You can’t be real
you hold me until we fall asleep
I just hold still
when I wake and you don’t
You call me baby,
and I never thought I’d like that much
But I think that maybe,
that might just be enough.

my name's on the gold card she said
membership went straight to her head
told her *******
turned into a cough
smiled, said thank you instead

A peck of his lips filled with sin
     my labored breathing  
          his calloused hands wander my body
          exploring every inch of me
He holds my hand
      and steals my breath
           with a rope he found in the kitchen
Calloused hands wander over my body
     as he lay me with his ex lovers
          each more beautiful than  the next
          each more grave than the last
Beware of boys with blue eyes like sapphires dropping in the ocean

sometimes,
i don't know what to say.
so i won't say much.
or i won't say
anything.

i'll just
let our eyes meet,
let my skin
brush against yours,
let you see
my cheeks
burn
the colour of redwood.

and then?
and then i will hope.
i will hope
for that to be enough.

with my hand
on your thigh
and your hand
over mine.

and my heart
saying everything
my mouth
can not.

we were in the back seat of his car the first time that he kissed me. it was sweet and it was young and it was innocent and i couldn't fully focus on it because i heard a song through the speakers on the dashboard and laughed about how wrong the lyrics were when i sang it to myself

take me down to paradise city,
where the tips of his calloused fingers softly run over the tops of mine because he is too shy to actually hold my hand;
                  where the air smells like the ocean and the sky is as bright as his eyes are when he's  
                  passionate about something;
   where the woods are always empty but we still run through them every
   wednesday night because those are the nights that his mother isn't home and his father still
   breaks out tequila and gin because he didn't get the daughter he wanted

oh, won't you please take me home?
and he better not ask me what my address is because he should know that a home is different than a house and my home can be found deep within the far away corners of his wandering mind, and in the valves in his heart which are accompanied by a slow heart rate because he's built like an athlete even though he's too timid to try out for football like his brother did

people usually name islands in the caribbean when asked about paradise, but if the textbook definition is a place of a extreme beauty and happiness, my answer will always be honest when i say that my paradise is anywhere i can get lost with him,

like the back seat of his car

when you died
i threw your skeleton into my closet
because i couldn't let go of the boy
who told me i didn't need skinny legs
to be beautiful and that it was okay to
drink water when everyone else was
drinking beer

but your skeleton has skinnier legs
than i do and i'm left getting drunk
off old photographs and songs that
sing the words that you used to sing
to me when we sat in parking lots
on wednesday nights doing nothing but
laughing and not saying what we really
wanted to say

i like you a lot
i love you more
i hate you sometimes
please don't leave
i'm really going to miss you

i locked myself in the closet yesterday
with your skeleton
with the memories
i could hear you laugh and
things were okay
(for once)

if you tell me that you love me, i will not say it back

instead, i will tell you that your voice reminds me of indian chai tea and that your lips taste the way i thought cherry blossoms would and that i'd much rather sleep pressed up against your skin than under a sheet — i will tell you that i plug in my headphones to listen to your heartbeat and that you make me want to scream and cry and buy a one-way ticket to the other side of the world just to get away from you and i will tell you that i feel like i am skydiving without a parachute because i have never fallen so hard or so fast and that's scary and yet i have never felt more alive than when i am with you