If my hands could tell a story, they'd say how your spine always looked beautiful in the morning,
when the sun's rays created shadows that danced along your back and flirted with your neck
like they'd never meet again.
They'd say how your lips always curved upwards as if they were saying hello.
If my hands could tell a fairytale, there'd be no happy ending,
there'd be no end at all.
I wish my lips could finally part to say the right things,
because all I want to do is hear your name roll off my tongue,
in the same sentence as "you're mine".
I want them to tell the story of your lips,
red, and taunting and always mysterious.
I always got a toothache when you weren't in the room.
I think I need a root canal.
If my knees could speak they'd tell you how lovely it was
to bend to curl to your legs.
If my knees could tell a story, they'd describe the cold, hard
bitter kiss of death they shared with the pavement so many times
when I found your bags at the door.
If my knees could beg, they'd ask for forgiveness.
For being too bony, too weak,
for not being able to support your dreams.
(I'd give up anything now for that little apartment in New York
and nothing but two typewriters)
If my fingers had a chance, they'd trace the familiar lines of your collarbones
and over your shoulders, because by now they've committed them to memory.
If my fingers had a chance, they'd hold yours again.
They say to stay away from broken people but I saw you as a puzzle
just waiting for someone to put you back together again.
If my eyes could tell a story they would whisper softly of your flowing hair
and pixie-like body.
They would ask you to stay.
They would jump out of my body to give you a glimpse of how I see you.
They would show you how utterly unprecedented you are.
If I believed in heaven I would tell you that you're a miracle.
That you are something I wished upon for years as a child.
You are a star.
You are a supernova.
You are a black hole, ******* me in and twisting me about until I am nothing
but battered limbs and my broken heart.
You are God with the Devil's kiss.
If my lips could move they'd say "stay".
You were mine.

whenever i hear a wind chime i think of your voice. i wonder what it's like to be your bedsheets. what it would really be like to understand the jargon in your head. i ******* want to kiss you sometimes and then others i really do want concrete between your hands & my skin. i can't think straight all the time so i wonder if it benefits me at all to explain what it means that i don't want or expect anything from you but if we accidentally liked eachother in that middle school "sort of way" then i wouldn't say no. i want to really understand what you mean when you say "stay" to me in our texts. i wonder if your sleeping pills do to you what they do to me. i'm thinking again about "stay" and maybe i'm choked up on you leaving for school up north but i'll never tell you because get the **** out of here and don't look back especially not for me. stay. your smile, genuine or not tears me in two. i wish every face on the planet had your smile and i am ******* afraid of you wearing lipstick. i'm terrified of your bare skin and goodbyes. i hate farewells and see you laters. i knew the first time i saw you interact on your phone while drinking coffee the way you text people and how i now do the same thing. i get around read receipts. i sometimes want to hear you say you want.. not so much me, maybe me, but my company. theres a park near my house where i've imagined us paddle boating. i got written up at work once for daydreaming about it. what the **** is in a friendship anyway, decency in a human isn't biological. i get hung up on knee jerks and gut reactions. i want to know what the ******* are thinking about when i look up and you are looking right at me. but then again, i don't. as long as i'm wondering. as long as the door might swing open or closed. stay. go. run. **** your collarbones. **** your chest and skin and lips and everything i hate but crave and might like about you without say so. stay. sit down and explain to me why it is that i care anyway. i am afraid that if i say i want to *******, you'll think i mean *******, and not "*******". i wanna know if any of this sounds familiar and i here i am back to wondering what the **** is going on and why you're looking at me. the hair on my neck stands on end when you do and another thing... **** poetry. i cloud my feelings for you & anything else with the abstract so you'll never really know if i ******* hit rock bottom or not over the fact that i know we will never kiss. somebody just said "**** buddy" on tv and i think sometimes symmetry between irony & circumstance. i have harbored some of these thoughts since the night you said hello to me. i'm sorry i had to get over the fact that once upon a time i wanted to save somebody, and you weren't going to let it be you. i do sometimes think my hands might break you, that you spend your day painting a picket fence in your head that you can't get on one side or the other on. i felt like you didn't want to get up from dinner and i rushed it out the door because i am afraid to start a sentence with so. so stay. i am sorry my words often wear brass knuckles. your smile shoots to **** and if i ever die while you still remember my name i want you to read this or read something at my funeral. i don't know if these butterflies are waiting for me to jump or sit down but they speak up when my phone lights up & it's you.

you see
i had always felt
that in a dream
i was the absence
of the dream
and then it dawned on me
that i was in a time piece
trapped during forgotten hours
where everything is alien
but vaguely familiar
the beach beneath me wandering
off to anywhere but here
and i straddle the shoreline
palming stray shards of sea glass
always the color of her eyes
and i am abruptly upside down
an upheaval, a maw
where i thought it as
a nightly revenge
for skipping stones
and again i am upended
& back on the beach
born of broken hourglasses
and it makes me think
that god likes to watch things leave me

your face went on every
milk carton in my dreams
when you went missing
& i listened to a song
about how the churches
in your hometown
were built from the martyred mahogany
of shipwrecks
i dare you
to think i can't rip
the very mood
from your temperate fingertips
when i am cold
and hell bent
on seeing you oceans away, wince
this is not an
"i saw this coming all along" poem
or a "i still wonder about the moments between breaths when your phone lights up" poem..
this is a will & a way
with brass knuckles
maybe a barehanded bludgeon
but i swear i'm trying
to sleep at night
without wondering how cold
it is in your bed.
so mother goose
tell me about
the whispered prayers
crammed into the earthquakes
you call hands
about an ennui
that speaks to me.

a desire to know
every muscle
governing the movements
in your face
that bring smile
from lapsed synapse
explodes from my meridians
with your name
on the lips of every
captain to my ships
in hopes that my tired thoughts
could find a home
in a harbor not far from your heart