I've watched you
all winter, holding your beauty close.
Protecting it from the snow and cold
in your grey-green fuzzy casing.
When the time is right,
you release that protection.
Giving you the freedom to unfold your splendor.
Like hands opening.
Like fingers uncurling.
There is hidden beauty in our winter.

I'm not the most
put together person.
I'm really a small
hurricane of a girl.

I am not a metaphor
or a simile.
Not a ****** mystery
or a floral print dress.

I am flesh and blood,
bone and sinew.
I bend and break,
and snap back again.

I will keep you on your toes,
and never let you rest.
I will love you with everything
I have.

I will **** your marrow dry,
if you look at me the wrong way.
I am unafraid,
and I have nothing to lose.

I am a stack
of paperback books
and a broken
typewriter ribbon.

I am gale force winds,
and raindrops like steel.
I am wounded pride
and a mended fence.

I am learning to forgive myself.

You have to fight for everything, even yourself.
Nothing was ever built for weak people.
But you are precious.
You are all the things I never believed in but happened anyway.
You are all the last thoughts of the last moments of someone's life. All I ask is that you always find your way home like you lose everything except for this.
Remember that wind is a language, like everything else, and every time you meet a new person you are discovering how to believe in people. And where we live, there is a lot of wind.
So in effect, I believe War is another way of saying I love something so much that I can't stop breaking whatever makes it sad.
And where we live, there is a lot of war.  
And courage is the form we take when we become someone else's second chance.
Remember that Earth is cold, that the world is a scary place to live, but ask yourself what the world is made of.
We all bleed the same amount, and we forget that if you ask for freedom then you have already lost it.
That sometimes running and leaving and going does not always take you somewhere else, and that in order to keep things, sometimes we have to lose them.

I hate you because I love you too much.
But I love you too much to ever hate you.
So I take it back.
But at the same time I don't.

When it has been five days since
anyone told you they loved you
and no one has held your
hand in four months
and you cannot remember the
last time you felt wanted,
remember this.

People aren't meant to say I love you.
Those three words mean
so many things but somehow
they mean nothing and eight
letters thrown together into
a combination of
lines and spaces is not an
accurate representation of feelings.

They say I love you
in the way they smile when
you laugh at their jokes and they
say it in the way they shake their head
when you make a bad pun and
they say it with every
text message in all-caps at
two twenty-four in the morning
because something incredible
just happened and they had to let you know
and they say it with every
hug and high-five and punch in the arm
and with the way your name
bounces off their tongue
like a child making poor judgement calls
on a trampoline and

they will not tell you happy birthday this year
and they will take four hours to
text you back because
they got distracted and they
will call you an *******
(because you are one, sometimes)
and eat all your lunch
without saying please or thank you
and they will
forget to tell you they love you
when they say good night,

because people are not meant to say *I love you.

tick tock
goes the clock

darling you are now
under my spell

play in this game
called love

there is no escape,
you are now in the palm of my hands

if you fall first,
checkmate