Funny how a photograph can pump blood
I only have one of you, it isn't mine
it sits here backlit
shared with all that would gladly drown in those mischief eyes.
Your smile, a moment of calm, a second of perfection caught, always brings my own.
There is no beauty like yours, no work of art has ever made me want to overflow with passion the way you do. I could write countless poems, a thousand odes to your dimples, a million sonnets to your curls, a billion lovesongs to your eyes to no avail. So I'll laugh at your jokes, and be a sturdy shoulder, a friend.  I'll wish the best for you always, while your heart keeps my secret safe. Poets shouldn't fall in love with the unloved, there aren't enough words to describe the agony.

She left me

It hurt

Ow my heart

I will get better

I will survive

Love is pain

Ow

Our love was like a kite string

I couldn't hold on for too long

the wind was really strong

whoa watch out for that wind

****, it's like a hurricane out in this ****

Wow, I'm very heartfelt

Hopefully someone sleeps with me after I read this at the slam

Such
revealing
beauty
lies
within
tragedies
of
reflection.

If you still loved her you'd tell me about how her nose crinkled when she'd laugh like she could love the entire the world, and how she liked the yellow of sunflowers because they'd remind her of what it was to be healthy; how she was set to be nothing like her parents yet was still fragile enough to breakdown in a hospital bed; her spontaneous singing. What it was like to hold her in your sleep.
You'd tell me how you miss her reaching out for you; how sleeping alone made you worship the summers when you heard her laugh billowing in the wind like her skirts, dancing in the breeze:ablaze.
But time does that sometimes,
You don't love her anymore.

Perhaps I'm lying.
Perhaps I've been lying
this whole time.
Perhaps my apathy
manifests only as self defense;
as denial. How can one
understand the center of the
labyrinth from the outside? Or perhaps,
it is from the center of the maze that I stand,
unable to conceive of
the outside world. There is an
ambiguity in emotion
with lines blurring between
apathy and anger, between
love and hate. --as they seem
to come so terribly entwined--
So perhaps I am lying, not only
to you, but to myself, and in
consequence my soul is
stagnating and stalling out in an attempt
to break through toward the surface.
However, that's a chance I'm unsure if I can take
at this moment in time.
I don't think I mind it so much here,
stuck inside the labyrinth.

It was 3 PM on a Tuesday
in the summer, just before
my first semester of college.
I went out on a whim and
bought a cheetah print lava
lamp for forty six dollars
at some stand in the mall,
despite you persistently
advising me not to
waste money on
"insignificant ****"

The next day it rained
from 7 AM until 5 PM
and I forced you to lie
in bed with me all day,
with the curtains drawn
& the lights out.
I wanted us to observe
the weird, red
shapes forming
inside my new cheetah
print lava lamp...
Something about it
captivated me.
I never had one as a kid,
And you just sat there
holding my hand for
fifty eight minutes before
I whispered, "did you see
how pretty that one was?"

You laughed gently
and shifted your eyes
toward my dresser,
at which point
I realized
that was the very first time
you looked away from me
since we had laid down
And
with that thought,
the butterflies
woke so chaotically,
I thought I'd never
catch my breath