i bet even after all this time
that if my chest were to
ache with emptiness enough
like it used to i could go to your house
and find the outline of our bodies
on your dark blue bed sheets
i have spent the last year
both trying to run from you
and find you at the same time
but i left everything i knew
about falling in love
on that mattress and
it's still settling there
like dust and
all i can do is write about you
until it comes back to me,
or by some kind of miracle,
you decide to.

They say that 1+1=2, and that is in fact true
but when it comes to me and you
1+1=1 not 2
for together we are one,
not 2

The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that I fall in love daily
Held under so many captivating spells
moulded and crafted by all walks of life
I find myself longing for all of you
the broken, the fallen, the bruised
the saints, the sinners
the righteous, the dispossessed
the holy, the unholy
all meet here
to speak of life
as they feel it
as only we know it.
Onwards, upwards
Downward spirals
kindness, cruelty
crashing through boundaries
bounding across oceans
carried on wistful sighs and broken dreams
The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that it breaks my heart
Then brings me back to love again
All within an hour.

this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.

I used to think you knew your soul mate if their chin fit perfectly into the nook in your neck. My first girlfriend was pretty awesome at giving hugs.

But I knew the kind of woman I wanted to marry the day I watched my mother hum her favourite song while doing the dishes.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to her humming.

Would my son ever watch me slow dance with his mother?

Or would I always be writing poems about leopard print skins and french fries hair.

I carry all these things on top of my heart and I fear if it gets broken they’ll all fall through the cracks.

Maybe I have a flawed perception of romance, maybe slow dancing, humming, dishwashers don’t exist. Maybe gorgeous earthquakes aren’t always heart breaking but ground breaking.

I feel like each second is a grain of sand and the waves are washing away my sand castles one after the other. People always tell me I make the truth the hardest to understand, so I guess what I’m trying to say is I feel like time is running out. And with all the so called fish in the sea, these waves never seem to leave any on my shores.

Maybe I’m too blinded, concentrating on fish when there’re great blue whales around, tiger sharks and even electric eels that we’ll always have a spark.

I’ve been living too fast, but there’s no point finishing first if there’s no one waiting at the finish line, I’d rather slow dance to her humming and maybe in essence we would be the ones that won.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to no music in the living room. I know she eagerly anticipates the day her and I slow dance to my wedding song. I hope this is not another failed attempt of me trying to get closer to that day.

i had thought
the boy in my computer science class
with the foreign skin and army outfit
was the epitome of adorable
breaking into spanish when he got overexcited about learning
which was always
and i was excited when we were paired together today
until he seemed genuinely impressed by my competency
and contributed nothing
suddenly his misunderstandings of gender and sexism no longer
seemed like something i could cutely teach him about
but a tragic flaw
and a person i didn't want to be around