Her mind is as loud as a whistle blow
I can see it in her smirk
As we talk over dinner

I hear her silent sarcasm
I’m not psychic
But her wheels turn quickly enough
That I know to be ready to dive into the dirt
And out of her path

I hear her train comin’
See the coals burn in her eyes
The way her eyelashes flicker flakes of cinder away

I feel one fall on my arm
It singes my arm hair
It smells like the square-root of burning bodies to an over exaggerator

This feels like

People who have prayed in silence
And caught fire
Because they were begging for the answers
Before the bomb went off

They are souls who have been told
Praying is a waste of time
Wondering is a waste of time
You don’t always get answers when you ask for them
You don’t always get answers when you ask for them

Sometimes you’re lied to

Souls who have to learn to accept
The helpless agenda of living

Whatever happens was supposed to happen
If it wasn’t
We wouldn’t be here

Ready for the fire
Ready for the whistle blow
Ready for the hog-tie train track love she has to offer

I ask
Do you still love me?

She picks up her glass of wine
Sips it
Leaves a stain of lipstick on the rim

She says
I do

She says
I do

The snow crisped to your eyes made me giggle
Made me wonder
About the lightness of snow

How the white in your lashes made them seem more wet
And how much heavier they would need to be
Before they bent

How heavy can your shoulders get
Before the shiver shakes the weight

I want lie beneath you
And catch your cold

The doctors asked me how long I’ve been feeling this way
I told them I didn’t know

One in particular
Gave me a mirror
Told me about actors
And how they would practice making different faces until they could completely control their emotions

When you feel sad practice happy
Practice angry
Practice solemn
Practice confused

With this much control I could be held accountable for everything

When I was 14 I learned what living looks like

In the mirror

It is that jaw dropped gasp for air
After the rope breaks
It is smiling at the neck bruises
It is being thankful for ******* up
Again

And now it is forced breathes of air
Visible in the cold
It is you smiling
Carefully wiping the wet from your eyes

The weight is building
White wet and heavy
But thanks to you
The bough is not breaking

It is slowly shedding
You collect it
To make a man
You make me

I ask you not to break branches from the bough
To give my man arms
I am afraid of the collapse
Maybe I can’t hold you the way I want to
But you have fixed me so much already

You have fixed me so much already
Flakes fill your lashes again
I laugh at how cute you are
When you fight to let them stay
The slow flutter
The pursed smile

I wonder about you
And am thankful at how much you have done

To fix me

Your voice is like a silent whisper that I no longer wish to hear

On any given day it breaks me down
like the soft hiss and hush of waves
working to break the levee

I feel your voice speaking from inside my cheeks

It feels like forever
and I still can't seem to shake you from my skin
how I say things the way you used to say them

how I sometimes think about things that make me uncomfortable
and say your name out loud to halt my thought's direction

I ******* miss you
but I don't want to miss you anymore

Moving on is the dilemma for ghosts
Who have nothing left to hold on to

I can't hold your ghost
There are people here who
are still perfectly capable of holding me

And when I see you again
Maybe you won't be able to hold me

Because I imagine
heaven
is energy

I know this in the way my skin still heats up
at the thought of your touch
you move my molecules a fire-friction-engine-rumble

You are energy
and this is how I know you are happy
because there isn't anything else you can be

This is how I know heaven is real
God is a ball of light that feels like a fiery smile when you touch it

But I still hear your voice at night
and maybe your memories creep up
like epiphany shivers
like

   oh
This is just me missing you
I am still human
and I am allowed to do silly human  things

Because I am alive
and so much self preservation
I haven't let you go yet

Which is why I still hear you
reminding me to do stupid things like take care of myself
and to not hang my head so wrecking-ball heavy
unless I am finally breaking down my own walls
to sucker punch my gut
in order to remind my lungs
that even without you here
the air still tastes so sweet

Reset my suckerpunch
to gasp
to fight for inhale
to understand
that my own breath
still tastes so sweet

I hear you
you silent whisperer
I hear you

Your smile inspires me
To write

I have already spoken about hearts
and their inability to affect other peoples hearts
I'll never go there again

But your smile
makes me smile

You've got dimples designed for sailing
kiss me
and we'll make a ship
big enough to break the bay

Brave enough the beach our bellies
to kiss new land

Smile so big you chew the tip of your tongue again
I want to make you laugh so hard
and so often
you have crows feet by the time you're 30

You are an ocean-throat whisper
of salty air
and sand that sticks to the bottom of my feet like a memory
the way my feet always remember how to land
to cushion the blow

Inside your smile are lists
lessons on living
that you might one day tell me
it's hard to talk when you catch wind like you do

I want to kiss the words out
taste your language

Run my thumb along the bottom crescent
curved first finger under your chin

Your smile is a language
anyone can learn
I can read your lips

At least I think I can read your lips

They always say kiss me

say

There is a secret hidden between these teeth
Tucked under this tongue
Buried in the back of this throat

Coax it out
I dare you

Secrets are prone to laughter
find safety in the crevices
of dimples designed for sailing

Tell me what it is

Your smile inspires me
To write
To kiss you
To mirror back your language
With my
Broken toothed
and ***** dimpled
secret

Your smile
I want to kiss it

I keep your ring because it’s a fantastic memory
but what's a memory good for
if you’re never coming back*

It’s a mantra

Too many young people not living long enough
She says

It’s true

She tells me about how a boy
Was found dead in his car the day before
at a community college she goes to

She knows life is fragile
She feels it in the ache in her knees when it’s cold

Her eyes are painful
In their beauty
And understanding
Of the things our stupid bodies do

Our bodies are stupid

Insanely stupid

Cancer is the body attacking itself

And so often we can be cancer for ourselves

In the same way we love our livers
Just to feel numb for a while

Because I’d have never spoken to you
If I still wasn’t a little drunk the day we met

On dance floors
In bars
At house parties
We need something to give us an excuse to **** up

So we can blame it on the cancer
The kind that breaks the ice

This is me breaking the ice
This is me letting things go
This is me doing everything I can
To live for a living

I do a lot of stupid things
Just so I can tell a good story later

and in the end

Even if we get in our seventy
Punch out perfectly

It will not have been long enough

Just ask David
Who knows he will never naturally feel as good
As the coke
And the adrenaline pump of near death experiences

Tells me
About happiest day of his life
Was when his father for the first time
Taught him how to tie a fishing knot
Tells me his father’s hands were the kind of comfortably rough
That only certain men can earn
Rough from the labor
But soft enough never to hurt
Anybody

He regrets not being able to be that man

Don’t let a day go by that doesn’t remind you
That you are made from the same things stars are made of

That at any given moment
You can shine just as brightly

And please **** up
Shameless
Excuseless

**** up for the love
For the smiles

No one ever thought badly of someone who tried and failed

Trying is the bravest thing any one person has ever done

I dare you to try

Try to find something to live for

And live for it

And in the end
I’ll grab her crippled hand
Worn from the life that
Broke them down perfectly
Worn from the years of sign language
And the holding of heads

If we are going to be cancer to ourselves
Let the break down mean something
Break yourself down to make things better

She knows this
Has shown me this

Now I have something to live for
I live for the poetry
And the laughter I cause when I am an idiot
I try so hard to be an idiot
Work my body rough for the laughter

In fact

I live for it

My heart can’t hold
True
To anything

It has been rumored that if you hold someone long enough
Their heartbeat will match yours

If this were the case you would have seen me for who I am by now

Hearts are ugly blood pumping engines
Keeping us alive

I’d like to say you keep me alive
But you don’t

And if this works out and I lose you some day

You won’t

I mean
I am tired of the love poems
About the longing
And the passion
And the
If I had you’s

Love happens in stages

That is stage one

And you are stage two
After we drop the five acre metaphors
All forming like words from the mouth of a man
Who is still learning how to swoon something honest
Still learning what it means to make things right
Still listening for the flaws in his passionate stutter

I have counted them all
Made notes on my own
So let me learn yours
So I can write about
The years of learning

The study of your mistakes
I will write them beautiful
Even if they’re really bad
Even if they make you really mad

Woman
I know I am broken
If I can’t change me
Then you can’t change me
I will write about your stinky feet if I want to

Maybe they’ll smell like the miles you
Walk on sunny days
Because you’re trying to lose weight
Maybe they’ll smell like losing weight
And therefore
At least for you
It will be beautiful

I will always think you are beautiful

And stage three is when you finally leave me for good
Even if we have been broken up for years by now
You leaving
Is you leaving
Is your heart finally failing at doing what hearts really do
Because if me holding you causes mine to beat like yours
Then I’d be leaving too

Here is the truth
I have been told
The heart is deceitful above all things
This is the truth

And I or you will be left
To pick up the pieces
Still alive
Still breathing
Still bathing in the stages of love

But I am still stuck in stage one

And you beautiful future deathbed lover
Are stage two

In a sea of lost souls
I can’t believe you haven’t found me yet

I mean
I’ve never seen so many people
Get so close to each other without touching

And I want so badly
To tattoo in thick black letters
Over my heart
The word

FOUND

This is for the people who
Are still waiting to be found

For the boys who thought they had her heart
and lost it

This is for the bravery of trying
For the bravery it takes to let someone hurt you
On a chance that they won’t

This is for the bootstraps
Caked in the dirt that you fall in
For how white your knuckles get in the rising

For the ones who have something to give
But think they have nothing to give

For the ones who have nothing to give
And try and give anyway

You will always have something to bring to the table
If you are willing

This is for the ones who’s walls of strength
Are so thick
They can’t feel the touch
So it doesn’t have to hurt when they see you leaving

Press harder
Press until you hit the soft
Find something worth holding

You are worth holding

The game of tag and all its variations
Were just preparation
For the time you spend hiding your heart diligently
Until you see the joy in being found

Know
If you are reading this
I found you

Which means it’s your turn
To find someone else

I know it takes courage
To touch someone
In a world where no one touches

But you did it once when you were a kid

I know you have doubts
I have doubts

I don’t see in me any of the things people see in me
I own a mirror
I mean ****
I shave me
No one knows how ugly this mess gets better than I do

But *******
We have got to be found

Know this is the year you do everything right

Ask someone to dance
Show them how they’ve been swimming all wrong
In this sea of souls where everyone feels so lost

Even Christians have to find Jesus
A man who can only save them
After he is found

I challenge you
To write a letter to a stranger
Telling them you’ve secretly loved them
Remain anonymous
Only send one

Hold a door open for someone

Smile like you do when you read a message
From someone you care about
And don’t realize you’re doing it
Until one of your ******* friends asks why you’re smiling like that

Smiling is ****
I promise

Do stupid things every chance you get
You’ll become a good story teller
It will make you interesting

Shake the dust from your tired shield
Let your walls fall like the crumble was healthy
You do not need walls in wide open places

Know whatever you have been made to believe
You should always love like you’ve never been hurt
You should not be afraid to be hurt

Know
Love is yours
If you want it

Want it
I dare you

Tag

I found you

Now find someone else