but the next day, he felt the need to tell me he'd been drinking the night before.
"i promise i meant every word i said." he soberly said. "every single one."
but darling, do you remember the way you breathed so quietly as i asked you to tell me again tomorrow? do you remember the way you stuttered when i rebuttled?
no one had ever told me they had loved me before, but
for some reason, hearing your words pointed at my ears
felt awkward -- although it should feel right, all utterly right,
you had said my full name, and i still smile when i hear my name on
the tips of your lips.
it felt like, you don't know how i feel about those lovely, lovely words
like, you don't know how i feel
like, you don't know how.

i want to eagerly love you.
in fact, i already eagerly do.
you are already in my bones. you are already in my blood.
it will be impossible to ever erase you from my mind, from the stories
i will share with the new people i will meet.
there is no way that i could forget the way you made me feel,
the way that you had lit a fiercer fire in my heart after i was sure
i would be dulled forever. i love you, for everything you have done
for me, for everything we have talked about, for all the laughs
you've dug out of me, for the way that you've showed me that
second ******* chances are so ******* worth it.

love takes trust, and i'm not quite there with you yet.
it takes a lot out of me, to trust.
i can barely trust my own mother to hold me down when i need her,
i can barely rely on my best friend to be there when i need him.
it must be a reflection of who i am as a person.

i was lying in bed this evening wondering about what i would
like to say to you, and i found myself crying into my sheets like a child;
the last time i had cried over a boy, he had broken my heart
into a million little pieces,
and i think i'd only found about a thousand parts of myself after him,
parts of me still gone, away with him.
darling, i couldn't help but think about how devastated i would be without you,
and how much i will need you more than you will ever need me,
and how much i adore you; everything about you, i adore.

baby, i can't push down this looming feeling that you will destroy me
when i least expect it,
and i don't know if i will be able to pick myself up again if it ever
comes to that.
my demons eat me alive every morning, every night, and they
won't let up, they never have.
as i rubbed my eyes at 8pm in nothing but your discarded boxers and
the same shirt i wore out with you the evening before, i couldn't
help but think about how i wouldn't want my monsters to scare you away,
for them to destroy you, too, as they had long ago taken me.

it just feels like i will never love myself enough
to allow you to love me too.
it just feels like, maybe drunk you really does love me,
maybe sober you loves me, too.
i wish i could believe you, have faith in you, trust in your words.
you told me once that i was the one good thing in your life
that you had ever felt okay about
and i skimmed over your words as if what you said didn't completely
shake my world.
you say the most beautiful things, but there's a broken person inside of me
who has a hard time understanding the way you whisper into my ear.

i love you. i will always love you.
i hope you will not hurt me,
and i will not hurt you.

do Not write for the sake of people understanding your pain
and understanding your story.
people are unique with their own twisting plots,
their own gorgeous freckles and their own crooked smiles.
Beauty.
Yes,
there is something inside of me that wants to be everything
Right, Beautiful
for Someone Else,
some kind, distant voice tries to assure me in a shouting whisper that
"i can never do someone i love no wrong."

do Not
try to explain your storyline to people who don't like stories,
they are just people, people don't think - they rely on what they see
you can't blame them, because to them, you are just people as well.
do Not
find the need to twist your story to make it "sound better"
to hoard more love, more fake love for a fake story
do Not
feel the desire to explain yourself for what you have come to love;
love is crazy, love is numb,
love does not arrive when you beg for it to come.
love swoops in when you least expect it and consumes
you when you blink for a second;
it may be a hobby, a thing, or a person,
you cannot tame a desire, you cannot calm a storm.

Yes,
there is something inside of me that aches to be something
Perfect
for someone Else.

You are not the one,
the Hero,
the knight in shining armor.
I don't know your story, I can't be the one to tell you that.
I am not your main character, the protagonist, the focus,
You sit in your limelight, in the glow of the spotlight,
this is your stage; you are your own playwright.
You are not a cliche, you are not mediocre,
You are not just people,
you are someone Else
and you are perfect for yourself.

I think what's so beautiful about being a poet
is reading your own work
and feeling yourself slip right back into that same spot of
what you were so eager to describe once upon a time.
When writing that perfect poem in a frenzy of
intensity, you get that annoyance, that irritation
eating away at your skin like a disease,
bubbling on your fingertips and itching on your palms
that maybe, you will never be able to properly capture
exactly what you're feeling,
that you may never be able to once again understand what you're
experiencing right now.
You laugh and wonder if you'll ever become an uptight parent
who completely forgot what it meant to love for the first time,
or forgot that sharp, aching feeling you felt when you finally
realized that the World isn't really at the tips of your fingers.
They say that sometimes, there's nothing more soothing than hearing
someone say "Me too"
validating that we are, in fact, entitled to feel as we are.
"If I can't understand it again one day, how will I ever
know I once ever felt at all?
Is this all real?
Have I gone mad?"

And I think it's important to remember these feelings,
these mythical things that have torn gaping wounds into
our souls and broke us open in ways we had never once thought possible.
What doesn't **** you makes you stronger versus "we are only
products of the experiences we have".
Sometimes we urge ourselves
that the pain isn't worth it, that we shouldn't allow ourselves
to break down and crumble and shatter and fall.
It isn't worth it to feel this way, it's not fair to who I am.
Protect and hide and cover your heart,
We are only out to protect what is rightfully ours;
ourselves, just us, the only things that we know are for absolute certain.

Why should we ever forget
and discard what reminds us that we're here?

As poets, we never want to forget that
we can feel;
that this feeling ever existed, and that it deserves to be
clearly heard, never forgotten.
Acknowledge how my breath tickles your cheek
as you listen emptily to me speak.
I want these words to be in every book, every library,
every Bible you ever open, every newspaper you ever pick up,
don't you dare forget that you are a l i v e,
left and right,
heart throbbing and brain whirling,
mouth watering and eyes blinking.
"These feelings must be translated into wisps of words
and rhymes and prose, whispered and yelled and cried and shouted.
My throat is raw and I am feeling it down my spine,
please don't try to shut me up or complete my sentence,
I want you to know that these words, used over millions
and millions of times, are beautiful in their way
because, like people, no matter how many times we decide to
use them over and over again, they will never lose beauty -
they will never fail to make us feel so alive."

there are so many words i should have said to you.
front and center, i never had any idea what it meant to care for another;
i just wanted to love you so eagerly and you made it
too easy
to laugh so obnoxiously with a terribly light heart;
to listen so carefully with no judgement in my brain;
to look you in the eye with no nerves shuddering down my spine.
left and right, i feel like i should have chased after you.
with these words that eroded the back of my throat
and burnt the roof of my mouth,
alas,
there are quiet 'i love you's beneath my tongue and
'no one ever hurt me quite like you did's on the insides of my cheeks,
eating my flesh and burning my insides.
i wanted to rip open my chest and break open my ribs,
hand you what's inside and only hope that you, too, could feel
see
understand
just how much i've missed you since our last 'goodbye's.

with each person who begs me to creak a bit open,
allow them a peak inside
from within these sudden walls that suddenly stand so tall, too tall between us,
i begin to realize how hurt i've allowed myself to feel after you.
running my fingers over these scars, they stretch around my body
further and deeper than i initially ever thought.
with months between our last forced conversation and today,
and weeks since the last time i've yearned for your skin,
i am sure i will never want you again-
to reign such hurt on my heart again.
but these words, they sit impatiently and loudly inside of me,
begging to be heard
painfully waiting for their turn to roll off my tongue,
press against the temples of your head and be understood.

i could never run after you,
i don't know why you ran in the first place;
i hate that men and women think so differently;
i am constantly conflicted between "it's not my job to chase after you"
and "maybe he never cared at all in the first place";
these words, like people
are used a million times over
but that does not change the beauty that they hold.

a cliche darling,
but i care so much about your feelings that
i would never impose my own on you.

to me, you're like a song that makes me feel like i belong.
not the kind that everyone else listens to, just because everyone else does it, too.
those songs get played out, and over time, they lose their magic
because every other song begins to sound just like them, too.
to me, you're like a song that refuses to be ignored,
like a heart that pounds viciously in your head after you've
run miles and miles to beat your old time -
who knew how violently alive you were?
like a young child, ankle-height, who will tell you
definitely
that this is right; this is right, and what anyone else says is wrong.
you have a melody of a thousand lost symphonies
simply forgotten in the face of sleepy inspiration and final conscious sighs;
you have the still rhythm of a heartbeat,
reminding me effortlessly that i'm still here, still breathing and with purpose,
you have the drop of a cliff,
and the verses of a bible; i would graciously live by your words, this,
is your song,
and i cannot stop singing your name.

i wish i knew how to put some pretty words together;
in a way that you could read me and cry without realizing it,
in a way that you don't know how it all suddenly made sense
but it all fell together - so right - till the end.
with the steady hand of a seamstress and the persistence of a theorist,
i would string together wispy letters, carefully taking away
and holding all the guilty, lukewarm feelings of self-romanticized nostalgia,
with those hollow, deep pangs of shamelessly missing you
from the somewheres and over theres beneath my ribs.
sometimes, i really miss you - and all of those times, i hate it.
sometimes i stare back at you longer than i should,
but i'm beginning to think that even looking your way
is much worse than a waste of sweet time at this point.
i don't want you inside of my mind anymore.
my wants and needs and maybes of tomorrow are foggy and furiously blinded with
what you used to make me feel. will i ever want anything that much again?
i see you a lot in my mind, smiling handsomely in a way that kind of ****** me off.
in some way, i am overwhelmingly upset in a way i can't describe, in such a strange dialect that
i've maybe only begun to understand when you spoke it to me with watery eyes and an offkey tone:
"i can't do it." i think i know what you mean now.
you were trying to say something deep, i had thought all along,
but i think you were just trying, just simply trying to go along
with something that was safe; you know, i forgive you for playing it safe.
we're just trying to protect what little good we think is left.
i wish i could have tried just as hard; tried harder/ to be with you
because i'm just so tired
(i need to rub my eyes clear)
that i will exasperatingly admit that i am lost after you.
i'm so ruthlessly childish, in a curious way that i refuse to let these warm,
painful feelings for you go.
ruthlessly, still into you, i'm so hardheaded that i will even ignore myself
to forget you
over
(this is the last time i'll look back on you)
and over
(i swear his name won't come to me tomorrow)
again.
you replay in my mind;
maybe one day i will
forget that you ever really meant everything to me once
anyways.