All my favorite writers
are vacant from this space
there is no trace
their heart felt out pours
crushed under a wave
of generic love poems
of fast writen mud
I scroll past
empty rhyme after empty rhyme
where are you?
where did my poetic friends go?
We broke like the last splash
on the shore of a dried up lake
These new words feel fake
to those whose souls I loved
I hope you are still penning
somewhere
I hope your ink still stains pages
and that someday
I'll read your names in a book
or I'll find you on a journey
and once again hear your words
that sent my heart
into a flurry

sometimes,
the s y l l a b l e s of your name
still feel like staples in my chest.

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

I want to trace sonnets into your fingertips,
because it's like poetry when you touch me.
I will let your smile be a blueprint
for the outlines of my heavy heart
so you know exactly what's been broken from those before you
so you know just what only you can rebuild.
I want to watch our world burn
and then rise again from the ashes at our feet
making rose gardens and hydrangeas out of the rubble
until the world that was once just ash and dust
becomes forests, fields and valleys of what can be-
I want to grow with you.

i have stopped picking my
skin apart, have stopped
trying to pull pieces of
myself off in the hopes
that there is something
better underneath.

I refuse to follow a trail where everyone else has
Crushed their individuality
firmly into the ground,
Silenced their hopes and dreams
so they no longer make a sound.

You do what you please,
but darling I'll blaze a trial so bright
it'll dull the suns light
And bring the trees to their knees.

I mailed you a letter because you said
the art of writing is dead but I know
how to twist words into sculptures still small
enough to fit in the post box. I hope
you read what I wrote. I opened my heart
and sent you a poem. Someday when you’re old
you will show your grand kids the written art
some hopeless romantic girl undersold,
prefaced with ‘it isn't anything great but
maybe it will lead you to understand.’
I never claimed to be the best but my
head is full of cosmos and volcanoes
begging to explode black holes on paper as
relics pressed between pages like a dried rose.