okay so i’m beginning to believe i was born asleep and still haven’t woken up, or caught in a day dream where my name is the answer to all your security questions. okay. a thousand years of wondering and all i can come up with is that you fell in love with me at a picnic in my imagination. the lemonade we always talk about swimming in sugar and tiny handmade sandwiches from my kitchen, your favorite, extra pickle. don’t forget about the pickles. of course the clouds march in stomping out the sunshine, of course. it was dark and there was lightning so much lightning. don’t be scared just now darling don’t be scared. in the middle of the night we only talk about your version of the story. how i’d ask you to stay, asking you to tell me what’s real asking you with my hands asking you with maps, a country called please listen to me, you should know by now that it is an island too far to sail to according to you. i know i know, who dared name an ocean lonely when all the ships are sinking. we can go back we can turn around where the sky is the gentlest shade lavender, we can go back and have a conversation that has never happened before. when everything is the color of day old bruises i won’t let you down. i promise when i get home i will count every freckle every one. when i get home can we open one of those mason jars full of fresh air because i can’t breathe. i remember that day, although i pretend it was more recent than it was. you were there in a swell of green grass in a dress that makes me blush, and there i was blushing. i’m not sure how i made it out alive, skipping the part in the song where you, long gone come busting through a doorway, through the well air conditioned living room and and across the kitchen tile, to the refrigerator where just like in elementary school, my fourth grade heart wrote all your favorite things on flash cards in the blackest magic marker so i could memorize the things that made you happiest. and you turning around in slow motion to see my face, or where my face should be, the only expression i can make anymore, realizing that you realized that i only ever wanted to be something that made you happy. suddenly you’re tired, and i’m tired too, goodnight goodnight, i’m falling asleep because it’s the only thing that doesn’t burn. i’m falling asleep to go back again. everything glitches and i’m underneath your perfect teeth. you say “i would never hurt you” and i say “just like that?” and the layer starts over again, always back to the moment i asked you in my bravest of voices if i could hold your hand. you probably don’t remember that moment, or maybe you do but don’t particularly share the same sentiment over its importance. you see, i’m always fine until the part where i have to say it out loud, and then time stops. i have always wanted to tell you that something happened inside me that night and now i’m not the same me as i was before. so if you ever cross a bridge. if you ever get my voicemail, if you need me, i’ll be sketching up the dramatic parts in my head and they’ll happen just the way i imagined just you wait you wait. the last scene the very last one, the bottom layer, knee deep in mud knee deep in i told you so, you say “i would never hurt you” and instead of saying “just like that” i reach up to kiss you and the room evaporates. so if you want lemonade and bedtime stories, if i can make a believer out of you, if you want bucketfuls of november if you want grace if you want the courage it takes to ask for grace, you’re over the train tracks you’re almost home you’re almost there. what else can you say besides “okay pumpkin okay sweetheart, in my head everything was beautiful" the doorway now filled with people who send you birthday cards saying welcome back welcome home we’ve missed you, hello. hello. the time spent waiting, chorus of rain, i only invited you over so we could make perfect sense. i only gave my hands away because you didn’t want them anymore. and days later a man with a shark tooth necklace asked if i was okay and i lost it i just lost it. all the little red bricks with their little names carved into them, how they don’t feel comfortable under your feet, how there were hundreds of flowers but somehow we took a picture of the same one the very same one, and how we can’t talk about things like that anymore, how i was sitting on a bench and i didn’t hear you call my name, shaking hands on accident with your parents hello sir hello mam, your daughter is my favorite ghost.

i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when we talked about going to seattle?
you said you liked the rain
and the fact that no one there would know you,
i just wanted to be wherever you were.
i was never afraid of the dark
when you talked about yours.
i still don't have words for what i felt
when you told me the only other number
you had saved in your phone apart from your mother's was mine.
i keep telling myself you're not allowed
to just exit and re-enter my life as you please,
but i leave the door unlocked,
so what does that make me?
the last "i love you" from the last time we spoke,
is still stuck to the roof of my mouth.
other lovers have tried to pry it out of me,
but the memory of you is like lockjaw.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember the lizard you caught last summer?
you let me name him forrest.
if life is a box of chocolates,
there are pieces missing,
and whatever is left has gone stale.
i can't smoke cigarettes in my backyard anymore
without wondering where you are
or if you're smoking too.
i hope you're not drinking,
i know you hate what it does to you.
your secrets are still tucked between my ribs,
i will hold them safe and repeat them back to you
if you ever lose your way home.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when you told me
about the person you were afraid of becoming,
i said i wasn't scared,
and i told you i was proud of you?
i'm still proud of you.
i hope you're in school or at least keeping busy.
i hope you still make yourself laugh.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember what movie we were watching
the night you got arrested?
i still can't finish it.
i am holding the place.
can we pick up where we left off?
can we stand up and wipe the dust off?
i never got to tell you why i only write in pen,
or why i can't sleep with socks on,
or about the day i caught god with his hands in a public fountain
fishing for change.
i'm not mad at you for disappearing, but i'm lonely.
the only reason i haven't called
is because i'm afraid of being sent straight to voicemail,
but if i ever find myself in indiana again,
you'll be the first to know.

- m.f.

“pinky promise you’ll be there for my play?”

i don’t do pinky promises.

“why not?”

I don’t make promises that i can’t keep. because a broken promise is just about as bad as a broken tequila bottle shoved into the soft spot just below your ribs.

“…what?”

speaking of tequila, let me tell you why i don’t do pinky promises.
it was a few falls ago, three if you really want to get technical.
i’d come down to visit you on a weekend instead of staying home to study like i should’ve been.
it was eleven to eleven. 

drunk. dear gods we were drunk. we’d just stumbled out of the greasiest mexican restaurant i’d ever eaten in. 
but hey. the margaritas were cheap, and more importantly, they were the only place in the area that would serve to minors. They even included a free shot of tequila when you asked for your check, that went down with similar smoothness to the way my debit card slid through the reader and emptied my bank account a little more.


but yes. you and i were drunk. and as we strolled down fifth avenue i-

“me?”

No, i mean her. not you.

“who is ‘her?’”

that’s not important. do you want me to tell the story or not?

“whatever…”

anyways. as we strolled down sixth avenue i-

“i thought it was fifth avenue?”

Can you not?

“sorry….”

as we strolled down whatever the **** avenue it was, i couldn’t tell my feet from the concrete because the street lamps tinged everything an odd warm shade of brownish orange.
to stop myself from falling i reached out and wrapped my arm around your shoulder. 

I can still feel the fur from your coat brushing on my cheek.
you didn’t protest, and i sure as hell wasn’t going to stop.
we were drunk. and talking. 
talking about nonsense, about school, about our grades, about boys… 
it’s funny that if we talked for long enough, without a doubt, our conversation would drift to the subject of love.

You knew that I liked you. back then i thought you just liked to torture me. 

we stopped at the burning open palm of the street light before us. 
i stopped you mid-sentence. 
‘i could love you better’.

after those five words left my lips i suddenly wasn’t very drunk anymore.
 
silence. 

there was no turning back now,  so i had to just roll with it. 

‘you waste all of this time on these boys who do nothing but hurt you…. but i’ve loved you for years now. you and i both know that you deserve better. that i would be better. every single time you come up in conversation with my old friends or my parents they ask whether or not we’ve finally gotten together or not. what’s stopping us?’

You stared at me for a long time, saying nothing, but it didn’t take a psychic to see the indecisiveness and longing and anxiety and fear swirling inside of you like your unmentionables in your Maytag.


“I guess i don’t really have a good reason. it’s just…. awkward, you know?” 

She paused. I tried not to betray any emotion with my face. 

"I'll cut you a deal. if in two years, we aren't seeing anybody... we'll give 'us' a shot." 

Not quite the answer I was looking for, but it was better than a flat out 'No'. little did I know at the time that they were essentially the same thing. 

I stuck out my pinky finger.

'Pinky promise?'
"Pinky promise”, she replied.

We locked eyes, locked pinkies in an embrace, and seconds later the ghostly white of the pedestrian walk signal shone down on us. 

We broke our gaze and walked off into the night.

That was three years ago, and it’s probably safe to say that we won’t be taking that shot.
I don’t hold it against her. But i learned through three years of waiting not to make promises that you can’t or don’t intend to keep.

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.

Another **** conversation
beneath a tangerine moon
Tonight is one segment - not enough to share
You tell me I’m selfish
and you are yelling
even though I told you that grapefruit
can make your medication not work;
And it’s unnerving peeling clementines with you
Can you de-flesh me too, with your bare hands?
Are you mad at me?
No, You say,
it’s just not the right time
I told you I would give you the moon
But for now these oranges will have to do

But come back when the world is ripe
Then I’ll peel and split it with you.

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.