There is no shame, in moving back with your parents.

To them you still smell of diapers and the time you puked jelly beans all over the back of the car after you tilt-a-whirled your “I’m a big girl” attitude into giggles.

Around them you still clumsily tip over you own puberty when they ask you to clean your room.

You’re still in college. And that diploma on your wall is still less of an accomplishment, than when you suddenly discovered your thumbs.

So, how do you cope with the baby talk condescension scribbled over directions to empty a dishwasher properly?

1) Realize this is just temporary. You have till you’re at least 40 to fix this.

2) Clean your room of all the embarrassing childish evidence (i.e. N’Synch Posters, Pokemon Cards, Ect) . When CSI comes in they will just assume you were visiting.

3) Take long, long walks far, far away from your residence. Preferably the woods, so you may not run into any high school nemeses.

4) Pray you can get laid by someone, your age. Preferably someone you have not had any prepubescent encounters with already.

5) Eat all the free food you can.

With theses steps you can safely avoid pulling out your own fingernails with the self-loathing hiding under your bed.

Do not let it fill your Pog champion hands with delusions that you have failed to tie your own shoes, let alone pay your own taxes or get married.

Might as well give up those big girl pants and open lid cups and go back to Sesame Street and ******* in your own pants.

This…

Is only temporary.

You must say.

A temporary walk through the woods. Praying to lay down relax, and enjoy the air you are still eating.

This is only temporary.

I'd give you
My stomach,
just to show you the caterpillars cocooning
into butterflies.

I'd give you
My heart,
just to show you how it stops
every time you smile.

I'd give you
all the moments I could hold in my arms,
Just so you could see frame by frame
how you have frozen every one of them.

And you might think that I am giving you
everything.
You are humble like that.
but you have given me
lengths of golden twine that you have
strung around my heart.
Making sure that everyday that I fall for you,
you can pull me back up
again
and again
and again.
You don't just pull on my heart strings,
you made them.

And when you cry it's like
rain on the wedding day,
that marries you and perfection together.
I could be your umbrella,
You could be my dream.

Because I have watched "Tangled"
way too many times.
And I don't want you to find a new dream.
I don't want you to scale a tower with my hair.
...although something similar would be nice.

But make us a fairytale.
One which makes little kids want to dress up
like us on Halloween.

Let me be your forever.
A fairytale about the girl who gave everything,
even the bones in her fingers.
To write about true love, about the one who gave,
everything in return.

Dear Pickle,

You are making my face sour. Mom is mad at you for skipping school and I have to talk her down again.

Maybe next time you can write me a 1200 word essay on "How stupid your decisions are", So I can mark it up with red pen before you lose grades on your ribs.

Sister, you need to calm your *** down, because the world isn't a race and the underdog doesn't always come in first, or even second.
But take a second to stop breathing that smoke you call air, everybody is choking on the smell of teen-spirit.
The tattoos not yet ingaved in your skin will serve as a reminder of how you took last place in a family full of sharp broken pieces of glass.
I tell Mom "Don't worry, it's just a phase, she just needs a second to find her place, in this world" But, at this rate, I'm not sure you will.

Because, people will knock on your door and hand you bottles of quick fixes and Novocaine, and I hope that this poem isn't in vain to serve as a reminder of that little girl that still caught fireflies in her teeth.

And I am sorry I left for 3 years without watching your molecules multiply, but I wrote my times tables on the back of my diploma for you to study.

That 6 year old girl with woodland creature cheeks hasn't been forgotten.
That 6 year old girl who never failed to puke in the car after a glass of milk hasn't been forgotten.
That 6 year old girl that cried every time we told anyone you are cat food under the kitchen table hasn't been forgotten.

I am sorry, can you bring her back now?

And for me, could you stop making Mom cry, she has watered so many Forget-me-nots that I am afraid her roots are drowning.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all the time you bared swords and shields to defend me against the stereotypes that threatened to staple them themselves to the inside of our cheeks, but come on...get your **** together.

We are blood-brothers...with vaginas.
Don't you dare break that bond because if you do I will lock you in the closet, turn the lights of and leave you in there screaming and crying until the rebellion leaves your bladder.

I'm your sister, not your mother. I will not birth any more brother *****-ups for you to father.

Love,
Vinegar.

This poem has been removed by author, for limited time.

This poem has been removed by author for limited time.

Dear Hot Straight Actresses,

Stop playing perfect lesbian characters on TV that cause me to become wet on lonely Thursday nights.

It’s the equivalent of waving double chocolate fudge cake in front of a menstruating woman who has just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

To name a few,

Jennifer Beals as Bette Porter on The L Word.
Stop it!

Naya Rivera as the sassy Santana Lopez on Glee.
Stop it!

Angie Harmon as butch goddess Detective Jane Rizzoli on Rizzoli & Isles.
You may be in the closet but you are gay and stop!

And Sara Ramirez and Jessica Capshaw as the married ****** Dr. Cali Torrez and Dr. Arizona Robbins of Grey’s Anatomy.
You…you keep going. You two give me hope.

Hope that someday my insanely high expectations will be met when my hot art collecting, sassy mouthed Doctor with handcuffs in her back pocket jumps from the screen and onto my sweatpants covered lap.
In this crazy assumption that I’ll end up falling out of an apple tree letting gravity push me into the arms of a woman who fixes my broken sense of reality with a amazing great hair and a wedding proposal.

Missing out on the

Hot barista who gives me an extra large when I ask for a small

or the

Budding **** artist who invites me to her galleries only to realize her muse has oddly the same hips as me.

or the

Best friend who is still stuck in the shadows of my closet.

Nope…didn’t see any of those.
I’m too busy watching the **** tube to see what low cut tops they can get away with before they leave the set and back to their husband and 2.5 kids.

All I’m asking is…

…when is it coming out on DVD?

It's funny what you do to me, and I know funny.
I go up on stage and tell ****** jokes for a living,
           and look super bad *** while doing it.
But now you've got my *** terrified. Paranoid to breathe because I'm afraid it will be my last
          and you won't be there to see it.
Yes, it's cliche. But you do have me listening to love songs, you do have me putting on make up,
          you do have me running up mountains so I can have a body you can enjoy while we make-
          out in your car to Beyonce songs.
You once told me that I "was the more beautiful person to grace this Earth" but Lover, I see your
          grace in everything on this Earth.
And snow makes me smile because you like to ski and I'm from Canada so my face hurts
         frequently.
Trench mapped hands, a sign of how many battles you've fought and won, how many battles
         you've fought and lost, how many times you've picked yourself up off the dirt, smiled at me
         and said "I'm fine, are you okay?"
Honestly, I have no idea how the most flawed person in the world, a girl who leaves her wet
          towels everywhere, a girl who puts her keys in the same place but manages to forget where
          they are, a girl who plays Assassin's Creed for 3 hours without blinking and wears that like a
          proud Metal Of Honor, how can that girl make the most perfect person in the work happy?
Answer? I have no clue, but you don't have to cheat on any test, because I'll stay. As long as you
          want me to, I'll stay.
Here for you when you get weepy, or angry, or curious to see what we can do behind closed doors.
I won't say "I love you". Not because it's not true. Nothing could be more true. But if I say it, I'll cry,
           You'll kiss me, and I can't guarantee what will happen to our clothes after that.
So instead, I'll keep making the "that's what she said" jokes, until you're reminded of snow, or
            maps, or breathing.
And I have fallen so hard for you that stone boarders between countries couldn't stop your
           gravitational pull.
And like willow tree roots growing into shorelines, I get wetter every time you hold me.
So, I'll send you Steven King length facebook messages everyday.
I'll ring up my phone bill to $500.
Light candles for 3 hour skype dinners.
Because, long distance relationships are hard, but not being able to call you "mine" is excruciating.
Because, it's funny what you do to me.
Because, I love funny.

I see you in window panes.
Breath spreading from one corner to the next during a cold fall day.
This is the happiest moment.
And yet, it's never happened...

The fish hooks attached to my ears, leading to you.
A smile passes as I listen to the words they hang off of.
This is the happiest moment.
And yet, it's never happened...

A dress, stitched to my skin, hangs off the curves like water on Niagara Falls.
It's white crest spilling like nature and man wanted it to.
This is the happiest moment.
And yet, it's never happened...

I can only dream of this.
Because it has only been 5 months, since I held you so close to me that our first moment still hangs on my neck, still warm.
And it's not really socially acceptable to be handing over your past, present, and future to someone you met over the internet after only 5 months.
But it seems like a lifetime. Because I knew in the first hour in that car, driving from the airport, that I wanted my life to be spread over yours. Like PB&J; spread over our childhoods in a thick, gooey layer that is in the bottom of your stomach and the top of your mouth making it harder to talk about the times when all you had was Lego and hands.

I knew I wanted 2 things in life from then on.
1) To wake up ever morning with the smell of good coffee and good kisses
2) For you to be my barista.
Here's a tip, you look so good in white.

So let's wait a little longer till I can ask you for that ring in your pocket.
Till you take me to a fancy restaurant, where I put on that confidence you built up for me and you wear that shirt I bought you for our 5 month anniversary.
You have planned all this out. Until you realize I have been waiting since the airport for this question and a plan was never needed.

I can take the waiting.

It will be the happiest moment,
And it will happen soon.

In the darkest hours of the night,
I think of you.

I think of your scent being a blues song,
Playing a lone trumpet
Drifting over my face.

It’s a funny thing,
What the night does to us,
Especially if you aren’t asleep.

But I have dreamed of you,
Eyes looking into your eyes,
You so close to me you breath in my exhale.

In the darkest hours of the night,
I think of you.

I think of your warmth,
Spreading over me like strawberry jam.
Sticky, sweet, and always easy to spread.

The inhibitions of the daylight,
Are lost within the dark.
Stuck in their bedroom with their nightlights.

I have lost all of my layers,
Now here,
Just a skeleton of myself.

In the darkest hours of the night,
I think of you.

I think of your shoulders,
Hard as Atlas,
But soft as the curves in your body.

There is no way I can’t think of you,
You are the night.

I cry
more often than I want,
And I manage to always do it right in front of you.
Something about your face,
Makes my face a canal for rivers of salt and sadness.

But there is always categories of sadness.
You make me so happy, I cry.
You make me laugh so hard, I cry.
You make me miss you, I cry.

I can count on my 20 year old fingers,
how many people I have cried in front of.
1,
2,
3,
4,
and you.

You cry
more often than you want,
And you manage to always do it right in front of me.
Something about my face, and arms.
Makes your face a canal for rivers of salt...
...I will levee them with kisses.

William Shakespeare said "When I saw you I fell in love and you smiled because you knew," and this happens to us every morning.

I put my lips to your chest, so I know what your breath feels like.

So when I mason jar my lungs and tell you to take it somewhere I have never been, somewhere far, far away, and you open it up in Utah, I'll recognize the whisper of "I love you" under the 2000 miles it traveled back to me.

And I'll wish it was you, so I could hold you into my arms and sink you into my lungs.

"Love," I'll say, *"Keep the jar. You'll need it every time I look at you."

The mathematician never finished his work today

Which is weird because it was the most important project of his career.
Working on the equation for the perfect person, left it halfway done.
The other half lost in this numerical mind.

But that's what we are, two halves of an unfinished project.

A slip atom
A half of a binomial theorem
A parabola at the apex of its' focus, ready to fall right back on its' feet.

Because apart we are imperfect, we trip, we fall
But when multiplied we are a product of perfection, able to point out that mistaken branch before you have time to brace yourself.

I'll take those expanded arms and wrap them around me, feel your acute angles against my obtuse curves.
Put my hand on your neck, not to feel your skin, well: to do that too, but also to feel your pulse.
Knowing it beats at the same intervals as mine.

And no one know why the mathematician never completed the equation.

…maybe fell asleep…
                                       …maybe distracted…
                                                                              …maybe he just forgot…

But I thank him.

Because perfect is lonely and you...you are everything.
Without him the  Y= to my MX+being would never be linear.

And I'm not good at math, neither are you, but I'm pretty sure we don't need to look in the back of the book for any answers.

I have spent more time,
in my pajamas than I would like to admit.
But I have spent more time,
missing you from our bed.

Something about yellow plaid and a white T,
that sends me over the moon
and landing amongst the stars.

Because you hold me up to a fame
that even Lucy in the sky with those diamonds
would be jealous of.

I will listen to you all day and never
ask you to pause, rewind,
or skip to the next song.

I have spent more time
in my pajamas than I would like to admit
But I would rather be asleep forever,
than awake and not dreaming with you.

Sometimes I don't like what I see in the mirror.
Love handles over the jeans like grubby hands picking for the last slice of pizza.
Sometimes I don't like the words written on paper.
Words hunched over till 5am that still come scrambled as my breakfast.
Sometimes I don't like how I kiss you.
My lips not being able to move in the way your hips do in those jeans.

But...

Sometimes I can't handle love that I see for myself.
How I find every scar on my skin a Van Gogh of flesh and memory.
Sometimes Laughter can not help but shuffle its' way from my chest.
Every facebook status a Emmy award winning season of words
Sometimes I can not wait for the next day.
When I get to taste the air in my lungs only to have it taken away again by the sun.

Sometimes a love/hate relationship is good....sometimes.

They say we are too young to know what true love is.
They say that long distance relationships never work.
They say that being "like us" is a sickness
So, I guess I'll never tell them how my ribs hurt every time my heart beats too hard when my plane
          lands and you love me with vaccine kisses.
I'll take my medicine without insurance because, you only live once YOLO
Unless you believe in reincarnation.
And I have to, because how could we be so perfect, know each others faces like a married couple
          knows the crows feet stories they grown into for 60 year, and I have only looked at you for 4
          months?
Lover, you asked me to come to church with you, I said yes.
I needed to thank him, or her, or whoever for answering my payers in a difference country.
To thank whoever for taking two candle burned pages and making them a book, a bible that I
          pray to every night.
And I may not believe in God but I believe in you and your past, which is chiseled into the banks
          of my bloodstream. The burred edges being eroded away by time and heartbeats.
They say we'll never make it.
They say we are too young.
They say Time + Space = heart break.
I say bring "it" on.
I say I have been old enough to see slow wars silenced by fast hands, see starts die, see memories
         so old that only the boxes in my basement remember them.
I say Their Mouths + words = shut up!
They say a lot of things.
But I say "I love you" more.
They say a lot of things.
But kisses are silent, and or are the breathless laughs and eye rolls you share every time I ruin a
          romantic moment with "that's what she said" jokes.
They say a lot of things.
But I talk way more and my tongue has more use in the subject matter that is you.

They say we are too young to know what true love is.
They say that long distance relationships never work.
They say that being "like us" is a sickness
So, I guess I'll never tell them how my ribs hurt every time my heart beats too hard when my plane
          lands and you love me with vaccine kisses.
I'll take my medicine without insurance because, you only live once YOLO
Unless you believe in reincarnation.
And I have to, because how could we be so perfect, know each others faces like a married couple
          knows the crows feet stories they grown into for 60 year, and I have only looked at you for 4
          months?
Lover, you asked me to come to church with you, I said yes.
I needed to thank him, or her, or whoever for answering my payers in a difference country.
To thank whoever for taking two candle burned pages and making them a book, a bible that I
          pray to every night.
And I may not believe in God but I believe in you and your past, which is chiseled into the banks
          of my bloodstream. The burred edges being eroded away by time and heartbeats.
They say we'll never make it.
They say we are too young.
They say Time + Space = heart break.
I say bring "it" on, specially if "it" means more ***.
I say I have been old enough to see slow wars silenced by fast hands, see starts die, see memories
         so old that only the boxes in my basement remember them.
I say Their Mouths + words = shut **** up!
They say a lot of things.
But I say "I love you" more.
They say a lot of things.
But kisses are silent, and or are the breathless laughs and eye rolls you share every time I honk your
          ***** like a red nosed clown at a birthday party.
They say a lot of things.
But I talk way more and my tongue has more use in the subject matter that is you.

Have you ever sat in a vehicle?
While it's molten lava under the wheels, with no sign of an oasis?
And, with both of your parents?

The thought of pulling your hair out is only a stagnant relief for a few seconds before the route change.

ER or Mental Hospital?

Both of them asking about who you've been dating? What work is like? Saving money? How's you retirement savings plan coming up? You better take care of us when were old!

I can't think of worse ways to get anyone to crack.

Do they do this to interrogate ****** suspects? Because a lot more murders would be solved.

But when stories of you sick, young, crying over the toilet come up you feel like an *******.
They take care of you, they love you.

But let's just hope mom knows how to take care of you after you fling your maddening body out into the smouldering roadside.

Hopefully you wear something flammable.

I promise,
to watch you everyday.
To like everything you do,
even when others don't.
I promise to share you to all of my friends,
but tell them I found you first.
When you need a smile,
I will make a gif of yours and watch it loop.

If better,
means making your view count higher,
count me in.....count me in a 1, 000, 000 times.
If worse,
means staying up past 3am to see your new video,
let me be an insomniac.

I will care for you,
when you catch a virus.  
I will never cheat on you,
with another channel of viewers.

I will subscribe to every,
heartbeat,
breath,
and click.
I can muster.

You are my tube.
and I promise to love you,
till we crash.

I want to whisper your name into my lungs.
Feel you sink into my nostalgia.
Because, It always comes down to "Where have you been all my life?"
My inner child screams, tears rushing down her innocents, that "It's not fair!"
My angst worn teen just rolls her eyes with her broken heart and Jane Austin hands.
My old woman hums "Love like there is no age."

Because it doesn't matter now, I can't see myself without you.
Ever...

And wedding dresses are all we have in common.
They hold so tightly that every moment stays interlaced in their very existence.
They will always have that one happy day.
One day that blends and binds they day after,
and the next,
and the next,
and the forever.

All tied with a white string.

Because red strings are too bold for your skin to bleed into.
So, I'll tie a white one around my wrist, so every time life looks down,
a wedding is all I see.
A wedding with you and me.
An alter with candles and flowers, on top of a hill.
We walk up like Jack and Jill.
But I have already tumbled after you, head over heals.

Love isn't a strong enough word.
Love is used by poets, authors, musicians.
No,
I live for you,
I live for you,
I live for you,
and I'll say it every time I breath your name into my lungs.

Girl, put down the pocket knife fist and pick up that pen of yours.

stop...

They aren't worth the status updates or the 140 character #hashtag
They are worth books. Trilogy novels of witty 'should have' banter and Good wins over Evil plot themes.
Rake in the millions.

Then put down the skinny jeans and wear the Tutu.

stop...

They aren't worth the clone bulimic fashion trends.
They are worth ballets. Extravagant classical shows where millions come to see. Each one hanging on you like fish hooks.
Because you got that audience hook, line, and sinker.

Then, go home.

stop...

They aren't worth the boastful air you inhale.
Exhale humility and stories about best sellers and the view from a ballet hall in Germany.

You are worth it.
You are worth the pens,
and tutus,
and a home.

You are
as vast as the ocean

Climb up
onto my hometown shores

and let me kiss you once more.