard.
i know where my laundry has been,
but i'm not sure if you do.
i can't talk,
this phase has boiled my
letters on the stove,
in which you stir it up
and pretend that this tastes
like tea.
i can't talk,
especially when referred as
that one girl who once
forgot her morals
and got lucky
that one time.
i forgot to talk,
when i was perched
up on telephone wires
like birds who have
nowhere else to go,
and i wanted to
scream
to say i finally could
hear myself.

i guess that's why public speaking isn't my thing.

you promised me mountains
while we dozed
in our sunday best,
even though we never touch
on religion.
i can hear your lungs like
thunder, it is sick of
this place
just as much as every
person who
just wants a taste
of summer with its
heavy humidity and
pregnant skies
daring to give birth
right on top of us.
some of us beg for
the rain,
the pollen covers our magnetic
skin.

that's how i felt when
you left for a sunshine
second.

our zones were tired and
nervous that we couldn't
hold on for much longer.

so i wait.
i can't tell you how many
glances down to my feet
it took to turn off the
faucet that was about to
bust out of my tear ducts
and nasal passage.
it was pretty gross.
but so was the train tracks
across my toes,
i'm pretty sure i didn't see
that thick metal
through the peripherals.
but hey,
i could have just blinked.
or i'm blind.
these eyes are seeing double,
as if i had a strong swig of
battery acid.
it's okay, my mama always said
it was best to sleep it off
my shoulders and
write it in my spine for
another day.
and so it goes,
i'll pull down the covers and
let this fossil bury
down in my
ribs
so one day, i
could read you to
sleep.

i hate writing about love.
every synonym and metaphor
has been beaten to dust,
and you are worth more than
that.
i guess i'll start with how this
started, like how the truck was stubborn
and how spring is hesitant in Pennsylvania.
sometimes i become angry
since i don't listen to my own
nerves.
i could have resisted when i
idled in diamond park with
salt crystallizing in the creases
of the dashboard,
but i didn't.
i guess i thought you had an
offer, like if i handed you the
chance,
you'd prove my only theories
wrong.
you said i made you do things
you'd shy away from,
like skinny dipping in the public
pool or crying with all your
might.
i couldn't help but build you a
fort to stand strong after the
battles.
i wanted you to touch the lanterns
hanging in the sky
because they remind me of
you.
your skin can turn to
satellites when your hand
links within mine
and the static clears in
your eardrums when
the focus is on velvet
bodies and fired hearts
still searching.
but if you would ever happen
to leave, i'd search in
those lights for
you.

i feel like you stripped me bare,
gathered the rough edges and threw away the soft ones.
at some point,
the sharp points dull and then we can say we won't
have weapons to use upon each other.


i like-like you
and i hope you feel it, too.
we still have energy in our
lousy, late night bones
so lets do something about this,
get caught in a fire
and let it burn to our
temporal lobes.
i want to taste the
aftermath of how you once
thought too much
and read too little,
but i know we can only
ease into it.

let's take it slow.

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 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.

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.

i could almost read your lips
through the biting tones the wind made.
we laughed like children as we fished
for our kites in the brightest of blues
we have ever seen,
and there wouldn't be anywhere else
i'd rather be
with your feather fingers
and coffee tongue.
my knobby knees kissed your
stitched up toes
and i heard your heart buzz
through the chest plate,
like there was a bee hive
waiting up for summer.

i woke up to you thawing out my
frozen body,
and i knew it the moment
you made a splash
in the reminisces
of my rusted out
bolts
and puzzled the
cardboard drawings
i left out on the back porch
where we listened to the collisions
the chimes felt,
but there was nothing more beautiful
than the sound waves
we could commit
and our
bodies could talk for hours
like the days bled into
weeks.
i have forgotten my
drowning wells
and held onto the thought
that you could
find me
in the trees
with more pennies
that etched my thoughts
and the stories
i have of you.

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 talk about secondhand stories
on the second story window sill,
like the price of gas wasn't worth more than
a penny for your travels and
we could get maps for free on Saturdays.
i remember the earthy words that could
stick in our soils,
building something beautiful right
before our little bodies.

we seem so big,
like giants walking and shaking
hands of glowing fires inside of
chest cavities.
you used to count my ribs
like the tracks that trains
used to carry heavy loads on.
the taste of honey bees
and the fees we paid to
feel good again never
really mattered
after the search was over.

you found me,
counting the bolts rusted
in the eroded planks of
wood that we chose as our
hidden spot that was
in plain view.
i like how you can
make me laugh when
we aren't even talking about
anything that funny.
you are always good like that.

i wrote you a letter and
showed you in sign language,
it was like the night i
rushed back to you after
i learned what "my boyfriend
is a sweetheart" was,
using my hands
like they were made to tell you
that.
of course you had
no clue what i was doing,
in the dark with the
tv colors springing out
of the box
trying to catch our attention
but somehow you read
my hands as if they marked
your cheek with spice or
feathers that i grew out where
my shoulder blades meet.
i guess taking flight was
more than child-like,
it almost seems as though
i just get caught up because
i don't feel significant.
i'm significant to you though.
i wish i was as forward
as a fighter or predator,
since the only way to survive
is to use their first instincts
but i am simple and have
no training for this.
i always thought to be cursed,
i'm never good at these things,
with their integrity and need for
"leadership".
i just want to be significant.

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.

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.

today is  named after avalanches,
accumulating up the thick snow
on televisions and
bad language slipping from our
basement convictions.
sometimes we gotta burn them down
instead of holding them up to
let the animal instincts feast.
even if it is love,
like loose change and
lopsided grins,
just begging for a nickel to
maybe get our secrets straight.
or even for the sheets full of ghosts,
phantoms that hold still
when all you want to do is keep
running.
sometimes, even when we sprint,
we aren't fast enough to
explode the truth from our twisted tendons
and stressed in ligaments.
and when we finally cremate the last of our
silhouettes that kept biting at the
frostbitten hills of our familiar perimeter,
all we can do is wish to go back
to the days when the snow
could cover our tracks
instead.

i found you on the train tracks one day,
folding paper into flowers and big love
and throwing them into the atmosphere
thinking the wind would catch it.
it didn't, so i did instead.
i tossed it away like stones in my driveway,
i could make it to the woods,
and the distance always seemed farther
than it
really was.

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

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