I've learned that no matter how many coins you throw into a fountain or how many fingers you cross, you cannot make someone love you and neither can superstition

2. Almost is the worst way to love someone and if you cannot do it whole heartedly, you should not do it at all

3. I've learned that you cannot trust the things your heart tells you when it's sad

4. I've learned what it feels like to have my throat tighten a little every time I talk about you and I've learned what it feels like to taste pennies in my mouth every time I say your name

5. I've learned that you cannot always be a love story, sometimes you have to make yourself a bridge worth burning

6. Loneliness is when you lay down at night and your ceiling burns with rage because it is only looking at one person

7. I've learned how to know if you really love someone because you don’t give people the power to destroy you that you don't love

8. And I've learned that even if you know it is coming, you can never prepare yourself for how it feels

One.
If I could, I would wash my body in the endless sunrays of your morning language with curtains wide open and coffee brewing
I would sing rhythms of fire breathing unrequited love poems and stain your bedsheets with untouched melodies I should never had wrote for you in the first place
I would have the ghost of my former self dance bare feet in your kitchen to songs you have never listened to
If I could, I would pick myself up and take myself to the hospital, attach myself to the nearest IV and drug myself up until I forget how in love I am with someone as spiteful as you
Two.
It's almost funny to me how you can lie to someone about how you hate liars and then you can lie and pretend you still hate liars because you don’t think that I know that you're lying
Three.
You don't have to let me down easy
In fact, I want you to skull drag these words on asphalt streets, rip them apart and throw them at me at the speed of a bullet
Let this declaration be a war cry
Do not tell me it might happen sometime down the road
Because neither of us can see what is going to happen so instead of giving me hope why don't you just ******* tell me that I am not what you want
That you could do better, that you are out of my league
And you are but I have always believed that in relation to how many lucky pennies I have picked up, I would spend them all on you
Four.
If I could, I would break all my bones to have them mold into the structure you would most like them to be in
I would get a lobotomy, wipe my mind clean and start fresh, build a beautiful minded girl that you might be able to love
One with sunflowers growing on the layers of her frontal lobe, one with ripped wave ocean tyrants of searing joy tattooed to her skull, someone who can make you laugh, someone who's laugh you adored
Five.
I'm sorry I let my hands tie ropes to your heart strings, I am telling you to stop pulling me along when really I am the only one who is still holding on
It is easy to be confused in love because I have found that we convince ourselves something is true simply because we want it to be
Six.
It once was wonderful, I felt like you looked at me as more than another catcall, girl's number you got while you were working and I often wonder what would happen if I never strolled into your workplace, if I never looked in your direction, if I hated Mexican food, if I lived too far away
Maybe if I stapled the receipt to my shoulder and walked backwards we could unmeet each other, and I will have the bittersweet opportunity to miss out on this heartache you have unknowingly caused
Seven.
I am not trying to make you love me because you cannot force someone to feel something when there is no vacancy inside of their chest or even when they is but they like the empty spaces
I have cut off pieces of myself and tried to hand them to you and it was hard to understand why you wouldn't want them
Some people do not appreciate sacrifice or maybe they do not care much for such insanity
And I know, I know it makes no sense put valuable things into hands that shake, that tremble, that quiver
Hands that often break things without feeling remorse, we willingly let go and expect them to catch up when they cannot even catch up to their own minds
It is a dangerous game that we all love to play
You are a the red light that I always end up running
And I know the risk of calamity, the risk of consequences
Eight.
Sometimes I like to talk about you like you're the one that got away, sort of like you're on a trip somewhere and you're coming back
And maybe you are, and maybe I am making all of this up in my mind like a child convinces himself that there are no monsters under their bed or a wife who tries to convince herself that he isn't cheating
It is a dangerous game, we all know it is
So, I'll be around if you want someone to be dangerous with

its taken me too long to unstitch my hands and free every thought you shuffled and stuck inside of my head

one. i think you lost me somewhere between wanting to cross miles to get to me and forgetting i exist because at some moments it feels like you worked overtime to fix the abandon architectural artwork inside of me like i was community service

two. after you came and knocked down trees and shifted the tides, every ounce of clarity was able to mirror
your whimsical efforts of drowning me out with pretty girl phrases and only calling me when you were too high to choke out my name

three. i had something inside of me that was kept under glass and i let you behind closed doors and watched you destroy it
i let you build me up with toy blocks just how you wanted me, and i let you lose interest when you decided it was more fun to knock me down and listen to the noise i made when i hit the concrete

four. the Worlds Most Fragile museum was being catered to in the holes in my chest and if i was an armoire and you opened me up your name in red pen ink would spill out of me over thousands of artifacts and priceless memories that you've bubbled over and consumed

five. even as i write this, you'd think i would find a home in an elementary classroom by the way i can barely remember how to speak
and ive got no doubt that you went out with your usual bang
and when you left you took a goodbye that never quite delivered and all of my words with you

six. my grandmother told me insects sing, for months, the same song in hopes that they will attract a mate with their repetitive soliloquies and maybe that's my hope when i tell you i love you even when you hurt me, hope that maybe one day you will pick up the phone and echo my ache with a clear, sober melody that sounds like home.

im sure the insects will find someone who enjoys their neurotic patterns and im sure i will sleep alone in an uncomfortable bed only shushing the silence as the mailcart comes by my front lawn and pauses for a second as if it empathizes with the way i stand at the door.

seven. im always waiting for a manilla package addressed to me
containing every night i spent trying to be anxiously clever and overlooking your bad judgement and the flickers across your sentences where you were forcing yourself to care

eight. every night all i receive is the crickets and a reminder that the letters that spell out your name had become my own personal hamartia before i started whispering it in my sleep

nine. ever since we met you've infected my veins like you were a deadly back alley drug and there's something so addicting about wanting to fix someone and figure them out and work for their love

ten.  if you steal my expressions and bury them in your ground and stick a wooden stake through my last words in order to make sure i only resurface when your sobriety is fully compromised, i will, as writers do, create myself a new dictionary

the act of your name will become a verb: forcing time to scrub the inside of every part of me you touched like im a sold off garage sale item and you're trying to expurgate any emotional damage that might have been done to lower my price

the way the bugs echo will become an adjective for when i am too tired to go out and pretend that my feet arent sinking into the floor

the drilled-for-oil glass museum in my heart will become a noun;  the eighth wonder of the world, and i will continue to let people destroy it and piece it back together for the sake of art

the way you left me and the ferocity of how you stole every part of me i showed you will join adverbs and Aristotle's tragedy principles among people who created their own cloudbursts.

the way i wrap everything i've wanted to say to the back of your head as you walk away into a bulletpoint essay will become my new definition for poetry and i will build myself up from the ashes i will create from your destruction, i will sing my own songs and showcase my own museums and mail my own letters and i will **continue.

And after every drink
I stare at these empty bottles
Certain they are full
Of a poem about missing someone
Someone like you

Remember our walks in the park, how I ran from you and you chased me and I have never played such an exquisite game of tag. Remember the laughter, the summer skies and sunsets, the way I link my arm to yours like a crisscross safety net that never said forever but almost
Remember my secrets, how I have them all to you and how I took apart my pride piece by piece
I put my shield in the paper shredder and I said "there I'm naked, ask me anything" and you asked me what I was afraid of and I was afraid of losing you but I said I was afraid of spiders
Remember the first time you held me, drunk and stupid on a front porch in the rain it was approximately one in the morning and I whispered I love you under my breath and you didn't hear me but looking back I wish you did
At that point I had already started writing about you and I guess you had been looking for ways to escape
Remember the dark, remember me kissing you back while you threw up everything you couldn't take in your cup anymore
Remember sitting in the corner of a coffee shop and you were trying to your work but love gets in the way of that sometimes and I was reaching under the table. Remember the laughter.
Remember dancing around my room to your favorite song about me. Remember the laughter.
Remember going swimming in full clothes, it was so cold and it was so peaceful and playful. Remember the laughter.
Remember the staying up all night getting high, playing music loud, and you couldn't keep still, remember the laughter.
Remember lying in bed, drunk and I couldn't see straight and you could see right through me, remember when I went swimming and you watched me.
Remember going walking, and you loved to play soccer and I tried but I was no good, remember the laughter
Remember the late night phone calls, rambling about our days, about our family, about our favorite memories with one another, remember the laughter that bled through the phone
Remember when I called you crying choking on my words and we went back to the same coffee shop where I fell in love with you and we got a free coffee
Remember asking me to homecoming, remember showing me your new guitar, remember listening to the song I wrote about you, remember showing me the song you wrote about her
Remember me as best you can
Don’t forget about it all
Don’t forget about me

I hate you for making me hate my favorite restaurant because you work there
Because that's where I met you
I don't go there as often as I used to for fear you will be working
For fear I will have to see you
For fear I will have to talk to you
For fear that if I do I will stumble over my words
Stutter, speak another language, have blood spur from my cheeks due to how much I would be blushing
Vomiting up words of my renounced love for you that lately I have been sick of swallowing
It would be embarrassing to say the least
Your palms would not sweat, chills will not appear on the back of your neck, you will be just fine
I can hardly talk anymore due to the amount of poems stuck in my throat
It is getting hard to swallow
It is getting hard to breath
I have been coughing up letters and syllables, numbers given to me that I forget to call because I don’t remember getting them
I am drinking away this sadness but more often than not I forget my name before I forget yours
I do not know who I am because of you
I am losing touch with every reality that your named is not tattooed on
I am in love with the idea of you loving me
You told me not to string myself along for something that may never happen
You meant this when you said it which was something unusual for you
And I turned the other cheek to seeing your new girlfriend at walmart
Turned the other cheek to her laughing at me
Turned it again when I drove all the way home without a seatbelt on
I find myself wanted to get in a fatal car accident so I am not so tempted to drive by your house
I hit all the green lights on the way their so there must be some viable reason for me going
I see a car in your driveway that I do not recognize I wonder if it is hers
And I know you did not mean to do this
It was not something you planned from the beginning, **** just happens I guess
You are completely unknowing of what you have done
And frankly I don't want to tell you
I wouldn't want to harm your ego
You wouldn't harm anyone
In fact you may be one of the nicest people I have ever met
Something about you switches on a light inside of me, igniting this darkness that I have been residing in
For a brief moment, you reminded me what it felt like to not be so blind to love
I sometimes wish I still were
I see you everywhere I go
You are the voice inside of my head
Every time I meet someone new I cannot help but plater your face on their, smell your cologne, do not let them touch me in the same places you have for fear of smudging the fingerprints
And I know, I know it makes no sense to place valuable pieces of myself into hands that have no grip
Hands that shake, that tremble
Hands that have touches bodies, making no memories of the valleys of their skin, the mountains in their bones
I have learned you cannot teach someone to feel, cannot teach someone to love
Cannot force them to wash their body in all that you are offering them
They have become too accustomed to lukewarm love in between ***** bed sheets, threaded backseats
I find myself wanting to be a bridge worth burning
I hate you for making me hate my favorite restaurant
Because you work there
Because that’s where I met you

Without question you are the worst thing that has ever happened to my poetry
I am tripping over syllables and breaking consonants
Knocking over languages I once kept locked away in safe quarters
Each time I try to speak these meticulously knit together units of expression my throat closes up like clenched fist and I feel myself choking on my words
You have changed my way of writing, using teeth and tongue to articulate words, my way of going about my day
I find myself skipping meals as if it will somehow make me feel less empty because lately things in my head are just not making much sense but I convince myself they are reasonable
They often never are
And I can tell you that I'm sorry
I can at least write my apologies bleeding out all over the page
Scribbling red letters onto this worn out notebook paper
I keep you trapped inside my head like a little kid traps a caterpillar in the palm of their hands
And maybe I was just holding you back from becoming something even more beautiful than you already are
I'm sorry for letting my selfish ambitions override your pleas to escape your grip
I have never been very good at telling someone that I love them but I love you
I want to memorize your laugh and store it in my mind, so I can bring it out and listen to it on a bad day
I want your hand prints to be imprinted on my body, the smell of your cologne on the shirt you like best on me
I want you to hold me like you hold your cigarettes
I would not mind sitting down and studying you for hours with my eyes and hands
I would not mind experiencing the foreign feel of your skin underneath my fingertips
I want to count every shade of color in your eyes and sew it into a dress
I want to pour all of your thoughts into a wine glass and sip it slowly, taking in each one
Becoming slowly intoxicated by your dreams, your fears of the dark, your plans for the future
You are a vision of evacuating a burning building but going back inside to gather the possessions you love too much to let burn
You are the ray of sunshine that greets a flower who had already said goodbye to its roots, giving it life again
You are the unopened bottle of whiskey that sits in my kitchen cabinet in case you ever want to stop by because I know it's your favorite
You are the map that keeps me from getting lose in places I have never adventured
You are the destination I've been looking for
You are the slow breathing I feel when I look at the moon
You are the morning coffee that wakes the cells in my brain
You are the only truth in my allusion
You are a lot of things but you are not mine
And in the midst of this hurricane I am still searching for pages on the ground
I want to keep writing about you
After even broken pencil, ripped sheet of paper, slammed fist to desk
There are very few things I know for sure
I know that every day is twenty four hours closer to you
I know that I have a special skill of feeling nothing when I should and feeling everything when I shouldn’t
I know that the only place I ever felt lost was in his arms
I know that you can't go back to yesterday's dawn by adding another verse to an old song
And I know that I can't speak for what I haven't bled over
But I have bled for love, for loss, the staggering feeling of loneliness
You came in like a winter wind and I breathed you in as if I was about to go underwater
You are the reason I always wear my seatbelt
You are the love songs I write when everyone else is asleep
You are the sound of rain on Sunday mornings
You give me hope for better days
You have taught me to believe in myself
You have made me want to love again
Without question you are the worst thing that has ever happened to my poetry
But in a way you are also the best thing that has ever happened to me