sometimes my anxieties are like intricately built sandcastles. i have been known to worry and fret over these sandcastles for hours, even days, at a time. i will collect millions of grains of sand and sloppily sculpt them. they are not usually beautiful or special or anything worth my time at all, but i continue build these castles. it’s like i have to. if i stop, what else is there anymore? what do i do? there is a sandcastle for all of my worries, all of the things that shiver beneath my chest for too long, anything that leaves my bones aching after all of the clocks plead midnight.

a year ago i was sitting on a sun-painted beach surrounded by two thousand sandcastles. the wind was beating the breath out of my lungs. the ocean was far off, so far i could hardly even see the dancing silver waters. i kept building them. i was tired and i was crying and building these hideous sandcastles of anxiety with my bare hands. people would pass me by, briefly, shaking their heads like i was something broken. i was miserable. i was always alone and i did nothing but build sandcastles. a year ago i was sad but no one knew why. a year ago i was sad but i didn’t know why.

but now i know you and the ocean is much closer, i can see it pushing back and forth all hours of the day and feel its song, because you are the ever-present waters that collapse my anxieties. i still build them often, but you continually take them away from me and they are forgotten. i do not know where you put them. i just know that every time i speak to you, you extend your long arms around them and they crumble. most of the time now it’s just me sitting on wet sand as the white-wash curves of your waves swallow every one up. i make you laugh and my anxieties sink. every new worry i have, your edges swim to the shore and carry it off. no matter how quick i try to build them, every time i blink they will be gone. i don’t know how you do it.

sometimes i think about joining you in the sea, but i’m scared. i don’t want to lose that part of myself. i’m afraid of what i won’t have anymore if i leave this fragile collection of crumbled sandcastles behind. i’ve fallen in love with the call of the sea and the storms that it brews, but i can’t abandon land just yet. your waves silently ask me all of the time but i can’t let go of this just yet.

i hope one day, when i’m ready, the ocean will gently carry me away, too.

yes, i know your heart may not often feel the whirlwind car-twisting hurricanes that mine does, but i will still listen every time it speaks. its smallest whisper is catastrophic to me. (i know you don't think it says very much at all sometimes, but it does. i listen.)

   even when the leaves fall to kiss
   blades of grass come autumn or
   when i wander down tire-beaten
   dirt roads or when strangers ask me
   questions that i don't know the
   answers to, you will always be a
   thought that blends into my brain.


i tried falling out of this -
i tried to staple and bind my feelings
shut and turn my head the other way,
i tried to let someone else's
face embellish my thoughts
and let someone else ask me
questions while i shoved the words
i'd always wanted to say to you
to the back of my throat.

   i tried;
   i really did.

but you are too intricately woven
through my ribcage for me to unravel,
you've left to many scars on my lungs
from my hammering heartbeat.


and even if you never spoke to me again,
i think you'll always be there
humming under my chest:
"hello, hello, never forget the things
i gave to you."

all the words i ever write
anymore are stained with you.
                     even the words that
trickle down from my lips drip with
    your blue gridline thoughts,
your pitter-patter raindrops of
words, your hindering heart.



nothing about me is quite
the same shade anymore
                  because of it;
      the fabric of my eyes
               tinged brighter,
    specks of gold blinking
beneath my skin.


i could scratch symphonies
into broken concrete or
        smear paint
                 across windows
or sway my hips this way and
that and they would say nothing
            but you you you all over


            my heart is just you you you all over

my friends don't understand why i'm so preoccupied with this boy that is always so quiet, so negative, so lonely. i've never told them before but i think i relate to that feeling of loneliness. i know how it feels to cement heavy walls of silence around your exterior so no one bothers to come inside, and say nothing when words jump into your throat, and feel everything but then feel nothing at all. it doesn't make much sense but i fell for you because you have eyes that always ask me questions, eyes that take my anxieties and pull them into the calm ocean in between your lungs and hide them there for me. “don’t worry,” you say. you always say that. i worry. “don’t worry.” i try to stop, for you.

but then i start worrying about you, and it's an endless cycle.

i claim you as my cure, the mellow remedy to melt in my bones as i walk down the hallways. i don’t want to throw myself down flights of stairs anymore. i don’t want to melt into the sidewalks with the rain. i don’t want some distant boy to fly to me and carry me away and i don’t want some boy who doesn’t know my name to turn his eyes in my direction. i just want you, and you’re here. i just want you, and you can see me.

the truth is i always write about your eyes because they are the only thing that makes me feel cared for anymore. they are the only thing that deserves my writing at all and you are the only thing i ever seem to want to write about anymore. i don't want some glazed-over faux-shine of love. i don't want to want you one day and be forced to forget you the next. i just want to tuck any of your nightmares in my pockets, knowing that you are my own dreamcatcher that hangs along my heart. i just want lazy conversations like the humid summer air that suffocates my soul every july. i just want effortless, and that's exactly what we are.

i like to sing and you don’t understand it, but i wonder what you would say if i told you that i can hear you singing. the melodies of your fingers and the falsetto chill of your skin and the harmonizing of your laughter with my own and the waltzing scent i sometimes notice. it sings to me, you sing to me, you are my silent musical that shakes me down to my very bones.

and someone asked me the other day how i love a boy that doesn’t know how to love, and i just shook my head simply because you taught me everything i know.

i used to be sad
i used to be sad
all of the time, gnawing at my nails
and bleeding burden in my mouth
as i daydreamed disasters, always
straying from words like "love."
but you taught me that happiness
is not anything that you ask for

when you see happiness,
you seize every crevice and angle and
corner of it, it is yours -
but only if you do not ask for it

you taught me that
there's too many creeps of sunlight
hiding between raindrops
as they fall,
too many open oceans offering
anchors on their beds to pull
us down under,
too many "not enoughs" and
not enough of anything anymore
because everyone is always
asking

you taught me that
if i want to glide along railroads,
i musn't turn into a bullying engine
that shouts and kicks and pushes,
but i must turn into the girl
who knows exactly what
freedom sounds like

and you taught me all of this,
you taught me
everything about love,
without saying a
single
word

i want frightening things running laps through
       the cycles of my veins i want nothing
but inevitable exhales and high pitched-insanity ringing
in my ears and the calm lulling of oceans
hugging my bruising thoughts  

       i want to write you letters between your
       tightly-bound layers because you let me
inside and sometimes let my soul wander there
i want crashing into endless fields i want shades of
yellow dancing over my daydreams

       i want the corners of us to overlap in subtle
       ways i want knowing glances and secretly
pressing your smiles to the delicate lining of my
ribcage because i don't want alone anymore i'm not
asking for alone because now

       i want to let everything surround me
       suddenly until i am nothing but this, this
complete euphoria and maybe i want too
much too often and though i would never
admit it i'm sure that i want

       (you)

and i’m starting to think

i need a lampshade big
enough to hide the
possibility of us
under,


because we are light we
are fallen sun and stars and skydust
beaming brilliantly without cause


and most importantly

we are
possible.

"my hands are
nothing more than
     things that need fixing,"
he tells himself with a bitter tongue


but in
the bleak morning
soft smoke curls around his
daydreams,
his eyes painted lost shades
of crimson and wanting;
the brief, sweet exhale of
maybe tomorrow escapes
his lips

- just before he realizes that
this moment                 alone
has become his greatest
nightmare

the bruise of the night hangs under us
anxiously; a brilliantly crisp, sharp curve
of dark onto pale that breaks my line of
vision momentarily, because this was
never what i wanted for us.


"i wanted..." an honest wish, spilling
into the air with such fear and regret that
my lungs swelled at the idea of it because
i still hope that maybe i could be
something like that, for you.


you talk like you're trapped inside of a dark
cloud, threatening to pour out thunderstorms
of secrets and insecurities to nearly anyone
who asks, and i know i never told you,
but i know exactly how that is.


in the walls of your home i often feel like i
might melt into the long-dried paint, maybe cave in
awkwardly and suddenly and then you'll just stare,
close-****** and wondering when i became
such an utter mess of a person.


maybe you could fit into my walls, just right;
i could maybe fold down some of your corners
just the right way and - there - you'd snap
right into place, just like all
the others never could.


i'd like it if somehow thoughts like these could
swallow us up entirely, and yesterdays would
only be a shiver of a memory to us any longer,
like maybe this could feel a little
bit like holding oxygen.


i am slipping so slowly this time, it's
different than ever before, and that's perhaps
the most frightening part of it all: my fingers
are slipping from the edge of sanity
with such a slow sureness.


and there you go, ripping into my life at the
seams, bringing in hushed stories like foreign
patterns to hover between my eyes - because
eventually you'll make me lose my mind,
but in the best way.

often times sitting beside you
makes my mind terribly fragile,

something created only to be
broken.

  my mind will drift until
the world is shrill violins
pleading for an answer.
  until the world is
made up of the unsure
peaks of mountains,
like the faint whispering
of winter come november.
  the world becomes quick
footsteps on hot pavement,
or uneven shadows of glass,
spinning into my vision until
my eyes can no longer see.

my mind becomes so many things,
the world refreshing. an exhale.

the world is a miraculous thing,
sitting beside you.

my shaking, unsure fingers yearning for this    
    mythical love in places i could never find    

and i could see the hope of our creator
swimming through your bones in such
an effortless way, it had single-handedly
been one of the most beautiful things
i've ever seen bleed through someone.          

      the curve of your smile getting caught on    
    the eighteen sharpest edges of my heart    

you seemed anxious but in a good way
and i'd never seen you like that before, but
seeing you standing there, with fast lips
and screaming eyes, was quite possibly the
moment i knew i was gone. so far gone.          

      my anxious, scarred palms blindly dreaming    
    that i am not nearly as alone as i appear    

there were a number of things i had found
hidden underneath the several layers of
your soul, still tearing a bit at some of the
edges, but you still somehow managed
to hold your irises up to the stars.          

      the slow blink of your eyes when you realize    
    i could maybe be something like everything

"we could, we could..."


this kept me running up and down
that dreaded staircase for hours
on end and i held you so tightly
but you were always so far away




there wasn't a chance for me to show you who i was at all;

i could only be the girl that brushed past your side in a hurry
the girl who always bit her bottom lip and turned the other way
the girl who held her breath every time you shared the same air
the girl who thrived on smiles meant for someone else entirely





and
i kept
climbing
that same
staircase in
my mind up and
down over and over
again and prayed that
something much stronger
than myself would send me
toppling to the very bottom





  you didn't care when the rain carried me briskly down sidewalks,
crumbling my skin to an ash-like texture that could be compared
to my hopelessness or forgetfulness
  you weren't burdened with haunting thoughts of me every night,
like the way your voice always seems to bleed in my brain and
wander through my unconscious soul
  you didn't seem phased when i hiccuped your name in the softest
of voices in that dark place, my hands blindly searching for yours
even though you were merely steps away
  you weren't paying attention when i screamed into the storms
that i needed you, so loud that my lungs seemed to scratch at
my insides with the thought of us



i suffocated myself with these unsealed promises
that maybe, one day,
    we could,
  we could...




there was nothing separating us any longer -
not the thinest layer of fear or hesitance,
or the thickest layer of painful longing

we were wide open and free to break each others
bones and souls as much as we wanted to, but
there had never been a single imaginary string of
connection to hold our misguided hearts together,
so we fell apart before we even began.







  people keep telling me
      we could, we could...


so i quickly reversed back into my old habits of self-loathing
and inhaling gaping holes of doubt and holding onto things
that simply didn't want me as much as i wanted them

these things came so naturally; tugging at my insides in
ways i wasn't sure how to deal with anymore because they
were asking questions that i didn't know the answer to

then my bookshelf collapsed quicker than i could ask how you
were feeling that day so the question was never asked at all
but i knew all the things you didn't want me to know already

i needed a lampshade big enough to hide the possibility of us
under, because it illuminated my endeavored nights and i don't
know if i wanted you to know about that just then

things suddenly changed for me when my throat closed up
and i couldn't speak and my headaches became studded with
all of these memories that barely even existed for us

my arms wanted you more than my heart ever did, but the more
i tried to ignore them the more twisted and unforgiving my arms
became, giving out in the most inconvenient of times





i can finally see that
you could never see
anything in someone like
me,





we never
could

(i will listen
to your bones
shatter when
you fall apart)





you don't deserve any of this,
and i don't want you to let go

i don't want you to let go but i
know that's out of my hands





you deserve milky ways
running through your veins
at night and black holes
swallowing up every
ounce of your sorrows


you deserve soft evenings
and quiet mornings holding
your ribcage together instead
of your too-skinny arms


you deserve an arm
always linked with yours,
taking you to somewhere
foreign and beautiful
but eternally yours


you deserve the tallest ferris
wheels shooting you into the
clouds for journeys to the
ever-mended hearts


you deserve feeling
worth something more than
mix tapes that need rewinding
or the unmanageable tangled
chains of forgotten





(i will listen
when words fail
and you forget
how to speak)





you deserve upside
down umbrellas carrying
you down the flowing rivers
of the most exhilarating
corners of the universe


you deserve to run
simply because you want to,
not because you feel like
you have no other choice


you deserve the will
to hold on even when shards
of glass pierce your lungs,
because the scars will
show your strength


you deserve endless ribbons
lacing through your heart
with the hope of tomorrow
morning or the next


you deserve to love
without exceptions or
limits and to dream of
disappearing into things
much bigger than yourself





you deserve all these things,
and i want them for you

i want them for you but i
know i can't give them to you





(i will listen
even when you
have nothing
to say to me)

while you ran around screaming 'save me'
at the top of your lungs i sat in the
darkest corner of my bedroom and wrote
four letter words on my palms with the
blackest of inks until they all ran
together and were hardly words anymore

lostgonehometakeweakmoreliesquitpoor
doneleapneargainfal­lracesanewontstop




the other day i felt hopeless because someone asked me what was wrong
and i didn't know so i tore down each of the sparkling snowflakes from
the sky one by one, not even giving them the chance to hit the ground

and sometimes i write poetry backwards or with my eyes tightly shut
because doing things the wrong way is the only thing i've ever been good at

i spent so long in my bedroom in the hallways in the classrooms
in the bathroom stall in the eyes of people who pretended i was
happy,

so quiet so quiet
(nowadays...)



"where has your voice gone?"
i didn't speak to anyone
for four days after you
did that and eventually
my voice box imploded



"where has my heart gone?"
you didn't love anyone
for four years after she
did that and eventually
your heart imploded




all i've become is a
sack of brittle bones
that screams stories
and i build them up
in my chest until i tell
them to people who
let their minds wander
far too long on their
lovers or pretty clothes
or their nice hair or
perfect grades

"what's wrong?"

and then suddenly i turn
into a carousel that
never stops spinning
round and round
don't let go you
don't know for
sure when it will
stop (can't stop -
won't stop ;
when does
all time
stop?)

i promised myself
that stories that
didn't deserve to
be told would never
be allowed to softly
bleed through my
bones and fade into
the pigment of my
skin

but that's just one of
the many lies i told myself
over and over again,
isn't it?




once my insides have been bleached of all color and joy and life
once my lips can't be bothered to speak - to try - to lie to you
once my dark hair falls flat and my eyes slowly fade to gray
once my fingers become too cold to touch anymore - to hold anymore
once my knees give out when i'm standing at the top of the stairs
once my arms forget how to hold you - to hold myself - together

will you love me?
maybe then,
will you try to love me?







so quiet so quiet

i am more than the words he spits in
my face when he is too angry to care
how heavy and hurtful they might be




i am entirely too silent and breathing
smoke into my innocent lungs that i did
not choose to inhale in the first place




i am alone in a classroom filled with
twenty-eight other students because i
can't bear the thought of rejection




i am the youngest sibling watching her
oldest brother fall to pieces on the
back porch while her mother screams




i am the only daughter listening to her
youngest brother say he doesn't care
about his family enough to live closer




i am not worth the spare change in
your wallet or an unsealed letter missing
a stamp and return address to home




i am not worth the torn edges of my
unused history book or scarred knuckes
from holding my own hand too hard




i am hardly worth the free time you
have while you're doing your homework
and think it's okay to text me lies




i am quieter nowadays because you
told me one time when i wasn't speaking
anymore that i meant something to you




i am the girl who wants olive skin and
brighter eyes and a golden crown of hair
that might make you think you love me




i am sitting at a table full of people who
say they love me but don't know anything
about me except what i decide to tell them




i am often alone on holidays because i
tend to lose interest in things that
represent temporary smiles and affection




i am telling all these lies with my bitten
fingernails and backwards hiccups but
there might be a little truth in it all




i am no longer talking myself out of
falling for you because i've convinced
myself that you might be worth it

i wanted us
to be how we
once were
so desperately,
so i took you to
the most familiar
place we'd ever
known.

but nothing
was the same
when we sat on
rooftops that
held stories of
the people that
were too afraid
of heights.


his name tasted
like june or
something else
worth forgetting,
with an aftertaste
of mid-july
and a lack of
self-awareness.

he had brilliant,
ever-changing
irises like
kaleidoscopes
and a mind
like a vacant
hospital bed.


and i know
that you find a
strange comfort
in the feeling of
crashing through
already broken
windows,

but my heart is
a wide open
window, letting
anything drift in
and fall out as it
pleases, over
and over again.


my nine-letter
name loses
it's meaning
after saying it
a few times,
just like
everything else.

and all i have
are ebony pupils
that stare and
ivory bones
that crumble,
inverted lungs
that shrink
and a backwards
spine that twists.







(i wanted us
to be how we
once were






but nothing
was the same.)