i miss home
it's to dry here
dirt caked
under my fingernails

but you're here

so i'll stand under the showerhead
a little longer
and pretend that it's rain

i don't smoke as much as i write about smoking
a cigarette just paints a better picture than a pen
when you're too broken to do anything but pull out a lighter

i don't stand where i'm meant to
but my posture is impeccable

your hands are so clean
i'm starting to think that maybe
i broke my own heart

spray paint
on cement walls
honesty
in an art form

someday
i'll tag one of these walls
and you'll hold my paint cans
as we fill our lungs with smoke

glasses sit atop my nose
but they aren't my prescription

they make the world dance
in places it usually mumbles
and it just makes me crave a smoke

if my stories don't leave you raw
then let me take off your sweater slow enough to feel the goosebumps
before i kiss your skin away

for my tongue tells stories
far louder than i can scream

i put my wishes
into the sun
hoping they'd
be granted
in a day

i put my hopes
in the moon
wishing they'd
be fulfilled
in the night

guess it's time
to pop some instant popcorn
and watch my life fall
apart

when did "want" become "need"
when did "bye" become "****"

when did "kisses" become "breathing"
when did "leaving" become "drowning"

i used to think
the wounds
were the worst part.

but it's the scars.

i'm doing
this
for me

right?

i don't need
your
opinion
to know
that i am
valid

right?

i am capable
of deciding
what
i want

right?

my knit sweater holds tears in
i fantasize about the old man that might have worn it
he used to smoke, i think

i dream about his mahogany pipe
with it's european engravings

in another life i might have cried at his funeral
but i just have his sweater

and i promise to remember him

i'm very afraid
of death

and i don't
particularly
want to drown

but when you look at me
with those eyes...

perhaps i can make
an exception.

kissing you
and smoking

create a venn diagram

and the middle
is large enough to hold my empty hands

i am looking
for okay
in all the
wrong places

smoking to die
living in the expletive
relishing the waste

for wasting must mean you have

the purple dye in my hair
is fading

and i can't help but think
it's taking me with it

sodium chloride
and dihydrogen monoxide

separate us

but we still
dream in the
same colors

i think i like it:
the way that you look at my face and feel the guilt writhe in your stomach
as you remember that you forgot me

the music is loud
but my tears taste louder

the sun turns our thoughts into sweat
so i curse at the sky and blinding heat
for taking your voice away from me

always a tear
falls
drawn toward the earth

for what is crying,
if not growing

feelings
[file: move to trash]

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are you sure?

[yes]

i'm breathing in
my own
suffocation

i still listen to our song

i just cry at all the parts
that are supposed to make me smile

twenty seven candles
unlit
on a cake
with frosting
almost as sweet
as the
girl who lost her breath
with nothing but
sugar on her lips

i take my coffee in the form of hard candy

because if i drank it
the warmth would remind me too much of you

when it is my time to be ruined
break me like a promise

you're all locked up, and
you gave me permission to
enter, without giving me
the key

you said
'i love you'

before you said
'i trust you'

i immortalized you
and you don't even know

we lit up
on the flame of one another's company
the smoke doused us in laughter
and the sky
was big enough,
just for a little while

we were infinite:
more terrified of blinking
than being too small

chewing on black holes
just to pass the time

leaving a fingerprint
with no identity attached

but the black holes got sour
and we spit them out
with the stray embers
caught on our bitter tongues

we buried the cigarettes in the dirt,
footprints their only grave marker

you don't hold me
as tight as
you used to

and i can feel
my pieces
starting to slip
apart

please break my fall

i have felt the hands of god
they were my brother's hands
feeling me up on the living room couch
only eleven and i knew
god was a greedy teenage boy
with sweaty hands and a *******

i write down all the things i am not

poet comes first
and the ink cries out of my pen

you didn’t set up your voicemail box like i awkwardly texted you to at 11:48pm last month (so i could leave you awkward voicemails)
and you don’t call me back this late at night
(because somehow you're still afraid that i will be asleep)
but i’ll keep one headphone out
just in case the phone rings

bleach running down my throat
to clean out all your lies
which i swallowed whole

i am a grenade
that keeps
apologizing
for
blowing up

a life told in
text messages

swallowed up
by distance and time

never
to see
the sun

distance made a deal with time
to keep you away from me
but little do they know
i tell the moon how much i love you every night
and she whispers it in your dreams

so you always know

here i lay
my ribcage open to catch the rain

i rip open my skin
not much different than i rip the band aids off of it
tossing it aside in much the same way

thirsty for the secrets my body is keeping from me

i'm not hungry, i'm just
empty
and now i'm just
sorry i expected you to know the difference

you'd think we'd learn
to love by now...

all the books and films...

but ink smears
and cds scratch.

my lips are dry
and cracked
not forming the words
i want them to

nothing but silence
on my tongue
mocking the screams
howling in my
skull

i decided
not to write
a poem
on mother's day

maybe next year

your languid lines
under my calloused hands

we see clearer in the dark