One.
If I could, I would wash my body in the endless sunrays of your morning language with curtains wide open and coffee brewing
I would sing rhythms of fire breathing unrequited love poems and stain your bedsheets with untouched melodies I should never had wrote for you in the first place
I would have the ghost of my former self dance bare feet in your kitchen to songs you have never listened to
If I could, I would pick myself up and take myself to the hospital, attach myself to the nearest IV and drug myself up until I forget how in love I am with someone as spiteful as you
Two.
It's almost funny to me how you can lie to someone about how you hate liars and then you can lie and pretend you still hate liars because you don’t think that I know that you're lying
Three.
You don't have to let me down easy
In fact, I want you to skull drag these words on asphalt streets, rip them apart and throw them at me at the speed of a bullet
Let this declaration be a war cry
Do not tell me it might happen sometime down the road
Because neither of us can see what is going to happen so instead of giving me hope why don't you just ******* tell me that I am not what you want
That you could do better, that you are out of my league
And you are but I have always believed that in relation to how many lucky pennies I have picked up, I would spend them all on you
Four.
If I could, I would break all my bones to have them mold into the structure you would most like them to be in
I would get a lobotomy, wipe my mind clean and start fresh, build a beautiful minded girl that you might be able to love
One with sunflowers growing on the layers of her frontal lobe, one with ripped wave ocean tyrants of searing joy tattooed to her skull, someone who can make you laugh, someone who's laugh you adored
Five.
I'm sorry I let my hands tie ropes to your heart strings, I am telling you to stop pulling me along when really I am the only one who is still holding on
It is easy to be confused in love because I have found that we convince ourselves something is true simply because we want it to be
Six.
It once was wonderful, I felt like you looked at me as more than another catcall, girl's number you got while you were working and I often wonder what would happen if I never strolled into your workplace, if I never looked in your direction, if I hated Mexican food, if I lived too far away
Maybe if I stapled the receipt to my shoulder and walked backwards we could unmeet each other, and I will have the bittersweet opportunity to miss out on this heartache you have unknowingly caused
Seven.
I am not trying to make you love me because you cannot force someone to feel something when there is no vacancy inside of their chest or even when they is but they like the empty spaces
I have cut off pieces of myself and tried to hand them to you and it was hard to understand why you wouldn't want them
Some people do not appreciate sacrifice or maybe they do not care much for such insanity
And I know, I know it makes no sense put valuable things into hands that shake, that tremble, that quiver
Hands that often break things without feeling remorse, we willingly let go and expect them to catch up when they cannot even catch up to their own minds
It is a dangerous game that we all love to play
You are a the red light that I always end up running
And I know the risk of calamity, the risk of consequences
Eight.
Sometimes I like to talk about you like you're the one that got away, sort of like you're on a trip somewhere and you're coming back
And maybe you are, and maybe I am making all of this up in my mind like a child convinces himself that there are no monsters under their bed or a wife who tries to convince herself that he isn't cheating
It is a dangerous game, we all know it is
So, I'll be around if you want someone to be dangerous with

I've learned that no matter how many coins you throw into a fountain or how many fingers you cross, you cannot make someone love you and neither can superstition

2. Almost is the worst way to love someone and if you cannot do it whole heartedly, you should not do it at all

3. I've learned that you cannot trust the things your heart tells you when it's sad

4. I've learned what it feels like to have my throat tighten a little every time I talk about you and I've learned what it feels like to taste pennies in my mouth every time I say your name

5. I've learned that you cannot always be a love story, sometimes you have to make yourself a bridge worth burning

6. Loneliness is when you lay down at night and your ceiling burns with rage because it is only looking at one person

7. I've learned how to know if you really love someone because you don’t give people the power to destroy you that you don't love

8. And I've learned that even if you know it is coming, you can never prepare yourself for how it feels

We were a fever, burning up, sweat dripping down your back
Drinking tea, sleeping in, warm and watchful of the dawn
We were on fire for a short time
This is the worst recovery I have ever known

Remember our walks in the park, how I ran from you and you chased me and I have never played such an exquisite game of tag. Remember the laughter, the summer skies and sunsets, the way I link my arm to yours like a crisscross safety net that never said forever but almost
Remember my secrets, how I have them all to you and how I took apart my pride piece by piece
I put my shield in the paper shredder and I said "there I'm naked, ask me anything" and you asked me what I was afraid of and I was afraid of losing you but I said I was afraid of spiders
Remember the first time you held me, drunk and stupid on a front porch in the rain it was approximately one in the morning and I whispered I love you under my breath and you didn't hear me but looking back I wish you did
At that point I had already started writing about you and I guess you had been looking for ways to escape
Remember the dark, remember me kissing you back while you threw up everything you couldn't take in your cup anymore
Remember sitting in the corner of a coffee shop and you were trying to your work but love gets in the way of that sometimes and I was reaching under the table. Remember the laughter.
Remember dancing around my room to your favorite song about me. Remember the laughter.
Remember going swimming in full clothes, it was so cold and it was so peaceful and playful. Remember the laughter.
Remember the staying up all night getting high, playing music loud, and you couldn't keep still, remember the laughter.
Remember lying in bed, drunk and I couldn't see straight and you could see right through me, remember when I went swimming and you watched me.
Remember going walking, and you loved to play soccer and I tried but I was no good, remember the laughter
Remember the late night phone calls, rambling about our days, about our family, about our favorite memories with one another, remember the laughter that bled through the phone
Remember when I called you crying choking on my words and we went back to the same coffee shop where I fell in love with you and we got a free coffee
Remember asking me to homecoming, remember showing me your new guitar, remember listening to the song I wrote about you, remember showing me the song you wrote about her
Remember me as best you can
Don’t forget about it all
Don’t forget about me

And after every drink
I stare at these empty bottles
Certain they are full
Of a poem about missing someone
Someone like you

Without question you are the worst thing that has ever happened to my poetry
I am tripping over syllables and breaking consonants
Knocking over languages I once kept locked away in safe quarters
Each time I try to speak these meticulously knit together units of expression my throat closes up like clenched fist and I feel myself choking on my words
You have changed my way of writing, using teeth and tongue to articulate words, my way of going about my day
I find myself skipping meals as if it will somehow make me feel less empty because lately things in my head are just not making much sense but I convince myself they are reasonable
They often never are
And I can tell you that I'm sorry
I can at least write my apologies bleeding out all over the page
Scribbling red letters onto this worn out notebook paper
I keep you trapped inside my head like a little kid traps a caterpillar in the palm of their hands
And maybe I was just holding you back from becoming something even more beautiful than you already are
I'm sorry for letting my selfish ambitions override your pleas to escape your grip
I have never been very good at telling someone that I love them but I love you
I want to memorize your laugh and store it in my mind, so I can bring it out and listen to it on a bad day
I want your hand prints to be imprinted on my body, the smell of your cologne on the shirt you like best on me
I want you to hold me like you hold your cigarettes
I would not mind sitting down and studying you for hours with my eyes and hands
I would not mind experiencing the foreign feel of your skin underneath my fingertips
I want to count every shade of color in your eyes and sew it into a dress
I want to pour all of your thoughts into a wine glass and sip it slowly, taking in each one
Becoming slowly intoxicated by your dreams, your fears of the dark, your plans for the future
You are a vision of evacuating a burning building but going back inside to gather the possessions you love too much to let burn
You are the ray of sunshine that greets a flower who had already said goodbye to its roots, giving it life again
You are the unopened bottle of whiskey that sits in my kitchen cabinet in case you ever want to stop by because I know it's your favorite
You are the map that keeps me from getting lose in places I have never adventured
You are the destination I've been looking for
You are the slow breathing I feel when I look at the moon
You are the morning coffee that wakes the cells in my brain
You are the only truth in my allusion
You are a lot of things but you are not mine
And in the midst of this hurricane I am still searching for pages on the ground
I want to keep writing about you
After even broken pencil, ripped sheet of paper, slammed fist to desk
There are very few things I know for sure
I know that every day is twenty four hours closer to you
I know that I have a special skill of feeling nothing when I should and feeling everything when I shouldn’t
I know that the only place I ever felt lost was in his arms
I know that you can't go back to yesterday's dawn by adding another verse to an old song
And I know that I can't speak for what I haven't bled over
But I have bled for love, for loss, the staggering feeling of loneliness
You came in like a winter wind and I breathed you in as if I was about to go underwater
You are the reason I always wear my seatbelt
You are the love songs I write when everyone else is asleep
You are the sound of rain on Sunday mornings
You give me hope for better days
You have taught me to believe in myself
You have made me want to love again
Without question you are the worst thing that has ever happened to my poetry
But in a way you are also the best thing that has ever happened to me

You tried to be careful
Stepping away when feelings swooped in
Hid from cupid
A dangerous game of hide and go seek
You were scared of loving someone
And it's not that you were scared of loving someone
You were scared of being love
And it's not that you were scared of being loved
You were scared of being love and then not being loved
Scared of the common cold feet
A disease that spreads and you never really see it coming
One day that just don't anymore
The laugher sinks back into the chest
They kiss is wiped clean from your lips
They have already moved on before they tell you the news
And love is something beautiful
We blame love for all the heartache and pain
We blame love for the loneliness and depression
We blame love for fixing yourself a plate of food and not being able to eat it because you had too many unspoken words already lodged in your throat
We blame love
When the only person you thought wouldn't, did
It’s a strange game and the only winning move you can make is not to play at all
I wonder if it is even possible for someone to stay in love forever
If it never got old even when we grew old
If the love never got wrinkles or weak even when we did
If the love stayed the same
Grew stronger
We could look back in photo albums filled with vacations, graduation ceremonies, birthdays, first day of school, our wedding
We would make our child's favorite dish every time they came back to visit
Dance in the living room to the sound of music coming from the record player
Fix you coffee in the morning
Take care of you when the cold weather came in, close the window, open the door
And it's not that you're scared of growing old, or dying
You're scared of doing it alone