I found you (you found me)
hands hidden
gloves to the edges of your sleeves (I wished I could see)
Box on the side of the road
three kittens inside (I wanted to join them)
One pocket for each crying mind
they were hidden.

Gloves callused, hands warm
you led me to your home (my home)
jacket off gloves on sleeves down
palms against your face
rain against your skin it’s rain it’s rain (I know)
but kittens hide in your pockets
so you wipe the water from your cheeks
and one by one you set them free (it’s warm)
Paws against face against gloves
fingers down their back
running through their hair (you ask them why they’re sad)

No response, except
purrs run hot against your cheeks (my smile is tattooed with your skin)
tails swish against your shirt
fur rumpled, eyes soft
so small against your chest (grow in circles with me)
Gloves off, kittens warm.

Paws against face against skin (they ask you why you’re sad)
it’s rain you say, it’s rain it’s rain it’s rain

(I kiss the tears away)

Some days I talk to you with my head instead of my mouth.
As endless jokes slide between my teeth
I tell you
I wish smiling didn’t come so easy.
I know you slide safety pins into the corners of your lips and through the tops of your cheeks
before walking through my door.
You always reach for me, fingers curling round my own
intertwining
so our fingers look like a tall picket fence standing between us and our palms.
I wonder
do you hold my hand like you would your own,
begging your younger self to stumble away — on foot, because your wings were still too small to fly on —
in any direction that wasn’t towards home
instead of giving her the key
and letting her lock you away
leaving you to batter hopelessly against
the confines of your rib cage,
wings no longer small
but cut
some by her hand,
some by yours held (lovingly) (hatefully) in her own?
I wonder
if your pulse between my fingers
is from your screaming begging tearing heart,
or the sound of you hitting the walls
of your confine time and time again
like a bird hitting a blacked-out window
because it knew it used to be clear.
Once, you let go of my hand
held me in a chokehold
until I tapped out minutes too soon
and I wonder
were your hands itching, hurting, begging
to feel the softness of your throat
the way your fingers would press
into hollows formed by a year’s worth of work
but you couldn’t, you couldn’t
not with your safety-pin smile
so you did the next best thing
and laughed your post-it note laugh
one prepared from hours of late-night YouTube tutorials
that you watched as you drowned in the smell of your home
and you reached for me,
held me in the way she taught you to hold
even as you hated yourself
hated her
hated the her that was yourself,
the yourself that was her and was hers
for listening to the lessons
she recites with her hands.

Ice cold hands
on jagged skin
Please don’t let me go

Tell me you’re okay
– No don’t lie!
But
tell me you’re okay

Where is your voice?
Lost its place
behind my ear
I can’t hear it anymore

Last time we spoke
you cried against my skin
droplets tattooed into my soul
I promise
I will never let you go.

Landlocked oceans
Killing trees
There’s nothing but the notion
Of worn out leaves
Gonna tear them apart
Before I run away
From the swimming
Sinking screaming
Of what follows

Buzzing buzzing
Lips curling
Fingers thrumming
There’s nothing in my mind
But that stupid silent humming
Gonna go insane
Without any weight
Above my head
Gonna go insane
Without any thoughts
Inside my brain
Gonna go insane
In a world where there’s 
Nothing inside sanity
But silence

Throw a bone to the dog
Because i’m hungry hungry
Quiet crunching sinew
White against yellow teeth
Worn against soft gums
Eating eating eating
Gone gone gone
Throw another bone to the dog

if our fingers brushed together
and you pressed yours to mine
so accidentally-on-purpose
they gently intertwined
and i looked at you
and you looked at me
and we smiled
i think maybe everything
would be just fine.

i missed you yesterday
and the day before
and the day before
when i hadn't seen you for a month.
time was a monster gnawing away
at the walls of its cage between my ribs,
its chains rusting and cracking with wear.
the present was a dreamer's life
of sleep and rest and zoning
because how else could i reach my perfect world
of us?
the past was a landmine,
every moment a missed opportunity
for more time with you.
and the future was repeated images
of when it was finally today,
hugging and seeing and knowing and having.

i missed you earlier
more than i ever had before
when i saw you for the first time in a month.
somehow time had freed itself
and i guess it saved our "us, maybe"
for its main course
because by the time i got to you
i could see in your eyes
that we were already gone.

Sometimes I wish that darkness was a human and that darkness was a cannibal.
That from the concave behind my eyes
wisps of black stretched out
and swallowed up my skin,
turned me upside down
and inside out
until I was inside it.
The skin or the darkness
I’m not sure.

when i laugh i look at you
and maybe it’s wishful thinking
but sometimes i think
you do the same, too.

Aching,
empty.
Restless
but not
in motion.
Words
blocked
like a
******'s dam.
Leaking through
the cracks
waiting for
the flood.

an everlasting love
sometimes hidden
but always there.

can i tell you a secret?
some days, when the sky is its darkest hue
and the clouds are a light gray-blue
i write poetry.
it's all about you.

The river of time continues to flow,
and yet here I stand -- unmoving.

I strung up Christmas lights on the trees in my mind
and haven’t taken them down yet.

Ask a question:
Let it dance on your tongue
like a child ballerina —
full of stutters and jumps
and hope.
As it spins circles
through your mind,
tears holes in the soles
of your shoes,
wait.
Let it fall swiftly and fast
so quiet it’s barely a whisper
if that at all.
And with no response,
let the hope fade
with a few tears
and maybe some scrapes
or bruises.
Just as the child,
pick yourself up
and walk towards the door,
allowing one glance behind you
before the soft click of it shutting
is all you can hear
and your locked up dreams
will never even know you were calling.

It's her words, I think,
that turn the world into gold.
Or, perhaps, the way her eyes captured entire soliloquies
and her voice took on a hint of an accent
as buttery, honey-soaked verses slid off her tongue
and filled the springtime air with such ease
that I began to wonder whether it was truly a poem
or just the lyrics of the thoughts that painted her mind.

And I know I've known her for a while
in that half-smile sort of way
and the contemplation of a wave as she passed me by
but suddenly there was nothing I wanted more
than to talk for hours under the brilliant sky,
the one whose windswept clouds were palaces
with moats of the most cerulean blue.
Though the sky may have once deserved only a passing glance
it was transformed before my very eyes
as she whispered its secrets into my awaiting ears.

I wonder, idly, what the world would be like
if she sang its soul into existence
and there's a small voice in the back of my mind,
one murmuring that perhaps she already has
but we're all too blind to see it.

"Icarus," I breathe
through my dreams of flying free.
The naïveté of the youngling I desired to be
was a warning sign to all that watched his descent.
It was not his disobedience that led to this --
to his body buffeted in the merciless winds and swept up by the sea --
but being blinded by boundless beauty through his kaleidoscope vision.
What more could one wish for than the all-encompassing euphoria
of weaving through the sun-soaked clouds,
of learning the meaning of freedom as you reach up
to brush your fingers against the sun?
What more could one know than wanting something so desperately
that every shiny red sign is just one more bauble for your collection
as you struggle to escape the empty abyss engulfing you from within,
as you let the feeling of bliss envelope you for one heavenly moment,
as everyone screams in tinny voices that you should listen --
listen! --
but at least you got this one second,
this one heartbeat of a moment,
to finally let the chains fall from your bloodied wrists
and spread your newfound wings for all to see, for you to see,
for once, for nobody but yourself
before tumbling to the beat of gravity's forlorn yet never-ending song.
And maybe he regretted it
and maybe I will too
but as I press my palm against the echo of the sunlit expanse
reverberating in someone else's memory,
one word slips from my parted lips:
"Icarus."

Your tender words caress my face
and seep into my skin.
Soft soliloquies, quiet rhymes, rhythmic patterns,
they swirl in my mind
and are painted behind my eyelids while I sleep
or as I think of you and smile.
The whisper of your fingertips
reminds me of the brush of your pen
and the tumultuous emotion from each word
brought forth from your mind.
Your poems of love impart a sweet nostalgic ache
for the passion I'd never felt
until your words flooded my thoughts
and allowed deeply seeded flowers to grow into a full bloom.

And I think
maybe it is not you I fell for,
but the sweet, sweet, song you sing.

No words
slip from my tongue.
No words
emerge from my fingertips
as they race across the keyboard.
No words
spill from my mind,
trace the recesses of my brain,
leave my lips with the taste of butterscotch.
I have traveled far and wide,
from one pole to the other
then so far west I'm back in the east,
but I still have no words.
No words
to describe this feeling,
the one at the back of my throat every time I speak,
the one tingling at my fingertips whenever I press them against the keys,
the ones zigzagging my mind from dawn to dusk and even after that.
No words
to describe the tightness of my chest,
whether from the way she tucks her hair behind her ear
or the weight of today on my shoulders.
The thoughts --
I chase them, but they always slip away
just as I can feel them in my grasp.
No words, no thoughts, no way
to finish this poem
not when it's ever-flowing, ever-growing, ever-changing, ever-there.

She spoke
with half-smoked cigarettes
and lilting cursive scribbled over last night’s letter’s return address,
her bags packed with only a backless dress.
Nails dripping black and red
blood and paint indistinguishable
in the darkness of the winding alleyways
zigzagging her heart.
She was truly, unendingly lost
in the mazes of her mind
as she traveled backwards with a string
lazily trailing after broken stilettos.
Yesterday’s rain still dripping from empty window sills
and illuminated by lanterns lit with fireflies
found solace in her silent tears
for they were companions,
cut from the same paper-thin cloth.
Maybe a goddess had worn it once,
but those days were long gone
when she lit it aflame with a cigarette
fresh from her lips.
Desire was never a question —
this she had learned from the fire
overtaking her overflowing mind —
and yet it was soundlessly spoken
on empty bottles
not yet broken and swept up by the sea.
Only the blind man could see her now
just as the deaf girl heard her cries
and thus she remained unanswered.
This, however, she did not mind
for being lost was no longer not a choice.

It was a shotgun wedding
and the bullet hit 'em both.

“What is a poem?”
My English teacher asks,
then barely pauses before answering his own question.
Lists of rules and reasons
spill from his mouth,
so many that he’s cut off by the bell.

I refrain from raising my hand
and telling him that anything can be a poem
if you want it to be.

The painting on the wall,
the fleeting peace that comes
from looking at the moon,
the little boy whose hands are already rough
and calloused with use.

Nothing makes a poem
but our minds and thoughts and wishes
for “poem” is just a word
but what it gives us is ours to decide.

Maybe even this is a poem,
though my English teacher would disagree.

That sweet pang in my heart
when I think of you.

The world rains down on this lonesome desert plane
and we watch and wait and go insane.

As I watch
your soft limbs bow before me
giving me permission to climb your sturdy trunk
up to your leaves.

I peek through the branches,
the world broken up into crisscrossed windows
each one a glimpse into someone's world.

I'm reminded of my younger days,
climbing higher and higher
until the sky brushed my fingers
in a soft command.

I would be a sky pirate, searching
for something or somewhere or someone
until momma came outside with lemonade and PB&J
and all my problems were solved
with a single kiss to my forehead.

Now, though, I simply watch from above
content in spending a few moments alone,
just me and you and the sky.

Wind picks up, your delicate branches waving in the breeze
letting swaths of gold float to the ground
in curtains that coat the cracks in the pavement
and hide the imperfections with golden rain.

And in that moment, there is nowhere else I'd rather be.

I search for my reflection
but it is here no longer.

One day, you'll whisper sweet nothings in my ear
and I'll fall asleep to your soft lullabies
of stardust skipping stones and rainbow oceans.

One day,  I'll tell you that your eyes
remind me of the universe
and that you shine brighter than the most dazzling star.

One day, I'll reveal that I ask for you whenever I wish on the sun
and that when our fingers brush against each other,
it feels like the entire world smiles.

One day, I'll wake up from this nightmare
only to roll over and see you curled up next to me.

But as I finger the cold sheets beside my lone body,
I know that today is not the day.

I beg of you:

1. Examine me with curious eyes.
Crave to sneak a look within,
to see where the treasures lie.

2. Caress me with gentle fingers --
hold me in such a way
that every touch lingers.

3. Open me, peer into my soul
and study each aspect with care.
Hold each one in the softest embrace
no matter the fright or scare.

4. And this, I ask with all my heart --
love me, treasure me, and all my parts.
For despite appearances, despite my walls,
I am not Pandora's Box.

It wasn’t “I love you”
but at least it was goodbye.

If my teardrops were wishes
life would be filled with the sweetest of kisses.

We sit at the cliff's edge
and skip rocks made of stardust
across the universe of time.

Soft hearts beat quickly in time.
One, two. One, two.
I stare at her lips, then press them to mine.
One, two. One, two.
I curl up against her, thinking “This is a sign.”
One, two. One, two.
Then deepen the embrace, and let our bodies intertwine.

In my dreams
we share
quiet laughter under setting suns,
soft kisses in the moonlight,
and secret smiles as the stars disappear.

Sixty red balloons
Seeping air through barely-patched holes
Falling from the sky.

Lost boys
Running down the streets
Cutting corners in their haste
To get away from life.

The light in your eyes
And the rain from your tears
Mix together to create
The most beautiful colors.

I am lost in the rain,
and the rain is lost in me.

You whisper
drunken promises
through red-rimmed lips,
eyes softer than the fading sun.
Like the kisses on my face
and the shattered pictures on the floor
they'll be broken all too soon.

You are a lantern
And I am but a moth,
Gazing in awe at your beauty and welcoming presence.
As if in a trance, I draw near
And bask in your warm light
Too enveloped in your grace
To notice the corpses littering the floor.
You burn my once-gorgeous wings until I can no longer fly,
You sear my retinas so all I can see is you,
And yet I can’t leave, too reliant on your heat.
And just like that, a switch is flipped.
Your light goes out.
And I am left alone with only the wreckage you brought me
And the knowledge
That it’s all my fault.

Help, friend!
Please, just make this brutal cycle end!
Let me finally transcend
this reality we comprehend
as a futile means to a futile end.

I'm nothing without
soft kisses in the moonlight,
bodies entangled
as lips trace constellations
made with freckles on your skin.