He leaned in, as if to say
All is sacred when pressed under the heat of my body
As if to say
That every moment you spent revolving in the atmosphere
Between your lips and his teeth and his tongue and your wasted words
Was the precipice
Of something new and beautiful
And he could only be described as the most freshly written check
A contract signed along the dotted line
His voice was an appeal to everything unholy
That lay beneath
You, hiding under bone and marrow and skin and darting eyes

but most days
he leans in
as
a memory
of touch and tease and
laughter tossed like quarters into a fountain

just a glance sets my mind into retrograde
no one ever questions the orchestration of an undeclared love
cover your tracks, maintain composure
plan scenarios in your head until you feel like a broken record over and over again
i like you i like you i like you i like you
but then?
                             reality.
I see you in blaring technicolor
and it's more than i asked for
for there is nothing worse
than truly seeing you as you really are

his sweet breath
a siren song
what can I say?
see, I breath only in prose
so broken that it takes transcription
just to utter a word
when the floodgates of my mind are open
my tongue knows no boundaries
the flower of my words
sweet on my lips
candied roses
I sigh in sonnets
only later to realize that
the song had been rewritten

as
                the
words          
          tumbled
out                

the candy are now cough drops
a hint of what they appear to be

      
his breath is a siren song
and mine is a stanza so delicate
that it doesn't know where to start
or


stop.

as i sit and wonder what could possibly be done
i arrive at a realization that my heart is that of a roaring tide
deeper than you deserve to have
but asking for nothing more than the sunshine
that rolls off in drops from your tongue

there is nothing i want more than your crystalline warmth beside me while i cry
and when i laugh i yearn for my sound to echo in the caverns of your mind
yet i can do nothing but watch you watch me
as my heart's decrepit hope
sinks further into the cavity of my chest
and i feel the resounding pain that is the absence of your love on a rainy day

the torture of her beauty can never truly leave my lips
but every one of her smiles causes me pain that you will never know
if i were to try, would it matter?
would i merely become an afterthought? a party joke?
a half-drunk pun told through champagne smiles and friendly glances
could i ever be more to you than what i am now?
a gloriously insignificant extra in your otherwise fulfilled life
so i continue to shake like the tide
without you

the feeling of you
is so visceral
my hand
your waist
platonic.
i try to distract with metaphor
words of water and fire
how your eyes remind me of
stepping stones
your smirk
a graduated *****
an equation to solve
try to distract
with anything other than
how your arms never seem to linger
like my own

what it must be like to be one of those girls!
teasing smile, heart of bubblegum and cigarettes
you chase her, yet you have no desire to understand her
no yearning to hear her thoughts on a dark and sleepless night

i want to exchange dreams with you
want to find myself breathless in the depths
of your mind's many oceans
want to feel your arms around me
encircling my waist
that will never be as narrow as hers
a figure of skin and bone that will never measure up

you don't care for substance
you drink from shallow ponds and let their coolness dissolve in the heat of your disinterest
you like how they sparkle in the light
the way my raging ocean never will
and yet i leave myself at your doorstep
knowing you'll never find yourself
looking down

i daydream about your lips on mine
our kaleidoscope love
colorful fragments only visible
by me
an unreachable reality
for my lips have never felt the touch of another
and your eyes know not of mine
only of hers

and into her I would channel the seas
let them erode at the darkness
file away the rough edges
fill her up so that she felt whole again
onto her
tattoo a thousand words convincing her of her own worth
etch them into her skin before she could wash them away
let them bleed through the empty pores
and sprinkle into her eyes
paint a world
a blank canvas
hand her a paintbrush
I'd remind her that she is more than he could ever build her up to be
that she was seeing the world through a lens distorted with Melatonin clouds and painkiller ocean

i retrograde my thoughts of you
until they are blurred into
an untold prayer
in which your eyes
seek mine
for once
and i feel an acute pain
every time
your smile enters my vicinity
something so disarming
about your everything
i pray and i pray and i pray
but every glance feels like sharp edges and champagne
dizzying and sweet yet a reminder of the hurt you cause me
by never knowing how much it hurts
but just one more smile now
it'll get me through the day
one more touch
feed the daydreams and be my kryptonite
one more moment
in which my heart is perfectly broken
and you will never know

i refuse to burn an effigy for every boy who won't kiss me at midnight
i will not envy the taste of a liquor soaked tongue
of an empty promise wrapped in empty virtue
a perfect parcel, forgotten by morning

Silly girl
You thought this time it would be different
that an apology would roll off her tongue like drops of honey
smoothing over the bitter grooves of underhanded insults
you thought that she could recollect your virginal heart
when smiles appeared as easily as the love interest in a rom com
days of honeydew laughter and cotton candy clouds
thought she could sit next to you gently
watch the wind roll by in tendrils of nostalgia
rather than throw herself into the dark mess of woods that are your thoughts on a sunny day
instead of desperately planting trees to block the sun as you stood quietly chopping them down in hopes of one day catching a rare glimpse of the light
oh honey
don’t you see that pride is a stepstool?
Low enough that you can still see part of her but high enough that she has completely lost sight
don’t you see that her head is in a cupboard of dishes that were organized by her
the dim echo of your calls bounce off the porcelain and land in her mouth
she spits them out
you leave the room
ignorant little girl
problematic little girl
you tell yourself that she will get better that you will get better that one day
waking up in the morning won’t feel like a broken elevator
stranded between floors
you could press the right buttons
but it wouldn’t matter anyway
you’re already in the wrong place
you wonder if when strangers say that you remind them of her
if they knew how her voice could turn from bandages to blades all in the matter of seconds
how her presence could make you shrink
turn you into a different girl
one with sandpaper voice and jackhammer rage
you wonder how others are supposed to love you
how you are supposed to love you
when everyday feels like peeling up floorboards
feels like wrapping myself in cellophane
feels like never truly knowing what life could be
there will be a day
when she calls you abusive
oh you naive little girl
don’t let the woman whose lips blossom with your insecurities allow you to tell you
that the sky isn’t blue
for it takes a sinking ship
to make cries of distress so buoyant
that they hit the surface as missiles.

she passed you in the hallway today
your eyes fixated directly ahead, never hesitating to notice
the shy girl trying so desperately
to keep her focus
on the floor

though of course she felt the presence of your blue eyes
as if their cool indifference could bite with the nod of a head

she was conscious of your feet
striding relentlessly, confidently
never second guessing the gleaming floor beneath them
black converse high tops. ***** laces. the ones you wore most summer days

you were not conscious of her.
you did not notice how her eyes flickered towards your silhouette
for just a second
only a second
you didn't observe her new dress
couldn't have realized that she thought of you when picking her outfit this morning
she thought of you when going to sleep last night
thought of you when she was on the cafeteria line
you never would've thought
that many of her problems arose
merely because she was thinking of you
and your eyes and your cocky smile
your intelligence and your easy conversation

she passed you in the hallway today
but why would you have noticed?

everything about you
confuses my very circuitry
i cannot separate you from the ghost of my own self-hatred
one touch
a tease
a glance
nothing more to you, but every second after you walk away is spent
replaying replaying replaying replaying

sunday mornings come easily, but weekends slip away
like raindrops on a tin roof
monday comes
you and your eyes and your smile
may come, may not
depending on your boredom or need for validation

my circuits continue to replay replay replay
lighting up at the notion of you stopping by
i am wired and assembled for your very presence
the voltage crackles from my skin and i can no longer live in denial
i power off and resume my week, back into my nocturnal crevice
of life without you
life without a hint of your smile
life with a broken circuit, begging to stay

alive

my future feels like
mascara
dripping down my panicked face
quietly imminent
i never forgot the way he laughed at me
that day
7 months ago
and though my switchblade heart
moves forward into what will be
i feel myself retrograde into his closed arms
and although good days seem bright and scintillescent
and the space feels infinite, full of hope
i still feel myself retrograde into who i once was
because doubt is not a skin that is easily shed
i retrograde
because moving forward feels like
constriction
feels like
stepping into an icebox on a winter day
i retrograde because
my mind is so broken that backwards is the only way to
move
on.

the day you stopped feeling like yourself
transparent window panes became frosted
with the cool heat of his disinterest
the kaleidescope of your mind began to retrace itself
praying to find a moment where you could
still trick yourself into thinking
that this was something
real
and i am left here turning and screaming
and praying for a day where i can feel warmth
that doesn't come from five minutes in his presence
i dig my nails into my skin because the sharpness of the pain distracts from the sandstorms in my heart
dry and hot and nothing left to give
i look to the stars and try to pray for a future
where i'm not still thinking about the look on his face
when he turned away
and the softness of his voice when it speaks my name

fingertips to wrist
i resist the urge reach out
he's an arm's length away
but completely unreachable
everything about you is so ******* inaccessible
i wish that i could find the words
my insides are tar and lavender
sweet enough, but so tenaciously anchored
that i couldn't bear a "hello"
for fear of losing the ground altogether

his eyes
will never see
my eyes
watching them
curtains of classroom lights
will paint a portrait
of a prettier girl
for his eyes
to watch
instead of me
my eyes
a barren desert
his eyes
the ocean

and do not tell me this is not love.
do not tell me that watching his sillhouette fade
into yesterday's sun and tomorrow's rain
is any less than a serenade
sublime in its intent.
do not tell me that love must be
late nights/entwined limbs/shut the blinds until rays of light rejoice over the entanglement of warm in living in a sacred room.

my love is radiant
it is my eyes on his with not a touch or a whisper of softness
it is the quiet dedication of unrequited
the softness of what i know his hands would feel like if only i could
reach out.

softspoken
i feel the simplicity of my attraction
elevate until you are no longer someone
who i can handle being
intangible
i dream of your lips on mine
rays of sun escaping from the corner of
that playful smirk that
haunts my halted concentration.

when i see you with her
feel your hand enclose hers
it feels as if
all of the sun in your eyes had been
overturned
a spilled glass of cough syrup
too sweet to taste on my tongue.

your smile forever on my mind
i shudder at the sound of your name
can't escape the effervescence of everything i'll never have.

i love you.


you will never know.