I didnt lose anything the day that you kissed my red lips,
told me that you liked them swollen this color instead of painted it.
I didn’t lose anything when you kissed down my neck and across my collar bone and all the way down into my soul.
I don’t think I lost anything the day we kicked off our socks and shoes and shimmied out of our jeans
When we crawled under the covers and into each others hearts,
whispering words that I can still feel againt my skin long after your touch has faded.
Christmas lights casting shadows that I chased across your jaw
Legs tangled and fingers twined,
we were more laughter and love
patience and passion
imperfection and beauty than I had ever felt in myself alone.
I don’t think I lost anything;
some part of myself that my mother was always telling me to protect.
*I think I may have even grown.

You were born with thunder rumbling from between your lips.
Your words were learned to be feared.
the promise of being trapped in the rain was too frightening for anyone to listen.

You were a flower that had begun to wilt,
covered by the shade of those towering above you,
and when they stole the last ray of light,
you learned to become your own sun.

Lightning shown in your golden-brown eyes.
Fierceness and a refusal to take any odds into consideration.
You struck hearts into beating again,
you struck minds into thinking again.

Your soul is a flood raging over hills. You are washing down every crevice of the world;
drowning and sweeping away things that will never measure to your strength.

You are a Californian wildfire.
Beautifully destructive and distinctively fearless.
You are crackling heat in valleys where thirst will never be quenched.
Don't be offended when they turn away,
some people just can't take the heat.

You have grown into a refusal to let the natural disasters inside of you sit still.
You have taken every ounce of nothingness that you felt and turned it into a brewing storm.
We will hear that thunder rolling from your lips this time.

Sonnets were written about your icy smile years before you were born.
Poets know the beauty of a powerful earthquake that could send cities crumbling,

Everyone knows the beauty of a powerful woman that can send worlds crumbling.

we lost ourselves in pieces,
because we promised we’d never do it all at once.

1.You’ll lose yourself in someones kisses. When you told yourself that you’d never live for someone else, you didn’t know that today his panted words are the oxygen that is filling your lungs.
2.You’re skin is buzzing and crawling, the trindles of smoke crashing against you hard enough to rock you off your feet. There’s an itch, but its too deep inside of you to scratch. The smoke starts knocking against you again and you being learning how to let the current carry you.
3.Inside jokes become awkward glances in the hall, and the people who used to make us laugh until it hurt, started hurting us for real.
4.Your dad used to push you on the swings. Your barefeet grazing a sky as bright as your future, but now hes anchoring you down, holding you back when your legs are kicking to push off the ground again. The wind tickling those childish feet is turning into mulch spiking splinters into the skin you thought was though, but isn’t tough enough.
5.Your bed has been made since Friday morning. The sheets are cold and the mascara stains in the pillow are starting to fade; because you can’t sleep in the same bed that’s covered by the quilt your grandma sewed when your skin is this *****. The shower stopped washing off your mistakes along time ago.
6.While sleeping in someone else’s bed, you forgot to pray. The sins began building up inside of you, another thing that won’t wash off. You’re done with people turning their eyes from your mistakes, but you aren’t strong enough to ask them to forgive you.
7.You’ve broken too many mirrors, and now you can’t tell the difference between a shattered one and a real one. Because they both shred you apart inside the same way. Those shards sticking in between the gaps of meals and the numbers on the scale and between the layers of your self-worth.
8.The butterflies drawn in the margins of your diary can’t fly as fast as your best friend’s car is down this back road. The stepping stones you leaped across don’t give you the same thrill of flying as unbuckling your seat belt to stick your head out the window and scream against the wind can. The flirt with death isn’t against dragons and monsters anymore, its with the cigarette between your finger and the creatures lurking in the darkness inside of you.
9.The things we promised our friends in middle school, words and childish innocence clutched in our pink palms, were forgotten until we’d cried hard enough to empty everything else from our heads. We lost ourselves in pieces and shed layers of skin until there weren’t anymore to peel away.