I AM LOSING MY MIND OVER YOU AND I AM DROWNING IN THIS CONFUSION AND I HATE YOU FOR DOING THIS TO ME YOU *******

One.
If I could
I would wash my skin in the endless sunrays
that your hellos bring
I would open the window to this cold bedroom
And let in the November wind to blow out all of the candles keeping us in dim light
So that you couldn't find your way out to leave
Two.
Lay me down
Tuck yourself in next to me
So that not even cold weather
Could take away from the warmth
That you bring
No heater or blanket could ever
Keep me like you can
Three.
I have found myself missing you
But being too afraid to say so
Four.
I am so scared to lose you
So scared to be another hit and run
Do not leave in the wreckage
My insurance does not provide for this
Destruction any more
I have grown tired of this too
Five.
You see, once enough pain happens
You tend to try and be careful
To have the eye of the tiger
And avoid future wounds
But you came in like my best friend
Do not leave as an enemy
Six.
I am sorry that I cannot help but smile
Whenever I look at you
But you are so beautiful
And I am so lucky
And when such a treasure is in my line of sight
I cannot help but marvel at it
Seven.
I am also sorry that I am so fragile
You call me beautiful
And all I see is a glass vase with seemingly
Beautiful flowers in it
But everyone else is unaware
Of what is holding them
We look only at the beauty of the color
And not the clear fragility that keeps them alive
Eight.
I will cross my fingers
Until the bones splinter at the bases of my wrist
And hope that as my heart runs away with me
That you are willing to come along
Nine.
I am learning to take risks
And not look down
Only at you
Ten.**
I falling for you hard
Hoping that your hands will be my safety net
Loving you takes a little more work than you planned
But I have learned that things that take work
Are the only things that are really worth something

They say that when you kiss someone you are supposed to feel fireworks going off in the back of your mind, a beautiful eruption of wonder in your chest, a tickling feeling in your stomach but fireworks only last seconds and I'm afraid of choking on the smoke it leaves in the aftermath. I'm afraid of burning out, of blowing up, of decaying into dust.
2. When I was 13 I broke my ankle running in the dark down the street. I do not remember what I was running from or what I was running to but I remember the fear and pain after I had stumbled onto the ground and tried to convince myself I could walk on it and I was fine. I am afraid of breaking and trying to be okay but only making it worse, I am stubborn by definition and will always try to stand and start running away again.
3. My cousin fell in love, hard with the boy with dark hair and funny jokes and nice clothes and ambition to do something with his life. They were together for over 6 years and on their wedding night, she found him in bed with someone else. I watched her crumble, drinking her coffee before it cooled down, burning the inside of her mouth, torching all of the words she couldn't say to him, all the words that she couldn’t say to anyone. She stopped talking, I sometimes wonder if she writes poetry to simply remember her language.
4. I remember when my dad found of my mom had cheated on him, he found himself on a downward spiral, running to the liquor cabinet for reassurance, hating himself sober, and he didn’t want anyone to help him. He was always stubborn like a kite stuck in a tree that didn't want to come down. He was okay with never being okay because after you lose the one thing that made you feel like your life was worth something, when they leave, it makes you feel like it isn’t anymore
5. I know that when I fall in love I will want to take him to the hilltop gardens and show him the place where I find rest and solace. The place I go when I don’t want to feel alone. I will make him listen to my favorite songs and let him touch the valleys of my body that I never really loved. I will memorize his smell, accustom myself to his physical language. And I know that since young love doesn’t always last I will never want to go the  gardens without hoping I suffocate, I will be swallowed by the lyrics of the songs we would dance to.
6. I don’t want to need him. I don’t want to have to forget the way he would tickle me when I was upset. I don’t want his taste drilling cavities in my teeth, I don’t want to miss him when he's not around
7. I do not mind feeling nothing, I do not mind being distant from love if that means I my heart won't die before I do
8. I don’t want to have to stop smoking so many cigarettes because he's worried about the way I breathe when I sleep. I don’t want to have to make sure I don’t smell of burnt lungs around his mother.
9. I hate the way I know I'll tremble, shake, quiver at the thought of him kissing someone else or letting my call go to voicemail when he's not busy, when he just doesn’t want to talk
10. I don’t want his mother to cry because she thinks you can do better than me. I don't want my mother to cry because she's scared of how I'll cope if you ever decide to leave, she's scared of losing her daughter.
11. I don’t like endings, I often times don't finish books or songs or poems. I have drafts hanging up on my wall as a reminder that unfinished things can be beautiful too. I am not very good at putting something away after having finished it. I think letting you go would **** me.

Can you remember who you were,
Before the world told you who you should be?

I want you and you want her and there is really nothing else to it

And as of now I have finally realized
I was drunk off of only you
And you were only drunk

The most horrifying thing
I have ever discovered
is that the way he feels about her
is the same way I feel about him

December 7th
It is Monday morning, 3:12 am
I'm sitting on my window sill
Smoking a cigarette
Outside, the air is frigid and wind blows on my right cheek
I can hear music playing faintly at the Fountain Motel
And cars racing by
To God knows where at such an hour
And I wonder why I'm awake
What is it within me that has caused such a stir
That my body cannot find rest
Though my mind is eagerly looking for it
In and out of focus
My eyes are like a camera lens
One minute things are blurry and colors differ
And the next I am seeing more clearly than I feel I ever have before
And maybe it is all in my head
But I keep hearing noises
Like someone is walking on the dead leaves that scatter the sidewalks
Or a stray animal moving amongst the trees
Or perhaps an imaginary figure haunting me
My throat is dry and my hands are cold
My legs wrapped in a blanket
And endless ideas, theories, misconceptions are running around me
Circling me and I feel as if at any moment I will be attacked
Annihilated by my own mind
There are plenty of ways I have pictured myself dying
This, this is not one of them

Why do I wake at 4 in the morning to run my fingers through you hair?
Sleepless lullaby playing in the back of my throat
I want to pull my body onto yours
But it is 4 in the morning and that's insane
Because you're gone now, the kind of gone where you are not expected to return
You have not left for work or for school, you're just gone
The cars on the highway have never sounded so loud
It's as if I can hear the radio static in each one
And I wonder how many people are awake at 4 in the morning wishing for the same things and me
Because though 2 am is lively and 3 am is scary, no one ever talks about 4 am because you are expected to be asleep by this time
It is 5 in the morning and maybe now I will be able to sleep this away, but maybe I will stay up in hopes that you will visit me

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

When your body feels foreign and abandoned
When your hands are shaking more
than the soil before an earthquake occurs
When your words seem to only grow louder
but never have more meaning added to them
They are only adding fuel to this fire that never should have started in the first place, there was not much to do after it started
Just watch it burn, feel it pierce your skin
When he yells, when he hits, when he yells more
Do not let it dismay you
Wipe the blood from your face, do not cry
There is no use in showing more weakness to this man
This man who claims to love you will tower over you
Holding you hostage, peeling off your innocence
Do not scream, do not alert the neighbors
Everything will be alright just wait until this is over
Let the silence resonate in your ears
Do not flinch when he yells again for he will only feel more superior
Do not fight for yourself after it all because you know he loves you
Deep down it is not just anger
You swear deep down he's a good guy

You have colored my skies dark and snatched away my sun I try to tell myself that I can paint back over this but mixing anything with black is just more black
I am out of white paint
My shelves are going dry, because you refuse to stop making art in the hollowness of my chest
Drawing borders that I wish you would cross
But you never do
Even when I am intoxicated
Drunk out of my right mind
On the very brink of alcohol poisoning
I feel your name start to boil in my mouth
And all I want to do is swallow you whole
Forget you ever signed your name on my tongue
But my gag reflex forces me to spit you out all over the bar
I will do my best to wipe it up
Apologizing to all of those who had to see such humiliation
I've come to realize however
That alcohol will always be much easier to swallow than the possibility that you once or still love me
Nothing else quite compares to the claws that slide down my throat when I try to drink a shot of your sweet toxin
There is nothing that quite correlates to that amount of agony
So if tonight, I end up calling you, know that I am sorry
I apologize in advance to the mumbled words and empty laughter
Know that I only did it, to ask for the white paint
That you stole from me

I found him, waiting on a girl who loved someone else
He was fighting desolation in total isolation
He was broken
I found him following behind her
Memorizing the way she walks, each step imprinted onto his brain
Like tattooing her body language up and down his arms, running his hands across them because it reminded him of touching her
He said she was his Achilles heel
I found him in the soft dusk light
Telling me that he loved me but that he loved her more
Declaring that there was something there, he just knew it
but that it was not enough to stand on
This was never a story about rescue, this is the story of the fall
I know that you cannot help the way you feel but neither can I
That is what makes this all the more difficult for the both of us

I found you and I tried to help you up
But you insisted that staying down there with her in torture
Was much easier than walking away with a limp

open up your mind
let all of your hidden thoughts
crawl out of the closet
and be set free for just a minute or two
try to remember the simple fragrance of desire
the constant craving kept a secret
until one soul became braver than the other
the beginning was calm and passionate
gentle and sweet
stage two
our bodies caressing on top of one another
turning back and forth
heavy breaths and open mouths
grabbing hard, kissing tender
never wanting to stop, never getting enough
you can hear your heart beat in your chest
and the flutter in your stomach is eternal
the feel of your neck and your hands down my back
until finally one kiss
then another and another
so addicting
then suddenly everything goes quiet, still
eyes closed, one deep breath
and one dark room filled with memories of a night
to forever be kept a secret

They say I drink too much
Alcohol may burn the throat but it numbs a heart's bruise
Drinking to flood my sober blues
Lips and memories soaking in *****
They say I smoke too much
The burning in my throat begins to flame
Doing all I can to smoke away your name
Although my lips recite it all the same
They say I should slow down
Speeding past every caution light
Drowning in these drunken nights
Squeezing memories in the palm of my hand tight
They say I will get over him
But I have learned that every story sounds the same once you stop listening
Every memory sits in shot glass, glistening
Calling my name as if I were its revival
Patiently waiting for your arrival
And they keep telling me you are not coming  
But you must be
**I know that you must be

Do not mistake his small acts of flirting for affection
Remind yourself that he does this with everyone
Do not stop reminding yourself until you believe it
Guard you heart
Do not let him hear how loud it is beating when you lock eyes with the moon
He has fallen in love with everything but you
He is only trying to get to manhood a little faster
Do not mistake his small acts of flirting for affection
Remind yourself that he does this with everyone
*Do not stop reminding yourself until you believe it

I hate to think that I need alcohol
To be confident around you
Without *****, I am only a coy maiden
I am fearful and tread backwards, never stumbling
I cannot trip and fall into you if my blood is only blood
This bitter-sweet poison helps me strip off my coats of paint
Freeing my inner goddess who is much more amorous
She is painted beautifully, she is dark and cunning
She carries herself with such boldness
When intoxicated, my mind does not race towards you
It is only a reminder that things can be easier
It is a coping mechanism that draws me into you but resists in such a way that restores my poise
I know that this will catch up to me
It already has in fact
But as I sober up, and only remember fragments of this puzzle we call a party
The night before replaying in my mind like a scratched up DVD
And after all of the missing scenes and mistaken context
I will always want to do it
*Again

Every day, it never fails
I get a twisting feeling in my stomach
Like dropping a boulder from my chest
Onto my kidneys
A stirring feeling churning my organs
I feel as if I cannot breath due to dramatic change of weather
This always happens when I think of you
Think back on the feeling of the dragging of your palms, tickling my skin
Remember what it felt like to never wear a seatbelt
Because I would rather have been closer to you than safe from calamity
Sort through the recollections locked away in my mind
I have never wanted to set free a criminal so badly
I know they will only do harm but I just have to see them one more time
These memories are a distant relative now
One I was once so close to that moved away
It is a waste of money to come back here but I am willing to pay the expenses if it means another chance to convince them to stay
This feeling in my stomach is like a tornado in an ocean
I cannot shield myself from it because everything looks the same way
Every thought of you is the same
They are all simply reminders that you are gone
How do you tell someone that they taught how to look as a seed and see a flower
Now they are blooming in someone else's garden
And this feeling is my stomach
Just might be the feeling of plants being pulled
From their roots

I write, not to deploy pity or ***** commonplace conceptions
I write to potentially discover the sole rationale as to why I am who I am
What variety of experience and array of struggle has molded my self being
And who is to say that I have or have not become who I was intended to
There is a fine line of losing touch with society's notion of impeccability and drifting towards the horizon of individual pediment in assembling the parts of your inner soul
The pieces of you that may never see the light of day but still continue to participate in your decision making and how you articulate ideas
Every part of the whole is significant
Yet we continue to sprint towards the standards of conformity
Our lives, slowly becoming a smaller line of which we walk upon, holding tight to mediocrity
Because the only thing to do when the curtain is falling is say what the audience wants to hear
And I fear that perhaps I and clinging to the same things I curse over without being aware of it
So, I write, not to deploy pity or ***** commonplace conceptions
I write to potentially discover the sole rationale as to why I am who I am
Perhaps I am who I think I am, whomever that may be
All I do know, however, is I am not who you think I am

You didn't say goodbye, but you didn't say hello either
It's like waiting for an alarm to go off
Then suddenly realizing you never set one
I'd like to think that you think of me, maybe
When the world gets really quiet
That the silence would remind you of my heartbeat
And steady breaths
Sometimes, that you would remember my hands on your chest
My hand in your hand
Do you ever think of me at all?
Or and I just footsteps in the snow
A grain of sand on a beach
Cliche song lyrics that you don't bother to listen to anymore
I guess that I understand
I was always the rough draft
But tomorrow
Under your pillow will be the memory of a girl
Who really did love you
One that has moved on
One that has forgotten
One that does not think of you anymore

As the liquor undulates down my throat,
burning a little more at each swallow
like lighting a match with wet fingers
I realize that in this moment
I am not worried about you
I am too busy sequestering my existence
with alcohol that does not remind me of you at all
the one thing that can not summon your name to my mind
one thing that makes me forget you, even if only for a little while
Fueled by liquid fire
nature’s neutrality doesn't do much
for this current wave
of lust and infatuation
I am only a girl
fragile, choleric
& craving something to fill the hole you left
And I know I will wake up in the morning
with regret, a headache, and an empty stomach
It can take 2 hours, 8 hours or a full day
to get alcohol out of your system.
but it's going to take
much more than time,
to remove you from mine.

a letter to my love who loves someone else
I know that with life cutting corners on your shoulders it is easier to walk away from a game that involves using your hands, the ones that knit blankets to keep me warm, the ones that made sound when I swore I was deaf to every motive except my own
I am sorry to have caused you so much trouble
I know that the word will knock down trees to build skyscrapers, I just only hope you will remember what it felt like to lay under them
I only hope you still think of me when you look up at the sky
I know that perspective is everything and sometimes turning the other cheek molds into shaking your head
I know that I often looked away too much and I am sorry I couldn't bare more drawn out moments of silence with you
My mouth has no safety on it, my mind wanders as if a lost child in a super market, it was hard to fall in love with every piece of you because I was scared of you leaving without taking me with you
I am afraid of the dark, I always have been and will most likely always will be because darkness means uncertainty and I still have a nightlight
I still pretend to be a child
I find myself sunbathing in these memories as a form of prayer
I hung up a picture of you and I on my wall and told everyone it was only for good times sake, something beautiful to look back on, flipping page in the scrapbook, old videos on the home computer
I did not tell them it was because I am pretending that we are still possible
That you will come back here and we can reminisce and play pretend
There are days when I am not sure if I can ever love someone the way I loved you, there are days when I do not want to play pretend with someone else
There is nothing poetic about the way I hopelessly love you
I have learned that poetry loses it's grandeur when you realize there is not a single combinations of words that can make someone love you back
And still, standing on the precipice of an echo, I can almost hear you singing along to the radio, I can almost feel your fingertips on my back like a record playing needle
And I can't help but wonder
Do you still sleep with a light on?

Falling in love is nothing and everything like they said it would be
It's mysterious and predictable
It's funny yet sad
It's song sounds like a sweet melody that
reminded you of bad dreams
It kept you awake at nigh and left you in a peaceful sleep
You see, falling in love is nothing and everything like they said it would be

She is everything you'd ever want
And I am nothing of that
And even though every time I look
in the direction of both of you
I crack like an old sidewalk
dark and tough yet fragile
I shatter like a mirror that has had enough
Even though it bruises everything in me
I will still say that I am happy for you
And I am
You deserve to be happy
Even if it does not include  me
And I am willing to smile in the name of you and her
Simply because you deserve to be happy
And you are
**And that is all I want for you

Every song that I danced to in your living room when we were supposed to be studying
Every song that we danced to in the kitchen when baking
Every song that we sang in the truck
Every melody that we have ever heard together
The songs we sang along to, the one's our parents taught us
The ones we taught each other
Plays much slower than it usually would
Coming to me note by note, tickling my senses
Reminding me that I cannot call you and tell you to listen to it
And I find myself biting my lip through the frustration
And the truth is, you never really know how lonely you are until everything is going wrong and you have no one to turn to for help
Not even music, because all of my favorite songs
Used to be ours

I remember all of the secret places that will never be secret again in life
The inside of my playhouse, up the ladder and through the wooden door
Talking about boys, laughing about TV shows, discussing our birthday parties that came too quickly
Never thought growing up involved so much grieve
I remember all of the secret places that will never be secret again in life
The rooftop of a house under construction at the end of the street
Smoking cigarettes, telling jokes, gazing at the world we thought we'd never lose
Talked about our future like we were the ones controlling it
I remember all of the secret places that will never be secret again in life
The front seat of your beat up truck, the middle seat in particular
Arms intertwined, singing along to the radio, talking about life as if we were sure of our future together, as if we were sure it would last
Along the way we tripped up, fell over, and now you are standing and my laces are still tied to one another
And each time I try to revisit these places that were once so beautifully hidden
I fall right back on my face when trying to walk into it, because the past is the past and it always will be

If you would have asked me what I though love was a year ago
I would have responded with one word
"Pain"
Love is late nights and damp pillows
Something that you find in the romance of hazy coffee houses and broken cigarettes.
Something that you get burned up in
Something so unobtainable people crafted a word for it
Unrequited
Love is cavities, love is hurt
But then I came across a boy
Who is now starting to change my mind
He shows me that love is acceptance
Love is joy
Love is waiting by the phone, love is finally calling and hoping that they answer
Love is a shared song that you can both cry to
Love is comfortable silence
And now, as I think about it more
Love is beginning to look
Love is beginning to look a lot like him

I crave intimacy
Delicate touches that reach into me like pressing down on an old mattress, feel my skin cave in, hear it creak and cry out
Make this sound into a melody
One that I will sing to myself on nights that you are not here
I crave intimacy
Drawn out conversations about the future and the past, avoiding mistaken mishaps and leaning over boundary lines
Racing towards insanity, or racing away from it
Whichever you would prefer
I crave intimacy
Dancing in the dim light coming from the television screen in the living room, neither of us are very good at it so the laughter is much more consistent than the skill of our movement
I crave intimacy
Kisses on my neck that send lightning bolts down my spine, there is something about lips touching the bases of what holds your head up, it makes you want to fall into them
Kisses on my neck from your lips would make me never want to stand again, I can only imagine the paralysis
I crave intimacy
Simple sometimes, simple as going out to lunch and splitting the ticket, or sweet glances in the car, or showing you my favorite songs, or even soft skims of the back of our hands as we walk side by side, a marvel that neither of us were expecting
I crave intimacy
With someone who does not push me past my limits, someone who respects my hazardous past, someone who does not question my ability to walk, even when I know that I can't
Someone who believes in me
Someone a lot like you

There is a boy
His skin is a warm dawn on the eastern mountains
His smile is the flick of a match in isolated darkness
He does not hold to the world, only the people of it
He cares for those with heavy hearts
But deep love is not one among his many skills
He never really fell, only tripping others to fall into him
I do not know how to leave him alone
So for now, I will wait here, collecting dust,
if only it means I will touch some of his particles that fall on the floor

An abandoned church with an open hymn book lying on the ground
The pages are still new yet the floor beneath it was littered
With ash and broken pieces from the ceiling
Amazing Grace has never sounded so bitter
The walls reverberated the sound through the hallways and columns
There was something sweet in the harmony of a lonely voice
The choir has fallen with the rest of the stained glass windows
I think of the last person to ever have prayed in that church
Got on their knees in the ruins, asked God why his body felt like this church
Broken and annihilated, like a plane crashing into a building
Like a freight train hitting a parked car
I feel weaker than I ever have in between the pews of this empty church
He thinks, "God, what did I do to deserve such hollow bones? Why does my heart beat slow down when I see her? How many prayers must I pray to get her out of my mind?"
His eyes closes tight like the doors to his father's house
And he wonders how he will ever get off of his knees
A tear falls to his blue jeans and does not make any effort to hold this in
He was past the point of never crying, no one was watching him anyways
Being destroyed was part of being a man sometimes
The open hymnal smiles in the back of his mind
He thinks of his mother singing in the car
Thinks of how her hands clenched tight to the steering wheel
She was careful driving with him in the car
She loved her son more than herself, she cared more for her family than anything
He thinks of the girl that he still loves
Even though she has walked out on him
Her long hair that draped down her back
Hung like a man on a noose in the middle of a town
Her eyes, like a bullet in a gun, rusted and covered in dust
She used to sing all the time
You wonder if she still sings hymnals in her grandmother's church
You wonder if she sings Amazing Grace

You were the vacuum in my life, ******* out all of the bad things
All of the dirt, the waste, the trash, the insecurity that I swept under my carpet
You took it all away
I sat back in a clean apartment and kept thinking
What if I'd actually love being a mess...

It is hard to describe the feeling of missing someone
Who is not missing you in return
They have moved on to a new home
And they have taken the keys to the old one
And you find yourself sitting outside an abandon house
Knocking on the door
With hopes that eventually
Someone will open the door
And invite you back inside

Today I finally decided to write you the apology you deserve
I'm sorry I cannot offer you all of me
My body simply will not give away pieces of itself
Nor will my heart
I am trying so hard to love you with everything
But every endeavor falls short
I'm sorry that I am a sad excuse for love
Selling only the promise but never delivering
I tried to tell you and I sorry I'm didn't
I've been trying to speak words I could not swallow
I am a double edged razor and you cannot hold me without slicing your palms
I am sorry for placing myself in your hands
Today I finally realized, how precious you really are
And I am sorry it took me so long

We are sitting in the same coffee shop I fell in love with him in, but it is different now. I look up and he is still looking at his hands. Eyes are on his callused palms, twiddling his thumbs and I still love him more than I ever have. He looks up with an innocence that only a child could have. I think of how he is thinking about her. I wonder if he even sees me or just the ghost of a girl he almost loved.
"You know this isn't easy for me. You know that," he mumbles, looking down again.
"Do you think this is easy for me? I have to sit here and watch you fall in love with someone else when all the while I am having to convince myself that eventually things will get better, people tell me that eventually things will get better. I can't tell you the amount of times you would have received a phone call but didn't because I knew you wouldn't answer. I don't know what you expect. This isn't easy for me either, this isn’t easy at all."
We sit in silence for a moment. I almost cry but I refuse to show any more weakness than I already have, he doesn't deserve to see me hurting. He wouldn’t understand. The silence falls heavy on the wooden floors. And after a few long seconds of it all he can manage is,
"I'm sorry."

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

And if he says he misses me then maybe we can just start over
Relearn each other's name and how to articulate them to the letter
I will retell you stories of my childhood
and you can laugh like you used to
We can learn how to tangle our bodies together so intricately that this time they will not undo
And I'm not saying that this will work, I know that it probably wont
But logic doesn't mean that I don’t miss you and right now I don’t give a **** what logic has to say
Just tell me you miss me and I swear I'll come running
Tell me you miss me and we can fall all over again

There is a space between breaths, an endless moment of infinite exhale, a calming of the storm inside of your chest, and you are there in the vacant valleys of my wonderland
You are the open field full of flowers enchanted with the smell of your cologne
You are the distinct vision of a painting hanging in a home of two people who are deep in love
You are that half second at a concert after the music stops but before the lights come back on, that half second where you can't catch your breath but neither can anyone else and you feel like a part of something
You shine so bright and I would just dim your star
I guess I am just in love with the idea of you loving me
The idea of waking up late on Saturday, I imagine the smell of coffee brewing, the sound of your fingers strumming guitar, the vision of light creeping in through a crack in the curtains, the undermining feeling that you are here with me now, still, that you never left, even though you did
I am just unconditionally and eternally entranced by your haunting presence
I'm sure that if you rearranged the sky in putting the moon, the stars, the sun, all the cosmos in an order in which they would sing it would sound just like your voice; have every dwindling planet, spinning on their axis, slow dancing around their seasons as they hum their love songs to one another, the universe is no stranger to love
And maybe love is only easy before the sun comes up because it is so easy to find yourself
When it's dark out and you cannot see through the fog
In the moment of clarity when the smoke clears and dawn approaches, everything's alright
If it be only for a fleeting second or two, everything is alright and that's enough

I apologize in the name of you far too often than I should
I paint the picture and I am always the criminal
and you are the victim
Yet, all the while you stole my heart
I've been told that the more love you show,
the easier it is to get heart broken
And I have shown far too much love to you
Secreting my feelings for you in my back pocket
being careful not to sit down
and break what I have left of hope in tomorrow
and break the rest of what I have left of your smile
and maybe break a little more of my innocence and hope that love might be real enough to be returned by someone like you

"Why do you like him so much?" they all ask
"What's so great about him?"
Well let me put this into perspective
What’s so great about cigarettes?
The exhausting vapor oxidizing your lungs
Painting rough shades of grey filling all of the empty voids
What's so great about alcohol?
The acerbic liquid that turns one night into a celebration
But the next morning into a distressing *****
Leaving you sick to your stomach, feeling vacant
So what's so great about him?
He is the IV in my veins
His eyes possess a power that draw me to him
An addicting extenuation of unrequited love
He makes me feel like candlelight
A lighter without gas
A bottle with nothing in it
Astounding disappointments falling on top of each other
Constant agony but this love is too strong to feel anything less
**I couldn't imagine feeling anything less

This is getting old
Loving you past your act of moving forward
It is like each step you take is one I tread backwards
I wish it was easier now that I know you don't want this
Now that I know you have found something better
But for some reason it feels nothing less like my collarbones cracking in mimicking the chandeliers falling to the ground of an abandoned palace that used to be so beautiful but now left with an unlocked door and someone who has the keys but doesn't even know it
I swear it's your voice I hear and your fingers I feel tracing the rise and fall of my ribs in the early hours of the morning
When no is awake, I always am and I wonder if you are too
Part of me still remembers how you made me smile, how despite the circumstance you would aways trigger something in me, flipping a light switch, I swear I could see things clearer when I was with you
Part of me still questions the possibility of seeing you again
Maybe just once, a coffee for old time's sake
But you wouldn't for the fear she would get angry because it lasted more than 20 minutes
For fear it would actually have meant something
And after a while I get tired of thinking of you every time another boy smiles at me
It is a never-ending cycle of you running in my veins
I am afraid to give blood because I know they will find traces of your laughter, they might call this a disease
I have tried to love other people but they don't deserve half of me
I have ripped all the synonyms out of the thesaurus for lonely
And still there will never be anything to describe this feeling because humans have not yet crafted a word for it
I don’t think they ever could
You are a bittersweet memory at best
And I am going to move forward
Because I've learned that there is no use in holding onto something that just isn't holding you back

I'm sorry
I'm sorry for smelling like cigarette smoke around your mother and for staring at you all the time
I'm sorry my voice is shaking when you speak to me and I'm sorry for the burn scars on my hand and I'm sorry for hurting your ego
I'm sorry for taking new routes to get to class just so I can see you
I'm sorry for bothering you in your busy life that has lost desire for me to be in it
I'm sorry for losing sleep thinking about you, I'm sorry for losing touch
I'm sorry for not loving you like I should have
I'm sorry for loving like I should have now that you are gone

There are so many things that I could apologize for
but today I finally realized
I have been apologizing for far too many things
that were not my fault
but yours

There are things I try to avoid
many things in fact
I try to avoid the creepy guy staring at me on the bus
I try to avoid my teachers outside of school
I try to avoid gum on the sidewalk
I try to avoid you sometimes
Sometimes to protect myself
Other times simply to do it
There are things I try to avoid
one of them is you
and I am sorry you have fallen into that category
but I am not sorry for the reason why

And that’s just the thing, now isn’t it? I’m not lonely because I don’t have you. I don’t have a you. There is no one that makes my heartbeat accelerate. My dreams are filled with strangers I pass each day because I have no real place to land.
Do you understand how frustrating it is to have no one to daydream about? To be completely and utterly free of love and pain. I’ll tell you. It’s quite miserable and it feels endless. A person looking for love is in much more danger than those who have already found it, whether it be requited or not. We are dancing in the rain, hoping to drown because at least that gives us a chance to be enveloped in something. We throw ourselves into exciting situations and chairs of coffeehouses in hopes that someone will look and say, I think I ought to go say something, and yet no one ever does. It makes me start thinking of my past lovers. Suddenly I’m on the verge of calling them just to see what their day is like. I feel like I’ve lost my mind. It’s like my life is being portrayed through a lens where all I can see is all of the people who are in love around me.
I often have dreams that I am being chased and I approach an end to the road. The cliff is steep and I have no map to safer ground, but I can’t jump. I don’t. Because I remember, I am not being chased at all. Everything feels very confusing. There are no borders, there are no lines to trace. I am freehanding my life, unrehearsed and unprepared. How do you give directions to an unknown place? That seems to be the question I have placed before me.

As most poems go, there was a boy
Tall, handsome, with a good head on his shoulders
Ambitious yet silly, could make a crying child giggle
He had more light than any cosmo ever to lay a finger on the sky
He was incredible to say the least
And he loved me
Strong like an autumn breeze, pushing leaves off their hinges
Passionate like a kiss between two lovers who meet in an airport after months of being apart
Sweet like a teenage girls coffee
It was the most wonderful love I had ever known
But I was never sure how to return it
I was afraid like a young girl stepping off the bus after running away from home
I was bitter like ice cream melted in the hot sun
Damaged like a cell phone dropped in a river and fetched out
He was trying to ******* to life but I had swallowed so many unspoken words, I was still choking on them
And I loved him
But I was never sure how to show him
Was always trying to think of ways, spent too much time thinking, not enough time acting out
I am sorry to the boy who waited for me, showing me his favorite songs, I'm sorry for not listening to the lyrics close enough, I'm sorry they were about me, I'm sorry I never noticed
I'm sorry
And I could apologize with all the breath left in my lungs and it would still not be enough to make you come back
I've learned that if the universe does not want something to happen it wont
And maybe I just loved you at the wrong time
And maybe I was meant to endure this
I just really don’t want to
The only thing that I am sure I want, deep to the core, is you

I can only imagine what it is like to love you
To watch you walk down the hallway to my kitchen
The soft thuds of you shoes and the wood floor
Sounding almost friendly as if it the reverberation is shaking hands with the walls
To see your hands slip into your pockets as you look down and smile at your feet
You slip one hand out of your pocket and it climbs the air to your hat as the other hand runs its fingers through each brown strand and gently places the hat back on your head
Only swift movement and light breathing
To see you driving down the highways of the city
One hand on the steering wheel, while the other fools with the radio, endeavoring to find a perfect song and stay on the road at the same time
Then I can almost see myself reach out and grab your hand when you've slipped up on a song that I liked
And you would look at me and smile
Eyes tightened and lips forming half of a crescent moon
As the timidity in your mind turns your head back to the road
A red light comes up
We both have never been more happy to come upon a stop
You turn and look at me, lean in, lips locking
Hands condensing into each other
This kiss sets my skin on fire and fills me with the life I'd never known I was missing
Suddenly a car horn interrupts us as laughter fills the air
Oh how incredibly lovely it is to be diverted by strangers
When we were once strangers ourselves
And today we may be strangers
The ones who are sitting at red lights behind people in love
Laying on our horns with somewhere to be
Today, that may be us
But before long, that could be you and me
Who are being interrupted
At a red light

Someone stopped to tell me that I was beautiful today
A complete stranger, someone who crossed my path for a second but decided they could not leave satisfied without spilling out a compliment into my lap
I wasn't sure how to pick it up at first
I smiled and said thank you, combing a piece of hair behind my ear, trying to hide the timidity in my posture
Thank you, to whoever you are

I hate you for making me hate my favorite restaurant because you work there
Because that's where I met you
I don't go there as often as I used to for fear you will be working
For fear I will have to see you
For fear I will have to talk to you
For fear that if I do I will stumble over my words
Stutter, speak another language, have blood spur from my cheeks due to how much I would be blushing
Vomiting up words of my renounced love for you that lately I have been sick of swallowing
It would be embarrassing to say the least
Your palms would not sweat, chills will not appear on the back of your neck, you will be just fine
I can hardly talk anymore due to the amount of poems stuck in my throat
It is getting hard to swallow
It is getting hard to breath
I have been coughing up letters and syllables, numbers given to me that I forget to call because I don’t remember getting them
I am drinking away this sadness but more often than not I forget my name before I forget yours
I do not know who I am because of you
I am losing touch with every reality that your named is not tattooed on
I am in love with the idea of you loving me
You told me not to string myself along for something that may never happen
You meant this when you said it which was something unusual for you
And I turned the other cheek to seeing your new girlfriend at walmart
Turned the other cheek to her laughing at me
Turned it again when I drove all the way home without a seatbelt on
I find myself wanted to get in a fatal car accident so I am not so tempted to drive by your house
I hit all the green lights on the way their so there must be some viable reason for me going
I see a car in your driveway that I do not recognize I wonder if it is hers
And I know you did not mean to do this
It was not something you planned from the beginning, **** just happens I guess
You are completely unknowing of what you have done
And frankly I don't want to tell you
I wouldn't want to harm your ego
You wouldn't harm anyone
In fact you may be one of the nicest people I have ever met
Something about you switches on a light inside of me, igniting this darkness that I have been residing in
For a brief moment, you reminded me what it felt like to not be so blind to love
I sometimes wish I still were
I see you everywhere I go
You are the voice inside of my head
Every time I meet someone new I cannot help but plater your face on their, smell your cologne, do not let them touch me in the same places you have for fear of smudging the fingerprints
And I know, I know it makes no sense to place valuable pieces of myself into hands that have no grip
Hands that shake, that tremble
Hands that have touches bodies, making no memories of the valleys of their skin, the mountains in their bones
I have learned you cannot teach someone to feel, cannot teach someone to love
Cannot force them to wash their body in all that you are offering them
They have become too accustomed to lukewarm love in between ***** bed sheets, threaded backseats
I find myself wanting to be a bridge worth burning
I hate you for making me hate my favorite restaurant
Because you work there
Because that’s where I met you

I miss who he used to be
His heart used to light up with kindness
He kept sweetness in his pockets
He left each day with a mark on it
A memento of some sort of joy
He and I used to dance in the kitchen
He and I used to dance in the street
He and I used to really love
We were infatuated with each other's presence
He was always hoping for the light at the end of the tunnel
But now, he barely even recognizes how to light a match unless he is using to burn something
He is cold and I am sorry to say I ever loved someone like him
Maybe I changed him or maybe this was him the whole time
Both ideas terrify me
I am sorry for all that has happened
I never lied about him, or said any hurtful words to others
I told them that he was a good guy,
Still after all that has happened I endeavor to believe that
I am sorry for all that has happened
But that gives him know excuse to treat me like I am nothing
His words sting like a bee, I only use that analogy
because I am allergic to them
I often wonder, that even though he used to shine bright yellow, maybe I was missing the darkness
That also lined his skin
Maybe I was allergic to him all a long