You must've not liked the way I said your name
with such fervor and dependence,
I brought it down into the depths of Need,
I grabbed it like your tie and suffocated you as I pulled.
And I'm sorry,
No one's ever taught me how to handle a lover,
I thought I could say your name however I wanted to and true love would do its thing,
but I've seen more evidence of love's strategic nature than I've ever seen of
it's fabled purity.

Nothing to distract you from
giggling points of light in the otherwise
daunting black of night,
taunting glow
Quivering blithely as if God himself is teasing you,
shaking these glimmering possibilities in front of your face.
You could believe that you're squinting at possible realities,
or you could cynically accept that they're all illusions
and the only reality is
this.
but midnight is so cold and monotonous
without a warm body to give it context,
and I think-
I think that I miss you now.
Or some two dimensional caricature of you,
The one that resides in my head because
you're no longer here to give it volume.
Memories are feelings and memories alone fade,
feelings just latch onto other things.
(Like tonight)
and we then romanticize trivial, inanimate things.
Ideas, places, not people no, too
dangerous.

oh good, the frenzy has subsided
and you've evaporated from my arteries
           (you haven't)    
i think the platelets gathered too quickly and their collective volume
overwhelmed the highways
So Now I Can't Feel a Thing
          but do you remember
the park on the hill and the
shimmering fluorescence of forbidden waters?
                                             because it was 2am i think
(neither of us understood what was happening)
but we flew to each other on wings of a craving
beating against the jurisdiction of two
opposing currents

Some loves  never die, i think --
they seek refuge in the dusty caverns where
external tempests cannot harden them.
Other loves are preserved in the amber of summertime,
because it is better to die beautiful and intact, i think,
than to disintegrate into unmarked soil.

Sometimes I look both ways before saying "God"
like I'm trying to be politically correct, since I don't go to church or believe in sin.

But God is subjective, and it comes from within.

It's one more universal truth polluted and perverted
by deluded
social constructs
just like drugs, money, *** and gender
and proper moral conduct
(it doesn't exist)

Well, not they way they've taught us.

don't have too much fun, do drugs only if they're prescribed
(you'll know that it's a sin if it gets you high)
Don't breathe out of rhythm or you'll be deemed a *****,
unless it's for procreation,
but still - pretend ******* are a chore.

Listen to your daddy and watch your mother silently nod,
question what he says, and his reply won't be "because I said so," but it'll be
"because God"

A WHITE MAN WHO HATES GAYS AND CONTROLS WOMEN
did you say God or Fraud?
Is that a stain on your white linen?

Your omnipotent holy deity,
I regret to inform you,
is a mere projection of human fallacies,
enlarged and stretched across the walls we build out of fear.
your God is a tool.

And I'm supposed to feel shame
when I so carelessly toss around His name
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain"
but what does it matter when God itself is running through my veins?

since i decided that the chain was too short
and the anchor i had attached myself to
was pulling me under

it's been Three Months since I've sharply inhaled and
let go of the rope
and stood slack-jawed
and in awe
at the calm with which you watched it suddenly go limp in your relaxed palms,
and then shrugged,
and retreated.

Three Months since I've turned my head toward the horizon
and rubbed the tension of staring at a backward-moving object
from my weary neck.

Three Months of my infatuation worming its way back into more isolated parts of my mind,
and festering in my body,
becoming quiet--
like the absence of a laugh track
while the film keeps playing.

And I feel like I am still holding my breath.
It's different now because I finally see the pattern.
Breathe easily,
       breathe excitedly,
gasp,
hold your breath,
                  feel it abruptly leave your body as you deflate
find your breath again,
                  have it stolen from you once more

The question is: what will lure my lungs back into blissful submission again? And how much time am I left with to enjoy my returned sanity?

And if you came back,
I think it would feel like a falling dream.
I think I am in the falling dream.
I am grasping and flailing and fearing the crash,
everything becoming a quickening blur of
irrational analysis and false epiphanies,
an asymptote approaching demise...
until
i wake up
(and realize that I never really was falling).

Only to have the ground snatched from under my feet once again
but instead of down, I will go up.
(and then down again)
I wish I wasn't familiar with this pattern.

your departing silhouette was ringed with gold
and even the light suddenly thought your face was too good to be touched

who are you?

i heard your name today and it sounded like someone said "God"
my synapses screaming Why are they saying that Don't they know that's taboo Why does it sound so sharp

this internal frenzy shows itself on the outside as a mere nervous chuckle and a pool of crimson under my skin

You are A Deity now

Something I pray to sometimes as if it is omniscient
something that echoes my thoughts like a carbon copy

My God is Shaped like You

you'll live in
her hippocampus, for now,
but when it's done with you, you'll be exiled into
dark, slower, parts of her brain (where the angler fish live),
you'll learn to keep silent just so you can survive,
don't try to swim to the surface, you'll just be pushed back down
The Light Doesn't Want You.

You may feel a disturbance in the waters, a rogue ray of sun, perhaps,
maybe an oil spill
But This Isn't An Invitation.

The Light Doesn't Want You.

You live here now because the pre-frontal cortex didn't want you,
you were too expensive to keep around.
Do You Know How Much It Costs To Set Off the Sprinklers?
we don't need to wash away your messes anymore.

So you'll live Here,
your movements will stir the plasma only slightly, and yes it'll affect the Ether but /shrugs,
it'll do.

Don't make a sound.

i am yours
and my thighs are yours to separate and
i want you to make a home between them,
breaking in the walls where you deem it necessary
and insulating cold rooms with your own self,
and i want to warm you, too but i don't know how and i fear failure,
I know I speak like a psychologist and that my glare draws crevices in your self-assurance,
but right now this isn't the Me you know

*This is the truth that I will not state explicitly, but will imply through shaky exhales and involuntary lapses in vocal function, with my fingers limp yet imperceptibly begging for you, and my lack of defense when your authoritative hands do what they do.

it's no wonder that the first hint of autumn manifests as tidal waves of conjured memories, as if I've forgotten that the shallow shores of my conscious existence are directly connected to the skull-crushing volumes of water farther out.
The changing of the atmosphere is spinning clockwise, whipping the depths and displacing everything that hasn't seen the light of my attention in about a year.
In the tempest is you
with flailing arms and water in your lungs, because you're dying.

Not you, (i don't even know what your life is now) but your memory at least.

And I'm watching you spin down the drain and not really caring where it leads,
as long as it's not deep into my episodic memory again.

I kept oscillating;
in and out of love,
in and out of emotions,
between the familiar realm of raunchy young adult literature and
the new, slightly uncomfortable realm of raunchy young adult life.
I oscillated between dispositions;
between pensive and restless,
***** and
not remembering what kissing feels like,
between the doldrums of despair and the
weightlessness of bliss.
My center of gravity oscillated, too-
from my head to my heart to
my thighs
to the cavernous void in my amygdala that was once abuzz with stupid chemicals brought out by the hysterics of infatuation

my neck hurts from tilting my head back and trying to squeeze the infinite sky down into my finite peripheral vision
i like feeling small, being compacted under ever-shifting air particles
that have been carried around this earth who-knows-how-many times,
and they'll leave again soon, they have no obligation to me, but they let me inhale them
and absorb them into my bloodstream

I Want To Find a Pair of Eyes Like This

I want the stratosphere condensed into speckled thumbnails,
two-way mirrors that watch me undress my thoughts while simultaneously
showing them to me as they are,
knowing spheres that see through me but enjoy me as their lenses

i want them i want them
i want to find a pair of eyes like the sky

then mere touches lead me to crescendos
and the vibrations linger
for days on end

if an emotion is the striking of a chord,
then sometimes the song you play on my heart strings
is an ominous one

but it always rose to newer heights,
until the song faded on its own

and cacophony replaced
the thrilling harmonies you sang

if an emotion is the striking of a chord,
then all that's left of us is an imperceptible remnant of
a once rapidly-oscillating frenzy

the Mmm's
and the Oh my GOD's
and the soft, closed-mouth moans and the
omniscient hands (how do they know?)
and dissolve all questions and just
give me the gift of
a minuscule fraction of existence
that is untainted
by doubt and
responsibility

when rushing waters are chilled
by absence of heat
and the molecules
slow down
and their movement cannot easily be detected,

the water expands
and pries open any crevice it has seeped into,
intruding and growing and breaking

i need your heat
just for a moment
just to melt the ice
so the waters can flow freely again
and not further erode
my crevices

i don't want the shape of your name to remind me of
*** and
i don't want my mind to flash red at the notion of your existence
and i don't want to yearn for your embrace
and i don't want to care about how you're doing at your university
and i don't want to wrinkle my forehead at the mere idea of you
seducing someone who isn't me
and i deny the existence of the translucent tether that keeps me bound to you,
only reminding me
when i try to run elsewhere.

Let me run
let me fly
i don't want to love you anymore

there is a thin, permeable film
stretched across the gap between the walls of your throat

little things get by, of course

but the big things,
the things hard to swallow
and the
things hard to utter
and things you should've said but didn't
(the things that grew with time)

those get stuck
and that's why you are manually swallowing right now
trying to wash them away
but they only go back down and fester deep within your gut

you know how
your most beautiful self expression comes from
very ugly times
and mental states?

i think very ugly people
become beautiful
when they leave

and everything just hurts i don't even know why i'm writing this

i am running into the woods like a wolf
and i am tripping over gnarled roots and fallen pinecones
and my legs give out because
i am not a wolf

and i am not made to survive this
and my own human arrogance is what led me to believe
that i can overcome nature

that i can stand on steady feet with an omnipotent typhoon
swirling about my ankles

that i can escape this suffocating atmosphere that actually allows me to breathe
without gravity gripping my shoulders and sitting me back down

i'm scared
of not being strong enough
for anything

the year has come full circle
and i am right in the place
that i was
just a few months
Before You.

oncoming headlights are bright and don't make much sense
but the glow of departing tail lights
is
long
and
cold
and dark.

"bittersweet"
that's what they call this.
but no dark cocoa truffle has ever
made me want to cry but
failed in the execution.

I am not Sad
and I am no longer Drowning.
It's like

you never existed.

It's like

waking up from a
very vivid, emotionally influential
dream.

It's like

moving through a fast, festive crowd,
and not being able to stop your eyes
from resting on
one lonely beggar sitting on the side of the street.

doesn't matter much, you won't remember him tomorrow,
but in this moment
you are not quite as festive as your surroundings.

i cannot believe you walked through these halls,
i cannot believe i saw your face every day,
i cannot believe how trivial everything is right now.

A sea has evaporated and left behind nothing but
sand and salt.

The tempestuous, treacherous waves are but a memory,
with only patterns in the sand
to corroborate
their ephemeral existence.

I am walking softly on the sand, feeling the somewhat familiar dips and raises,
wincing against the phantom feeling of
invisible currents pulling my legs.

how i fought against those **** things! how i panicked at the rush of water in my lungs!
how i denied my suffering! how reluctant but desperate i was, crawling against something within my own soul, how i struggled to regain footing on land!

i still feel it,
like a poorly superimposed photograph

like a haze in my peripheral vision

like a stutter in my speech
only noticed by me.

I can't believe We happened.

i'd tell you that

(i shivered when you left me in your bed to dress myself and
i hated when you used the heart eyes emoji on other girls and
i felt ugly when you said "something smells fruity" and i pointed to my lips
and you didn't kiss them and
i can't believe you didn't tell me you were a ****** and
why didn't you ever take me to the movies and
i've walked past your house and cringed and
i've missed you so ******* much and
i was doing fine without you and
i won't let you in again)

i'm so glad you're back.

locking the door behind me,
my cold blood making the transition
from blue to red,
your smile shooting scorching rays at my
tundra of a soul --
violet.

your tawny skin stretched over your tense jaw,
illuminated by the blacklight moon --
violet.

my whole body had been blue for months
without your touch,
but that night, your hot fingers,
touched me red
and it swirled with the blue --
violet.

the sky was a not-quite-black blue
(i think i was still bruised, too)
but i wore rose-colored glasses
and it all was
violet.

the color of magic is the conjunction of
hot and cold --
violet.

i dreamt about a bridge that
swayed ominously over a broken dam and
i dreamt about me standing in its center and
i dreamt about it bending under my weight like a trampoline with too many kids on it and
i dreamt about it snapping back into place like a slingshot right before
the wood even had a chance to skim the rushing waters

and i know that the water is You

forget his impulsive tongue and forget
              his hands, powered by
                   his forearms, stitched through with veins, inflated by
                      his fascination of you.

forget how ephemeral that fascination was and forget
            how his face flickered across your dreams like a faltering mirage and forget
               how your most vulnerable parts cringed at his memory and don't bother remembering
                  how you were to him
                      what they all were to you

they're fascinated by my
soul's avante-guarde ******,
and how much of it i bare.

they don't know that i feel every breeze,
and mere dust particles can adhere to my ****** surface,
muscles operating in constant fear of being punctured

i sat down in the middle of Myself,
eyes stinging from the
rush of air that your quiet
escape brought in through the doorway.

i thought i could fall in love with
a mug of black coffee
but it didn't taste quite like you (you had some sugar
masking your bitterness).

But i liked how the place looked without your
carelessness strewn all over the carpet,
and i liked breathing in air untainted by
your dusty indifference.

i think i swallowed a seed that i
didn't detect in my
first airplane meal,
every sip of foreign water gave it vitality,
It is expanding in me from the inside and it has destroyed
any roots that hindered its growth.
It seeks the sun,
attracts buzzing opportunities
that help it spread,
craves no one and everything

you're in Times Square and it's midnight and
all the people you've ever been
are surrounding you,
and they're running to you,
bleeding from skinned knees
(they've all fallen somehow, stumbled over different things)
and there's a ****** grandma in the corner chuckling
to herself and observing the chaos,
glad she can't run anymore

you wanted to invite him in because
he didn't seem too interested in coming inside --
if he was too eager, you'd be
suspicious,
and it's nice finally meeting someone who doesn't
want something from you,
fascinated,
you offer him your dearest hospitality,
and you feed him but he
refuses, and you think
wow he's so polite
but he actually hates tiramisu
and he doesn't admit it
until you offer to give him tiramisu every night for the rest of his life

i ran into myself today,
she was smiling and then she collapsed into someone's arms because she
couldn't believe he lost feelings for her
and she was stuttering,
her teeth trying to carve her thoughts into words that would make sense (they didn't),
her lips trying to soften them so they wouldn't cut her own ears
when spoken aloud (they did),
Maybe He Just Needs Time,
and
He Looked Reluctant To Leave Me,
and i cringed because i heard the familiar grinding of conflicting gears,
one turning toward He Loves Me, and the other toward He Loves Me Not,
and the screeching was unbearable
and i know she wouldn't hear a thing i said

if eyes are windows to the soul (or whatever)
then yours surely existed, but they were tinted almost black
and i'm sure you could see out,
but i couldn't see in,
and they were always turned away from me,
perhaps yearning to open to someone else,
(does it get hot in there...
do you ever air it out?)

he is walking on you like wet cement and every step,
no matter how light,
leaves a print
and it hurts,
but it's drying and maybe
many people will walk on the finished pavement
and their mark won't be as brilliant,
but they will wear you down
they will discolor you,
until someone decides you need some paving over,
and that someone will not dare step on you,
they will want to make you new
and won't want to ruin your baptized surface

love doesn't fit a formula
love laughs at your molds
love exceeds your expectations
love disappoints you
love has no reasons
love has plenty of reasons
i wish i could control it
but it is more creative than me and sometimes i like seeing what it comes up with

it was 9-something o' clock
and we were in your car
parked by the playground that would witness us 2 months later,
kissing despite the cold hiatus that wedged itself between
us because you didn't know what you wanted,
anyways,
you pulled out your AP Environmental Science notebook
and your handwriting was small and neat
and i held you because your stomach was hurting
and i kissed you because somehow seeing your handwriting made me fall in love with you
for the twentieth time,
and i wrongly thought
that the way you handled a pen somehow indicated a steady hand with which
you could hold my heart

you were mouthing beautiful words but
i couldn't hear them
it looked like someone put you on Mute,
but you swore there was something wrong with my hearing,
your words were crystal clear, loud enough,
and i believed you because maybe there was
something wrong with me and not you,
until someone came to me and said
"Why does no sound come out when he moves his mouth?"

a breeze would slither by and
my heart would ignite like coals that were thought to be cooled off,
and at first i liked the warmth
but then it burned a hole through my ribcage
and sometimes
in a bout of masochism,
i would blow on the coals myself,
dare them to turn scarlet,
but only get cool ash in my eyes,
no it doesn't hurt
i don't feel anything

we stood on the precipice
and it was a safe place between the white-hot, dry sand
and the omnipotent currents hidden beneath the breathing ocean,
and i grabbed your hand without thinking and i said let's swim,
let's do it,
what could go wrong,
if we both want this,
but you said no, there are Living Things in that water,
i said let's befriend them and you said
no,
we are powerless against the current,
and i said let's surrender to it and you said
No --
and you ****** your hand from my grasp but i held on until you told me that
you're not afraid,
you just hate the water

i guess you fell out of love with me and
i didn't mind that much, i just envied how easily you slipped out of this straitjacket
and i longed to follow suit,
to follow you out of the labyrinth (why didn't you leave a map?)
to follow you out and go my own way,
maybe find another maze to get lost in

i know that you can't imagine yourself being hung up on
anyone but him
and i know that even though his *** was mediocre you can't imagine
moaning any name but his
and i KNOW that no one's voice sounds as enticing right now
RIGHT NOW
right now
right now doesn't last forever

shy gazes and
I Hope He Likes Me
and *** He Texted me and
touch my hand again
and
i was so nervous to kiss him but ******* i'm glad i did and
Your Existence is a Gem and
I CAN'T BELIEVE I WAS EVER SAD OVER ANYONE ELSE and
YOU ARE PERFECT
and
LIFE IS SWEET
and i feel so **** and
i can do anything i want

i don't want to go back to school unless
they found a way to remove
the fluids of a broken heart off of bathroom stalls,
unless they ****** all the air out of the building,
just in case i'll inhale a particle that you touched,
unless they removed 4 years of your
hot pink presence from the spotted tiles

you told me you'd **** me longer next time and
you told me you'd spend all day with me and
you told me you wanted to skip class just to stare at me and
you told me that you were afraid i'd judge you and
you told me i had a profound way with words (oh you should see me now) and
you told me i had an adorable body and
you told me my native language was gorgeous and
you told me i was your first and
you told me that you just wanted me for *** and
you told me you loved me and didn't want me just for *** and
you stopped telling me things and
then you told me you were back and
you told me it was because you wanted to be and
then you stopped telling me things again and
your mouth was still moving but you weren't saying anything anymore
so i pressed my finger to your lips and turned away and said
you can stop pretending now
you told me a lot of things
but you never showed me them

it is the sun persuading your eyelids to open
because you've shut them against the torrential downpour,
it is panting and gasping after running 10 miles and stopping at the edge of the pier
just in time to watch the sun burn brightly before it sinks below the horizon,
it is looking behind you and watching the flames dwindle into pathetic little embers
and it is your skin being calloused from years of walking on dead coral reefs

the day I see you again and
my mind turns into a  screen scrolling through a seemingly never-ending list of words I've written about you
and my tectonic plates shift to reveal a gaping valley
between the peaks of What I Felt For You and
How Ordinary You Are
and i'll feel an anticlimactic realization
and ill feel relieved
but also sad
and I will have nothing to write about anymore

he ****** you,
in/out
here/not
filled/hollow,
and his absence only further defined his presence
and you loved when he was in but
hated when he was out
but you loved it all because
in and out
were two parts of the same phenomenon

i like falling in love as much as i hate it,
i like losing balance and writhing on slippery slopes and bruising my knees and laughing at my panic
i like my pupils dilating and taking in blinding amounts of light
i like the rush of my heart sinking and rising
i like the great abandon with which i love
and how i'd skip French class
to explore the less verbal part of the culture,

i think i like being in love with you
more than i like you

you were further behind on the Path
and you stopped to stare at daisies and i tugged at your hand because
you were slowing me down
and i tried to tell you about more important things that lay ahead,
but you were so **** distracted by the flowers,
and i was hurting your wrist,
and you got sick of it and found someone who wouldn't rush you

i want to wake up from you like a skewed nightmare
and feel the familiar relief of reality
settling into place like a crisp white bed sheet onto a mattress,
and i want to shudder at the memory
and make coffee and
squint and try to remember you,
but blissfully fail,
and only remember you when i see grey snow
or feel a Northern wind find a patch of skin on the small of my back,
and i want to feel the warm barrier of reality protect me from
the delusion of you

i was so focused on the corpse of What I Thought We Were
until my eyes zoomed out to find
that i was walking through a cemetery
of things that Used to Be,
and instantly found it silly to focus on one unmarked grave when there were so many others
that had nothing to do with love or ***,
nothing to do with you --
older, more elaborate graves
that i mourned from the dawn of my life to now,
more important deaths.

I remember the setting Carolina sun,
Fluorescent fuchsia medallion  
Sitting on the landing strips at RDU, like an observant child
Making sense of our tamed world,
And counting the aluminum birds as they flee to altitudes that
Offer an illusion of freedom.

Fast forward an hour,
Zoom in on seat F, in row 18 on an ascending Boeing 747,
Almost perpendicular to Earth
And my thighs are clenched instinctively, the nervous muscle quivering,
Trying to make its own rhythm against the quaking of the craft.
Irrational fears are countered by irrational ticks.
Will you falter o’ mighty mechanical fowl?
I prayed to the wings that kept me afloat.

Not too high, Icarus, or we’ll all go down –
The pull of hubris becoming a failing harness.

The great bird began its passive decent,
A feather in the breeze.
And my worries were left at
Higher levels,
And the glittering skyline that I had been dreaming of for half of my life
Suddenly becomes near.
I consider reaching my hand through the double-pane Plexiglas oval,
To caress the jagged silhouette as it wears the sun’s dying rays like a stolen diamond ring,
To pinch with the tips of my fingers
An unsuspecting toy car and place it on a highway leading to
Somewhere else.

But time is an avalanche,
Gaining momentum quicker and quicker --
The toy cars become real,
Life-size.
And the people in them are not dolls,
But engineers, junkies, biologists, tourists,
And (soon) me.

And sometimes (only when this town gets tedious
Or the sun is lounging on the horizon,
Taking a hazy summer bath)
I (can’t help but) remember.

The future is uncertain,
and i don't know what i'm trying to say,
i just wrote this
and
hoped it rhymed
along the way