I forgot how much I loved the
Foreignness of a stranger's hands on me.
My waist, my arm, my ***
I felt every touch
Like an infrared light sensor
The heat from your hand
Stayed and glowed on
my arm, my breast, my thigh
It's fine though,
Nothing more.
I have a boyfriend,
And you have
A Fiance and a Baby on the way

I am an independent person,
I am not an add-on to your life.
I am an independent person,
I cannot have my freedom taken from me.
I am an independent person,
I will be who I want to be.
I am an independent person,
You cannot tell me,
What I can and cannot be.

Where my heart isn't breaking
This place where a muse is constant
And the muse is you

I've missed this place,
Where calm and ease are synonymous with your smile and
The gleam in your eyes when they cross paths with mine.

I've missed this place
Where I let myself feel the warmth of your skin
And relish in how it warms my heart

I've missed this place,
This place I didn't realize I left
I missed this place
The place where I let myself love you.

There's a poem written inside of me
About all my heartbreaks
From all the boys before you.

There's a poem written inside of me
About all the ways
I pushed people away.

And then there's a poem about you,
Slowly developing,
While you take every brick out of my wall
While you cross the moat and walk past the dragon.

poem lines that read
i love you
i love you
i love you
because those are the only important words
that a poem for you should ever read.

I.
I need your lips on my lips.
I need your hands on my hands.
I need your skin on my skin.
I need to get tangled up in your love, baby;
I don't ever want to forget it.

II.
*******, I can't sleep
And I need you here next to me

III.
Your fingertips write the sweetest of poetry
Every time they touch my skin.

IV.
Letting myself love you
Has been the hardest
and easiest thing
I've ever done.

All I could think about
Were all the poems I haven't written yet
And all the poems I'd already written that should have been for you.

Your hands set my skin on fire,
Burning my flesh into something
You can easily mold.

All I got is Hennessy on my tongue
and, baby, you on my lips.

a year ago
we were talking about my (then recent) breakup

He's such a poison it's not even funny

today i finally realized you weren't talking about my ex.
you were talking about the boy with the curly hair and dark brown eyes sitting across from me:
the one i just confessed my love to.

You told me
Dreaming only gets you so far
Putting your words to actions will take you the rest of the way.

You told me
I had to close my eyes
Imagine what I want
Put a bulls-eye on it and aim.

He told me
He's willing to fight for what he wants
And that bulls-eye is on me

I told him,
*Sometimes bulls-eye's move, darling

Out of death comes life
Something old is sacrificed so something new can begin
You will leave people
People will leave you

Darling, don't ever think that the death of you
Will recycle into something
New and good

You didn't sacrifice yourself
I sacrificed you
For my sanity.

Don't think that you opened the closed door before you left
I opened it myself.

I.
I'm tired of being reminded
Of all the places you've touched.
I'm scared of looking in the mirror,
Because I'm scared I'm going to see all the marks you've left.
You've scarred my body
And I'm the only one who can see it

II.
My anger burns up these walls
And the floors are cracked
Because my spine has sunken so far into it
You said you wanted to ruin me,
Darling you just ruined the walls all around me.

III.
I used to write all the time
And I don't know if you took up too much of my time
To pick up a pen
But the second you left
I couldn't breathe without writing about how painful it was.

You got a concussion and the doctors told you to stay away from me.
They said my blonde hair and blue eyes
Were too bright for your brain to heal itself properly.
You needed dark places
With the lights off.
The doctors told you to stay away from anything
That reminded you of me.
At least for a week.

I thought about the guy before you
How he told me he needed space
After all the darkness I had shown him.
It took him a week
To find someone brighter.

Truth: the heart has no ******* clue what it wants

I'm sorry.
I've written this out a thousand different ways
and all I have is a pencil sharpened down to the end
and a paper filled with holes
from erasing too much.

I'm sorry.
I cause problems.
I know.
But all I keep thinking is:
"What if I was enough to make you stay."

my poor broken-hearted boy
you search for love
from the one person who can't give it.
Me.

You always expected my late night messages
that begged for you to wake up
because I couldn't sleep
and I was terrified
of being in
bed all
alone.

Just look me in the eye
And tell me you love me

A dream about all the things you never told me
Leaving me wondering if I mean anything to you
When I wake up

You told me to write about us;
I told you I was already writing about renal failure.
I told you I could find a place to fit you in;
I can make our love sound like it's destroying us from the inside out

But truthfully,
It's so unhealthy when we're together;
I can slowly feel myself
Unraveling
And I know you feel it too.

Are we really that bad, that you have to refer to us as a failed *****?
I told you how it wasn't an insult.

Yet here I am slipping in metaphors about us anyways.

Like a drug addict
I've gone to rehab and rehab and rehab.
I've relapsed and relapsed and relapsed.
Like a drug addict
I've learned to survive
Without those chemicals mixing signals in my brain.
I've learned that I can get by
Without the nicotine, the alcohol, the ****, the *******.
I can get by
Without the little spike of adrenaline
I feel when I'm in the same room as them.

Like a drug addict,
I've learned to survive
When you are not in the room
I've learned to get by
without the spike of adrenaline
I feel when you get close enough to touch me

Like a drug addict
I went through withdrawals
Because the doctors say a psychological addiction
Is worse than a physical addiction.

Like a drug addict
My only name is anonymous
Unless it is accompanied by you.

I am a collection of the people I have left

I know you want to be independent
and make yourself happy, but
I want this to be a partnership;
we both make each other happy
but we don't need each other to be happy.

Me and you
We're alike.
The way we keep our hearts chained in our chests
So no one has a chance to break them.
Because there were the boys who crawled into our rib cages
And figured out the quickest way to squeeze all the red out of our love.

For you,
It was the boy with the fish-hook smile,
Who you let hold your hand
While he spoon-fed you lies.
And once he got bored with his own fabrications
He reeled himself up,
And left you with watery lungs
Now you chase after boys
while you wear that same smile
Hoping that
"maybe this time I'll learn my lesson,"
Because now you know how to change the hook on your line.

For me,
It was the boy who lost his heart
Long before he could give it.
And I realized that giving him mine
Wouldn't give him feeling in his empty chest.
It would just make mine emptier.
Now when boys leave after
I've taken too long to make up my mind
They say I'm heartless
And I agree.

After awhile,
Girls like us stopped hiding their hearts in our chests.
Instead we hid them in castles
Because we knew no one would look for them there.

Nobody told me
That disappointment was your body.
Nobody told me
That hope was something I shouldn't waste on you.
Nobody told me
That blood was a synonym for your name.
And nobody told me
How I should love you
or how I shouldn't,
But then again,
Nobody told me
That you are just like me;

Pushing people away
The second they ask for some
Honesty.

Nobody told me
That I needed to love myself
Before I could ever love you

Nobody told me
That you're the reason
I'm disappointed in every person
I've ever met after you.

You're the reason
Nobody told me.
Because no one told you.

How am I supposed to tell her,
"Yeah it turns out I do have feelings.
And it turns out they're with the boy you just ******" ?

Even though I was the burning flame
You were still my only light.

It makes me a little nervous
To not know your name.
But I guess your face
Will always be engraved in my brain.
You were the boy with the football
With the fame in your eyes at 2am.
And that's where your life will begin
And mine will end

What would be the outcome of us?
If I broke your heart
And you broke mine?
Who's to say that everything will be fine?

I'm dying for approval in this empty auditorium
I'm dying for affection
In this rotting jail cell
I'm reaching for you when
I've already hit this brick wall

There's nothing left of me at all

I'm not invisible
You still wear me under your skin
I put my heart back in my chest
So I won't easily give it away
I'm not going to fall in love with you again

Something about you makes me weak in the knees
You must be working for the queen of thieves

Something about you doesn't seem right
But I'll grab the apple and take the first bite....

The worst part about being your friend
Is that there are the good times
And bad times.
Everyone seems to forget the latter.
Not every friendship is about how much time you spend together
Or how much you tell each other
It’s about how much you trust each other
When you’re miles apart.

I know we’ve never been good at this
Telling each other how we really feel
Because in our hearts we know
That we both know the answer to that question
I can tell when something is wrong before you even set foot in the room
And I know you’re probably too scared to admit that
But know that I would do anything for you
And I know you would do anything for me
But what can we do
When we’re miles apart
And the letters on these pages won’t change that

I felt the burn on my tongue
As I kissed your fingertips
to ease the pain.
I guess that’s what we are
You’re my fire
And I’m your propane

You knew me when
I came to you,
Drunk in the middle of the morning
Begging for forgiveness
Because from all my mistakes
You’re the only one who could make me forget them

You knew me when
We would sit on my front porch
And I would read a book.
You hated the silence
Because you were so uncomfortable around me

You knew me
The first time you cried around me
And I didn’t know what to do
Sympathy wasn’t my forte
And you realized I didn’t fit into the stereotype.

You knew me when
When I left.
Because the only reason I couldn’t stay
Was because I wasn’t strong enough
But you knew that I was stronger than you
And you could lift over 100 pounds.
It wasn’t cowardice I was running from
I was running towards a new beginning
Because you knew I hated staying in one place for too long

You knew me when
I didn’t even know myself
And I couldn’t stand to look at myself
Because I couldn’t stand to look at you.
I got mad
And you let me
Because you knew it was only the distance
That was killing me

You knew me when
I first said
“I love you.”
And you knew
I meant it.

What are real friends anyway
When everyone’s gone
At the first sight
Of the tide rolling out

I.
I remember the first day I met you
At that stupid gas station.
I remember it was raining and
You said you hated pumping other people’s gas.

II.
You kissed me
And I fell
Hard.

III.
I put the note under your door
Hoping you wouldn’t be home.
I didn’t feel like knocking;
I didn’t want you to answer.

IV.
You told me you cried
When I left.
I cried
When I realized
I didn’t deserve you.

I won’t give anyone else my heart
Because it’s only been broken once
And once is enough
When I know you won’t be coming back.

You told me to write this down
So I did.
It was the first thing you ever wanted to be permanent.

But a year later I found out you had scribbled it out
With a black Sharpie.

Now I’m left wondering just how permanent words are.

It was the summer of missed promises
And I tried so hard to make it up to you that year
But everything was different.
We couldn’t get back in the same rhythm
Because I’d hate to force it.

It was the summer of forgotten love letters
Because we never knew how to sign off.
They always ended up in empty desk drawers with “for sale” signs on them
Because we wanted them to be anonymous.

It was the summer of bonfires
And nostalgia
For a time when the only thing that made sense was your laugh and your hand in mine;
For a time when I had no idea what I really wanted,
Because all anybody’s given me was a broken heart.

It was the summer I dared to look in my high school yearbook;
Crisscrossed with scribbled writing
In everybody’s haste attempt to sum up the four years I hated most.
I read them with tears in my eyes
And I’m sorry for that-
I’m usually not like that; regretting everything that didn’t happen between us

It was summer of drunken nights
In small attempts to erase you from my mind
It was the summer I realized
I may never see you again.

Sometimes we don’t know what sober is
Because the sadness makes us drunk
And our happiness makes us high.
Sometimes we’re only completely ourselves when we have a bottle in hand
And a smoke in the other.

You enter freshman year with the confidence of something new
And by sophomore year you lose some of it until
Senior year you’re nothing.
Waiting to start over to pretend that you’re happy again.

This is not a poem
And this isn’t poetry.
This is my shaking heads
And blubbering thoughts as the tears stream down my cheeks

Because sadness is more relatable
Than my happiest days

It’s 2 am
And the walls scare me
Because the shadows don’t look like me
And the moon is a piece of cheese
That is too bright.

It’s 2am
And the ink spills
And my hands are witness to the tragedy
The Dawn helps
But can’t get back what I’ve already lost

It’s 2am
And I close my eyes
Hoping for some peace
From my ravaged thoughts

I get shaken awake
By my mind reminding me of all the words
I haven’t written down yet

And suddenly
It’s 3am
And I write
C
O
C
O
O
N
With shaking hands.

I stared at the letters
That can start life again
Willing them to transform
Transform into some beautiful 2 winged creature.

I begged it to leave
This 4-wall enclosure
Because protection is only an idea

The walls are daring me to knock them down
Like the dominoes I secretly keep under my bed

It’s 4am
And the words are pouring out of my mind
But my pen can’t keep up.
I am drowning.

Sometimes I drown
But my eyes are dried out rivers
Begging for the clouds
That will never come.
Sometimes I’m not strong enough
To admit that
It’s been forever
Since I’ve shed a tear.

And I don’t know how to feel
Unless my throat burns.

I don’t know how to
At all;
Anything.

But last night I cried
Until I laughed
And I’m still drowning in both.

Your words tuck me into bed
Like a child’s lullaby.
But the ocean waves crash into me
As soon as I close my eyes.
There’s a storm here
In my head
As soon as the lights go out.
The tide goes high
And I’m lost out at sea once again.

Sometimes I’m scared of the archangel
Because he looks so much like Lucifer
I’ve wondered how much he’s fallen from the grace
That God so much wanted him to have

Sometimes I lie in bed and overthink until my head hurts
Because I can’t stand to close my eyes
I’ve always wondered how much closer I am
Than from where I started yesterday

And its days like these
When all I can think about are the sins
I’ve committed
And all the pain I’ve caused

But sometimes I can’t help it.
Sometimes I  just
                              keep
                                       falling
Hoping someone will catch me
Sometimes I
                       keep
                                falling
Knowing no one will love me.
So I’ll just
                  keep
                           falling.