I've become afraid of the dark.

I lost my sunshine,
The reason I wake up
The way all my deep rooted efforts bud
The light on my path of love;
I lost you.

I find myself too many times
Wondering when you're gonna fill the space in my bed
Because you already filled the hole in my heart,
So I figured you'd be open to the idea.

My fingers never stop twitching
And I can't help but think
That they're looking for yours
To latch on to and never let go
like teenage summer nights
Filled with pinky promises
In which we both realized
That you cant break something
as sacred as us.

My mind is always running now.
I think its trying to catch up to you
Lapping past any other thought process in my head,
Speeding faster than my heartbeat
When we make eye contact
and I fall in love with you all over again.

There's plenty of girls out here in college
But now that I'm at the point
That my eyes dart from girl to girl,
Frantically hoping that one of them will save me
By taking the shape
of the most beautiful girl in the world
And being you by surprise,
I start to notice
That I bite my nails now more than ever,
Nervous that if you become anything less than my primary concern, my body wont know how to respond anymore.

My legs wont stop moving
Because they're a bit lost
Now that they're not trying to trip you
Until you fall a little bit more in love with me;
I think my ADD is growing.

I cant focus on anything
except trying my hardest
To remember
the feel of your curves,
the grace of your hair,
The tingle in my lips when we kiss,
The perfect harmony of your voice,
The slight slouch of your stance,
The heartwarming laugh you make
Before you smile,
The way your tears felt on my chest
The last time I was able to hold you.

I think
I'm in love.
I think
My body is trying to escape it, but
I think
I finally found out
What its like
To feel alive.
You gave me ADD -
Addictively Deep Devotion.

Sunlight peeks In between silk curtains,
Sparking my whole being into motion.
Today starts.

  11:00am -
  I roll out of bed
  And wake up to a sweet goodmorning
  From you.
  I keep this huge smile
  While my morning shower washes away
  The sins of yesterday's memories.
  While I make bacon and eggs,
  You make your way to my door.
  Your knock is like the alarm clock
  For the butterflies in my stomach
  Scrambling all over.

    3:00pm -
    Our moans fade into a sweet ambience;
    Your bare skin on mine feels like
    I'm lounging in the clouds above our heads.
    We basque in the amazing energy
    Our seeds of love bloomed into.
    Please stay. Pretty please?

      7:00pm -
      Our nap comes to an end.
      We hope our goodbye kisses
      Are merely just holding us over til tomorrow.
      You might be going back to your house, but
      You and I both know
      Your home is where my heart is.

        1:00am -
        I've been in bed for three hours,
        Restlessly tumbling from side to side in bed
        Trying to get to sleep.
        With you in my life,
        No dream compares
        To another breath I share with you.
        **I love you. So much.

When God took one of my ribs
And breathed life into you,
He did more than just create
The most beautiful body of work
I'll ever lay my eyes on.

He made my heart that much easier to touch.

You don't just make my heart skip a beat,
You are the reason I still have a pulse;
You push blood through my veins
Breathe fresh air into my lungs
Spark my neurons into a frenzy
Like how light particles scatter
When they hit the diamonds studded into your smile;
You are an amazing body of work.

The first time you told me
That you loved me,
I felt like angels lifted me out of a coma
And rested me upon heaven's highest clouds.
Your lovely virus took over my whole being;
So if this is the disease,
Don't give me a remedy,
Because I never knew
That when you're dying to get more love from someone,
you'll feel more alive than ever before.

Kiss me until our lips grow numb,
Lock hands with me so tightly
that our arthritic fingers
Will never be able to separate,
Send static shocks up my spine
By making me fall in love with you
Over and over again each time
You stare through me
With a look that screams out
That you love me as much as I love you.

You..
Are living proof
That there really is such thing
As perfection.
You completely embody
What wonders God can do.
You..
Are an amazing body of work.

I can't.
Bombs and missiles are flying everywhere;
Gunshots are whistling past my ears,
These nights are becoming the battleground of wars
Between my logic and my love;
Mind and heart fight back and forth
With neither daring to give up any ground.

Blood seeps into the soil,
Feeding this seed you planted inside of me,
And a flower grows amidst all chaos.
You kiss me to make it all feel better,
The tears you drop fall on the budding rose,
Its thorns scraping my feet while i try to run away from whatever hurts the most at the time -
I get tangled in its lengthening vines..

Until finally, your love has me constricted, gasping for air,
I need a fresh breath,
A momentary cease in fire,
A lapse in everything -
An *I love you.
But this time, a real one.

I can't tell
If I'm looking at
the New York City skyline
Or into your eyes,
Contemplating a bright future
With you and I;
I can already tell that
You're something along the lines
Of one of a kind.

But I was just another Philly boy.

Blessings don't nearly encompass
The satisfaction that sets in me
When your voice
Pierces my eardrums;
You keep my heart warm
In the face of any blizzard storm,

If my heart was a compass,
You'd be my true North.
If God charged you for beauty,
Then my darling, you'd be poor.
If love is a path, then baby,
You're opening all the doors,
and when I hear your voice,
My whole being is begging for more.

They have to make a sixth borough
Just for how big my heart grew
While you've decided upon me.
I've dreamt of your angel wings
Taking us over the Verrazano bridge
Countless times;
Time Square wishes its bright lights
Could one day rival your smile,
I'll race Rocky Balboa
To the top of the Art Museum steps
A million times over
To prove that I'll go any length
To hold your hand.

I was just a Philly boy..
But then I found my Queen of Queens.

I can now walk like a king, knowing
That your fingers are interlocked with mine.
I can love myself,
I can love my world,
I can love my faith,
But most importantly,
I can love you.

**Let's paint our towns red.

Depression suffocates me
until I am begging
for just one more breath on the floor -
the aftermath of my overdose taking its toll.
Poetry is my oxygen tank.

It is a bit challenging to accept
that after feeling so low,
I felt that getting high was my only choice.
To wake up to hell for 16 hours a day,
only to have nightmares
I have never found myself able to outrun,
no matter how fast the alcohol seeps into my bloodstream -
it's almost scary to realize
that my life has fallen to this.
Long nights in basements
filled with scarlet red cups become synonymous
with dreadful episodes in the bathroom
staining the sink blood red -
We're merely trying to escape.
Depression, however, isn't just a phase -
It's a lifestyle.

Depression isn't feeling sad
when everything goes wrong -
it's not being able to accept
that everything is alright.
It isn't crying over spilled milk,
it's being the delicate glass
that was tipped just too hard,
rolled over and cracked
with a resounding smash
on the ground.
What people don't get
is that no matter how much tape or glue you use,
that glass will never be the same as its original self -
It isn't temporary - it's permanent.

It is hard to admit that I am sick.
The pills won't help,
the drugs won't help,
the people won't help -
the scariest part is that
I have to help myself.
When you've fallen into a hole this deep,
you don't simply climb out -
you claw and fight
until you can finally get a grip
on the beauty that life holds for us
and keep it to you tighter than ever.
Whenever I love something,
I hold onto it like the Earth
keeping the moon in perfect orbit
until the end of time,
in the hopes that it's not
just another wandering asteroid
that accidentally found its way into my atmosphere,
in which case the impact
leaves permanent craters on my psyche,
splashing the debris into the air,
covering up the sun
until I'm done tripping out and finally come to.

On one random Wednesday,
I blacked out.
Hours of my life in my memory
are simply gone.
Over the course of two hours,
I found my way
to the 5th floor of an unknown dorm,
face down and unresponsive in my own *****.
The next two hours consisted of EMTs
trying to force me to keep going;
all I uttered for those 7200 seconds:
**** me.

When they held my body,

Long detached from conscious thought,

I felt like I was being pressed into nothing.
As they held me down
with enough force to subdue my thrashing nervous system,
my world slipped away,
l i t t l e   b i t   b y   b i t .
I felt the dry heaves push out
any remnants of life I had remaining.
When they stuck me with the IVs,
needles pierced every inch of my body
for hours on end.
I saw hell for one night -
scary enough, in my period of unresponsiveness,
I crossed the threshold of life and death once.
I lost my heartbeat for three seconds.
Who knew that one **** hit
would almost give me one last night on Earth?

We all have our ways of coping.
Some cut.
Some rebel.
Some don't care.
I write. I speak. I live.
Poetry is my lifeline.
Somehow, words become much more
than just a collection of letters;
they become my heartbeats
translated into English.
It's almost scary that the only words
besides '**** me' that I remember from my trip are,
'you have to write about this. people have to know.'

Poetry is my oxygen tank.
*Take a deep breath with me.

Growing up was a bit difficult.

They always said
That it is easier to frown than smile.
Maybe they were right -
It is so much easier to feign a smirk
than to ask for help.

You feel so much less than human
because your mind holds a weak memory
of what it meant to be whole;
Maybe, despite everything,
I am still human,
But all I feel
is that I'm dying here.
People toss jokes up in the air
Like balloons flying up towards the sky;
Unaware that, though they'll never see them again,
They keep floating and floating
to the top of our heads
Until they explode from too much pressure.
Life's hills and valleys become canyons and mountains
And when someone tells me to just get over it,
I don't think they realize
The monumental effort that goes into that;
As if I can't wait to wake up to a cold sweat
Worked up by running away
from the vivid nightmares that I had
During the few minutes that my body actually was asleep,
or that I'm absolutely thrilled
To perfectly plan out my last breath,
Writing suicide notes on our wrists
And numbing what little grip we have on reality
by popping pill
                      after pill
                               after pill
until you have enough drugs in your system
To never feel pain again.

Friends tell you that they'll be there for you.

Parents say it's just a phase.

The doctor claims antidepressants will do the trick.

But the friends won't keep you grounded
When your lifeless body is left hanging by a noose;

you can't have another phase
If you throw yourself into Hell for eternity
And those ******* antidepressants
Have side effects
of increased depression and suicidal tendencies,
So that instead of taking my daily doses,
I'll plug my throat with every last pill
until the suffocation drowns out
All the noise.
I can't just get over it.
I need help,
Because I am depressed.
But I refuse to let this turn into my suicide note.*
Instead,
Let me put to word the voices of millions
who are afraid of finding out
just how much worse tomorrow can get.

The last time I made an 11:11 wish,
I asked God to remind me
what the definition of amazing was.

And then you came along.

I almost thought I was going half crazy
because you were half perfect and half impossible;
Please tell me how
You were able to demolish walls I had put up
To stop girls like you from
Making my nervous stutter come back,
Or how you show me the Earth
In your vibrant green eyes;
Two worlds spinning,
Two different realities,
You put me in a new world,
You have me playing hopscotch on the clouds -
Please, let your lips put me on high again.

I'm not exactly sure
How you could numb my whole body
With just one touch,
And I'm still puzzled
As to why my stomach scrambled
When my fingers filled the gap between yours,
These freezes in time come along
With my heartbeat halting -
The only thing keeping me alive
Are the shocks you send up my spine,
Explaining how you leave the hairs on my neck
Standing at attention.

I find constellations
In your freckles,
Marvel at the aligning of stars in your smile,
Trace tails of comets down your curves,
Let's come back down to earth,
Cause earthquakes from how hard you hit me,
Dive head first into my mind the size of the seven seas,
Swim to the new places and things you've shed light on;
This new world you have shown me,
I feel like an alien on it
Because I didn't think it really existed
Before our spaceship took off.

I'm not too sure
I want gravity to pull me down again.

When I felt you tremble,
I felt the earth quake beneath me
Like I stood on high grounds;
You pounded emotion into me
With playful punches
And hard stares;

But I'm not supposed to like you like this.

The way your hair falls
And the way my finger feels curling in it;
The freckles on your face
And the heart I formed connecting them,
Your voice that is a song playing on repeat, repeat, repeat
Release me from your spell -

Because I am not supposed to like you like this.

Tension builds like the walls I put up
To protect myself from a girl like you,
A girl that will come marching through
With the audacity
To make me break rules set in stone,
Because I don't care that

I'm not supposed to like you like this.

Your teeth align in your smile
Like the planets during a solar eclipse -
Girls like you come along once every other millennium,
You are the reason I pray to God
For every good thing that has happened to me
On days when nothing goes right
You are the hammer that shattered any standards I had.

You are the reason I am walking like a KING.
You are my QUEEN.

You look so beautiful right underneath me;
This isn't just another hook up
Why are my lips tingling
and my mind mingling
Somewhere between us and the heavens?
When will I remember to start breathing again?

You are not just a friend -
you are the girl
That I am not supposed to meet.
Why am I connecting to you
like steel chains that cannot break?

Emotions became synonymous with skyscrapers -
We're touching the clouds,
We're getting higher and higher
My lips
fall lower and lower;
You
Get closer and closer,
I am being pushed
Further further,
Im not supposed

To be writing a poem like this.

Your moans should not be in perfect harmony
With my panting,
You should not have a necklace of hickies and bite marks,
Your pants should not be on the floor,
I'm not supposed

*To be feeling good about this.

So..

Ive been thinking about you a lot lately.
At this point in time, i should probably be studying *Mathematics
But instead, I'm looking to add us two together
Because it wouldn't be nearly as complicated as long division
To subtract all the zeroes in my life
Until its just you and I as a final product.
The only thing I really got out of calculus
Was that a great relationship could be our derivative.
I think the function for Y
This is happening is because
You have made
an X-ceptional difference
In my life;
Your beauty's limits are just imaginary numbers.

But -
I think I should review my English notes,
Because, I swear- We're just like Romeo and Juliet!
... minus the whole killing ourselves thing,
There aren't enough words in any dictionary
To completely envelop the feelings I have that make me so wary,
Now that you've torn down my walls, I hate being vulnerable,
You've gotten so close, so fast -
i can almost feel you hugging my soul.

Pero, uhh, donde esta mi libro de Espanol?
Porque
hay una mujer que domina mis sentidos con solo tocar mi piel,
y solo por un beso con ella soy feliz.

But in all seriousness.
The Chemistry we have is undeniable.
You take away all the oxygen in the room
When you get my blood boiling
And stomach toiling
when our eyes lock;
A limitless amount of reactions are unfolding
With you being my catalyst for my heart beating
Every time our hands are meeting.

Its now 5th period, Psychology,
When we kiss, its visualized neurology
Because my lips still tingle when you allow me
To go clinically crazy,
I'm only left to plead insanity
After our physiological fallacy.

Or maybe i should crack open my History textbook,
Because all I ever hear about
Is how Benjamin Franklin was a ****,
And that crazy chick from 300 stabbed her love affair,
Or, quite simply,
How nothing good ever lasts.
Well, I don't know why I'm even in school anymore,
Because I feel like you and I reversed millenniums
Of misguided relationships,
Because with finger locked,
We ran through Berlin Walls that said
High school romance was stupid,
And practically caused World War 3
When so many jealous lovers realized
That the only weapon of mass destruction
Is the undeniable army of two that we have become.
I'd say
We're a bit closer
To that old couple from The Notebook!
..wait..
they die too.

So the last bell has rung,
You made me late to every class,
But if my homework was just to love you,
**There'd be no doubt that I'd pass.

Lately, I've found myself daydreaming
About swimming through space -
I want to become the Moon, solely
So that I can show you
That you are my world
And my life revolves around you, my love, you -

are my star filled sky.
No city skyline
Shines bright enough
To keep you out of sight.


The first time our orbits intersected,
Our collision created a black hole,
And you pulled me in
With no chance of getting out,
No matter how hard
Any force in the galaxy tries,
Inexplicable by any means,
Except that, just simply-
I need you.

When i gaze into your eyes,
i feel solar flares leaving burn marks on my heart;
As if the sun decided that it would rather
Rise and set with your blinks,
Leaving me blinded by your beauty.
Chain reactions of supernovas are going off in my head
At the mere thought of you,
Unleashing a nest of butterflies
Scrambling in my stomach,
Unsure of how to reach the sky
Except through a passage
Your lips reveal to me.

Every time we touch,
I'm diving headfirst into the Milky Way;
Your smooth skin's mere grazing
Keeps me together,
All the while ripping me apart, because
Im not sure how to deal with,
Someone as amazing as you.

Sometimes, I hope that one day
You will settle down
In the warm home of my heart,
As we cook hot dinner plates
Of affection and perfection,
With love so stellar,
we are steaming spaghetti
In the big dipper,
You get my blood boiling,
My tongue rolling,
Love is unfolding,
Because
if you're in my presence
I might as well unwrap you, right?

Orion's belt is the only thing
Holding me back
When I have you to myself,
Your curves bending and winding
Reminds me of moons
waxing and waning In perfect orbit.

You are an asteroid that hit me hard
with no chance of recovery,
The impact you've made
Is bigger
than any grand canyon sized crater;
Every night I go to sleep
And I recite my normal prayers,
I say, God -
I don't know what i would do
If you didn't create her.

Shooting star sparks fly off of our lips when we kiss,
And this time, I'm wishing
That I will not have to say goodbye,
Because we have become
A complex binary star system
In perfect equilibrium;
We are One in a
Million,
Billion,
Trillion,
Quadrillion,
You take me
To infinity and beyond.

You take me
to a whole new level.

You have me flying higher than comets,
My love will go any distance
Until I fizzle out
To nothing more
Than matter dispersed
Across the universe.
I will traverse galaxies
To reach for your hand.

The once in a lifetime opportunity of meeting you
Is a solar eclipse
Of all the pathetic red giants
Who implode at the sight
Of the smile you put on my face
and put to shame
All the airplanes
With blinking lights
Yearning to catch my eye
And fool me into thinking
That there is a replacement for
the new constellation we have made
Called love;
My love,
You
Are my north star.

Please.. do not ever stop shining.

When I saw you, I knew already
That you were the kind of girl
boys like me write poems about.

We first met on our way to the beach
But I figured
You'd be giving me the tan
Because your smile
Was at least 10 times as bright
As the sun;
I didn't dare call you beautiful
Because I felt like it'd be an insult
To not fully encompass
How fast my jaw dropped
When we made eye contact.

You probably haven't given me
Much of a second thought,
But to be honest, I haven't either -
My mind is still stuck on the first time
You pierced my conscious
And staked claim on my attention
As if it was just another sandcastle
You wanted to name after yourself.

You crashed into me
Like waves of saltwater
And knocked me down
With the surprise
That God decided he'd rather watch one of his angels
Play tag with my senses while i try to pinpoint
Exactly what it is about you
That's has left me mesmerized.

You're the cool breeze.
You give me goosebumps when you come my way,
Pacifying the billions of beads of sand
To make way for a queen entering her throne.

You are the setting sun,
Making everything you touch
Just a bit more breathtaking by association,
making me wish i could freeze time
Just so i could completely absorb
All that you have to offer.
Your laugh reminds me
Of the gentle ebb and flow of the tide,
A serenade reminding you that,
For the time being,
Everything will be alright.

The next time I go to the beach,
I do not want the saltwater kissing my skin,
I want to walk on water
From your lips kissing mine.

I really wish this day
Would never end.

We loved
With a love
That I didn't know existed.

This is not a love poem;
This is a ballad
Of all the sweet love songs
that finally made sense,

This is a dictionary
Defining the new outlook on life you gave me,

This is the final scene
Of something so perfect,
It had to be nothing much more than fiction.

God stitched together
All of my cuts and wounds
With thread made of your touch,
Your scent, your voice,
Your laugh, your hair flip,
Your 'I love yous', your leftover strands of hair
Still clinging to all of my clothes,
As if this distance between us
Was never there in the first place.

We were like Romeo and Juliet,
Discarding what everyone had to say.

I loved you like I was an abused dog
Straggling along, pouncing on any piece of meat
That came my way
Until you held me tight close to you,
Letting me know that
It'd all be okay.

Your love rivaled that
Of the Sun and the Moon,
You had shed light on my world
When I couldn't see
Past my insecurities and downfalls,
And brought shooting star showers down upon me
When it seems like the bad days could not get any longer.

We trekked over hills and valleys
And sure, sometimes, we slipped -
but we always made sure
That we got back up and kept going.

Our love was a perfect melody,
And sometimes, we struck a sour note,
But your voice was always a beautiful symphony
That slowed everything back down to its right pace.

I loved you
like diamonds yearning
For the perfect ray of light
To grace its surface
So that it may project a perfect spectrum
Upon your naked left ring finger
That i had daydreams every day
Of staking as my territory.

We were a binary solar system
In supposed equilibrium
Until your gravitational pull
Ripped away all my outer layers
And you left me vulnerable,
so that you could use all my flaws
To become a black hole
and tear my whole being to shreds.

I loved you
Like the breeze loves flowing through
Your hair, making a cascading waterfall
that left me drowning in your beauty.
But now -
You're not mine anymore.
*And I'm not okay with that.