If you are not recovering you are dying
A phrase I have taken to heart
Tattooed on every bone of this skeleton inside of me
Despite its harshness, it's beyond true
If you are not recovering you are dying
Naturally, it didn’t offend me until I learned it was supposed to
I often sit and think of you for hours on hours
Wasting my time, as most people do on thinking of those they love who do not love them in return
It is the bittersweet past time of humans
Coffee shops are stained with more than coffee stains
I wonder how many chairs I've sat in that held someone else broken off of the ground
I wonder how many salt water lakes I have walked over when approaching the barista
My coffee burns my tongue
But no other feeling lingers worse on my mouth than the feeling of your lips
I have taken understanding that love does not mind giving scars
Remorse was never it's best attribute to conscience
We must know that in the midst of something wonderful chaos is making blueprints
Planning attack like a predator that has not eaten for days due to the winter
Nutrients to keep it alive have been hiding in trees and under snow
It is the middle of December and I ache for nothing more than your warmth
No amount of coats and sweaters can comfort me like your arms
Wrapped around me like a Christmas present
My coffee burns my tongue
But the flame of his words pressed against my skin
I do not love you anymore
Does not amount to the physical distress my body undergoes
My coffee burns my tongue
And I have not eaten because I am too full of a love
How strange it is to feel so empty but so unable to consume
Like a vase with no flowers
I am waiting for something beautiful to offer me meaning
And though waiting is not deemed to be the worst
The hands of my clock are leaving bruises on my wrist
My coffee burns my tongue
But in a few hours, it will heal
And I will taste cold coffee as the heater in my car warms my hands
If you are not recovering, you are dying
And at this point, I fear I will not see tomorrow
The dew on my window will not meet the ashes from my cigarette
Tomorrow I will not make it out of bed
Tomorrow I will not go downstairs and make coffee
It will not burn me
Cause I fear I will already have burned out

Imagine if the sky were always orange and red
If it was a flaming sunset all the time
If the cloud's silver linings resembled halos
I think this the reoccurrence of beautiful things turning ordinary
I think this is the end of what once was a beginning
You see we often take things for granted
Things that do not last forever
I say to myself that nothing lasts forever often
I look at you and there is the picture frame understanding
You are a sunset I sometimes forget to step outside and see
Paint you on my walls to be a reminder of beauty
I often wonder if the sky were always orange and red
If it was a flaming sunset at all time
In the clouds silver linings resembled halos
I suppose if that were to be the case at hand
Then we may marvel and take pictures of the sky when it was blue

It is Sunday morning
The light leaking from the curtains lands on my eyelids
Upon just waking up I feel I am being blinded so I turn over
Warm breath kisses the tip of my nose and I see you lying there next to me completely at peace with in your gentle unconsciousness
I pull my hand from under the covers and glide my fingers down your cheekbone
You smirk and open your eyes
I have never wanted to go swimming in the mornings but when I look in your eyes the desire swallows me whole
Their shades blue green drowning my words
I know exactly what love is when you look at me
And there's something about the way you kiss so lazily in the mornings
Like last night's dream is spilling out of your mouth
You whisper to me good morning and my stomach takes flight with butterfly wings tickling my insides
Because your voice sounds a lot like a love song
Once, I could not think of love without thinking of a plane crash
Trained myself to keep distance from romance
When a friend would introduce me to a boy I learned resist making a memory of his cologne
Because sometimes you don't see, the best thing that has ever happened to you is sitting right there under your nose
There will be hell to pay for the way we love
Disjoining ever love story resting in antique ambience
We kiss with our mouths open
We have kept it complicated
We have kept it impossible
It's that hushed conversation that happens when you love someone and it's reckless, when you watch them life up their shirt and die
I want you unfolded
I want to untie you
I want to touch you like pen to paper
I want to brush the knots out of your hair
And work the knots out of your back
I am interested in the way you take your coffee, what makes you laugh, what makes your pupils dilate, what keeps you going on
Love is not just made up of syllables or words that sound nice
Love is more than clandestine love letters and sharing umbrellas in the rain
Love is Sunday mornings waking up next to you
Love is the feeling of your lips curving into a smile when they are on my skin
Love can heal your asymmetry, it can piece you back together
It is Sunday morning
And I am in love as I'd always hoped I'd be

ive been told
many great poets relied
on mind altering drugs
opiates and pills
in order to force their hand
to the paper
in order to jumpstart their brain
like a side of the road
two degrees
junkyard car

i have nothing to write about
when I abstain from your name
and calling you my ******
gives you the power to roll my eyes
back into my head
with pleasure
it gives you the power to **** me
typical bathroom scene
slumped over your
"i miss you"
choking on the apologies
i couldn't spit out
in the middle of winter

ill never be a great
and self destructive artist
not because i light your memories up under a spoon
not because I let you infect me
not because I roll you up and set you on fire
and breathe in your sentences

ill never be a great
self destructive artist
because there's no jumpstart
or moment
of connection
ive tried
every drug i can find
and im still
sitting with the shower running
letting it burn me
begging to feel something

because really
what's the difference
between numbing me
and telling me
you don't love me anymore

I'm trying to be

There are ways to forget
There are ways to get better
There will be a tornado in your throat as you try to unlearn the definition of love and you will have to choke down all the things he said to you with alcohol you shouldn't be having so much of
You are dizzy from intoxication and you think of his kaleidoscope eyes and fall to your knees
In humble abandonment of your old self, you are vacant of any comfort you may have once knew
You are looking for new ways to escape this horror of reality
You stop showering because the water feels too much like his hands running through your hair
Open the windows, he would have wanted them closed
Smash the television, break the radio, drown out all the sound because he can't sleep without noise
And you can't sleep without him but it is better to lay there with silence hanging in the air rather than accidentally hearing a song that the both of you once loved, waking you in a cold sweat like an addict itching for a drug
And sometimes when I get drunk I say that I hate you
That I wish my mind had never laced itself into yours
That I hope your next morning will be one that is cold and idle
And I'm sorry that I do these things
Because alcohol is an intoxicating ingredient being poured into my blood stream and these words that smell of liquor are one's that I do not always mean
I find myself filling with immoral substances to resist going to sleep
I cannot bear going to sleep now because each night at approximately 3 am
I wake up in a frenzy from a dream I was having about the old you
Panicked, terrorized, I feel I am under attack by the soldiers of my own mind
Maybe it is because I know I will never capture you, with each relentless passing second, you will never be the you I once knew and loved
Because when things were good, they were great
However, you must always pay close attention to how they treat you when things are bad
Whether it's "I love you but you're such a fool" or a door slammed on your fingers
There is always an option though
To continue loving you, chasing pavements, limping towards a dying light
Or to leave with some decency and a change of clean clothes
You see, I've learned that there is always a hospital bed, the question is whether or not I want to rot in it
And with you, I feel on top of the world, a mind game
Because I know I am actually on the bottom
There is something you do to me, as if you place glasses over my eyes
Making me believe that maybe this is not as bad as it seems
That being without you is somehow bearable as long as your face is implanted into my skull
There is no real way to describe the staggering appetite for his touch
I am starving for such warmth that never goes cold
A drinking water that never runs dry
He could refresh my cracking heart valves if only he were to come back
But he won't
He would watch me *******, crumble, disintegrate away
Deteriorate, degenerate, decay to ash
Corrode, decompose, shrivel up, pollute this hole I am locked inside of
He does not care for my safety, he does not care for my life
If he did, he would have come home already

noun | pen·e·tra·tion |\pe-nə-ˈtrā-shən\
1) the act of going through or into something: the act of penetrating something
2) an ability to understand things clearly and fully*

if you penetrate their body
without entering their mind
you aren't really all the way in

There’s nothing there anymore
Empty space
A neck without a head

I remember how you taught me to tie my tongue
Or maybe I taught myself
Doesn’t matter

I just wanted to fill the space
So we made nooses on our deathbed
I caught your breath and framed it
‘Holly blooming’
Before asphyxiating

Never did pick up my head from your apartment
You’ve probably moved away
Shifted flesh and become someone else

Doesn’t matter
Never did

What if what you feared was always here?
Pain must be felt once it's there.
Where will you run to if there's only one where?
We try so heavily to avoid the inevitable because we're scared.
To embrace is to defeat, to conquer and adhere.
The cure to death is to live, the cure to hurt is to feel, to trust like the cuts were never there.
I know the pain & the failure, can make ****** minutes & depressing seconds feel like years.
We must stop hiding & open our vision to a world where we're encased in our fears.
I shall walk by Faith and not by sight with Belief in my tears and hope in my ears.
We are awake when everyday we see our fears.
I see hell everywhere.

Caution, not perfection. Caring, considerate, there's so much kindness we're meant to live out.
Imagine if we had to feel all the pain we give out.