you can't find me in a summer dream
darling
i'm a 3 a.m. cold sweat scream
darling
you won't remember me like a soft breeze
darling
i'm a force that'll bring you to your knees
darling

when you use all of your water on one plant,
you drown it.

You won’t remember this
but that time we sat
on the steps of your cousin’s place
in Brooklyn, Hewes St., one October night,
where we stayed out
and talked till three A.M.,
our fingers chapped,
our noses tinged crimson.
I remember it because
you were cold and I gave you
my jacket, the black one
I’d only just bought the day before
and you said wow, look at those goosebumps
popping up along your arms,
but sorry, I’m colder, I’m wearing this now.
We’d been to see a concert
at Madison Square Garden,
and they were all there,
Billy, Dave, Hayley,
to celebrate your birthday five days early.
They knew, you knew
every single word,
hurling them at the band
like verbal snowballs,
your hair a brunette blur,
strobe lights in our eyes.
We left with headaches
bursting open as flowers,
sweat trapped in my fringe.
Dave was into you,
did I ever mention that?
He’s been to see you
and sometimes speaks
but he finds it difficult.
We all do if I’m honest.
Anyway, we took the F
and then the J.
By 11.56 we were tired
but not quite tired enough.
I was going to walk you home
but we never left those steps.
We looked up and down the street,
said what cars we liked and why.
A Honda HRV, avocado-green
stood out to you, a hulking skeleton of metal
I said looked ugly.
You were lonely then.
Any attention was guzzled up, I could tell.
I rambled on so much
it stopped sounding English
but there was giggling, smiling,
puffs of breath whirling away from us.
You told me your only friend
was your reflection in store windows.
Surely not true.
We all said that.
Hayley told you to snap out of it
but you didn’t know how to snap out.
And when you rang on Friday morning
we all should have listened,
clutching our phones
making sense of it all.
Now you won’t remember
and there’s blood on my wrist.
that came from someone else.

If you asked me to tell
where the ceiling ends and
the walls begin,
I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
When I think about you
everything blurs into black
like an unkindness of ravens.
And I—
You are
the only thing that ever
crosses my mind as soon as
dusk turns into night,
and I could never tell you why.
I like to think that
just as birds know when to fly
and time knows when to die,
I was meant to love you.

How do you stop writing about pain
and start writing about softness?
How do I stop talking about the way it hurt
when you hugged me so loosely?
Like if that's how you gripped me when my life depended on it, I'd go tumbling down?
How do I stop writing about emptiness?
About how, though there are millions of
stars in the sky, there are gaps in-between
all of them and sometimes the blackness
swallows me?
How do I start writing about how
comforted the sun makes me feel when it
wraps it's warm rays around my wrist
on days I hang my arm out the driver's
window?
How do I start writing about how big the
world is?
About how, if I wanted, I could pick up and move to anywhere on Earth?
About how colorful the world is?
From indigo skies
to infinite pallets of quizzical colors
that boggle my mind and keep me in
wonder?
About the greens of rainforests, and reds of
dirt, and oranges of canyons, and yellows
of light, and blues of seas, and purples of
mystery,
and how when you combine all of those colors, it paints hope in the blackness that
lingers in dark corners of me?

I guess it starts here.

You pick me up and kiss my open mouth in the middle of a "hello" and an apology for my hair
I kissed you back and forgot what I was even saying

small things

you ran ahead of me to open your car door
even after I get in you look at me for a moment before you close the door

you push me on swings even though you hate swings, I'll never really know why will I?

we got fast food and drove circles around the city we love
you took pictures of me in front of buildings
I took pictures of you eating

I feel most alive right then

We drive home and race the indigo sunrise
I like watching you drive
I wanna break the concentration in your eyes

I can't feel my face when I'm with you is playing- I turn it up to wake us both up
we sing at the top of our lungs to each other and even though you're tone deaf, I can't help but smile and cheer you on because you're the best singer I know.
The smallest things you do make me feel like everything is the way it's supposed to be
I'm supposed to be in this moment with you

I never feel more complete than when we become one
Vibrations turn to colors
Sounds melt into pillows
I'm finally able to be yours
I think I've entered a new realm of release, are you here with me too?

You drive me into sanity

Isn't it weird how we see the image of stars that no longer exist when we look into the night sky? Sort of like looking into a mirror and seeing the reflection.