and we are still strangers who only find each other
in the starlit hours
our love is unconscious and ceases to exist
when you wake up in the morning, drink your coffee and realize you've made yet another mistake
you look at me as if you were expecting something better, lovelier
as if we did not travel through the nights so closely
as if we never went anywhere, as if we were never anything other than a dream

we've become walking coffins
throwing dirt on ourselves
with the idea that if we all
somehow, managed
to care less
loss will never find us
but the slow death of feeling
buries us alive

and i,
am not yet ready to die

darlings, you must remember
that the most beautiful things
will always **** you the best
that pieces of you will have to die
to become part of something else
it's a sacrifice we all make
it's the price we all pay
even if our pockets are empty and our hearts bled dry
we will give and give but never dare to take

during the quietest nights of self-examination,

i have come to the saddest of conclusions that perhaps

this depth is not to be shared: i am meant to swim alone while only once or twice reaching the surface to refill ever drowning lungs,
watching the faces above shifting through translucent waters 

some stop to stare and maybe stir the surface with their hands
because they have caught a glimpse of something unexplainable and shining
but never
 diving far enough to explore

and through this process i have decided you don’t love me because you’ve never known me
you are just another curious passerby
who doesn't have the time to hold their breath.

i could never live forever
i would spend all my days
trying to die

i want to
be the thing
you twirl
between
your fingers

darling you just pulled the trigger,
my brain does the rest of the work for free.

the strongest of us will find hope in the face of uncertainty
as for the rest, well
they can lay beneath the rubble of the cities they've burnt
and left behind
even if the mind sometimes leaps and bounds
to treacherous conclusions
there is more to love than hate
there is always more, and more, and more

i find no satisfaction
playing in the flowers
i need the earth
to sink underneath me
i want to struggle for air
the soil and roots
worms and horrid things
i want to find bodies below us
i want the rot of everything
i want to go deeper
or nowhere at all

there’s not enough room for me
in your present
how can you see me in your future
you’re killing me and
it will only be realized
when it is much too late
and you’ll go back a thousand times to save me
try to do things differently
but you’ll fail
and you’ll fail
and you’ll fail
because you’re stuck somewhere
where i never existed
and i am fading from
the known world
by the
second

there was always a shadow of
something,
but i wasn’t sure of its existence
until i felt the
flutter
under my skin,
a pulse of dead things
brought to life
a cluster of
silent creatures
in the zoo of my body
haunting the tips of my fingers
where i once held you
and a
spark
of remembrance
of things from a past
that has never happened
until you came along
and broke the wall separating dimensions
the universe has exploded in
my night time eyes
and i am even farther away
from the truth
sometimes things are much too great to comprehend
this must be what god is,
if anything at all
this must be a reason
this must be a meaning

you were the reddest,
most delicious apple
and i never had a choice
but to take the first
dangerous
bite

miss you
even though you are convinced
that no woman could even
breathe
without your
existence

spring days in the park

you were just traveling through, you said 

you didn’t mean to end up here,

but life has a funny way of bringing you places
and you say such horrible things

everything evil spilling out of your mouth

like pandora’s box 

and you leave my tongue tasting sweet

but it never stays for long
i want your hands on me but you take them away

as soon as they start sweating
i want to bare everything, this worn-out soul

but as soon as i take off my clothes

you’ll see my body’s secrets

and you’ll just keep
running

i like a boy

who doesn’t have a name

i have to touch him 
ever so
carefully

to make sure he is real

to make sure he won’t disappear

at the
shiver
of my 

voice

i am still translating your many languages

but i understand a sort of warmth 

emanating 

from the deepest parts of you

even when you think your life

resides in darkness

i may have been weak
in the knees,
and in the chest
but i have beaten down the bars
of every cage
and yanked them out with my teeth

(i could cut through steel with all this pain)

they said i wouldn't feel the impact
for a few days
my neck, stiff and unable to look around me
my universe has become somewhat
smaller
my head piercing at
spontaneous, inconvenient intervals

but they didn't tell me about you
sneaking back
into the places behind my spine
inside the songs
that are ruined
i can't even listen now without
choking
on the words

everything could have been anything
but it isn't
it just is what it came to be
isn't that amazing
isn't that strange

it would be easy to erase you
just a few taps and your face would be gone
i know you are forgetting me
but i'll forget you first
i have already forgotten
your skin
and your scars
because i haven't been close enough
to touch them

you are one of those
that keep me on a leash-
tight enough to let me know you're in control
but loose enough for you to roam
only selectively showing me pieces of your life
like opening your front door
but never letting me walk inside

his eyes, icebergs
he is dangerous and you can hit them and sink at any moment
and i am the titanic- my too large of a heart
trying to take over the entire sea

i can only write when the devil of love fills me
i am otherwise blank and waiting
for its hot red touch
that burns and releases me back into myself
and suddenly i have so much to say.

your heart is an alaskan wilderness
and i never know what's hiding in the trees

that you were "all in"
then why are your toes
barely wet
and i'm already
drowning

out of all of the possibilities of evolution
and potential existence
you are by far the loveliest accident
your skin is the perfect catalyst
for oxytocin and dopamine
to charge through my brain
like lightning
your pheromones speak to my body in
provocative biological languages
to which i respond with red cherried lips
puckered and begging for more
serotonin-induced euphoria
until you, my darling
it has never been so exciting
to be so human

sometimes i get so angry that you are
empty
i want to shake you shake you shake you until you are gasping my name because
i know if you knew how to love
you would love me
but i refuse to get out while i still can
i hold onto the briefest moments where we are inside of each other
and you can almost see the light

i am
a magnet
for broken things
pieces of boys
forever
clinging to me,
making it hard to
walk

i bet you think i'm writing love poems
penning down the
exact
color of your eyes
or trying to capture the mimic
of your musical heartbeats

do you feel the electric pulse between our fingers
what is hallucination
what is real
because life is imagined for me,
most of the time

these symbols just flow out of my inkwell soul
hieroglyphic tears streaming from a forgotten, ancient face
the pen feels so natural in my hand
like its been holding it for
centuries
always
dripping
never finished

we got drunk and drew on each other
i scribbled flowers and tattered leaves
you wrote in pink floyd lyrics
and meteorites

we fell in love through felt-tipped markers

together we were breathing art

you touched my scars lightly
one by one
stroking them in small circles

the dents where stitches have been
the long marks that stretch on for eternity
the burns that burnt more than my skin
and you just said

okay

my face burns from the place
your mouth was
      from dusk to dawn

the moment is gone as soon as you catch it
time is a butterfly in constant motion
and it dies when you touch its wings

i remember keeping the shower window open
even when
icicles were forming on the frame
we could see for miles,
the train always passing at inconspicuous hours
you made the water so hot
and we were just so hot

(for each other)

sometimes we would **** but
with you it was making
love
and joked
about how the tiny pinpricks of light
were people watching us
laughing at our
naked, animal
impulses

our sud-soaked bodies
our steaming cold skin that screamed
into the distance whenever
we touched

can't sleep
too many possibilities await me in the
night; the time of lonely wolves
i howl with them

i never understood the sun and its purpose
and when the thoughts come i almost cannot bear
the weight

philosophy is a brave art
but i am curious and fearful of
answers
so i stay,
howling, in the dark.

my form is formless
         -ness
he said i was a strange creature
to be remembered
now and again,
         always

i wonder how i looked
         dancing
with too many chemicals inside of me
my eyes
         wide
                and wandering

i couldn't let go of his hand for days

and in the rarest moments i let myself
slide
         back in time,
i am almost convinced
         that i never did.

i fell into the world like an accidental spill
clean up on aisle 5
          oil spewing into the ocean
i am death and decay in motion,

a wildfire taking down every last breathing tree
         in my careless path

how many times have i been so acquainted with the ground
gravel filling up my throat
stuffing these useless words back into that deep dark somewhere
where everything dies and nothing grows
a fever that's been killing me for days
my brain hot with over-thoughts
a pain that's been killing me for years
a scalpel in the back is nice and steady
but the knife that you hold is red and rusty
i have many scars but none have hurt
as much as yours
death would be nicer
even death would be much nicer

i am the deepest of sorries
that fear rules me like
planets might rule our minds
that i jump into
concrete conclusions
only to slowly chisel my way out
ascending small and ashamed
with the knowledge that i am wrong
yet and yet again
but still afraid because
once in a while
i am right.

and that's when i decided to keep my words to
myself
my veins forever excluded from the daylight
my blood no longer yours to feed on
you kept me outside like a dog gone rabid
no wonder i gnawed at your mouth
begging for sweeter words
you gave me nothing nothing nothing
except a muzzle to sleep in
i am taking away your power

i am adjusting
i am pretending

what makes you get up and walk to the liquor store
when you can barely get up to do laundry
or god forbid wash a **** dish
can’t you just say
not today?

is it your brain and the way it is wired
with neurons firing and serotonin lowering
needing something anything
does your liver shiver from the weekend before
does your body shake until you get more

or are you just bored and tired of
******* on the couch to the same cheesy 80s **** you got in a bargain bin
i would honestly prefer the latter, as if it is something you could control
but you still manage to ***** all over our ghetto apartment because you couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time
and i spend my nights scrubbing it with dollar store carpet cleaner because my paychecks are used to buy
twelve packs of generic dr. pepper, hamburger helper and chocolate cupcakes for a grown *** man

i had to call your mother a few times because you couldn’t even speak and it scared me
that you could possibly get more stupid
but i am stupid too because i love you and i still
let you play video games and not nag you
at least until you’re sober

i just wait until you pass out oblivious to the damage you’ve done that day
and eat all your ******* cupcakes in revenge.

it’s a pen of bulls in your stomach
the wonder, the not-knowing, the what-ifs, whens coulds and might-bes
the numbers on an oxygen tank dwindling down

too many thoughts becoming their own creatures,
tearing down cities that we carry inside

it’s leaves shivering from an island wind,
the people running away from shore

that moment when you slip on ice and you don’t know if you’ll catch yourself

it’s dying, not knowing where you’ll go
and space, not comprehending how vast

counting all the possibilities in the universe and only thinking
about the most horrific ones
some of us always live in worst case scenarios
and i,
have not yet mastered the art of surviving them.

i was born with my heart outside of myself
free to grapple with and pull apart

and they did, they did

there was once an artist
who laid out knives and needles and guns
and spread out on a table
and waited

she didn’t even move when they started to **** and stab
and i have always wished i had the same strength

that sad little rainy sky
the chill of the sheets from your sweat the night before,
and the creases it left behind.

i discard belief in demons or angels
or resurrection or blood spent for my sins
but i have seen evilness in human nature
i have felt the wastes of desire
the utter trash of always being unsatisfied

if i was judged i could never be forgiven
if hell existed i would be queen

i'm tired of writing poems about love
sometimes i'm tired of love
but there's no running from it
only rinsing and repeating
crying and leaving
cutting and healing
dying and living

you can say you love me
but it will pass through my heart like wind

you can stroke my flushed cheeks and say
"beautiful"

but i won't recognize my own face

and every time i don't believe you
i need you to tell me again

it doesn't stick, nothing sticks

i'm not falling apart
i've just never been put together

you're not the first that's tried
you're not the first that's failed