it all started four years ago,
when she first touched my hand.
it was just a slight brush,
but it drove me crazy.
she smelled like vanilla,
and had honey like hair.
her lips were always cherry red,
and her eyes like a sunset.
she was the most beautiful creature
i have ever laid eyes upon.
from the pinnacle of her head,
to the underside of her toes.
her smile drove me insane,
her laugh shattered my heart.
but she had no idea.
i wasn't existing to her.
i left her flowers every day
at the top step of her house,
with a note reading:
beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl.
and i wasn't sure if you ever got those flowers.
but i remember one day,
you got deathly ill.
the doctors said you wouldn't make it.
so i visited the hospital,
for one last chance to see you.
when i got there,
you had a smile on your face.
you greeted me with kindness,
and you murmured sweet words,
that brought me closer to you.
and i won't ever forget you,
and the way that you spoke.
or the way your eyes crinkled on the cot.
or how you spoke my name.
you knew all those flowers were from me.
and you loved me just as i did you.
but death cut us short.
and on october 14,
we laid you in the ground,
and sometimes when i visit your grave,
i can still see your smile,
when i lay the flowers down.

She hikes as a way
To escape.
She’s outspoken,
But internally broken.
She cries
Most the time.
Because she's learning to cope.
Loathing loneliness.

But more importantly,
She does her best
Each and everyday
To be forgiving
And allow herself the grace
To know
That perfect is impossible
Mistakes aren't her fault,
But a backwards way of freedom.

She's rigid
But only to herself
Believes people are inherently good
If only she could be included.
She speaks her mind
And sometimes her words
Are misunderstood.
She picks on herself for being different
Though people admit
Her presence is like a beacon of light;
Pure sunshine.

She has blue eyes
That see beyond the surface
In more ways than one
She is like the sea;
Vast, deep, filled with mystery.
Never shallow or transparent
Very powerful and her current
Depends on her mood
Some would say the moon.
But ironically
She fears the ocean,
Scared of depth and unknown
Doesn't like monsters or the cold.
She fears herself
And all her potential.
If only she could remember
She deserves something better.

It's hard to tell she suffers;
She's guarded, and hides pain beneath her smile.
But it's not a lie.
She adores the world
And prays one day
It may find peace.
Which is why she's still trying,
Getting up each morning,
Attempting to reclaim her body
Without disappointment or shame.

Give her patience
She will come around
Even the ocean has moments
When the current is down.
Wait until the moon is at its fullest phase
Watch the waves begin to raise.
Moods aren't meant to stay the same
They ebb and flow
transform and change.
She could complain,
but she knows each feeling has a place
bad exists to appreciate good days.

I will bury your memory in the hill just past the chain-link fence, the one where we’d spend hours discussing “R-rated things” and skipping steadfast from our childish remains. It’s okay that you’d rather cut the throat of what used to be my favorite thought to mull over than letting it breathe in the pool of your cerebrum.
Or, now, it is a puddle.
You’ve beaten yourself into the way society wants you to be: humming the tune of burning books and inhaling the charred whimpers. I’ll heed the blame, too, for I was spendthrifty with time and energy trying to hate you (when really, I needed you all along). I’ll just send you a postcard when we’re both caffeine-hunched adults, the complete opposite of how we thought we would turn out to be. Maybe it will release something, anything, to trickle back into the droplet of honesty you have and perhaps your crow’s feet will crinkle.

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

Always it happens when we are not there--
The tree leaps up alive into the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.

Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
Perhaps someone will pass this house one day
To drink, and be restored, and go his way,
Someone in dark confusion as I was
When I drank down cold water in a glass,
Drank a transparent health to keep me sane,
After the bitter mood had gone again.

I'm sick then I'm not
Dependent on a cane then I walk
Exhaustion hits me like a ton of bricks
Then I'm and at 'em with all the rest
I see the questioning stares
"What's wrong with you?"  
They seem to ask
You're either sick or your not.
There is no in-between
Trust me, if I had a choice I would not have this disease.

Our hands act like Newton's Cradle;
bumping into each other like there's no before or no after;
just a constant force of just wanting to hold your hand
until I find the courage to let the friction just be,
and the heat just dissipates throughout our fingertips.
We let the tension of our feelings fall and the oscillation is no more.
It'll just be us; wrapping that constant energy within our fists;
preserving awkward unplanned first kisses.

Nervousness filled to the brim of my smile,
to my fingertips painting on the canvas of your cheek.
Just you and I, and streetlight spotlights
tracing our figures on a pitch navy night;
just waiting for the perfect moment to arrive.
And like devastating car wrecks;
it seems to come so slowly, yet so suddenly.
As the moments of uneasy tension begin to sandcastle its way to glory;
the waves begin to greet them in its wake.
And the kinetic energy of my lips greeting yours is lost
in the awkward, sweet silence that fills the street.
And the heat from the butterflies fluttering against the insides of our stomachs
allow us to exchange nervous laughs and mysterious smiles.
And we begin to taste the sweet, soft shock of each other’s lips.

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.