I have been in a relationship with my insomnia for four years
Have been on and off with my inability to sleep for as long as I can remember
Know him so well
That trying to avoid him
Is not even an option
His persistance so strong
That I have given up all attempts to leave him
Instead I attempt to please
Feed him with too many thoughts
And late night conversations
Provide him with anxiety
And reaccuring nightmares
It is easy to love something
That has practically become a part of you
Easy to get attached to something
That knows your weakness
Time and again
I have tried to end things
Pursued alcohol before bedtime and medication proven drowsy
But somehow I always come back to him
Let him convince me that sleep isn't needed anyway
That he can give me all of the attention I will ever need
Insomnia
Is the boyfriend I will never be able to break up with
Is the one out to get me
Is the enemy created by my own mind
By my overthinking and fear
Insomnia
Lives in the tip of my pen
In the bend of my fingers
Lures me with words
I cannot keep them inside any longer
Insomnia
Tells me writing is the only way I will stay sane
And if sanity can live without sleep
Then there is no point in doing so
If lack of it
Provides me with material
And the power to write away my demons
Then so be it.

I want to be intimate with you
Not bare bodied and touching
But a different sort
I want to see your soul as it is
Stripped down into nothing
Your demons in their raw existence
I want to hold each one on its own
Until I can understand how it feels to live them
I want to hear your voice scratchy and strained at 3am
And listen as words fall from your mouth into mine
Late night thoughts and questions
I want to learn your mind like it is the only book I will ever read
Memorize it top to bottom like it is my bible
You are enough religion for me to understand why we're here
I want to understand you
I want your dreams to come to me like I can make them real
Tell me your secrets like I am the journal you have been hoping to find
The empty pages you have been waiting to fill your whole life
I want to know it all
I want to know your fears
Your worries
Your happiness
And everything that keeps you up at night
I want to be the thing that keeps you up at night
I want to be the morning sun that you cannot wait to wake to
And when you do,
I will continue to get to know you better

I don't need your hands on me
Or your skin against mine
To be close to you
The best form of intimacy
Is loving someone without knowing how it feels
To touch them without clothes on
The best form of intimacy
Is realizing you can open yourself up completey without holding anything back
The best form of intimacy
Is laughing and not caring at all how you sound
The best form of intimacy
Is talking for minutes that turn into hours that turn into tomorrow
The best form of intimacy
Is time spent wasting
The best form of intimacy
Is moments
Is patience
Is devotion and commitment
With no guarantee of satisfaction
It is surrender
It is vulnerability
It is now
The best form of intimacy
Is quiescence
It is the purest method
Of affection.

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.

The smell of whiskey makes my teeth hurt and today I woke up gasping for breath
Missing you kind of feels like rubbing alcohol on every paper cut from the scraps left behind
Some days it is a hollow swelling but the majority feel more sunburn, easy to forget but sore when touched

I used to dream about waking up with you as a normal routine, instead there is only quiet
I hold my hands together when I sleep to fill the space of a bed too big
I find pieces everywhere, your hair on my pillow, your cologne on my sweater, your sock, just one, tucked into a drawer I didn't know existed

I don't think about you often but when I do it becomes a sinking
A hole jammed into the side of a ship that had just learned how to stay afloat
There is never enough time for me to save myself from drifting off and I give up

It is back to you, and the guilt washing on your face when you said this feels weird, lips building lies like the fixing of shelter after a storm
When another someone tells me how soft my skin is, I want to light it on fire to burn off your fingerprints,
To forget that you said the same so often

I want to call you and ask why you haven't tried to reach me
I want to remind you that we live in the same city, big, enough distance apart to ignore
I want to pull your hands out of my hair and your breath off of my neck but I'm aware of the inexistence of both

I'm aware that now you have become nothing more than a figment of my imagination
Gone from reality but still alive in memory I do not try to erase
I'm not waiting for your return, I know you wont but I am waiting for the day my tastebuds don't crave you
It will happen, sooner or later but
for  now I still do

I am the kind of person
Who has mental breakdowns in the line at subway
Decision making is difficult
Or maybe I'm just crazy
And I might be
Every day is unpredictable
Every day I wake up in the same body
A different person
People never believe me
But believe me when I say
I change on a daily basis
My mood is completely erratic
And always shifting
It is not desirable
To be this unstable
With the daily possibility of hurricane
And ever-present disaster
There is bound to be destruction
I think deeply about everything
Too much and too often
My personality is introverted
Yet I get upset when I'm alone for too long
Human contact is critical to my being
But sometimes I get upset if I am looked at the wrong way
I push people away
And then get mad when they don't come back
I don't make much sense at all
Really, I don't
Potato
I got a massage once
And cried for the whole 80 minutes
Because I had realized
I needed to pay someone to touch me for that long
It was still worth it
It's not normal
To fall apart this often
But I do
So often that it's become my daily routine
A repetition
Of overanalyzing
Freaking out
And then worrying
Followed by bouts of hysterical crying
I cry at the most irrelevant things
But never serious situations
I've been to two funerals in my life
And didn't cry at either
I didn't know how to
I am impulsive
I have seven tattoos
All of which were added within a span of three months
I make my decisions at the last minute
I'm addicted to netflix
I bawl my eyes out every time I watch lilo & stitch
Which is often
Sad music makes me depressed
But it's still the only thing I listen to
I say I hate hookups
And then spend a night with someone who will never speak to me again after
I look for love in all the wrong places
And then get ****** when I don't find it
Yell at happy couples because they are happy and I am not
I smoke cigarettes only because I like the smell of them
I drink too much
And then not enough
I look good some days and then like hell the next
My pillow has a permanent imprint of my head because I sleep a lot
Some nights I don't sleep at all
And then cry about it in the morning
I think I cry too much
And most days I realize this
I realize that I am
A mess
A whirlwind of ugly
Black and white
Back and forth
Thunder storm tidal waves
That constantly pick up and crash
A kaleidoscope of everything wrong in this world
All put together in one single being
I am the definition
Of insanity
But when you look at it
In the right perspective
I guess it starts to make sense
Starts to fold into something other than just breakage
I can't see the appeal in the chaos
I can't see the beauty
In any of this
But maybe someday
Someone will.

It doesn’t matter how many times you fall
Or how many times you get let down
It doesn’t matter if it’s done gently, swiftly, all at once
The force of gravity and the role it plays in the situation is irrelevant
And it doesn’t matter how hard you hit when it finally drags you down

It doesn’t matter how many times you fall
And it doesn’t matter how many times you get let down
It will hurt every single time
Maybe not the same, maybe even worse
It can range from scraped knee to broken wrist to bleeding mouth
It can be mild, it can be severe
It can last for a moment, a month, a year
But it will always hurt when it happens

It isn’t about preparing for the crash
You could be parachute-ready, eyes open, waiting
You could be practicing your jump, grace, descent
You could prevent yourself from building up too high and planning
But the impact of the landing will still be there

It’s going to hurt
The first time, the fifth, the tenth
Nobody tells you that it will, but it will
You will say to yourself,
“I’m never going to let this happen again”
“I’m going to be more careful next time”
“I’m setting my expectations low from now on”
You can tell yourself that you’re not hoping for anything, that you never were
That it is your fault for not bracing for the disappointment
You could say that you’re simply floating out the ride
But when it comes to a halt,
You will still **** back

It doesn’t matter the circumstance
Or how many people have dropped you before
Whether or not you were holding on tightly enough isn’t a factor
It’s still going to hurt when you hit your head,
Your hands will still crack from the friction
And it’s not going to be pretty

You’re going to feel it in all of your being
You will pull the splinters out of your eager heart one by one,
Leaving behind holes as you do
You will push the bones back into their sockets like routine
And you will bandage the wounds of led on

Maybe hurts
Almost hurts
Heartbreak hurts
Memory hurts
It’s going to ******* hurt

But you’re going to be okay
You will fill the gaps with cement stirred confidence
You will pile back the bricks high with pride
You will learn to hold your heavy head up even when it feels like too much to carry
You will paint a smile on in permanent ink
You will barely make it through some days, but you will make it
You’re going to be all right.

I will regret this in the morning
but I will do it anyway
my impulsivity often overpowers my conscience
yet I am almost always fully aware
of the decisions I make
and their consequences
I am not exactly mentally stable
but I am sane enough
to know right from wrong
yesterday from today
love from lust
although sometimes I mix them up
I have a tendency to lunge at any pair of arms that open for me
my mind and body often disagree
my body saying yes to eager hands
my mind saying no
constantly looking towards my heart
thinking how stupid one must be
to fall repeatedly
get hurt every single time
and still manage to do the same
over
and over
again
I wonder
how many times I will have to hit the ground
in order to learn to stop falling face first?
I often say things
that should be left unsaid
I often do things
that should not be done
sleep in beds unfamiliar
make believe love to strangers
get to know people who will not remember me tomorrow
I am gone as quickly as the hangover
I can be washed off the tongue
just as quickly as the liquor
I often believe I am capable of inciting change
I kiss temporary lips with permanence
hoping that I can train them to stay
I love temporary people with permanence
hoping that I can train them not to leave
and when they do
I claim to have seen it coming
I am incapable of forgetting
a scrapbook memory of skin and heartbeat
of touch and moments
I know not to look directly into eyes
for they can be blinding
and I still
do it anyway
I know of the risks that shouldn't be taken
well aware of their consequences
and I still
take them anyway
you could say
it is my own fault
for the way that things continue to turn out
but I can make no promise of apology
instead
I will live momentarily
**** up intentionally
love recklessly
fall unguarded
break enough times to learn how to put myself back together
crash into concrete enough times to learn how to shift a crooked smile
into something worth seeing
I have been told that a life lived in fear
is hardly a life lived at all
so I intend to live every second
like it is the last one I will have
I will write each night as it happens
narrate my own stories
and hope they turn out okay
I will regret this in the morning
but I will do it anyway.

I wish I could write the poem
To make you fall in love with me
But I am still trying
To compose the one
To get me to love
Myself.

I dreamt of you last night
For the first time in weeks
You once told me
That the thought of my body
Intertwined with yours
And the hope of us
Lulled you to sleep
In the mornings you would call just to tell me
That you saw me again
I'd ask you
How I looked
You would tell me
Lovely
You always looked better
In my dreams too
In insomnia
In late nights of why aren't you here
I knew the answer to the question
Before it left my mouth
Your heart was a house
With a two year lease belonging to someone else
I asked if she knew how lucky she was
To be able to live in you
A part of me always knew
That the reality of our combination
Was so far off from real
Our whispered promises
And breathless futures
Were nothing beyond fault line
I never should have crossed yours to begin with
Your voice
Still rings in my ear
Your leaving
Still fresh with sting
So abrupt in its existence
I used to count the days to you
What a foolish thing to do
When there was never a set date
I asked
When you were coming home
Forgot
That I wasn't yours to come home to
I would have locked my doors if I had known
You were just coming in to break things
And leave
You wondered if we could ever make it
Some nights I almost forget
You didn't stay to find out
Some nights
I see you
Last night
Was the first time in weeks
I don't remember
How you looked
Or exactly what happened
Only your words
And that you said
You are still waiting
For me

What a silly,
Silly,
Dream.

Are you mad at me?
Babe
Baby
Don't, please
Goodnight
Goodbye
I was
I'll call you tonight
I'm in front of your door
I'm sorry
It happens
It was sad seeing it get colder
K.
Ok sweetheart, sleep well
Ok
Okay
Okay fine
We'll talk soon
What about you?
Where have you been
Where did you go?
Sorry
Sorry.
Sorry
Sorry, I really am
Sorry
You still up?

I joke about watching the laundry
in the machine when
what I really mean is I could
watch you for the same amount
of time without losing interest

Tell me when it was
The first time you learned to hate yourself
The first time you tripped over your own fault lines
And started taking caution in every step
When did it happen?
Was it at 10?
When your shaking hands couldn't hold still
And the shame of them drove you into isolation
Maybe it's because others noticed
Or because they did their best to make it clear you were different
I don't think you know
That the rhythm you had and still have
Is unlike the rest
It is crooked and uneven but beautiful nonetheless
You didn't know it then
And accepting unsteadiness is easier said than done

Tell me when it was
The first time you learned to hurt yourself
Could it have been at 13?
When the weight of too much pressure motivated you to lose it
To the point where bones stuck out more than your voice
Loud girl became quiet that year
And then even more so the next
When your changing body didn't morph the way you would have liked it to
Left you shaped uncomfortably
A little too top heavy
The kind that drew unwanted attention
At a time when standing out was the last thing you desired
You turned skin into a battlefield into remnants from too many losses
Wrists became front lines, then hips, then neck until
You became too much destruction to keep the war going
You learned that it is impossible to win in a fight against yourself

Tell me when it was
The first time you learned to forget yourself
Was it at 15?
When the sacrifice of your body wasn't enough
To make a careless boy love you
It was a silly thing to give it all away
When you barely had enough of you for yourself
Your efforts changed after that
Trying too hard turned into not trying at all
Feeling too much turned into feeling nothing at all
You learned to repress and erase
And start over in the morning
You have been heavy from trying to hide away for so long

Tell me when it is
The first time you learn to love yourself
Will finally be after all of the years of disappointment?
Of self-deprecation?
When you realize you deserve more
Than to be the dust swept off to the side
Deserve better than to be an ashed out version of your potential
You were not meant to be wasted
You were not meant to be washed out and pushed down
You were meant to stand tall

The first time you learn to love yourself
Will be when you realize flaw is inevitable
When your skin turns itself different colors
And nothing can be done to change it
You will then learn acceptance

The first time you learn to love yourself
Will be when you stop comparing
When you look in the mirror and see only yourself in the reflection
Nobody else
You were meant to be here
You were meant to embrace it all
This body
This skin
This image
The only one you will ever have
The same one you will have to love
And eventually you will,
You'll learn how to.

I knew
From the moment we met
That you were going to ruin my life
And I was going to let you

I knew
When you picked me up
Your arms wrapped around my body
With the intention of holding
That you were going to drop me
More than once
And I was going to let it happen

See the thing is
You could break both of my legs
Shatter my bones
Into a million pieces
And I would still find a way
To come crawling back to you

Knees bloodied,
Hands torn from the pulling
I’ve never been one
For giving up easily

You could effortlessly
Take my heart and crack it open
Drink its contents
Throw the rest away
And I would still somehow attempt
To give you the remains

Call me selfless
But I am used to giving parts of myself
And receiving nothing in return

You could tie my tongue
My lips, my teeth
Split them into surrender
Into a foreign language
And I would still manage
To cough up your name

I have never learned release
Or let go
I only know stay
You could leave
One hundred times
And I would still wait for your return
With patience

Because kissing without permanence
Is like loving without memory
There is no purpose
If there is nothing to come back to
No reason in attempt
If it is bound to be forsaken

You had no intention
Of staying
This was something I knew
From the moment we met

That you were going to leave
And I was going to let you.

Let him miss you
Let him roll over in the morning to find you gone, your absence filling the empty side of the bed like a flood
He will drown before he even wakes up
Let him know what it's like to have the sheets to himself when his hands reach out and find too much space to grab, a vacant imprint of you still on the mattress
Let him crave the hold of your body against his, laying down, molded together in unison
Let him miss the crook of your neck and how his face fit perfectly in it like a hollowed shell
Let him miss your skin and his own announcement of its softness
Let him miss how fingers would run swiftly along the folds and creases
Let him miss the tracing of your veins that led him home, a purple and blue reminder of familiarity
Let him miss your legs folding between his while sleeping
Let him miss your breath in his ear
Let him miss your words blanketing around his fears and his stresses, how your language was the only kind capable of calming
Let him miss your comfort like a Midwest winter without a fireplace to lay in front of, like below zero temperatures with a broken furnace in charge of heating the air
Let him feel his heart leave his chest when he thinks he sees you at the store, at a concert, bar, restaurant, all of the places he knows you aren't
He will look for you anyway
Let his lips mumble your memory with every shot of whisky that meets them
Let him taste you with each cigarette he smokes with the intention of forgetting
Let him hear your voicemail when he calls you at 3 am
Let him leave his drunken words to a mailbox you will never check
Let him say your name in his sleep
Let him wonder where you are tonight
Let him feel your ache in every muscle, every bone, every limb
Let him wonder if you're aching too
But don't give him the satisfaction of knowing you are

Don't tell him you are splitting like the red sea, your heart spilling as it parts
Don't let him know you are near freezing to death without palms to protect you from the cold, how this December was one for the records
You will look back and wonder how you ever managed to survive
Don't let him know that getting up and out of bed is a ropes course you are still trying to complete
Don't let him know that every bit of ink made permanent on your body is too much reminder to look at, that the words are growing with unwanted by the second
Don't let him know that tonight you are too far from the sun to expand
You are shrinking from the darkness and you don't know how to let the light back in
Don't let him believe that your smile is anything but a portfolio of happiness
Don’t let him know that your laugh is merely a symphony crafted from regret
Don't let him know that he is the ringing in your ear that refuses to go away like a migraine, bringing blurry vision and a pain in the back of your head
Don’t let him know you still crave him like a bad addiction, the withdrawal being the worst it’s ever been
Do not let him know if you miss him
Do not let him know you do
There is no purpose in missing what never made you whole
You are enough human without another to need you
If he misses you tonight, let him
If you miss him tonight, don't.

Dear lover
By the time we fall in love i would hope that you will have already learned my name, but just in case you havent i will tell you. My name is danielle lauren shorr. danielle like some ancestor i never met, lauren because my mom liked it, and shorr like the beach. I like the beach. No more like love the beach. Maybe almost as much as i will love you. I like the sand between my toes, the way the wind blows through my hair and makes it an ugly mess, i like the way pigeons search for any trace of food like its all one man for himself and this is the hunger games. I like food. But at first i might be embarrased to eat in front of you, i can attribute this to my history of insecurity and that ******* belief that girls are supposed to order salads on dates. But fear not. Because i hate spinach and fries with extra cheese are my favorite, and soon enough i will learn to embrace it. I will always want to embrace you. To hold you, to be close to you, i have an overwhelming need for touch. But a slight fear of intimacy. I will be afraid at first when you try to get close to me, i will put up my guard and attempt to hide my battle scars and everything i dont want you to know about me yet, ive been hurt before. And i know im not the only one on this earth who has been. But when i tell you that i want to get to know you i am telling you that i want to memorize every part of you like the way i used to stay up at night as a kid memorizing lines of books. I love to read. I love getting lost in the words that someone else wrote that so closely manage to speak to me. I want you to speak to me. When you are struggling or lacking in anyway i will assure you with 100% certainty that things will be okay. I will pull you out of pits of depression with every muscle, bone and limb i have in my body, i have not always been comfortable in my own body. And thats been a cause of my own depression. So when the day comes when i give myself to you, i am hoping that you will remember that every part of me is devoting itself to learning you, i want to learn you. I want to trace the lines of your skin, connect the dots with your freckles or birthmarks, play silly little games and hope you let me win, i will let you in. But only if you let me. And theres parts of me that arent my brightest, i will have days where i will be unable to see anything but darkness, i want you to hold me regardless of what i say, or my stubborness, i am stubborn. I am a taurus. When we fight i will be a bull, strong in my pride and unable to see any other side of the argument, i will tell you this right now: give up. unless its important. I want to feel important. I will want to be included in every part of your existence and when I’m not i will get annoyed and ******* and demand to be the center of your universe. I will act like this because i want to feel like i matter. Like i am matter on this earth so important that if i disappeared even for a mere second the earth would crumble and fall into pieces. And if i crumble and fall to pieces, i only ask one thing of you. Do your best to help me back up, im not asking you to put me back together but to try your best to keep me from breaking even more. And when you break, know that i will be here to comfortyou. To hold you. To tell you that i love you. to make you laugh at the most innapropriate moments about the most innapropriate things, to make life seem a little less painful, and a little more bearable. I will do my best to help you stay your best. And if we end up not working, it will be okay. Because nothing will matter more than the love i gave to you when it was good and if in the end it doesnt go the way we thought it would, well, we'll be okay. But if it does. If this love stays, know that i will love you and give you every single day i have, i will make you remember why you decided to fall in love in the first place, i will make sure to make you feel okay, i will always make sure you're okay. if you're having a bad day, I'll be right there with you. I'll be here now and forever.
Sincerely your future lover.

I hope you're happy, really I do
I'm better off without you
I don't miss you too terribly
I only think of you sometimes
I can forgive easily
I never wanted to be in your life anyway
There's plenty of other people to love
I'm just waiting for the right one
I left the house enough times this week to call it progress
I swear I'm doing okay
I eat when I'm supposed to, I don't drink like I need to, and I stopped smoking
My lungs are full
So am I

I hope you're happy, really I do
I'm better off without you
You're girlfriend is better off not knowing
I want her to be happy too, really
I am happy
Really, I am
I got out of bed today when I was supposed to
I brushed my teeth, flossed, cleaned
And I did all of it without you,
Didn't I?
Not once did you cross my mind
In fact, you hardly ever do
I am too busy for distraction,
Writing poems about other things than the crippled dream that was us
I use past tense purposefully
I am over you

I hope you're happy, really I do
I'm better off without you
I can sleep in these sheets without feeling your phantom limbs grazing mine
It's okay that you left so little behind
I can swallow the shells without choking
I can listen to music without hearing your voice singing along
Your absence is what I've always wanted
I hope you're happy, really I do
I'm better off without you.

I cut myself into pieces for you
So that maybe
I would be easier to swallow
You somehow still managed to choke
On my rough edges
On my bitterness
I am not sweet
Or saccharin
But I refuse to be forgotten
I will stick on your tongue with no remorse
You may have spit me out
Still in pieces
But I will become whole again
Soon enough
And I
Will linger
On your mind
My skin
Will linger
On your hands
And my taste
Will linger
On your tongue.

We are laughing while passing a bottle back and forth between the two of us
Our breath reeks of nicotine vapor and the remnants of marijuana mixed with whisky
I down half a bottle of Maker’s Mark and you ask how it is I am able to do so with such ease
I tell you it isn’t difficult and it isn’t
I want to add that swallowing bitterness is much more pleasant on one's own terms but I do not say this part aloud
Instead I act like my insensitivity to alcohol is a skill not relevant to a family history of addiction
Built from uncles and fathers using liquid as a method to cauterize open flesh
A mechanism of numbing that has been passed down for years as casually as a recipe
We keep our secrets tacked onto hard labels and the inner caps of beer bottles
We antique our inheritance with the reminder that it has always been this way
This ability to drown myself under the weight of high content is nothing more than expectation
I make wine to water the moment it reaches my tongue
I convert drunken slurs to a language understood
I know sour breath more than I do mild
I didn’t learn drinking from beer pong and taking shots
I didn’t learn how to from games at parties and competition
I didn’t learn it as an activity or an outlet, I learned it as a habit turned routine
I was introduced to liquor with the same hand that walked me to school everyday
With the same lips that kissed me goodnight
This comprehension for the intoxicated soul is as engrained as my predisposition to become one
The only thing impressive about this relationship with alcohol will be how I choose to survive it,
Not all of us have.

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.

I have always
Had a knack
For losing things
It's no wonder
You're gone.

This city
Has so many bright lights
And 3.8 million people
That live in it
Some nights
I go out
Frequent bars that are too loud
Drink whiskey that is too strong
Try to drown out the noise in my head with greetings
And meaningless conversation
Some nights
I go out
Always secretly hoping
In the back of my mind
That maybe
I'll run into you
I can almost swear
That I see you
Every single time
And I do
I see you
In faces of strangers
In smiles unfamiliar
In shoulders that accidentally brush my own
I mistake each one of them for you
Maybe it's because everyone has the same stupid haircut as you do
Or dresses in that vintage way that you like to
Whatever it is
I cannot stop seeing you
I cannot stop seeing the ghost of what never was
The fact that our vessel had been abandoned long before setting sail
How your promises always read false
Your intentions never true
The reality that you
Are never going to be mine
And I
Am never going to be
Yours
You have already forgotten me
And I
Am trying so hard to forget you
But in this city
There are so many bright lights
And neon signs
That I am often blinded by hope
My imagination
Makes you reappear suddenly
And I start to see things
That aren't there
Put you in spaces
Where I know you don't belong
In this city
Filled with millions
All of them wandering aimlessly
I can only wonder
If your heart jumps out of your chest
When you see blonde hair and red lipstick
I have always been lost
And I can only wonder
If you ever find me
If maybe you stopped looking
A long time ago
Or if you never even searched
In the first place
Regardless
I still manage to see you
Everywhere
I can only wonder
Where you are
Tonight
And if you see me
Too.

I know it's only been a short time since the first moment I saw you but when I did, I knew
I have watched your mouth carve wisdom into trees, your beak burying its secrets into their wood
It is the most graceful destruction I have ever witnessed
There is music in your rhythm; you are a song I could play on repeat
No hummingbird can create what symphonies your unknown language does
If we spoke the same one I would tell you how much I want to love you
I do, like sand loves kisses from waves and how flowers grow every time the sun greets them
I didn't know how to tell you this
So I took the only opportunity I had available
I decided to risk it all for the chance to be yours
I have hopped from the highest branch on to your back and I am along for the ride, the ups and downs of romance, how it can take you to new heights once impossible to reach
You have given me wings I never thought I could have
While some have mistaken my attempts with bad intention, you are the only one who truly needs to understand
The only struggle here is the hoping that you will feel the same,
That you will see more than rodent in me
Maybe you could realize I am more than just digging holes and rascality
I would fly to the moon just to prove myself to you
Together we could be one for the books, crossing boundaries not yet written in history
I hope you don't take me as too forward
But I didn't want to risk not knowing if we could ever be
I took a leap of faith-
Thank you for catching me.

Dear Chicago
I have known you since birth
Was placed on this earth at the corner of belmont and clarke
Between thrift shops and sports bars
Amidst high rises and churches
At introduction was enamoured
Fell in love at first sight
Fell in love with your capacity
Your buildings
And skyline
Fell in love
With the way the pier's ferris wheel
Glows against lake michigan
How I felt invicible
The first time I ever rode it
A tourist attraction to say the least
But to me, has always been more
Has always been comforting
I claim to hate the cold
But the snow blanketing the trees in the winter time
Is a beauty unlike any other
Is painstakingly unbearable in it's temperature
But worth it
Worth the below zero windchill
Worth the frostbitten hands and hour long commutes
The weather has yet to prevent celebration
Couples bond over frozen lips with kisses and hot chocolate
Skates click against glass ice in Millenium park
I have always thought
That the city looks best dressed in christmas
In street lights
In holiday
In togetherness
In road rage turned blessing
It is hardest to hate what is shared
And freezing cold has a way of providing unity
As does autumn
How nothing has ever been more breathtaking
Than how leaves make death look graceful
How they make fifteenth story falls seem desirable
Something about the air
Feels different in the fall
But regardless of season
There is always warmth in the food
In the deep dish pizza that settles at the bottom of hungry stomachs
In the hotdogs that cannot be imitated in any other town
I have noticed
That some things can not be replaced
And this city
That I have grown up loving
Is not one that deserves to be changed
But still
Is imperfect
Is molding
Growing in ways more negative than good
In ways unwanted
Gang violence is no longer a rarity
Earning us a top spot on the list of high ****** rates
It seems today
That gunshots and sirens
Are the only music to be heard in the streets
That the jazz born here decades ago no longer plays
Only silent cry of mother losing child
Only unanswered prayer
Reports of daily shootings have become routine
Safety is not one of the stronget attributes
And a girl like me
Would be unable to securely navigate the streets on her own
Survive in this community turned war zone
Chicago
I have loved you
For as long as I have known what love is
I have painted picture after picture of you
Admiring your intricate details
Your originality
Your parts that can not be found any place else
But there are flaws
That have forced me to leave
Have driven me thousands of miles away
You must understand
That I needed someplace
That could offer me protection when alone
Chicago
I may not be in your arms
But you will always
Hold a place
In my heart
You will always
Be home.

Dear thickness,
Dear bold flesh I call shelter of leg,
protection for this body I call home
Dear thighs.
You are more important than you think
more crucial than you've been told
more space than I know what to do with and
more vocal than most other girls' quiet but
your prominence is nothing to hide
your existence is not an apology ready to be given,
your presence does not want to be covered
the way you suffocate yourself into a pair of jeans is
a talent unlike any other
or on hot summer days when skin comes out to
kiss itself between your graces
leaving marks as evidence
what some would call chub rub,
I call magic,
an inability to resist touching,
Thighs.
You never let clothing,
or temperature,
or weather come between you
you are passionate lover,
the proud I always strive to be
the unapologetic beauty I wish was all of me
you maintain the confidence I have to dig for to find within myself
you have so much potential built into the many layers of thick
I cannot tell you enough how important it is
Some say you save lives and
I would have to agree
but still
I know that there have been times when I have neglected you
moments where I have been blind in acknowledging your worth
It is not an easy feat to love the parts of yourself we are taught from
such an early age to hate
magazines have always said be small while
you have always aimed for big
trends tell you to grow in when
all you've ever wanted is to grow out and
expand into a galaxy built of freckles and skin,
you are human as human as gets
I have made you into a warzone on more than
one occassion and for that I am sorry
I am sorry
for more than one reason
I am sorry that this world has twisted your greatness into embarrassment
I am sorry that people have tried to make an apology out of your density
I am sorry that we live in a society that keeps telling you to shrink
I am sorry for all of the times I have wanted you to.
It has taken me years to be thankful for your holy,
you are the answer to my every prayer for health
you are living proof of survival,
Thighs.

This is my proclamation of appreciation
This is my asking forgiveness
I never meant to make you feel anything but needed
Thighs.
you were not made to be thin
you were not meant to be shy
you were built to be the loudest voice in every room
head turning, eye catching, without remorse
you are never silent
even when I am
and for that,
I love you.

Loving the addict is
an addiction in itself
Learning to digest
all of the sharp pieces that
come with it
Apologies and how
they lose meaning
after the second
Loving the addict is
as much of an art as
the hiding is, as
the covering up, as
the forgive me
After some time
I love you and I'm sorry
start to sound the same
letting go and withdrawal
become an equal amount of
swollen
and coming back is
more relapse than any
tangible substance
Loving the addict is
a guilty habit growing
inside a dark closet
feeding the plant until
it becomes animal,
ravenous
love and dependence
are both diseases that
share the same root

But being the addict
is always an attempted break up
It is avoidance at
its finest
It is ripping apart
strings of a rope
with chipped fingernails
in attempts to
cut loose ends
It is sawing pieces of
wood with bare skin and
trying not to get a splinter
It is leave me
It is don't go
It is I am trying to not destroy
everything in my path
It is painting with
heavy winds and rain
hoping there wont be
a mess to clean up
But mess is as inevitable
as the art is creating
And love and addiction
mix like oil and water
nobody is perfectly
capable of cleaning
up correctly
So we leave in a pile
to return to later
Coming back is
more relapse than any
tangible substance
that has ever
existed
and mercy is more perilous than
we'd hope it to be

There have been mornings
Where I have awoke in my bed
Unable to recall any semblance of how I got there
Yet so incredibly relieved that I did
That somehow I had made it home
In one piece
I consider myself agnostic
Yet some nights I found myself thanking god
That i managed to make it out alive
Too many times have I been a passenger
To drivers with weary minds
I still feel guilty knowing
That it's the one thing my father told me to never do
That my life could be ruined
By just being in that car
But more than once
I have found myself shotgun
Next to friends with more alcohol than water in their blood
How I am here today
I do not know
I do know
That my past would prove
That I don't deserve to be
I have made countless haste decisions
Been thrown in the bullseye of bad situations
Played russian roulette with beer bottles and pain meds
I have put my life on the line for the sole purpose of momentary excitement
Pushed myself just far enough over the edge to feel the thrill
But not far enough
To fall off
I have come so close
To falling off
And somehow I am still here
Somehow
I have cheated my way out
I have found loopholes in the same rope that so many others get caught in
What I have learned from this all
Is that most things happen
Without a reason
Therefore I will call it
Luck.

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 colored you into an image so bright that I could see you even with eyes closed. I painted you loud enough for the noise to keep me up at night. I made you into something you were not; a masterpiece.

This skin that I live in
Has not always been home
When people ask me why I have turned my body
Into a canvas
Into a picture printed piece of art
I respond
With a smile
And a shrug
But I know that the reasons
Go much deeper in me than the needle has
That there is
A volcano explanation
Waiting to errupt from my mouth
But it is not worth the energy
So I lift my shoulders up
And let them fall back down
I am often asked
What I would do
If I woke one morning
With regret burning inside of me
Filling my lungs like smoke from a wildfire
What I would do
If I learned to hate
The self-inflicted artwork that adorns my limbs
My response to that is not one I can cover with a laugh and a movement
Too many times
Have I awoke with a hatred for myself
So strong
That I've had to water it down with whiskey
Too many times
Right before my eyes
Have I seen my skin morph into alien green
Into stranger's clothing
Unfamilarity becoming a familiar concept
When people ask me
About fear of regret
I want to tell them
That my only fear
Is not having any
That if
A drawing on my skin
Is my biggest remorse
Than lucky I will be
I am told
That when I get old
When my skin is
Wrinkled and worn from
Years of experience
I will be embarassed of the photo albums glued to my body
But if I live long enough
To tell the stories
Of my limbs
If I live that long
I will know that
At that young age
It was
And
They were
Exactly what I wanted
I would rather have
A painted complexion
Than a vacant blank page
Rather have
An ocean of color
Than a sea of scars
If the filling of ink in my pores
Is a step towards
Learning to love myself
Then who cares
My tattoos do not read ****
Do not read rebel
Trouble
I have hope written all over me
And that is something
I do not plan
On regretting
My body
Is something
That I do not plan on regretting
I am trying
To make this house a home again
I am determined
To find shelter
Under this leaking roof
I am determined
To become
A masterpiece
Because I know
I am
A masterpiece.

because we're not quite there yet
or at least that's what you tell me when I ask how
you feel
I never know exactly when that moment is
or when it will be or
if we'll ever even make it that far
but I'd like to think
we will

my only proof being
our sunday mornings
between grey sheets and
laying in until noon,
laughing
the saturdays before them and
my inability to fall asleep
how I would much rather stay
awake with you
than give in to the tired I am
I am certain
that I could spend all of my weekends like
this

your laugh against mine
like words against a concerto
unconventional yet
somehow beautiful
my hands poking at ribcage
to find the spots where
you become vulnerable
how I am it,
always

the way my body fits
perfectly into the curve of
yours like the smile I cannot stop
wearing
like the dress that hugs the hips you
love so much
how my chin is your favorite hill I have
and how I become an entire valley
at your touch

I don't know what else to say
I'd like to think that time
will write the rest
for us

I don't love you
not yet
but I'm on my way,
I know it.

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.

It is undeniably human in how we constantly seek explanations for our problems
It's funny, the way we blame the alignment of the planets for our mishaps and frustrations, calling mercury into fault for our own mistakes
I have spent far too long searching for answers I will most likely never find to blame it on astrology

Your hellos have morphed into avoidance and I miss the way you once looked at me like I was a single star in the middle of a loud Los Angeles sky
I don't know exactly when you changed your mind or how and why but I do know that I haven't put the bottle back to my lips because the cool of it feels too much like yours
Early on I prepared myself for the let down but that doesn't mean I didn't taste disappointment

This could easily be an apology but I'm not sure what I have to be sorry for and the word is overused anyway
This could easily be an I am still angry but I'm really not, just aching and tired of the aftermath that follows wringing myself dry
I poured out all of my contents and you don't even have the decency to act like you could have loved me
I used to light up like an Idaho sunrise when I saw you but now when I do I have to dig laughter out of the depths of my stomach to pretend I’m okay
I am fading like the twitching light bulb in my room I am too weak to change

You made the mistake of telling a collapsing ceiling its perfection; you said there was nothing wrong with the structure
I watched you leave and then I caved in completely
Gravity had been calling to pull down for some time so I guess it makes sense that it finally did
My only regret is how quiet your smile gets when you notice me now and my inability to understand why

I don't know what I did to create the dull in your eyes or what I did to make you stop caring
I don’t know how we managed to go from pretend lovers to near strangers
I am so sorry for something I can't comprehend, for something I didn't even do, for that which I am uncertain
I am sorry that you changed and that I can't blame it on the retrograde of mercury
Los Angeles has enough stars without me,
I hope you find yours again one day.

Some days
I am a mess
Consisting of red lipstick
And nicotine teeth
Of black dress
Drenched in whiskey
Alcohol fallen from shaking hands
Crumpled white bedsheets that
Barely cover skin
Not knowing how to keep anything warm
Only knowing
How to look good against glow from morning sun
Sometimes
I am disarray
Most times
I am out of place
And even further out of body
But I
Am not looking to be cleaned up
I do not want someone
Who finds my disaster pretty
When it is anything but
I do not need someone
To try and mend something
That was broken to begin with
That has always been chaos
I am
Perfectly content
With the clutter
And I
Do not need
Fixing.

I’m the kind of person who
will sacrifice an entire night of sleep
just to be next to someone
who will disappear as soon
as morning comes.

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.

Mother
I see the sadness in your eyes
The uncertainty
The fear of solitude
I saw it the first time I told you I was leaving
Spat out in awkward silence during one of our quiet dinners
I told you that I was leaving
Going across the country
Moving 5,000 miles away
To where the air is always warm
And sun is in abundance
Leaving
To experience real life
For the first time
Mother
You took my haste decision to go
As nothing more than a reason for abandoment
To leave you
Alone
And longing
Just like my father did
But you see
Mother
I am not leaving to spite you
I am not leaving because I no longer need you
I am not leaving in attempt to forget every memory built in the drywall of this home
Mother
I am not leaving
To solely leave you
I am leaving
Because the roots I've planted refuse to grow here
I can not bloom into anything more than weeds and grass in an environment like this
In constantly cold weather
With bitter neighbors
In a town surrounded by people whos only intention
Seems to see you fail
I have failed too many times
To want to give up
I have lost myself on too many occasions
And am just finding out
Who I am
I know that
There is a longing in my heart for ocean
And sand between my toes
I want nothing more
Than to risk everything I have ever known
To be able to see through a different lense
I would rather lose it all
Than condemn myself to a life of unhappiness
Of wondering what could have been
Mother
I have never been one for small towns
And I have lived here long enough to know
That I don't want to come back
Mother
I know that
You're afraid
To be on your own
The typical story is usually about letting your little girl go
But there is no need to
Mother
I want you to hold on
And one day when you've pinned down the demons you've wrestled with for so long
The crippling anxiety that has left you confined to this house
The depression that has kept you prisoner to yourself
One day mother
When you finally overpower fear
And befriend adventure
You will join me
We will replant ourselves
Grow all of the petals we never before could
And become something beautiful
Mother
You have made me who I am
And regardless of where I go
You will always
Follow
Mother
I am leaving
So that one day you can
Too.

I have been
Piling my boxes of missed opportunity
Cursing at time for his ability to fly so quickly
Two weeks to go
And somehow I am
Still holding hope
That it's long enough for change to move in
To the house that I am leaving
Long enough
For the flowers I've planted inside myself to bloom
I have a garden built upon all of the chances
That I let pass me by
I have wasted too many good moments
With too many bad people
Spent far too many hours
Loving those who were poison
Feeding off of their arsenic touch
I was too naive
To notice that you were sacharrin
In a pool of sour lovers
I was too naive to want to change my perspective
To see you as anything more
Than arms to run to when my own were broken
You always somehow managed
To help me stand up when my bones turned to jello
And just when I get around
To realizing how much I need that embrace of yours
To be held against you as more than just what I have always been
To be looked at beyond the level of friend
Someone else has taken shelter in your home
I waited far too long to sign the lease to your heart
Now I am counting down the days
To when I will be 5,000 miles away in distance
And I wont be able to tell you
How much you mean to me
How much knowing you these past years
Has meant to me
I told you
That I love you
But I don't think you understand
That the kind of love I have for you
Does not crave to be platonic
The kind of love I have for you
Has recently gone from smoke to forest fire
From drizzle to lightning storm
I am aware that
The kind of love I have for you
Is not a kind that will be returned
But before I leave
I felt it necessary
To take some of this weight
Off of my already heavy heart
So that I am not haunted
By things left
Unsaid
And I said it once but I feel the need to say it again
I love you
I really
really
Love you
And also thank you
For
Saving me.

All of my belongings are strewn across the floor
lone socks, piled clothing, a book of poetry
the carpet is covered in empty bags and pens and pieces of notebook paper filled with lines I couldn't finish
I never found the right words to

I know I should be putting my life together
folding and storing and cleaning
I should be fixing the chip in the wall or doing something of importance
there are too many boxes I still haven't packed, but
all I'm thinking about is how to get you back

I should be moving out of this house into the next but
I'm wrapping myself in these same red sheets wishing you were sinking into the mattress with me
phantom feeling skin that isn't touching mine
longing like the hungry heart I always claim to not have
but here I am, starving again
insatiable

and when I leave I wont miss the salt in the air or
the sand building hills in every crack of the room
I wont miss the ink stained sunsets much
or the welcoming breeze that morning wakes me up with
I wont miss it at all

not the sound of waves or the way the moon looks when
everyone is too busy to notice
the stars and how they peek out during the vacant of night
not the crawl of sunlight through windows and
the dance the curtains do when the door is left open

not even the sounds coming from the alley outside in the middle of sleep
or the scratch of cars along the one way street
I wont miss it, I promise
there's no point in missing what I can always come back to

but I will miss you
I will the way I have for however long I haven't had you here
for whatever city you're in today
for whatever heart you're casing inside yours
for whatever one that isn't mine
how ironic it was that you used to be just a few blocks down the beach
now we're more than miles apart in distance
I wonder if your thoughts ever find their way to me

I buried too many feelings in the sand  
leaving seems an easier feat than digging up memories
and I don't think there's enough time in the world to get to where I need to be to be okay again

all of my belongings are strewn across the floor
lone socks, piled clothing and a book of poetry
the carpet is covered in empty bags and pens and pieces of notebook paper filled with lines I couldn't finish
I never found the right words to
I'm starting to think I never will

I go out to dinner with a near stranger
we sit on the same side of the booth and
I think about how you're the only one who
knows how much I hate that

I drink a drink with ***** and lime and
***** and it almost makes me feel like
I know who I am when I'm with someone else

I don't think of you often but last night I did
I remembered how your arms are the
only place where I am not self-conscious

I lie next to him on my balcony and
there are a lot of stars above us but
I'm the only one who notices

he is thinking about what I look like naked and
I'm counting how many hours of sleep
I will get if he leaves before 2

there is not an absence of feeling,
just a different kind than I'm used to
he touches my hand and I smile in
a way that doesn't feel forced

I spend a day with a near stranger and realize
there is so much he does not know about me,
so much he doesn't care to

like how I got my nose pierced at 14 or
the amount of time I spend in the mirror each morning
picking myself into something I can carry only semi-confidently

he only learns I can't ride a bike when he asks if I want to
he has no idea that my blonde is shielding a deep brown or
when I got the freckle above my lip or
the inch long scar underneath my chin

he doesn't care and that's okay
when he leaves we say I miss you but
in a different way than I'm used to

it is not a pain swelling to be morphined
nor is it a pulling from the gut but instead
it is the ever temporary desire to fill the excess lonely

we say I miss you and still mean it but
it is not the missing that a body feels for
a phantom limb

I am with him now and probably will be again but
moving on doesn't mean I don't miss you
it only means I'm trying not to

just because I'm all right doesn't mean
I don't wonder how you are
I can still be happy with the existence of a quiet ache

but yes I do
miss you,
I will until the day I can sleep without having to count sheep
I will miss you even if there are no stars in the sky to remind me

I don't think of you but last night I did
the moon was too bright and
I was the only one
who noticed

There are bits of poetry
And parts of lyrics
That slip out passed my lips
Every time I open them
There is so much beauty in voice
In language and in speaking
But there is also a magic in silence
In the up and down of chest to lungs
Air is the melody we all know how to hum to
My breath is the sound of crickets chirping
Even with my mouth closed I am singing
My pulse beats with a purpose
To remind me of the rhythm that is engrained deep within
My hands are always moving
Fingers never still
They are tapping to a song
That nobody else can hear
There is no stopping the music-
It is alive in me.

I will not say I love you like the rest
I will not put it in words
Instead
My love
Will come in reminders
In late night hellos
In moments of disbelief where I'll wonder out loud
How you possibly love something like this
My love
Will come in touch
In palms attempting to comfort shoulder
My love
Will come in laughs
In nudges
In squeezing of the hand
In the way my eyes fill with admiration
Every time I kiss you
And look at you
I will love you
But I will never tell you
That I do.

My summer love
We met on a warm Los Angeles evening
When the air was still and quiet
Cigarette smoke filling our lungs
I asked you for your secrets
You handed them over willingly
I placed mine in your palms for you to keep
As we talked minutes into hours
Into 4am and restlessness
The only time I have ever been content without sleep
My summer love
What a coincidence it was
To have met you when I did
What a convenience it wasn't
That you were from the other side of the country
Thousands of miles away in New York City
You left with the promise of return
But I think I knew you never would
My summer love
It has been more than a while
Since the few nights we spent together
Tangled and curling
Our bodies molding with familiarity
The irony of us as strangers
Loving like we weren't
I barely knew you then
I hardly know you now
But I am content
My summer love
We were never meant to last more than the week
Our lives were as different as we were passionate
Caught up in the moment
I am glad to have known you when I did
But realistic enough to accept past tense
You could not have loved me longer
Even if you tried to
I am glad you didn't
I am not sure it would have been worth it
What we had for that short time in June
Is something I will keep forever
It was fun while it lasted
But we ourselves,
Were not meant to.

Pablo Neruda wrote too many love poems
Almost all about how someone compares to the ocean
But he forgot
The often times both human
And nature
Are more storm than calm
The sea is reckless and unforgiving
And already there are too many writings
About softness and sweet
Too many sonnets about gentle
Love
Is not gentle
Love grabs from the roots and pulls with savage hands
Demands to be more than just flower
More than white petal admiration
Love is thorn and finger-pricking
Bleeding palms and heavy skin
Love
Is often ugly
And I am wondering how
Neruda found it possible
To find so much beauty in it
How it is possible
To write so much beauty
I can only guess
That he must have had a love
Greater than most
A love that molded his heart into convection oven
Spitting his words into saccharin and sweet
Candy for the world to savor in their mouths
Maybe he always wrapped his language in gold
Or maybe it's just that he saw what others couldn't
Found spark in the ordinary
Somehow managed
To string together letters in crochet
Sew them into masterpiece
I want a love
That can make me do the same
I still think Neruda
Wrote too many love poems
But it makes sense
When you are told to write what you know
And all you know
Is love.

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.

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.

I am done writing love poems
Done pouring my starving heart into a never ending buffet of possibility
Optimism has never been a specialty of mine
Therefore I can never seem to pinpoint the positives
Or any kind of genuine reality
Only uncertainty
And minor cracks in the foundation
I am skilled in hanging on to breaking rope
With the mindset that it will hold
Too many times have I unknowingly tied my own noose
With over analyzed thoughts
My soul is always eager
To grab at whatever arms shoot out towards me
Justifying the flaws in their grip
With the only alternative being seclusion
I used to avoid solidarity
For fear that isolation was a trap to being made undesirable
I now know this is myth
That being alone does not destroy your chances at finding love
Love is a term that I have never correctly defined
I have spelled it out on countless occasions
Unaware that my definitions were unsound
Romanticising the blatant errors in every episode
Believing that love was supposed to hurt
Engraining it into muscle memory
I have hurled myself towards black holes expecting nothing less than escape
Only to find that everything has an ending
From it all I have learned
That happiness through another can not be created with metaphors
And a sense of hope
That it can only be made with sincerity
Therefore
I am through with writing love poems
Through with throwing sentences at people like lassos
You cannot make someone love you
With words
You can only incite it
So I am done writing love poems
Until I find someone
Willing to write me
A novel.

Smells like the smoke coming from the 24-hour 711 next to the fright train
like the walk home from the part time job past the house he used to live in
like the cookies we made but never ate
like guilt slipping from cover
like I almost let it show
Sounds like daddy's cancer
like driving on the freeway with no music
like not speaking
like I don't know how to
like every ride home from the hospital
like the fireworks we lit a few months back in our front yard
like the mistakes I called choices
Feels like the first boy I let have me vulnerable
like the meeting of hand to face
like shaking shoulders into apology
like the forgiveness crawling from his lips
like my tongue unfurling with remorse coming too easy
like my voice echoing I'm sorry
like it is something I will always be
Tastes like swallowing a pill backwards
like Fireball mixed with the thick of cough syrup
like holding back a ****** nose
like vicodin dust between broken teeth
like waiting for another winter
Looks like leaving the front door open for the air to come in
like the snow building a cast around our insecurities
like it's never been this cold before
like this Chicago is a stranger we never loved
like the ****** he tried just once
like how once can be enough to **** us
like all the questions we never got answered
like when will the branches stop cracking?
what makes a flame keep growing?
and why are these memories still
breathing?

The odds of being struck by lightning
Are one in 3,000
I watched from a window
As 13 people that were not me
Got struck by it
Just a few feet away
From where I was standing
And I am left thinking
About how that could have so easily
Been me
Out of curiosity
I looked up odds in a lifetime
I wanted to know
How often things happen
What came up
Consisted only of odds of dying
And I laughed
Thinking
About all of the other odds
That were more important than death
That were more interesting
Than freak accidents
And demise
How about the odds of meeting someone
With the same exact name
Or the odds
Of loving someone who loves the same stuff
As you do
The odds
Of throwing a perfect game in baseball
Are one in 18,192
The odds of finding your soulmate
Are one in 10,000
And more people are concerned
Of getting bit by a shark than finding love
The chances of that happening
Are one in 11.5 million
Sharks are not the enemy
We are
If you ask me
I would say
I'd much rather focus
On the rare positives
There are good things that happen daily
That happen unexpectedly
It is better to hope for those
Than worry about ones unlikely
You can measure the past
All you want
Give it numbers
And try predict future
But one thing you cannot do
Is measure life.

I can't remember
If I told you I loved you
The first time we had ***
But knowing me,
I probably did
My fingernails digging into your back
Your face in my neck
I most likely whispered it into your ear
Said it softly but loud enough for you to hear
I said I love you
Like it could make you stay
Like it meant mutuality
Thinking that maybe the lack of space between us
Could hypnotize you into believing
That you loved me too
A part of me certain that the air particles
Could somehow sew us together
And that the inevitable reality
Lingering in the background
Could never detach us
Convinced myself
That we were an atom in pure form
Incapable of being split apart when we were this close together

***
Is not synonymous with feeling
I knew this to begin with
Love and lust
Like oil and water
Can be separated with ease
Television and movies
Trained me in the art of one night stands
But I never intended to have you for one night
I didn't wanted you for a week
I wanted you for the amount of time
Where we forget how long it's been
Memorizing every single one our limbs
Ribcage
Arm
Hands
Skin
Then ******* the demons out of each other
To rectify our sins
Making love until we have no recollection
Of who we were before we learned each other's bodies
We were nobody
Before the conquer of this foreign territory
I wanted to surrender
From the moment we touched
But making love is so similar to make believe
That it gets hard
To tell the difference sometimes

When I slept next to you on your couch
My back pressing into the ridged corners of the sharpness
It was not out of convenience
It was out of purpose
Believing that withstanding the ache
Would show you how much I cared
Forgetting that your heart
Belonged to someone with a different name
In different city
Yet every night you still called my body home
Coming back to it repeatedly
Like a drunken wanderer
I thought if you did enough times
You would never want to leave
I convinced myself
That letting you **** me
Was one step closer
To getting you to stay

***
Is not synonymous with permanence
We should have never done it to begin with
Knowing quite well you were here
With the intention of temporary
I talked myself into your skin
Thought if I wrapped myself in it
Deeply enough
You would do the same
To me
My body
Was nothing more than a grave yard
For you to hide your secrets in
No treasure,
No gold

I buried my love for you
Into the curve
Of your collarbone
I bet it would still be there
If you looked for it
But I know
You wont.