You can tell how much you love someone by their hands and how well you hold them.

You can tell how much you love someone by the numbness in your brain and the tides in your chest.

You can tell how much you love someone when your favorite color is their eyes and your favorite place is their atmosphere.

You can tell how much you love someone by the conversations you hold when they aren't even there.

You can tell how much you love someone when their last touch stains your skin blue until the next.

Spots become sacred.
Your body becomes new again.
Love seems to make the rest of the world irrelevant.

But the danger of love is the loss of it.

Once love is gone, not only is the world irrelevant but it becomes cruel.
And this cruel world will eat you up until you find another source of love.

You need blue stains and hearts made of the ocean's tides to keep yourself sane.
You need their eyes and words to make you crazy again.

You need love.

There was a certain point
Of no return
When you were killed into art
And dreams were burned

I am still haunted by that night
In pieces at a time
I recited you a poem
But I forgot how to rhyme

I never knew that our lives would extend this far intertwined

Starting a sentence with "I" makes me squirm but starting it with "you" makes it worse.

The ground glitters under leaves
I found graffiti on the trees
You still like to talk to me and
I found shelter in a cave
No one to find me there ashamed
I know they walk into the light
To hide from the fear of night
And when the light turns off
There’s chaos

I hear planes, trains and cop cars
But no dog barks in the city
Anymore for fear of water scorn
And I will swing at my own risk
I regret that one last kiss
On the chilly night in plaid
On the hillside when we found lost keys in the trash

I miss last fall because there was a ball
In the woods in pajamas
I eat the bark you eat the paper
Melted candy corn foil wraps needles shorn
Fire pain blood black ink we’re together in the sinking ship
That is time and we lay on needle pine
Forest floor no real cares no one’s true concern of bears
Running wild chilly air
First drunk night when I shared
My real feelings toward you behind sheen of royal blue
But you alertly wiped me off like a drunken sickened cough
I was a disease you used to catch but now you found your match
I lost my dignity that night
On the ashy rug when you found your true love
You kept me there out of pity so I moved into the city
To start over but I can’t start anything at all
The pen is too heavy to lift
I can’t listen I can’t learn
I found I’m not concerned about anything but last fall

Are you a collection of borrowed jokes and songs and ideas?

Does hate only reach a heart by reflecting from the heart of another?

Will you visit me in the city with a handful of wildflowers?

Do truely beautiful things have to call for attention?

Do we drink as a way to erase time and ourselves?

Do you still believe in the big thoughts we found in the snow?

I have this yearning in my soul for somewhere else
A place where I only need my whispers and your lips
And we stay warm with our bodies
And we write music and cry

But above all we laugh

The world will shake from our laughter
And the oncoming trains

Sad songs and words make me feel safe

because


there is always an underlying tragedy to the happiest lyrics

but there is always hope in a song about tragedy


I would rather find hope than fill my face with a smile until the next time I cry