i stopped asking
why you hurt me
and started asking
why i let you

i cannot
and will not
apologize
for loving him

i mean

you would never expect
the moon
to apologize
for being attracted
to the earth

some say drowning
feels oddly peaceful
after all the thrashing

the moment you know
your lungs
wont taste oxygen again
and you give your body over
to the water

i think you and i
are past the thrashing

i know how terrifying it is
to press pause

to lay in bed
feeling the unrelenting rotation
of the world pass you by
as you try to sleep your way
through the pain

but let me tell you a secret,
my dear—

the more you try to
fast forward through the hard,
the more you’ll have to
rewind back to it in the end

so feel it.
pause it and exist in it.

yes—the world will keep turning,
but don’t let that scare you

someday so will you

there will be no
photos
labels
or diamond rings
to validate
the permanence
of the life we spent together

only the fact
that i never would have chosen
to do it without you

it’s not that
there’s someone else
in the picture

it’s that
someone else
is your picture

and i’m the sun in the corner
begging not to set

i didn’t know
how to love you
when you first made
your name known—
my heart was missing pieces
from him

two years later
and i’ve carved your name
into pieces of me
that i didn’t even know existed

i’m fairly confident
that if i sat on the moon
and looked down
at the earth

first i’d notice you
then i’d realize there are oceans

the sad truth is that
many of the same people
who preach that love conquers all
actively try to conquer a love
they don’t understand

it’s odd
that she cares so much
about the oxford comma

when the love of her life
isn’t hers
to love

i have this tendency to believe
that i only become more broken
as i crash into more obstacles
in life and in love

but the river reminds me
that water only becomes more pure
with every rock that tries to stop it

so what if the needle
never drops

what if
we just keep spinning
around and around

so much potential

but never any sound

what if we woke up to
find the sun rising in the west?

would i be your lover
and her your second best?

my mind can turn so cruel
when all the lights go out

but you always seem to know
when i’m trapped in the dark

because you show up
with your smile and a rocket ship

and fly me to my heart

a king bed
was the only royalty
those princesses needed
to make each other
moan like queens

at the end of the day—
it doesn’t matter
how meticulously folded
the envelope is

all i can see
are the big red letters
stamped across the top

RETURN TO SENDER
...

after all these days and nights
we spend together

i find myself making
choices
and faces
and noises
that i never have before

you’re rubbing off on me
and i like it

at least now we both exist
in the same state

confusion
heartbreak
yearning
virginia

i learned over time
that people would rather
the sun
over too much rain

but then you came along
and reminded me—

some people choose to live
in seattle
...

i’ll follow her around
breathing in
every ounce of you
in her lungs

getting high
off of secondhand love

when i came out of her,
i was her daughter

when i came out to her,
i wasn’t

you’ve made me feel seen
in every sense of the word

but tonight
i just wanted you to see me
in the most literal one

i’ll always matter to you
but i’ll never be your person

i’ll always just be a
significant
other
...

it’s a shame
that running from
healthy relationships
doesn’t burn calories

i’d be a size zero

i didn’t know
my cheek dimples
could get sore
before i met you

you give life’s hardest moments
a softness
that i could live in forever

it’s time to accept
that you can’t possibly be
my soft place to land—

not if falling for you
always leaves me broken

it was never going to be fair
that his brand of magic
is just intangible enough
to entrance me

and just tangible enough
to make her
his sidekick

all things point to the fact
that in some life
if not this one
i’ll finally get to touch you
the way i’ve spent this life
and probably the past fifty
wanting to

unrequited love
is something of an orbit

forever looking in
at the center of your world

dreaming of the sounds
the two of you would make

if ever you'd collide

sometime past sundown
i want you
to want me
too

a rebellious soul like mine
never thought to romanticize stability
until the blue in your eyes
felt like my first cloudless sky

it terrifies me—
the thought

if the stars hadn’t made you...

where would all that magic
have gone?

family can feel like a prison

the trick is—
if you make your personality
so big

you can burst right through
the steel ******* bars

you feel guilty
about occupying a space
in my life
that makes me hurt

i wish you understood
that you’re the only thing
in my life
that reminds me
that my heart can still beat
through stitches

if the world
ever stops turning

i hope you’re the one
i’m still with

there’s a subtly
to your softness
the starkness of your beauty
almost hides

almost

i guess i could
stay at a safe distance
and watch you
brighten the world
from afar

but i would rather burn
trying to get close enough
to touch you

we hit terminal velocity

where we couldn’t


physically fall



any faster





and then we hit










the ground

the knife in my back was
yours

the fingerprints
hers

the blood
mine

against all odds
the cactus
finds the will to live
in a perpetual drought

and i'd rather be prickly
than dead

you like the way
my charm
traps everyone
in my palm

i like the way
you’re not
everyone

you and i
are holding hands
on the edge
of something beautiful

so you tell me—

do you want to enjoy
the view,
or the fall?

and though i knew
you’d never call it home,
i built this love meticulously
and lived in there defiantly
completely on my own

so as i feel
the house lose its roof
and the walls lose their blue

i can’t help but feel
homeless
in the house i built

i looked down
twenty three stories

tears in my eyes
legs shaking

every intention
of falling head first

you see— i was just so tired
of having to land
on my feet

he told me there’s not
one unfaithful bone
in his body

which *****

i really just needed the one

his smile
wouldn’t be one
that i’d ever get to kiss,
but his eyes—
those eyes taught me
that there’s no such thing
as a wrong turn

just detours
and scenic routes

i’ve always been attracted
to men who admire the sea;
i’ve found that such a man
is more likely to admire me