It's supposed to be over 100 degrees all this week
here in my forested northern California foothill town;

**** that, I say.

painful to see you
can't hold back my grinding teeth,
striking again and
I'm shocked at myself for not being
honest about the
gravel I chew in your presence.
wondering if I was
ready and pushing myself harder
to try to see you.

all of what I desired so painfully
is suddenly open armed and wanting
me back, won't leave me alone about
it. pouring out your heart now will
only hurt you more, for all that I am
refuses to move anywhere but forward.

you say you want to move forward
and to do so with me, and that you
will let go of the memories, and yet
that is all your soul seems to pour.
all your pen seems to shoot out and
the second I tell you a no instead of a
maybe, you go home and write about
how ****** up I am. Yet when I was
willing to still ******* I was some
sort of goddess. you were "honored"
by my presence. now it seems that
because I am my own person and I
wish to explore whatever excites me
after drowning in my love for you.
hating myself for feeling like I couldn't
live without you, or that love, and
constantly being another object you
could use at your leisure. *******.

everyone makes mistakes.
I made a big one and you made
small ones constantly.
I was going to be calm with the
words I spoke
for you did the same thing I did to you
with someone you claimed to love
who you loved and had been with
for 3 times longer than we've even
known each other.

the more time that goes by since I ripped your heart out
the more I wonder if we ever really knew each other in the first place
the more I see who you really are without the blinding curtain of love
the more time that had gone by since you ripped my heart out,
without even realizing it.
the more time I spent repairing it and returning it to you,
and again, the cycle continued until I physically attacked myself.

"my heart is so raw I think it forgot how to break"

I'm going to be free. I'm not going to dwell.
You said you wouldn't and you're happy and you've moved on,
perhaps it was all a lie you told yourself, perhaps it is true, but
if you don't stop writing **** about me,
then I'll just slam my pen back at you.

he only wants you in the way that means
he can wrap himself around you like a cocoon to help you
change you'll be
a butterfly
something different from what you are which is
flawed so flawed i don't want to touch you don't want
to talk to you just
write poems about the way your hands fist in the pockets of your jacket
i hope you'll go with him because
no matter how many poems i write about the way you
hurt and hate and hope in helpless hollows i know
it'll still burn
like a rope you tried to catch when you fell but
it just caught the skin of your palms
[please don't ever open my notebook you
look at it sometimes when i'm writing i
don't ever want you to see the way
i romanticize
your pain it's not
beautiful or poetic it's just sad
i wish you were happy but i just keep
writing poems about
your misery
and when you surface when you emerge from your cocoon i will
write odes dedicated to the selfishness
that would keep you hurting so i could
feel something when i look at you]
he only wants you in the way that
stitches want an open wound and
i know you want to be mended but no,
no,
nobody can fix you but you and they,
they will try but just
stitch embroidery
into your back
you are the seamstress and the shredded quilt:
you can stitch yourself together you just need to find the thread
and love is no substitute
for a sharp needle.
don't unclench your fists for
any lover who promises to
fix you
don't shotgun old wounds like thick smoke
if they promise anything more
than to hold them
in their
lungs
until the pain eases
just a little.
he will cocoon you
and let you out confused
and hurt
and hating yourself because you didn't change
you are
not
a butterfly
you will not wake up beautiful:
just learn to be full because the end of the word
is all that matters
and the last words of a relationship
are the most honest.

when you stitch yourself together
i will wear the rope that caught your palms like
a silk collar
pour your perfume like lighter fluid
and burn my notebook
and hope that no one writes ballads
to your clenching fists
again

honesty is just a desperate attempt
for closure used when
there's no more time to fake our way
around the truth

he said i look more like an
iris than anything else
(and i couldn't help but think
how right he was, and how ironic
that he doesn't even have any idea
who i am)