The only studying we ever got done
together was anatomy,

you whispering the names of bones into
my skin, each followed with a kiss-

clavicle

sternum

ilium

patella

Each word sparking through my skin
and into the blood coursing around my
body.
Making alpines of my skin with each of
your exhales.

It's much warmer here beneath the sheets
than between the pages of your books.

The Places I’ve been
I’ve been in rain, I’ve stood
In puddles and I have watched
As the pools of water climb up my pant leg
I’ve traveled to different continents
I’ve hiked up the mountains that separate them
And I thought I had seen most of everything
The dips of this world and its highest peaks
And after all of this seeing
After all of these places of being
The place I remember seeing the best
Was a place I wouldn’t have guessed
Some rink-**** of a church out west
And even now I cannot tell you what
Art looks like inside the Louvre
But every detail of those nuns I can tell you know
The sound of their forks hitting metal plates
The sound of those same forks when
They were pulled between teeth
Their black coats fraying against the ground
Their protruding knees as they bend down
When they were praying the tiny mumbles
From a distance sounded like sweet-nothings
And I thought that this was their version
Of making love to the Lord.

Kindness and goodness are only genuine when the motivations they come from are born of morality and not fear.

I stopped breathing last night,
dreams of weights resting on
my chest woke me flailing,  
calling for help without a voice.
In my dream we were in your room
and you were sleeping on my
chest the way that you used to.
We'd had a fight about my best friend
about how you thought that he was
in love with me just like
that barista at our café and
my scruffy coworker and just about
everyone on my train ride home.
I told you,
(I think I screamed a little)
that it wasn't possible because I had you.
You said I had a Dickinson heart
but I didn't understand your
literary references
(because by this point I was crying)
and so you kissed me and laid me
down and I woke up
suffocating.
You were sitting on my chest, darling,
grinning at me.

I know a girl who tries to read people the way she reads books.
But people aren't two dimensional, and they can't be pressed into
page after page of dialogue and action. Black and white stand as a
testimony to truth, but reality comes in a variety of shades and
when her blood comes out red and sings a tune sweeter than any book
or bible written by man, she is left somewhere between fiction and non-fiction.
The badlands of indecision, where her beliefs search for a home built on rock
instead on the sand.

If I could, I'd buy us enough acid to last everyday
for the rest of our natural born lives. Just hoping
that the trip would take us back to the night when
you painted rainbows on the insides of my eyelids.

If it was possible, I'd brand your fear of needles
onto the surface of all my organs.  So that I would
always remember the time you let me see the
scared sick little boy still hiding inside your skin.
So that maybe, he could hide inside my skin too.

If magic were real, I'd use a spell to make a
quilt with our story on it, the way it should have
ended. And every time I felt alone, every time
the panic threatened to close my throat, I would
pull the quilt over my head, and be able to live
in what could have been.

If I could,  I would crawl inside one of the
pink and yellow capsules the doctors gave you
and after you swallowed me down I would
climb up through your blood vessels to the brain.
Stopping only to see the heart I love so dearly.
I would build bridges over your broken synaptic cleft
and bribe your brain chemicals to walk the
straight and narrow. I'd tell them how their careless
vagrancy has left your eyes empty and your aura dark.

Mint green nails, trailing across your faded black tattoos.

The ability of bandanas to cover up out grown roots that I'm
too broke to touch up.

Long showers when no one is home to yell at me for wasting water.

The way your lips feel against mine, so safe and familiar,
and how your mouth tastes like a bad habit.

The white of battle scars against my summer tan.