Tonight
Is the first time I find myself feeling homesick
Feeling maybe I am not meant to be here
In this stretched out city that I have not yet learned to navigate
Feeling maybe these bright lights are too much to bare
Maybe it's the way the car I sat passenger in
Smelled of mommy's menthol
Maybe it's the way I have never missed the scent of newports until today
I am not one to turn back
After all i hated the cold
Hated the way the sky never seemed to come out from grey
And sun became such a commodity
That we'd sell ourselves just for the chance to see it
But a part of me misses rain
Misses the thunderstorms and lightning that would soothe me to sleep
Maybe I'm just weird in that way
Most wouldn't crave disaster like that
But I'm accustomed to ****** weather
I was raised on snow storms and below zero temperatures
Maybe this sunshine
And warm sand
Blue ocean
Is too good for my cold bred soul
I have always said that this is where i belonged
Where I am meant to be
What if we're not meant to be anywhere
That maybe we just are
Maybe we're just here because theres nowhere else to go
California
I have spent years writing love letters to you
Awaiting the day when we would be reunited indefinitely
I have always been one to romanticize
But maybe I built you up too high to be able to reach you
I hope we can be on the same level someday
I hope you can welcome me as much my heart welcomed you
Praised your beaches and mountains
Wanted nothing more than to learn every part of you
California
You have always been the center of my earth
Maybe always will be
I do not know you enough yet to say for sure
Have only tasted certain parts
Most of which were sweet
I am devoted to trying it all
I might never know
Where my place is
But California
It is an honor
To get to know you.

I am very good at deciphering certain things about me
In fact
Most all my poems somehow turn out to be lists of what I am not and why you shouldn't date me
I am just now finding out that it's not the best way to seem inviting
Or welcoming
I have been wondering what would happen
If I were to pour myself out
Empty every last part of me
And then swallow the remnants
What would happen
If I were to leave myself an open door
A no questions asked scenario
Just accept things as they are
I am used to picking apart my insecurities
Used to throwing them at any pair of feet that walk towards me
But humans are not brooms
Are not there to sweep up my petals of doubt
To clean up the mess I've made so many times before
It gets old after a while
And nobody wants to date the girl
Who ***** her ghosts every night
Who still sleeps with depression on the side
I have purposefully highlighted every demon of mine
Made a point to wear them vacantly on my smile
My weakness is often mistaken for confidence
So I embrace it
Thinking maybe if I come right out and say it
The sharp reality won't cut my lip on the exit
My mouth is nothing but an abundance of canker sores
Formed from every time I've had to bite my tongue
To keep my words from falling out
My intention
Was to write something
That is not just another eulogy
For my inability to be vulnerable
But like most everything that leaves my hands
It is unpredictable
And not expecting return.

What I would give
To wake up next to you
Bodies tangled vines
Legs wrapping around backbone
Skin stained from the previous night's hunger
From eager lips
What I would give
To have you run fingers down my xylophone ribs
Every morning
Play me into routine
Sing each note that leaves my lips
Each breathless hello
Each half whispered stay
Each please don't go
What I would give
To know the exact shape of your palms
Have them folded into memory
Making home in the dimples of my back
In the curve of my spine
Not allowing for goodbye
Reading only welcome
What I would give
To run hands through your hair
Through the saltwater aftermath
Through sand dusted in from the wind
From a day spent in beach sun
What I would give
To bury myself in the vacant parts of you
And never leave
What I would give
To fall asleep next to your mumbling
Next to your 3am curiosity
With your breath against my ear
And toes weaved together like the silk from our bedsheets
What I would give
Is not enough to shrink the space between us
Is not enough to turn distance into nonexistence
But boy,
What I would give
To have you next to me

I would give everything from the arch of my soles
To my abundance of freckles
To be with you

In order to be with you
I would give
All of me.

I have been trying to stop romanticizing introductions
Attempting to grasp the reality
That not everyone I meet is a potential soulmate
My mind was just born open I guess
Conditioned to want to love at first sight
I am more so addicted to people than I am smoking
I have been trying my hardest
To keep my expectations low
Understand that not everybody has the intention of staying
I have had too many hellos turn into goodbyes
And
Too many hugs turn to leaving
I had been trying
To learn the opposite of welcome
Embrace temporariness with arms as wide as my eaget heart
So when we met
On a directionless sunday
In the living room you were calling home for the week
Know that
It took everything in my power
To not let down my guard
It wasn't until the quiet of the night
That I realized
I had already dropped
Goodnight turned to words to questions
To 3am caress
I was in your arms before I could even stop myself from letting go
But you
Are not the meaningless
One night momentary bliss I am used to
You
Are everything I have tried to avoid
For fear of losing again
I am trying to figure out how it is possible
That you are the kind of thing I'd been attempting to refrain from
Yet exactly what I want at the same time
You are the nicotine from the 5am cigarrette on your last night in town
Your goodbye serving as reminder to everytime I have been let down
But there was more hope in your seven letter goodbye
Than there is in any poem I have ever written
I am saying grace in a language that I still do not fully understand
And although both distance and time
Are two names that usually define ending
I see beginning
I see different
When we kissed
I could taste the promise of future on your lips
My hands spelled out in the creases of your back
Said exactly the same as you did before you left
Said please don't forget me
So please
Don't.

Most nights I cannot sleep
There is no amount of melatonin that could shut my eyes just enough to keep them from breaking back open
Nothing that will wipe my memory clean enough for me to dream on a blank canvas
Most nights I am too taunted by past to imagine the future
Spend the time between laying down and deep sleep
Trying to open every door that was left unlocked
Retracing steps that are far too buried to be seen
Most nights I cannot sleep
Cannot bare to remember every moment I used to wish I'd never forget
Held on to seconds like they would somehow stay
I learned that most people don't
And am so easily haunted by visions of those who didn't
You were the first to leave me breathless and wondering
Hands filled with shards of glass that I wanted to give back to you
Thought maybe you'd come back if you knew how much it hurt to have you leave
I cannot sleep
There are monsters in my closet
Most nights I can drown out their noise
With the volume of late night tv and sitcoms with laugh tracks
But sometimes my thoughts are too loud for even my own head
See the thing is
The monsters in my closet
Do not have multiple eyes and green skin
They wear your smile and smell of marlborro reds
My cigarette of choice
So comforting
That it almost makes me forget that you're not next to me
That you left a long time ago
Said the only reason you stayed in the first place is because you didn't know
How to tell me that I meant nothing to you
Didn't know how to put out a fire started from a match you lit yourself
Never knew how to take the blame for your own mistakes
When you totalled your brand new car on the side of the highway and blamed it on the cracks in the road
You can not rush into things
Speed towards them 80 miles per hour
And then not take account for their injuries
At times I wish you would have left me with bruises and a ****** nose
I've learned physical wounds are a lot easier to explain
It's hard to understand what cannot be seen
I haven't seen you in a year
Do not know where you are now
Or what you do with your time
I don't know if you still smoke
Or if you listen to the same type of music
To be honest
I can't even remember the sound of your laugh
But I do remember most of what you were
When I thought I loved you
Most nights I cannot sleep
But I have reached the point
Where you are no longer in my days
In fact you only show up
Only come out
Only are visible
When the lights are off
And It is dark.

2 days
It took two days for me to fall
And far I have fallen

See I've always been careful
Watching every step to make sure I don't walk along a crack
I'm superstitious in that way I guess
I've always been one
To keep my hands out in front of me
So that when I do trip
I can catch myself
Hands over my heart
I do not do trust falls
Do not let myself lean backwards into just any pair of arms
Do not have enough faith in humanity to do so
But every now and then
I let my guard down
Do not mean to
But I do
Security is hard enough as is
Keeping unwanted palms off my body is a kind of routine I have come to know well
Putting up a barbed wire fence along the circumference of my skin
I have been touched too many times without consent
Without invitation
I have learned to flinch at a man's touch
I have been conditioned to stand stiff
To stay still
So
When I finally let myself go
Let my arms fall to my sides
Close my eyes and descend,
I hope for the best
Know that I do not do this often
Do not do this lightly
Do not melt with ease
My bones are not made of wax
My limbs are not candle sticks
Instead
They are iron
Titanium built
So when I get weak in the knees
Know that it is a rarity
That vulnerability is not a strength of mine
Baring my soul
Is the most naked I could possibly be
The thing about me
Is that
I have an addictive personality
But regardless
Of how much I smoke
I will always find people more addicting than nicotine
I do not usually think things over
I am more impulsive than anything else
But know that you are an impulse
That I would be happy to wake up next to
Know that you are not one of my spur of the moment tattoos
I will not regret you in the morning
See
I am trying
So hard
To let my parachute open up
Trying so hard
To float down gently,
Not worry about whether or not someone will catch me
But I am still holding on
Just in case
I hit the ground

I am willing to take risk.

My mouth is full of moths
My words are not pretty
They do not flutter out with grace and ease
Instead
Twitching as they find their exit from my lips
They are not butterfly
With a name so smooth that it rolls off the tongue
I am not monarch
But
The decaying flesh it preys upon
The contrast between beauty and reality
I do not know why
Why
People like me are attracted to light
I guess it makes since
To swim towards brightness
When you've spent so much of your life in the darkness
Cocooned in between empty spaces
Nesting in silk spun from my own silence
I have spent months inside my shell
Learning how to find my own voice
Learning how to speak my own language
Hearing myself talk for 18 years but for the first time actually listening
Like moth
Touch sends me fleeting
Like moth
Attention back into hiding
I am not conspicous
Nor do I crave to be
Like caterpillar
We
Are all given blind hope
Told that someday
We will be noticed
Visible
Beautiful
But some spend so much time
Preparing for glory
That they forget storybooks lie
That in real life
The very hungry caterpillar
Who was promised butterfly
Becomes moth
Moth
What most see as ugly
And intrusive
Chewing holes in your finest clothing
Making home unwanted places
Moth is undesired
Butterfly is welcomed
Tell me why
One is invited in and the other shut out
Moth is not pretty
Moths lack ofbeauty
Is enough
To disregard it
All at once
Different is enough
To disregard all at once
Do not disregard me
Because I am not ideal
Because i am not fully painted winged beauty
We as a society only stop to see what catches the eye
Unable to notice the intricisies
Of darkness
So look a little closer
Try a little harder
Because if anything is to be known
It is that beauty
Is not
In the obvious.