have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.

i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader  
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear

I've done and am doing
everything I can to avoid you
and save you from feeling uncomfortable
standing in line for drills, I'll give you
almost a ten-foot berth
it surprises and shocks me
when I still see your face
looking slightly disgusted
or when you and your sister make eye contact
I can't help but wonder if you've deduced it,
figured out, that though
I have no right to be jealous and hurt
I still am
and though
you do not belong to me
I love you like someone suffocating in the heat
who only occasionally gets a breath of cold air
and even then, it is just a trickle
for I am dying to stay away from you
dying when I keep you close
my heart is struggling, limply pounding
frail against my ribs, there's nothing left of me
because its all for you, I changed myself
a named bullet
or a placard on a seat at a table
saying 'here, this one's for you'
my mannerisms have changed
my dance, my walk, my voice, my sense of humor
consciously or subconsciously,
I have branded my soul
molded it into a you-shaped whole
but then
you never liked being told what to do,
did you?
so I turn away, I walk on the opposite side
I never want you to feel pressured or like you have to hide
I dance far away from you
It's not a matter of 'time to bide'
it's about you and your decisions
that you have your alone time,
despise being labeled,
your wants are completely yours,
defy my understanding;
I'll never serve them out loud to you, you'd hate that
all I can do is quietly avoid, conceal
because I'd give my life to make you happy
and fill your needs, objectively
for I've come to terms with the stark reality of love
and your plans, blueprints of what and whom you're going to be
and how they don't ever include me.