This year I vow to change for the better but remain constant in my being. This year I vow to embrace this body, this skin, this figure, the only one I will ever have. I vow to love myself before I do anyone else. This year I vow to listen. I vow to be open ears and heart. This year I vow to be patient, to be still and trusting. I will not let the past spoil expectation. I will be as hopeful as I am eager for opportunity. This year I vow to not take health for granted, to appreciate the existence of it when good and accept the challenge when it is not. This year I vow to let nothing break me. Not disease, depression, or person. I will not fall victim to weakness. I will do my best to be as human as I can possibly be while also being understanding of human flaw. This year I vow to not judge. I vow to welcome the unknown with outstreched arms and a wider perspective. This year I will not hold on to mistakes with closed fists. I will let go of what is not meant to stay. This year I will try and do all of the things I've sworn I'd do a million times before. This year I will try again. This year I will try my best.

I'd like to say I don't think of you
That you don't cross my mind until your name crosses my screen
And only then do I take the time to care

I'd like to say that I don't
That I haven't devoted any energy to wasting
That it is all too precious to give away to anything but positivity

I'd like to say I would need to think twice if you asked to see me
But I know too well that I wouldn't
I'd say yes
okay
of course
when
All without asking why

I don't know why some people come back and trust me when I say I want to
But I would without question welcome you with open arms and no hesitation
I wouldn't even pause to wonder why you left in the first place

I'd like to say that I'm happy,
That this heart is a filled balloon and there is enough oxygen for me to breathe easy
But sometimes I find myself suffocating on what I don't understand

I am scared that I could so easily let you back in the way I always swear I'll never do again
But I have and I do and I probably will
All you need to do is ask
And I'd say yes,
okay,
of course,
when?

I'll be honest
I'm not exactly sure how to write myself pretty
I don't think I'm capable of making desire out of words
Or forming the way I sound into something you would want to fall asleep to
I cannot mold my body into a figure that you would want next to yours for more than one night
I have more passion in myself than I know what to do with
I often give it out as hope for people to take in their hands, find something good in all of my chaos
Everyone always advises not to fall face first in love
Forgetting that the those who fall by accident
Often land the hardest
Hitting the ground full force
Cheek against the pavement
I was built with 206 bones in my body
And I will break all of them from my mistakes
Before I dare to stop falling
The crash is worth the high
Ask me every time when I am still hung over from yesterday
And I will always say yes
Having regrets has always seemed better
Than having nothing at all
I was born with steel layed out upon my chest
All of these attempts at language
Are done with the intention
Of removing some weight off of it
I have been made heavy by my own silence on too many occasions
At times I have been told not to speak
That my lips should be kept shut for protection
There are bolts on my jaw
My tongue is sandpaper
And I will risk grinding my teeth for the possibility of igniting a flame
Inside someone who has spent years trying to find a lit match
Let me be the thing that starts a fire
Rhyming doesn't always incite romance
But I can try my best
See the problem is that there are so many ways to say I love you
But not enough to make them love you
The problem is having a million things to say
And a million ways to say them
But not knowing the right way how to
There is no right or wrong here
Only hold back or release
So stutter instead of staying quiet
It is much more beautiful on paper
To disregard format, or style
And structure
I will mess up
As best as I can
And in the morning
Look at it again
Remember how it felt
To live
Then reread,
Review,
And edit.

You may not be
The brightest rose
In a bouquet of flowers
But one day
Someone will find you
And call you their favorite
They will admire your petals
Your stem
They will withstand the thorns
And you will learn how to be soft again
They will see what most cannot

Beauty is in the eye
Of the beholder
And the one who holds you
Will find the beauty in your eyes
You may not be
The brightest rose
In a garden
But someday
You will be the brightest rose
To someone.

Money cannot buy happiness

My mother
Has a collection of jewelry
Diamonds are her favorite
Hers are pure and glimmering
She wears them on her hands
And over her heart
She has a collection
Of shiny things
They all sit pretty on her body
Glowing against her tan skin
But their worth is still not enough
To cure her instability
Or ease the anxiety that never leaves
She has all of these beautiful things
But still relies on antidepressants and nicotine
To make it through the day
And even after that
She is still not content
Money does not buy happiness

My father
Has a love for cars
He has spent his earnings
On greatly crafted vehicles
They are kept well and clean
They glisten
Shining almost as bright
As my mother's diamonds
They are fast
And smooth
Like his collection of fine liquor
All of the bottles lined up neatly
15 year, 18 year, 20
All of them rich in age
He has a lot of nice things
But at the end of the day
Still requires multiple glasses of whiskey
To wash out the bitterness of life
And the memories
Of how close he came to losing it
He has all of these cars
That take him from place to place
But it is still he
Who has to drag himself out of bed
Each morning to face the world
And even then
He is still not at ease
Money cannot buy happiness

Celebrities
Have lives that most would envy
But even they can be consumed by darkness
And fall victim to their own sadness
Money cannot buy happiness

The man who lives next door
Has a beautiful house
And a lot of things
To fill it
His home is never empty
But I can tell that he is
His eyes give it away
Money cannot buy happiness

I have
So much to be thankful for
I am provided
With more than one could ever need
And my level of privilege is beyond doubt
But most days
I struggle to make it through this one
And on to the next
It is always a never ending battle
Between me and myself
Between my mind and my sanity
Most nights
I fall asleep to a mix of ambien and panic
Having to **** my thoughts
With substance
I am overwhelmed
By constant fear
By frequent depersonalization and depression
Often feeling sad and then guilty

Because I have everything
I could ever ask for
But I am still not happy
These material things
Are not enough
To fill the gaping hole expanding within me
And there is a lot
That money can buy
But happiness
Is not one of them.

I fuel my lungs with oxygen
Work them with cardio
And then destroy them with cigarettes
I am a walking,
Talking,
And somehow still breathing,
Contradiction.

I fell in love with the idea of you
The thought of who you might be
How your hands might touch me
How your lips might feel against my skin
The idea of you loved me
Patiently
And kindly
Never selfish
Only selfless
The idea of you knew how to listen
I poured myself empty every time
And still managed to feel whole afterwards
Did not need a bottle to fill me
I was drunk enough as is
The idea of you gave me all there was to give
No need to ask for anything
No need to beg
Or wait
There was always something to grab onto
There was never any chase
The idea of you kept me company at night
Held me in moments of despair
And sung me to sleep
The idea of you always knew what to say
And when to say it
Knew words to untangle me
When my tongue grew tied
The idea of you was everything
I could have ever asked for
But you
Were not what I asked for
Your grip was rough
Your edges too sharp
Your caress anything but sweet
The only time you held me
Was when your arms had no other obligation
There was never any time made for me
You were running so fast
That I could hardly keep up
Always busy
Too consumed by everyone else
Too distracted
To pay attention to what lay in front of you
It is often the brightest lights
That blind the hardest
I must have been far too fluorescent
For your eyes to handle
And although it took me a while to see it
I finally do
I have come to realize
I never really wanted you
I wanted someone
Who didn't even exist.

19/30
My memories do not corrode
Incapable of being broken down
Sap stuck to the branches of my mind
I remember it all
The first time your fingertips grazed the ridges of my back
How your breath felt speaking silence onto my neck
I remember it all
The nostalgia once sweet to me
Now tastes bitter
I've learned
To swallow it down quickly
In order to
Prevent it from coming back up
My memories are trapped in the lyrics of
Songs we used to play on repeat
Ones that
Used to define the whole moon that we were
That are now
Merely a crescent of what you left me
I am still trying
To figure out who I was
Before I padlocked every door of myself that I once kept wide open
I have learned that
My memories do not rust
So I am still trying to figure out
How we became iron
I am still trying
To figure out
How I could still long for something
That was never truly gold.

I am homesick
For a place
I have not yet found.

I didn't love you, I loved the way you made me feel

your mouth, contagious memory of sweetness on the tongue

whispering voices through our sacred ears during the night

meadow of sunflowers, I want to lie in quietly

holding wrist against a wet rag heaving apology

forty-seven, return of sickness for the second time

photograph evidence and words but mostly in flashbacks

summer heat pressed against glass or a phone or a parked car

ants crawling their hungry way through holy skin, decaying

cracked open window for breathing without suffocation

claw your path through blue veins on pale skin and I will watch the

parade of history unwanted as it leaves the throat.

Muscle I thought I had, now softly disintegrating

I can't believe I ever wanted you
I can't believe I ever needed you
I can't believe I ever cared for you
I can't believe I ever loved you
I can't believe I still do.

I interpreted your language incorrectly
I thought your beautiful meant stay
I've learned that words can have a million different meanings and
I will never know them all.

I don't know what it's like to run a hand along your jawline. I don't know how it would feel to bury my fingers in your hair.
I don't know if you prefer wine to hard liquor.
I don't know if you stretch the moment your alarm goes off in the morning or if you roll back into your sheets after pressing snooze.
I don't know a lot about the scar on the right side of your chest. I've only seen it once.
I don't know what your eyes look like when you really love something.


I remember you asking,
“What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever been through?”
I knew what your response would be before it left your mouth. I hesitated to answer with my own and you said I didn't have to. It is nights like these when I wish I did.


When I see you it is mostly outside of houses where I don't belong and which you are familiar with, places where you have an abundance of friends and I have too many drinks.

You say that we'll talk soon and I remind you that you are terrible at texting. You laugh because it's true. I laugh to keep myself from spilling out my admiration for you. I laugh because your smile provides insight on how to be freer. I laugh with the hopes that doing so will teach me.
_

There is an equal amount of things I know about you and things I don't.
I don’t know if your eyes grow wide and out at the sight of what makes you happy, I don't know how they look when you really love something.
I’d like to find that out.
I’d like to see you looking up at me one day and for me to just know.

Here,
Take this uncomfortable and
wrap it around your body
Fold your tongue in half for all the times you are silenced
This sculpture of bones and
weight shifted uneven,
these newfound curves are landmines
Chest,
a weapon attached at all times
Too much attention drawn unwanted
Her skin is a canvas where
she paints her demons tangible and
wears each one to face an audience of mockery
A voice nasal and high,
an excess of feelings,
being too much all the time
The hardest years are between
13 and
18
yet
we laugh at their misery like these wars require no effort but
surviving in a world playing enemy is not easy when
your existence is the punch-line to every joke
Tell me,
how much do you know about living as anyone else but yourself?

do not answer.
bite your tongue to keep the want in.
swallow your desperation with a glass of saltwater.
when it burns your mouth, don't cry out.
rinse with soap.


don't pick up.

I miss you today and
The sky is more blue than I swear it has ever been
It reminds me of your skin looked in cold temperature,
The way your hands would curl from lack of circulation
I miss them too.
It rained yesterday and it reminded me of
How much we both loved thunderstorms and falling asleep to the sound of them
You said you slept better next to me than anyone else but I am more of a hurricane than anything else,
The way my downpour came in tidal waves.
Withstanding both the wind and reckless was a challenge but
It was something you did so effortlessly
I miss you so effortlessly
I do without trying to
Like a body held still with phantom limbs
Like hands that reach forward out of habit and discover a part now missing
I have learned how it feels to long for the nonexistent
To wake in the morning to an absence of comfort laying where you used to rest your head
Some days I don't want to get out of bed but
I do because you would have wanted me to
Like the way the sun wants to watch trees grow instead of hear branches snap
I never intended to split directly in half but the winter is colder than I expected it to be and
My skin has turned bark in its roughness
It is cracking in too many places and it is not very pretty to look at
I spent too long creating myself out of iron for you to have to see me rust like this
I'm sorry.

There are things I want to tell you but
They are things I cannot tell you
Because your ears are not here to listen and if I were to,
The confession would make me more vulnerable than I ever intended on being,
It would scrape me raw and paint me weak to tell you that this life is
A lot harder to navigate without you living it with me
My sense of direction has always been shaky but now every route to future is tangled in your veins
I am used to tracing them to get home and
I don't know how to get there anymore
24 hours have never seemed longer than they do now and
Nights come much sooner when there is no reason to go outside
I have learned that the sun can't blind you if you don't show your face to it
I stay in out of precaution
My sight is fading and
It is colorless without you to fill in the intricacies
I do not see like I used to
I keep them closed because these eyes have nothing to search for knowing they wont find you in their path of vision,
I want to tell you about the moon
That it seems to be growing bigger and bigger as I shrink into myself further and
I can't remember a time when I felt as whole as she appears glowing against blackness
If only I looked that beautiful in half, in crescent form
The stars here are so bright that this city of mine could be mistaken for rural landscape
They stand out every evening and tell me to look at them
I want to tell you to look too
But I know you have already seen them
I know you are the one who put them in the sky in the first place,
Hung them delicately on their hooks and said,

"Look what I built for you,
I put these up carefully with my own hands,
See? I haven't forgotten how to make you smile."

And you're right, you haven't.

I'm not happy
Nor am I angry
I am somewhere in between
But I am not content

I miss the happiness I had
Back when we first met
Those first few months
When everything was exciting

A week without you
Felt like an eternity
And we wanted so badly
To just pause time

But now when we're together
Time drags on
And you always leave
Before midnight

And when we argue
There's no rush of adrenaline
No intensity
Just a dull ache

I wish things
Weren't so comfortable
To the point where nothing
Is the same as everything

I used to be your everything
But now i feel as if
I am nothing
And I am not content.

I took you to all of the places I remembered as ours, with patience, moving slowly to keep the past of us alive / We kept going, I spoke without saying words, but you understood just as much without me needing to explain / The city was asleep and the night quiet / I saw the glow of your eyes reflecting off the blackened sky / Above the buildings were lights kept from holiday seasons, still lit, like they were begging to be noticed / It was a kind of reminder, symbol for a Christmas we spent together but separate / I wondered how we got here from where we used to be / The heart that once held yours is mine to call it, but I don’t want to / To claim the space of it is useless, the empty, is of no use to a hollow being and this showing you around is nothing more than a dream that never happened, one that never will.

I wonder if I'm on your mind tonight more than I probably am
My eyes move between phone and computer screen seeking your name
My ears are perched to their highest capability
My mouth tastes of blood from the lip I've bitten in your honor and
all I can do is wonder where you are tonight and if you're wondering about me too

I feel your warmth next to me like summer rain
falling carelessly on our open palms in July,
not wanting the momentary coolness
to end but consciously aware
that everything does
eventually.

Do not ask me
Why I have trust issues
Ask everyone who has ever left.

It was a tuesday night in January
A flight delayed two days late
Stranding me in California sun

I ask Ari
To take me to hear poetry
Without hesitation she takes me
To small crowded theatre on Fairfax
We sit cross legged on stage when she encourages me
To share words I had never before spoken aloud
Puts my hand in the air
My name on the list
Volunteers my voice to a hundred unfamiliar faces
So I stand
Bow legged facing microphone
Open mouth
And for the first time
Hear myself speak

Vulnerability has never been a strength of mine
But in those 3 minutes I was given
I let out the sawdust buried beneath my tongue
In those 180 seconds
I learned how to breathe open
Learned how to listen
That tuesday night in January
A flight delayed two days late
Left me stranded in California sun
And fate
Grabbed me by the wrists
And led me into poetry's arms
I never knew
That night
Would become start to new beginning
Would become catalyst
To finding voice in this echoed hallway of a body
That night
Handed me future
Gave me
What I hadn't even known existed
But had always been searching for

I was introduced to opportunity that three girls and one boy later
Would become family
I never expected
To find home in a place other than comfort zone
But leaving was exactly what I needed to reach it
Found parts of myself
In the words of four strangers
Found purpose
In the rhythm of our pens against paper
Found steady
In voice speaking vebrado
I did not plan
To navigate four hearts at once
But learned how to connect our valves
Just enough for it to work
Learned from them most
When raw and ******
Shaking at the times we couldn't bare our own thoughts
Our own feelings
Our own memories
I learned
That each weakness of theirs
Is outnumbered by asset
By strength

Cheyenne
Has a voice like a welcome mat
But closes herself off to most
For fear of goodbye
For fear of repeat abandonment
I want to tell her
That she has a smile like summer
And dimples one could live in
That I don't understand
How anyone could ever leave someone
Who is so much like sun
Is beauty and warmth
In a mixture that can only be swallowed
By those worthy enough to hold her
Sophia
Is crystal eyes and steel bullet
Loves nicotine
Almost as much as she does coffee
Knows how to stand stripped and bleeding
Without worrying about covering up
She
Has a voice like honey bourbon
The kind you want to pour down your throat
Until inhibition disappears completely
Julia
Fell into these words the same way as I did
Composes hers with softness wrapped in strong
She may not believe it
But she is more metal than any other element
Knows anxiety as well as I do
Knows loving is never going to be easy
But doesn't know
That she is so easy to love
Laughs at herself between embarrassing stories
Doesn't realize how much courage that takes
I can see
When her heart attempts to leap out her chest
Doesn't know
That I wait with open hands
Ready to catch it
Erique
Is old soul living beneath 15 years
Knows smiles and laughter
As the most important entity
Doesn't get upset
At my mention of his youth
Loves human almost as much as they love him
Looks to strangers
With outstretched arms
And ready heart

I came into this group unexpectedly
Expecting poetry
And leave
With more than just an understanding of language
I leave
With passion I had never known possible to find
Leave
With stories strung together by veins
With a family
That is more of one
Than I have ever known
More of one
Than my own has ever been
I leave this team
With gratitude
For three months spent working the hardest I ever have
Gratitude
For it being the driving force in my decision to move
To leave my past behind in another city
Leave my demons to the cold and highrises
I found purpose
In a time where I questioned its existence

To the army of fighting poets
You are the most peaceful war fought
Toughest calm ever written
Your battles have not been easy
But you have grown strong
The only casualties being the perceptions you killed
I do not know
If I will ever find this vigor
In another lifetime
But I do know
That I will never find it again
In this one.

We lay gasping for air
Speaking with breathless whispers
I can feel your warmth against my skin

I find the place to lay my head
The place where our necks fit together like puzzle pieces
And our freckles align like constellations

Bodies intertwined like tangled wires
Seemingly impossible to separate
Because they are lost in one another

Our tired figures rest still but busy minds run constant
We sink into the sheets
Forever drowning in this momentary euphoria.

Buy her flowers
Not as a chore
Not to get on her good side
Not because you have to
Not because it’s what you’re supposed to do

Buy her flowers because
When you saw them in the store
They reminded you of her
And you couldn’t stop thinking about
The beauty they possesed

Buy them because
You live to see her eyes light up
And  the dimples in her cheeks when she smiles
How she turns her head
To hide the blush of her cheeks

Buy her flowers because you want to
Not because she wants you to.

In my dreams there is resolution
An abundance of apology, words strewn together from the many mistakes made,
Genuine meaning,
Sincerity,
And forgiveness
There is no awkward confrontation or apathy
There are no half-assed hellos, there is no avoiding
In my dreams you are holding my face like you once held me
Our eyes meet the way they used to,
And you move your lips quietly to say
"I'm sorry."

I imagine your sorry explaining what you never did
Like
"I'm sorry I stopped caring,
I'm sorry I pretended to"
You'd say,
"I'm sorry
For treating your body better than I treated you"
Or maybe even
"I'm sorry
That I can't face you, it is cowardice and weak but I really don't know how to"

I know that this admission is not one that would ever exit your mouth
It is one that is unlikely to even form in your thoughts but
I like to think that it is possible
I like to hope that you have some sense of remorse for the carelessness
Or it could be that you are only sorry for leaving what is now blooming
I was a flower twisting when we met and I have become an open rose
I'm sorry that you couldn't see the beauty up close
I hope you like admiration from a distance

I wonder if
You've forgotten me
Completely
If i am
Erased from your mind
Detached from your heart
Memories swiped of any trace of me
Or if
You remember
But you choose to forget
Because you don't care
Or maybe you never did
Maybe i was never good enough
For you
But for me
You were more enough
You were everything
And everything is harder to erase
Than nothing
To you i was nothing
I am nothing
So i am erased from your mind
Detached from your heart
And swiped from  your soul.

A boy told me
That the skin on my back
Is beautiful
That it makes me unique
I am not sure
If his words
Were supposed to make me feel pretty
But they made me think
Made me wonder
How a near stranger
Could admire my skin
Almost as much as I despise it

My skin
Is a combination
Of freckles
Of scars
And of spots

These marks
These sun-stained,
Disease-ridden patches
Are not beautiful
This lack of pigmentation,
Scattered formation of color
Looks more like a puzzle
Than it does human
And often times
I feel more puzzle
Than I do human
See I know what it's like
To feel your skin changing color
To feel like your body has betrayed you
The cells that are supposed to protect
Have instead chosen to neglect you
Denying their purpose
Into abandonment

I have spent hours in the mirror
Turning my reflection into stranger
Staring at these flaws
Picking apart every piece of my complexion
Until all that remains
Is insecurity
But the problem with self-hate
Is that it never ends in satisfaction
Only in disappointment
And destroying yourself
Is not an art form

There are times
When I forget
That my body is home before anything else
That it is mine
Before anyone else’s
And although it is shelter
It often feels more
Like the aftermath of a storm
A battlefield left behind
The remnants from wars fought
And wars lost

Some say
I should take pride
In the incongruity
In the mess
In this map I call my body
I have been told
To embrace the blemishes
That they merely proof
Of survival
Of being alive
Of breathing
And it is easy to say
Something is not that bad
When it isn’t you
Who it is unfolding
But this disease
Will not ruin me
It can take parts of my body
To twist into ugly
Turn my immune system against me
And leave scars as evidence
But I refuse to
Let this disease
Make me into anything but
Strength

I have spent years
Trying to find comfort in this skin I am in
Wondering
How unlucky I got
To be this mismatched
Forgetting that I am this lucky
To be this mismatched
And that originality
Is as desirable
As my skin is unclear

This skin that I bare
Does not define me
These tattoos that I have gotten
To cover up unwanted memory
Do not define me
These scales that I wear
Not by choice
But by default
Do not define me
Only I
Define me.

You can turn someone into poetry
But you can't make them love you.

My drawers don't shut completely. My socks are everywhere. I am wearing jeans that are too blue. I have been staying up late at night just to think more. The gym is just a few feet too far to push myself to. I'm surprised these jeans still fit. My lips are chapped from the winter which makes no sense considering I live in California. There is a rash on my chest that won't go away. I haven't written a decent poem in weeks. Most of them just turn into ramblings and lists of all of things I should be but am not. There are a lot of things I want to be but am not. I get along just fine for the most part. I get by for the majority of the time. I think I’m doing alright. I'm a mess to say the least.

I wonder
If she asked about me
Or if you told her
If your guilty conscience finally got the best of you
Shook you until my name bled from your mouth
Maybe
You never even mentioned me
At all
Maybe you didn't have to
Maybe it was easy
Maybe you woke up one morning
And decided that what you already had
Was much better than what you were going after
Maybe you finally understood what I meant
When I said I wasn't worth it
I never wanted to come between
But you welcomed my interference with open arms
Promised me oasis in desert future
And I caved
Because I have always been weak
Because I have always had a soft spot for guys with tattoos and turbulence
Our plane crashed long before takeoff
And somehow
I am still awaiting closure
Spend time telling myself you still think of me
Convince myself I'm still in your head
You already did the forgetting
You managed to do so with such ease
So effortlessly
Maybe you erased my number
Swallowed my image
And then trained your mind to delete
Programmed me into your brain as nothing more than homewrecker
Remember it was you
Who invited me in
In the first place
Gave me the hammer
And told me to start breaking
I split myself into two for you
Emptied out parts I kept deep inside
Poured myself in your hands
Painted my skin transparent
Confided about the night I was taken without permission
You promised
To never hurt me
Like he did
But disappointment is a certain kind of ache
It does not go away overnight like you did
You should have told me to begin with that we,
Were just a game you were playing
While your real life recharged
I am sorry
That I ever held my tongue for you
There will be no remorse
I can not grieve over something that never was
Our existence
Ceased before it began
So I,
Am back to placing caution tape around my body
Back to glueing my lips quiet
I wonder
If you sleep easy at night knowing how you left me
Knowing that I am still questioning
I know
She didn't ask about me
She didn't have to.

We are hungry lips and eager hands,
Reckless teeth and touching
It is 4 am and we are too much alive to care about the consequences of later
I can only wonder,

Will you regret me tomorrow?

In August you told me you would be home in a few weeks
I had hoped it would be sooner than that
It's a lot later now and I am still waiting
The chill of mid December has arrived
January is approaching quickly
You are completely out of sight
But not out of mind
It has been close to six months
And your ghost still talks me to sleep every night
It's hard for me to believe that I ever believed you
But I did
You said you were coming back for me
It's almost the new year
And I wonder how it is that I am still thinking about you
I am still thinking about you
Wondering if you ever think of me too
I am still holding on to your promise like it wasn't built of string
It broke the second you gave it to me
But I held on like my loyal hands could fix it
I know I should let go now
Maybe that will be my new years resolution
To forget you
For real this time
Maybe my new years resolution
Will have less to do with hoping
And more to do with changing
Cleaning out the contents in my box of future
Most things in it have reached their expiration date
Maybe my new years resolution
Will be to wipe your name from my vocabulary
To make it into a word I am unfamiliar with
Maybe my new years resolution will be
To stop checking your page to see if you are happy
I want to be the one who is happy
I know you still follow me
The past months have been spent showcasing my life
In hopes that you'll see it
And wish you were a part of it
Maybe my new years resolution should be
To stop wishing you were a part of it
Placing dreams on stars that have already burnt out
I am devoting myself to that task
And training myself to not love you anymore
But it's only Christmas eve.
So I've still got some time.

There is a little girl
That rests in my bones
Inhabits
My soul
Hides within me
Peaks out through the cracks of my ribcage
And
Every so often
Reminds me
Who I am
I call myself woman
Now and then
Give my body to men
Who promise me fleeting moments of attention
I live in routine
Put on the charade that is adulthood
I almost forget sometimes
That I am not grown
That most of it is false
A cover
I hide under the covers at night
And still fear the dark
Conquer it with a glowing light shaped like a rubber duck
I sleep alone
But the pillow of my late dog besides my head
Keeps me safe
I am a person of habit
Afraid that if I alter the slightest details
More than just the content of my sandwiches will change
Change has never been a close friend of mine
I know him just well enough
To invite him in
But his arrival always seems to come
When I least expect it
I still cry
When I get overwhelmed
And the thought of unfamiliar hands
Makes me shudder
I am still learning
How to trust
When I had always been taught
To not believe everything you are told
I've recently realized
That soon enough
I'll have to confront the reality that is life
So for now
I'm choosing to protect
The little girl within me
Wrap my arms around her innocence
Shelter her from the hurricane like storms
From those who have come to knock her down
I'm choosing
To hold on to her
For my greatest fear of all
Is letting go.

Do not fall in love with me
I will turn every empty second into a overanalyzed thought
I will fill the spaces between our heartbeats with lovesongs emitted from my fingertips
I will make your words into poetry
Recite them over and over until they are tattooed on your skin
I will make your lips a sacred temple and send my prayers through kisses
Your body will become my garden where i will plant myself roots up
Intertwine my vines with yours
I will call you the sun
Your breath will become my air and I will use you to photosynthesize
I will forget that I am not a tree
And you are not my forest
I will forget that we are only human
So do not fall in love with me
Unless you are willing
To love the details.

New year, new me, I say it always
It is a new year but I am still the old, aching heart and tired bones from chasing for so long
These hands fold backwards trying to find something to put in them, really anything that fits will do
It is just like me to constantly be looking to fill the emptiness

New year, new me, I say jokingly
But I do not laugh when I start to miss you
It is a new year but I am still stuck on the last, when one month turned to six
We met in June and on December 31st you decided to cleanse yourself of me entirely
It is January 2nd and I can't say I've done the same

New year, new me, she is not new
I am waiting for the ring to appear on her finger
Your recycled promise will be on whatever diamond cut you choose and
When she slips it on, I almost can swear I'll hear my pinky break from the weight of all the let down it carried
I tried to hold it all, I did

New year, new me
I am a quarter of a half of what used to be whole
I have never been very good at math but you taught me how to count
Days waiting, it has been 151 since you were supposed to come back
I have learned minds change like seasons come, slowly then all at once
It is winter and I don't know who you are anymore

New year, same me
Maybe I'll be different by the time the next one rolls around.

Do not start something
You cannot finish
Someone will always be left
Unsatisfied
And disappointment
Tastes so much worse
Than rejection
Do not build
What you do not plan
On maintaining
Do not start a fire
If you have no intention
Of putting it out
Do not promise the stars
When you are only capable of dust
Do not shoot for the moon
With blind aim
That is how craters come to be
And this one expanding inside of me
Is wide with regret
There are third degree burns
On the inside of my chest where my heart used to live
I do not know
How to put end to what you started
I have always been combustible
And this
Is nothing more
Than arson
Do not start something
You cannot finish
Someone will always be left
In flames.

Sometimes I wonder if
I would actually love you if
You actually loved me

I want to marry you
I want to marry this 17 year old naivity

I want to collect it and put it in a glass box for the whole world to see

I want to freeze frame, pause time, snapshot

This photo of us

This moment filled with nothing but young love and lust

I want to drown in this bliss

Stay forever underneath the surface

I want to swim in eternal happiness

And never come up for air.

I woke up this morning to you gone

Opened the blinds to let in the sun

Laid back in a bed that’s too big for one

Wishing that time hadn’t gone on


But it did


And now I’m alone

Missing the way your arms feel like home
 Wondering why i ever let you go

Still holding out some hope


That maybe someday you’ll come back

There is science to a broken heart

When the heart strings that connect the valves of your soul collapse
When the veins are full and heavy with the weight of let downs and false promises
When your bones ache the same as a near fatal injury
Know that it is not a phantom pain
Not an empty longing
For a temporary someone
You mistook as permanence
The ghosts of their skin forever
haunting with their former touch

The pain of a ruptured spirit
Is equal to that of being hit by a truck
Going full speed down the highway
Lights off
No warning signs
Is equal to the pain associated with The inability to forget
You place a do not enter sign around your heart
Next to the caution tape
Marked on your skin

The science to a broken heart
Can not be found
In an anatomical enclyopedia
But it's existence
Is not to be questioned
Heartbreak has been researched
Enscribed by historys greatest
For fitzgerald felt the blows to his being
From love that thrashed with winds and currents
A hurricane

Often the subject of their own experiments,
Writers are the scientists who study broken hearts
Words used as algorythms
Attempting to respond to
Questions we might never get an answer to
We're often left wondering
And often time its suffice

Because if we were to know why
Why the sun aches for the moon When the moon only has love for the stars
Why the theory of newton and gravity
Will never account for humans falling
Why storms are named after people

If we knew
We might not expose ourself to said research
We like the unknowingness
That science has yet to offer a conclusion to
The unknowingness that is often synonymous
With love.

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.

I have known pain
In every form
All too well
My box of memories is filled to the rim with moments so vivid
That if I close my eyes
I can almost taste the blood between my teeth
Pain has been
Someone I have turned to
When emotion has defeated feeling
Sometimes just a pinch of the skin
To remind myself
That I am real
That this
Is real
Pain is an alarm clock ringing
Begging us to wake up
In a world full of dreamers
Who just cant seem to face reality
Without pain
Without the sandpaper glued to our palms
Life would slip right through our fingers
Pain is attached to every year of my life
Marking the moments that mattered most
From ages where seconds of happiness seem blurred
And mostly pain is remembered
Age 4
Chin shattering against the kitchen floor
Skin and bone to hardwood
When a game of horsey with my older brother
Goes too far
Stiches sewing me back into place
I can still taste the melted twix bar that I was given
For being such a good patient
Age 7
Scrapes from falling off the bicycle
Were enough to get me to stop trying
Needless to say
I never learned how
Age 12
Words thrown at me like razor blades in the school cafeteria
Hurt enough for me
To use them against myself
In fits of aching rage
My body refuses to let me forget
Age 15
Watching my father
Sick from chemotherapy
Hunched over in agony
Hair falling to the ground like the ashes of cancer victims
Watching him suffer
Hurt more than any broken bone
Than
Any paper cut
Scratch to the surface
The worst kind of pain I've learned
Is the kind that can not be erased from memory
With a rub to the eyes
Is the kind where
You are forced to watch
Loved ones
Experience it
Without being able to help
Or do anything to ease their discomfort
The worst kind of pain
Is being witness
Is being bystander
Pain is more than a bully
Pain is a backstabbing neighbor
Who pulls a gun to your head just when you think you've got it right
Is a ghost
A physical form that fades
But remains forever alive in memory
In the faces of people you've hurt
In the scars of skin that forces you to remember what happened
What happened
Does not define you
But the thing about pain
Is that whether or not you want it to
It shapes you.

Today I touched your hands for the first time in months
They were cold
You said winter was quickly approaching
I laughed
Because winter is something California doesn't know too well
But I do
I know the below zero temperatures
How we spent those nights huddled together underneath your sheets
When your breath was the only thing in the world that could keep me warm
I kept my socks on
I always did
You said it looked silly
But you didn't mind
I think we fought most when it was chilly outside
The weather being both a catalyst for an argument
And an excuse for me to spend the night
I spent so many with you that I lost track

Today I wondered where the time went
And gave up looking when I couldn't find it
I thought about how I used to tuck my secrets into your palms
For you to keep safe
I know you probably still have them
Wedged between your knuckles
Blue from the weather
And the lack of circulation
You told me you hated it
But the color of your skin when it is cold outside is my favorite
Everything about you has always been my favorite

Today I was next to you
But tomorrow I wont be
And soon enough I will be back on the other side of the country
I can't help but hope that you will still think about me
When you are stuck in the snow and the wind blows against your flushed cheeks
I hope you think about my hands cupping your face
And how they would shake
Just to be able to hold you there
I would risk shivering for your comfort anyday

I never told you this
But you are the only warmth I have ever known that doesn't burn at the touch
You are the only fireplace that I can lay next to without catching flame
You are the only summer that exists even in the middle of a Chicago winter
Yours is the only jacket I will ever accept when I forget my own
You are my warmth
So I am going to keep you close
For as long as I possibly
I am going to keep you close
As long as you want me to,
As long as you let me.

The trees dance
The grass swims
The flowers drown
When it rains

When it rains here
It storms
And when it storms
I begin to miss you

So from my window i watch
As the rain falls
Thinking if the sky could feel
We'd feel the same.

He told me
That I'm not over you

He can tell
By how everything I write
Has traces of you in it

I tell him
This is not true
That I do not directly
Write about anyone
Anymore

But see,
The spaces between words
That's where you fit in
I don't even need your name
For you to be mentioned
Just a hint of your memory
Or the way I describe
A body that is no longer next to mine
Provides enough insight
For anyone to guess
That you are still very much
On my mind

You are in every sentence
Every stanza
Every syllable
Every breath

But he is wrong
To say
I am not over
When I have already passed the finish line

Yes I still write you
Everywhere
But only because
I have nowhere else to stick you
And I like the idea
Of rewriting a story
In order to remember what you want to

You sound much better in poetry
Than you do in real life
And your description tastes much better
When it is drenched in metaphor

I like to make you
Sound pretty
Even if we ended
In so much ugly

He told me
That I'm not over you

He can tell
By how everything I write
Has traces of you in it

But I am over you
I have been
For quite a while

My heart
On the other hand
Is still learning
To let go.

I wonder
How it is possible
That I am able
To miss something
So terribly
That I
Have never had
That
Has never
Been mine.

You make me want to
Set fire to everything
More specifically anything
That has to do with you

You make me want to
Tear off every piece of my skin
And pull out all of my hair
Just to strangle you with it

Okay
Maybe that is
A little bit
Dramatic

But you drive me
Absolutely insane

You are a bus
That I would willingly
Throw myself in front of
Just to get your attention
Although you would most likely
Keep going
Without stopping

You are so skilled
At pretending not to notice me
Talented enough
To paint my skin invisible
The way you look right past me
Is truly an art form

I am well aware
That I am not the only girl
Who plays marionette
To your puppet master hands
But I am the only one
Who is content
With having them around
My neck

You make me want to
Sharpie all of your faults
On to your forehead
For the whole world to see

You make me want to
Stand on top of a cliff
And proclaim every single thing
That is wrong with you
For the whole world to hear

Calling you terrible,
Awful,
And cruel
Is easy

But if you were to call me
At 2 am
I would probably still give in

I would drop everything
Just to see you
For a moment

I would sacrifice my pride,
My dignity
Just to spend a night
With your body

You make me want to
Do a lot of things to you
In more ways than one

And that is exactly
What the problem is

I don't hate you
But you make me want to
You make me wish I did.

You are a map
That I want to spend hours studying
Drawing x after x
On each part I want to explore
Freckles as a path
I will trace every route from my fingertips
Every ridge
Every curve
Every hill
Leading to your lips
You are a treasure
That I want to devote my life to uncovering
Bury myself in your neck
Travel my way into to your heart
I will call you my shelter
Vowing loyalty
To protection
You will always be the road
That will lead me home
You are a map
That I want to frame above my bed
Stare up every night
At you
My sky
You are the constellation
That will remind me
Where I am
And where I belong
I know that
I belong
In your arms.

I miss our whispered conversations
I miss your contagious laugh
And the way we never needed words to speak

Because the expressions on our faces
Did the talking for us
And the movements of our hands
Said more than we could ever possibly say

And while our lips spoke syntax
Our bodies spoke with language as well
They spoke for the forever-mute heart that so desperately wants to speak but cannot

If I could tell you that I miss you
I would tell you through my skin
I would touch you softly and let you remember

I’d run my hands through your hair
And let my fingers do the talking
Assign my palms to do the apologizing

I’d kiss you gently
Forcing my lips to move
But not to release any sound

If I could
I would let my body do the talking
*But a body can’t speak without a beating heart to listen.