I wanted to write a poem about flowers, so that's what I did.
It was short, expressed how I feel, and cut like glass.
I showed my father "Flowers" and he thought it was mediocre.
And I said, "No, "Mediocre" is the poem where I talk about dying,
and I'm trying to stay alive, so I wrote about flowers."

Flowers strangling soil plots with their roots, with their existence.
And to hurt something you love with your existence is a terrible feeling.

breathe.
because you know what you
do when someone ***** you
over? you calmly take your
heart out of their hands
and leave. you think maybe
you'll sew it back on to
your sleeve but not now, not
today. you put their things
in a box (their cds, their
shirts, their books, their
notes, the little things you
picked up on your dates)
and you put it on the
highest shelf in your
closet, because someday
you will want to remember
them, maybe. if you don't
want to remember them, you
give them the box, you
donate the box, you throw
the box in the river. and
you breathe. because you
deserve better. you deserve
someone who doesn't consider
you a fallback, a plan b.
you will be someone's plan.
you will be the only plan.
you will be my-god-what-
was-i-doing-before-you-
walked-around-that-
corner. remember that
you are enough.
breathe.

she was left , half dead , and a word was struggling to get out of her lips.

*w h y ?

I admired things no one understood.

his fluid being mimics that of cigarettes;
death chopped up and rolled
into a curious little thing

i could hold him in my hands
but that is a mere only;
his wonderment insufficient
my soul too mammoth

my lips crave the grim reaper's touch
my skin detests the flawlessness of
staged idiosyncrasy
this world has seen enough
of those
you yell misanthrope,
but you do not understand

i seek
the intertwining of
precariousity
intimacy marked by fluttering thumbs
tracing specks of golden
on his cheeks

galaxies splashed across the
bridge of his nose
he is everything i yearn
yet;
everything i cannot be
he is my exotic morns
and my sunday siesta
fingertips outline
connect-the-dot maps
i could only ever get lost in


freckles.

like a lacklustre silence
the end of sentences pinpointing areas
chipped fingernails have lusted to memorise

you only crave what you know cannot be.

There are things that I don't usually tell people
things like I wish I could remember my fathers voice
or that sleeping alone is the most daunting thing I face in darkness
I don't tell people that I pray for them at night
or while I'm on the subway
or walking home from work
I don't tell people that they brighten my day
or that they make it a little easier to breathe
but i know I should
There are things I keep to myself
like that i discovered the fine line where being independent becomes being lonely
I don't tell people I still think of you so many months later
and I don't tell people that you haunt my dreams even though i've only known you for a week
I don't remind my friends that I do love them
I don't tell the boy on the corner that his smile makes my cheeks hot
i don't
instead
I say things like :
I want to *******(i want to be close to you)
I'm fine(its hard to get out of bed today)
I love working so much(i wish other people still took care of me)
There are things I don't usually tell people
I don't explain the scars when they see
I let them fill in the blanks themselves

"17 bullets in his body"

I'll never forget
those words
the doctor had said
while my man was on his death bed

17 bullets
17.

And it was the 17th of March

On our 17th anniversary
And I heard those words
At 1:07 am

17 bullets
and we were both 17 when we first laid eyes on each other
that day when you came over to our house with my brother
and it was the 17th of March

17.