I want to write a love poem
The best the world has ever seen
About two shattered people
Fitting together at their broken seems

I want to write a love poem
That no one can forget
About two lonely people
That where a perfect fit

I want to write a love poem
That transcends past the stars
About two cosmic bodies
That's not imprisoned behind broken bars

I want to write a love poem
So great no one has ever known
Of two tattered spirits
That clung to each other and the love they shown

I want to write a love poem
That can survive any storm
About two people with icicle hearts
That true love burned bright and warmed

I want to write a love poem
But alas that I can not do
For I have never tasted love
So I have not a single clue

Today I threw away the third letter I wrote to you.
I always write them under the moonlight,
under the impression that
it might somehow make every word sacred,
every sentence holy.
I write them with shaky hands and teary eyes.
I write them for me,
I write them for you.
But when morning comes,
I taste regret on my tongue
and each letter feels poisonous.
So I rip them apart
with the same fierceness I tore myself away from you.
Closure?
I don't know how to get it
when I'm not the only one that had been hurting.
I still hang on to the unfinished.
I only wish to let go.

i know that
most days
the cathedral of your body
with all its dips and curves
forgotten staircases
and ripped velvet covers
on the splintered pews
is hard to love

and there are days
where you wish that your
body would have manifested itself
as a palace
made of ivory and bone
with great empty halls
that would host nothing else
but your anguished cries
and empty stomach

but these things
are incapable of filling you up
because it is hard to sustain yourself
on bitterness and past scars alone

so i say to you
my friends
brothers and sisters
my lovers
and those living in the wastelands
of themselves

cast aside these
things for you are not a church
or a palace or a temple

no
you are something
much stronger and vast
grow yourself into a forest

turn all the sleepless nights
and breakdowns and hospital visits
and suicide attempts
and those traintracks of scars
into the great twisting trunks of trees

grow yourself as big and bold
as you need to be
protect yourself
wrap up all your sharp and soft
edges and corners
into the bark of mother nature

become a forest
because
through fire and drought and storm
and flood
the forest always comes back
even the charred remains of trees
stand strong

so
i say to you
with your dark circles
and long sleeves
and chest hidden behind a binder
with all your scars
and imperfections
be a forest
because
a forest is unstoppable
it always comes back
it always grows back

and so will you

that night
that dress.
the way when
i turned just
right, my
breast appeared.
and you, pride?
but a scolding
while you sought
candy all night.
nothing underneath,
and i was flushed,
hopeful, always.
you didn't see me
though.
you never
did

I've got the world's best kept secret
locked in 2 AM screenshots--
her late night musings over a crusty joint, a crushed pill,
or some ***** cigarettes.

She sends me her thoughts,
fears,
anxieties,
insecurities--

at her most vulnerable,
absolutely the most beautiful.

Her anguish stressed in the digital scroll
(though she doesn't like Kerouac, I let her borrow my copy),
her stained fingers mashing all their hurt and nicotine
into the keyboard--

and her pen aches and her paper stains
with the unrequited love she empathizes with
in the somber pop punk songs that explode from the stereo
she sings loudly on cold and lonely night drives
(I shiver in her passenger seat).

And she made for me the greatest of mixtapes,
her holy scrawl expounding upon a dull grey donut-shaped
slowly fading form of intimacy,
a blank CD--

"This mix is a good time"

and when I jammed it into my car stereo I was illuminated.

She is so cool, she is so punk,
and in her clandestine drugstore car charger thefts,
broken poems,
impalpable aesthetic,
impeccable music taste,
illuminated or even further obfuscated drug trips--

I have the world's best kept secret,
and more than anything, I wish to share it with you--

                                     so she can make someone another mixtape.

this poem
is not about you

even though
your spirit is in every word
your voice sounds strong
in the halls of my mind
telling me things
I am now sure
I want to know

this poem is
about me

trying to understand
you