I hadn't cried in years.  
I was always taught that strength
was not having the courage to let yourself feel but
******* it up, holding it in.
I am sick of "You're going soft on us, honey"
Today I came to understand that
you are completely okay with writing the same poem
over and over again.
This is a metaphor for the way you ****** her in my bed.
This is a metaphor for the night you copy and pasted love letters.
This is a metaphor for what really happened-
I never fall in the same place twice.
Except when I do.
I think the critical difference between the two of us,
critical because there are many differences
but- I think our hamartia, our fatal flaw,
our end scene is this:
if people didn't like my poetry, if nobody listened,
if I walked out on stage and nobody snapped their
fingers, I would still write for just your eyes.
I would still cramp my crooked, birth defect,
quadruple jointed fingers writing to you about the nights
you loved me back,
for a minute there you loved me back.
And you loved 20,000 other people back.
And you loved small towns back and big cities back and the entire west coast
back when you drove through, making temporary homes out of people
who should have been permanent
and I loved you.
And I hadn't cried in years.
Not because I wasn't sad, but because I was taught that showing emotion
was weakness.
So if my father made me memorize the How To's of strength,
if I were going by the book, today I'd be so fragile
you could say hello and I'd shatter so suddenly you'd
forget you were the one that let go.

I am my fathers daughter.
I know this because he tells me every time he's drunk or every time I'm drunk
I think it started when my mother left
skipped town with the preacher
left me shaking in the bathroom holding my knees like a bad taste in my mouth
this is family
this is coming home or the lack of coming back
this is making toast for your mom when she's had too much wine and somehow ends up where it all began, in the apartment that was once hers but has since switched ownership
this house is not a home
without a mother
this house is not a home without the fathers daughter
we become glue for those who cannot become sober
we become wall, ball and chain, we become our fathers at such a young age we forget how to be anything besides drunk

when someone thanks me for writing the things they wish they could say out loud I apologize for hours until they stop wishing and ask me why. I usually tell them the same thing
"do you know when you're driving alone and that one song comes on, you know that one. that one song with a million different memories dripping off the tongue of that one man who sings like he never got on that airplane and so he didn't not make it back to the ground? and you're thinking about crashing and when you're thinking about crashing you almost do crash, because you were distracted about crashing and you get scared and realize that you just want to not want to crash? well that's how I feel all the time. Even when I'm completely still. Or when you're in the bath and you see faces in the ceiling and you wonder if the faces you're seeing are significant? like maybe you're seeing their face because they never meant to hurt you or maybe you took an extra 20 milligrams today and you're just a little out of sorts."
I'm not done explaining why I'm sorry, but this is usually around the time they interrupt, all "no, I apologize" all "I shouldn't have asked"

we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread

Somewhere there is a nurse putting clean sheets on what was once someone's death bed. Somewhere there is a police officer laying awake at two in the morning contemplating breaking his thumbs so he won't have to pull another trigger. Somewhere there is a body bag taking the shape of a person. Somewhere a warden has accidentally called a prisoner by their first name. Somewhere there is a man getting ready to pay for his glass of whiskey, his '1 year' AA token falls out of his wallet onto the bar counter. Somewhere the glass is completely empty, somewhere it's overflowing. Somewhere a therapist sitting in an empty session reading the local newspaper's obituary section wondering what she could've done. Somewhere a bullet has fallen in love with a heart, giving a whole new meaning to the 'kiss of death'. Somewhere the girl that never speaks is raising her hand but immediately putting it back down after the sound of her classmates' laughter bounces back and forth from the back of her mind to the front. Somewhere the silence at the dinner table is making a dent in a child's suit of armor. Somewhere a 70 year old man starts skipping instead of walking, he stops taking his medication. Somewhere there is a mother too drunk to sign her daughter's permission slip. Somewhere a man has stolen all of the flowers from a grave, so he can somehow feel as though he's  being missed. Somewhere a child is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she realizes ''myself'' isn't a good enough answer. Somewhere a mirror has been mistaken for a stranger. Somewhere someone is being loved by another person the only way they know how to love; whether it's through kisses, bruises, sleeping too closely to the other, or fifteen missed calls. Somewhere a man is falling in love with the automated voice inside of a voice mail because at least she will listen to him. Somewhere a 911 operator is walking into her house, hearing screams that aren't actually there. Somewhere these short stories are being broadcasted on the news,  printed in the paper, whispered to a friend, or rotting in the back of someone's head. Somewhere I am whispering all of these things to a silent room full of people, none of them look up.

today it is sunday, and i want to be waking up with you.
look - this isn't going to be a cheesy poem about love, or maybe it is.
the summer of 2013.
i was only 15, i had no idea what love was.
you said it was never unrequited love, but what i perceived was just as bad. you loved the idea of a deadbeat me who would care only when you cared, and who wouldn’t mind being put on the bench when her team was losing. instead, i just scratched out my eyes and went to the mound anyways. somehow i never struck out.
some days i am an overly caffeinated and hyperventilated excuse for post traumatic stress induced dramatizations.
i wrote a trip report on you. the come up is foggy after repeated use. the peak is incredible as always. i am so ******* addicted that sometimes i forget everyone can see the track marks on my forearms.
if i were to speak for myself, i'd tell you that the universe is twice as big as we think it is and you're the only one who made that idea less devastating.
all the boys that had "loved me" before then, loved me with sweaty palms and left me with sad bruises. all the girls that "loved me" before then, loved me with busy mouths and shallow "i love you's". all the boys and girls i thought i might have "loved" were all just something leading me to you, and i think me still falling in love with you two years after we broke up really proves my point. loving you was different. it was hard. it was tiring. it happened fast. it happened so nicely. *it was. so. *******. worth. it. you're so worth it. you have not been treated the way you should be treated, and i promise to make up for every time you were left upset all night crying because of the ****** person who made you feel that way.
this is so scattered.
it's like i wrote you into ******* existence. i never thought i would get the girl i've been dreaming up. you're everything i've ever written about all bundle up into one perfectly imperfect (beautifully) flawed person. and you're all mine.
look - i used to write you into a sad poem at two in the morning, and my bones trembled like your upper lip as you cried in your bathroom that night two summers ago. i think i’m still shaken because my skin is fitting a little strangely
i feel gravity in my kneecaps
i feel ice rubbing down my spine
i feel false hope and real hope,
and i feel the ten milligrams of relaxation that i took to forget what i could. the mass in my lungs is shrinking, the fear in my empty stomach is being replaced with love and it's all for you you you you y o u.
there was something in my bones that told me to love you. i remember promising to like you even after i knew everything about you, and it turns out i loved you instead.
i'll cut my soul into a million pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home.
i'll write love poems to the parts of yourself you can't stand.
i'll stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you i'm not afraid of your dark. you're so beautiful because you let yourself feel so many things, and that's pretty **** brave.
i am in love with you simply and as difficult as it is to remember all 10 trillion digits in pi. i want all of you, i am in love with all of you. i want you forever, i want to be in love with you forever.
i love you.