my hands were cut by thorns
while i was picking
lemons from our tree.

i didn’t know
until later when
the lemons reminded me,
stinging, that you were not there.

sitting outside under starlight.
breathing in the atmosphere and million year old earth.
with you, counting constellations and pretending for awhile that nothing else exists.

we will orbit the sun and the planet will rotate like the hands of a clock spinning round and round until time runs out. perhaps at the end of time we will supernova like stars; our remnants will glow colorful and beautiful and shining, but we will be dead. and in our remains will swirl tiny pieces of us all mixed up with matter. people will look at us through telescopes to study what we used to be.

or maybe I will collapse in on myself and twisting, become a black hole.
******* in every star and planet and ray of light until nothing is left. the people, with their telescope eyes, will stare and wonder how I came to exist.
but I will know. and spend the rest of that existence chasing stars to fill the void.

and when I turn around to look, there you stand.
a bright spot on my memories.


we’ve been alive for decades but it seems we haven’t aged.


maybe when we’re older we’ll see the world with different eyes,
but for now we have only opportunities and there’s always second chances.


they say we don’t know heartache.
what they don’t know is how many times we’ve proven them wrong.


the difference is we know we’ve got life left to live,
and everything to prove.


so a toast to all the nonsense and mischief.
to all the loving and learning.
to all the living we’ve done and have yet to do.


to all the heartbreak and sadness, Pura Vida.
to all the people who scoffed, Pura Vida.
to all the people who thought they could break us, Pura Vida.
to all those shining memories we own, Pura Vida.
to all those moments of realizing just how much we love, Pura Vida.

To Us,
Pura Vida.

you are my longing and
strange, half-formed desire
for a touch or embrace or emotion
i can read.

you are my eight years of commitment and
inability to understand how i
really feel about
you, or me, or us together.

you are my uncertainty and
apprehensiveness to change
what we've only just barely recovered,
what we'd so utterly lost.

you are my confusion and
"am i really feeling this way?"
or am i just replacing
him with you.

you are my selfishness and
want for some sort of stability.
a love that is
only mine.

you are my insecurity and
lack of petite, feminine qualities.
being so distinctly not
your type.

you are my happiness and
joyful, unabashed smiles.
with easy laughter shining
in your bright eyes.

so i will spell it out for you in words and phrases and half-finished sentences.
and when you refuse to listen i will paint it out with acrylics and oils and pens.
and when you refuse to see i will press all my words and phrases and colors and inks into your skin so that you can feel. so that you can feel what i feel. so that you can know that i love you.
but don’t be confused because i don’t love you that way.
i don’t love you the way they love the movies.
or the way your sister loves herself.
or the way my mother loves the person my father used to be.
or the way you loved your ex-girlfriend.
i love you the way the fish love the sea. the way the birds love the air. the way the trees love the earth. i love you like home.
i love you like you never hurt me.
i love you like you never made those mistakes.
i love you like i will give everything i am to make you happy.
i love you like it won’t matter if you never notice. i love you like that.

Sometimes Life becomes a struggle,
I feel that I can barely breathe.
It feels like Life has torn me open
and then left me there to bleed.
It feels like Lifes entire purpose is to bring me to my knees
and then when I am fully broken
Life will call the crows to feed.
Life will bruise me and abuse me
continue on despite my pleas
and because Life is so cunning
no one else will ever see.

It knows all my greatest failures.
It knows all my biggest fears.
So it waits to catch me all alone
and whispers in my ear,
"No one wants to see your struggle.
No one wants to see your tears."
And then as if these quiet words alone were not enough,
Life screams at me so loudly,
"You know your life's not so tough!
Those people have a real struggle,
their lives are a thousand times as rough!"

And because what Life is saying is a truth I can't deny
I will never share my struggle,
no one will see me cry.
And if they ask me how I'm doing
I will tell them I am fine.

you are this: unbridled jealousy and paranoid, tumbling down.
you are the king and queen falling from your throne.

because you look to the jester,
who looks to the queen,
who looks to you.

but your eyes are filled with illusions
and tricks
and you lose sight of her royal devotion.

we are the knight and the lady, lost in the castle.
and we were once secrets and happiness.

but the knight went off to war and the lady grew tired of waiting.
so now the knight courts his princess and the lady nods her head.

and the queen and the lady grow weary.
because we’re too old for fairytales.
because the lady no longer believes in happy endings.
because the queen can’t seem to slay the dragon.

my queen, my queen, what can we do?
the king doesn’t listen and the knight doesn’t care.

you’ve lost your heart to the king.
i’ve lost my all in the war.

my queen, my queen, what can we do?

i’ll raise the shield and you raise the sword.
we will slay this dragon.
we will hope for our ever after.

you are the

best

and

worst

thing that has happened

to me so far.

you are exactly

what i need and

what i want and

no one

has ever made me feel

the way you make me feel.

you bring out the

best

and

worst

in me.

you make me feel

beautiful and wanted but

jealous and obsessive.

expressive and alive but

still clinging to you like a child.

this is the

best

and

worst

thing i’ve ever felt.

because i think

i really think

i was in love with you.

or at least this is

the closest i’ve ever gotten to

love or

something like it.

this is what i know

about love:

it is the

best

and

worst

thing that could happen to you.

a euphoric feeling of

being needed.

a terrifying feeling of

addiction.

love is:

me still writing

poems about you

months after the fact.

me still dependent on

you like

a drug. unable to

escape this prison and the

best

and

worst

part is i did it

to myself.

still thinking that

someday it will work out

because there cannot be

anyone else. you are

it

for me. but this is

what i know about

love: it is

not

infinite or

unconditional or

something to build

your life on.

what i know about love

every man in my life

has taught me. one

at a time

they tell me

love is: not

what you thought

at all.

love is: when you

feel that pain

in that one spot

of your chest where you

feel it

every time. like when

your brother left or

your uncle left or

your father left.

so the

best

and

worst

thing i’ve ever done

was to

love you like i

didn’t know

what love is.

I am so afraid
of loving you
because
I am so afraid
of losing you.

loving someone is hard. very hard.
because you cant stop thinking about them and every little thing makes you insecure.

because you spend all day waiting for them to call and when they finally do at 1 in the morning,
you force yourself awake just to hear their voice.

because you haven't talked to them in a week and you want to cry.

because you can’t live without them, and ‘god i hope i don't ever have to.’

because they fill the space in between life and busy.
the quiet moments that were empty before.

because nothing makes you happier than seeing them.
and nothing makes you happier than that except holding them.

because all the love stories and love songs and ballads and poems,
were written for the both of you.

because they’re the first person you think of when you wake up.
the last person you think of when you go to bed.
and the only thing you can remember about your dreams.

because you want to make yourself better, you don't deserve them.

because you want to **** them, they made you so worried.

because you miss them, and you’re lonely.
and no one else can make it better.

loving someone is hard.

Sitting in the dark and analyzing all the life I’ve lived up until now. And I will take all the broken pieces of myself and reform them into the person I am. All the shards that are my heartbreaks and sorrows, dreams and ambitions. Because after all what am I, but the sum of my experiences? And all the pieces of me are shaped differently with rounded surfaces and jagged edges. But the pieces of my old self will still fit and fuse into the core of my new self because I have grown and developed and shifted and adapted, but I am still me. The old me and the new me, like different shades of blue, overlap and blend into one another creating a contrast that is easy to see, but is still entirely blue. Here my past and my present will speculate on my future. Here I will continue breaking me down and building me up, harboring at the nexus of my being every little dream and sentiment that gives life to my soul.

I’ve been just a child until
this day; I feel a child still.
Another year that I have gained,
eighteen and left to my own will.

Insecure and I’m left doubting
what the future will be bringing.
Another year that I have gained,
so I will sit here deeply thinking.

And at this age what have I learned?
But a lesson, smart and stern.
Another year that I have gained,
and there is much I’ve yet to learn.

I want it.
And if it takes that long to get there, it’s okay.
Because I want you.

I want your rainy days and foggy mornings and nights in front of a fireplace.

I want your red brick and cobblestone and antique facades.

I want your rivers and towns and mountains.

I want your eyes and words and touch.

I want your hope and grief and quiet contentment.

I want what I’ve lost and what you’ve gained and what we never had.

If it takes that long to get there, it’s okay.
Because I want it.
I want you.

it’s a shock, but not entirely unexpected. because she is all lines and circles and i am triangles and squares. i can’t really blame you for lines-circles; she is beautiful and wonderful and everything i am not. i would want her too, if i were you. but it’s still not okay and it still hurts so i think we are just about done. but before you go i have to tell you. i met her once, even before you. she was bright eyed and shining. she still is. so i am telling you: you cannot do to her what you have done to me. because she is soft curves and endless horizons. i am sharp edges and harsh angles, with you always cutting yourself on the corners. you cannot tell her about how you can’t wait to see her in her wedding dress and how you don’t think she should wear white because it’s too plain and not good enough for her. how you can’t imagine that she could be any more beautiful but you know she will be, coming down the aisle. you can’t tell her about the house with the red door. you can’t tell her that Alexander is your favorite name so you’ll have two, one for each and July is a strange name, he’ll probably get made fun of at school. you can’t tell her that you heard somewhere that Maine is a good place to raise a family and you want to eat lobster everyday, so the house with the red door will be there; July and Alexander will play in the yard. you can’t promise her that when you come home from work, before anything else, you will just hold her. because these are our things. these things are meant for Triangles and Squares. she deserves things meant for Lines and Circles. so start over with lines-circles and don’t worry that our almost life won’t remember you, because I will.

pulling scraps of paper from a drawer.
mementos of a different life and tokens of a stranger. a different person from the me, now, that sits at this desk and pulls from its depths memories from far away. images flash in my mind, slow and staggered, like a slideshow of who i was and who i became.

and as i come across them i will throw away, or maybe burn, the bad things.
but the good things, the things that imprint upon me a smile like they did once before; these things i will cherish and secret away. so that one day when i am a new person again, i will smile.
like i did today.
like i did back then.

It’s raining right now and I can’t quite remember if you like the rain or hate it, but I like it and it’s putting me to sleep.

The other night I went to bed a little earlier and woke up around this time to the sound of the rain on my window and it felt so peaceful that I would have stayed in that moment forever if I could have. Instead I just smiled and went back to sleep. When I woke up it wasn’t fully and in my half asleep state it felt like eternity stretched out there between the sound of each raindrop.

So I guess I did have a few seconds of forever there in my bed, in my almost sleep.
I guess eternity is the sound of the raindrops on my window.

you are gone.
so with a weird empty space in my chest and a long painful recovery, i move on.
it is long and it is painful, but it is progress and so i am thankful. it’s a little strange to deliver this sort of news. it’s my first time. but then my first is time is my second time is my third time and after that its less difficult. i’ve adjusted to the idea of marking you as absentee from my life, but sometimes i’ll forget and you are there smiling, for a moment. and in that single moment i can remember every single good thing about us. but it will pass as it always does. when it is over i will remember the bad things again. and from there i will start to recover again. will start to live again. will laugh again.
and find someone new to remember.

in the stillness i waited
for
some sign
that you were alive.

when it did not come
i died there
with you.

It's not really fair to them,

the victims of my

attempts to move on

from you.

funny, i
always seem to think
in
yesterdays
or
tomorrows.

all i wanted was

for you
to realize

how
you
hurt
*me.