Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

I have been writing in my head for too long.

Pages and pages have accumulated in my mind and finally I realized
Words are heavy.

How long had I been walking around in this state?
These sentences
They make me drag my feet.
These sentences
It’s hard to lift my head

These sentences –
Am I still standing?

Look-
I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to shake these
Words off of my fingers.
I could be sitting here for years.
The universe may carve this exact spot out for me
“Reserved: for the girl who
held her words like they were bricks
for the girl who dragged those bricks around for
three years and didn’t even know it until now,
this very moment,
she sat down and a brick was shattered.”

This very moment.
This very moment is all that exists and all that ever will,
Yet this very moment
Is gone

Curious.

You see,
I have been writing in my head for too long
And right now
This very moment
I feel weightless

a heavily decorated door creaks open to disturb the silence-
"why don't you turn on the light?" he asks her,
but she likes the shape of the night;
the way the sky hugs close to the earth and resembles the bell of a glass cover over a cake on a bakery counter.
"life is sweet like that..." she sings,
"like a pastry on display,
something sweet that we can taste."
there's a certain way of looking at it.
your eyes half closed,
one hand high on a hip and the other clasping a cigarette.
"yeah,
i mean,
i guess that makes sense..."

"one ******* roll!"
of the drum,
of a car,
of our calendar.
things have changed.
the universe is stretching,
the earth has grown;
and so has she,
into a species of flower that can't be grown indoors no matter how many lamps you point at her face-
she needs the sun...
and the wild.
let her grow free in the sun of foreign hillsides,
by a creek in the meadow she's dreamt of for years...
with the fruit farms.
"yeah...the fruit farms." she smiles.
she's always wanted to sell fruit on the highway a few miles from the farm she'll own,
on land she bought,
in a house she built,
feasting daily upon earthly treasures she grew
in the dirt
with her hands.
let her feed you a story for breakfast;
a picture she'll paint with scenes of her dreams that she only occasionally shares...
when the mood is hopeful and kind and she's not worried about anyone laughing.
listen to her heart;
type-writer keys over the hum of radio space.
rest your head-
ear pressed to her chest;
listen.
like curious neighbors in the backyard in the sleepy hours of the weekend between breakfast and lunch,
coffee and cartoons.
let her show you one of her dreams.
a prized,
***** pebble she keeps cradled in a pocket full of lint.
she's an old soul...
peering through dirt colored eyes just as wide as a child's.

"it's been a long time since i've seen the ocean..."
she whispers to herself under the last drag of her third cigarette.

but she hates the beach,
and the crowds of the vain who gather there to worship starving,
sacred bodies;
she just likes the sound.
the throaty yell of prehistoric waves breaking over zagging shorelines.
she says the sound "helps her dream."
it doesn't "help" her dream,
nothing helps her sleep...
it just makes her think;
of unimaginable beasts that have swam in our seas,
and the shape she's been told that the continents once made.
she thinks of mer-maids and voyagers and the rustic ship that brought her great-grandmother over at age thirteen...
this time she's not dreaming,
just remembering things that she's never seen.
her ***** feet need a stroll through the sands of a pristine scene-
she's heard such thing used to exist.

she mumbles, "it hurts to know that nothing is sacred..."

but she is.
a mess of tangled heart-strings and sentences,
she's sacred.
and so are the four tiny walls that hide her from the world.

I know someone who finds solace in ballet shoes
                A boy who strums his secrets to guitar strings
Someone that spends his waking moments with glazed red eyes
             As if facing this world cold turkey
                       Isn’t even an option.

For boys whose fingertips shake
                Like the burning end of a cigarette
And girls whose smiles resemble
Car crashes waiting to happen
A cacophony of shattered noises
             And those of us who feel guilty for the
                     mere act
                           Inhaling air
                        And exhaling poison
So we spend lifetimes holding our breaths

   Until we burn our lungs out trying
            To warm our hearts
            With something other than the fire
           That burns out in a smoky haze

Until our eyes become rivers,
flowing oceans
That cry out a thousand melted glaciers

Our tongues speak ruined languages
We read everything backwards
Curse in Latin
Make oaths in Russian
So whatever we say sounds beautiful.

So that our hands wont have to learn permanence,
affection
consolation.

i want to tell you all of my secrets.
i'll write them down on the back of a torn up map,
and cram them into a jar for you to set atop your desk and ponder.
something about the way that you speak
sounds an awful lot like all of my walls tumbling down to the ground.
i'd even let you pass the guards,
if you'd just ask,
but you won't.
maybe we could make a trade;
you could carry around my burdens for a bit,
and forget all about yours.
and in return,
i'll hold you the way that your rib cage cradles your heart-
intently,
and with the sole purpose of protecting something important.
at least,
i think you're important.
if only i knew what you think.
but you keep those prized gems to yourself,
thrown about your head in a "shouda-coulda-woulda" past tense.
i just hope you think of me.
as a face with an identity,
and not just as a place to fall asleep.
i'm only boring when they expect it of  me.
so how about we try something new?
let's cut the shakespearean bull-**** and jedi mind-tricks
and just tell each other the truth.
**** poetic justice,
let's cut to the chase:
i'm done chasing cars whose traffic boots have begun to rust.
so dust off your unravelling heart-strings and strike a chord within me,
and maybe then you'll be convinced to sing along.
see,
love songs are for the birds,
love poems are for the lost,
and love itself will always evade me.
prove me wrong.
lace up your boots and run for once.
prove to me that YOU like the hunt,
and that i'm worthy of your crooked arrow's fire.
take my breath away,
with the intentions of leaving it that way,
instead of in hopes of a few hours of restless companionship.
despite popular belief,
worth isn't proven between the sheets,
that's where it's meant to be honored,
addressed,
nourished.
a woman of intelligence is far more exciting
than a dolled-up piece of meat,
and all it takes to catch a good one,
is to try.
i know **** well that i'm worth every single one of saturn's rings,
but i guess i'll wait
and see what you think.