Pulling, tugging, grasping –
     all to be closer to you.
Two hearts beating, and lungs breathing deeply –
     all in beautiful unison.
'This is one of those moments,' he says
     I tug his ear as he speaks to me,
    an attempt to commit to memory every inch of his body.
'When I can't believe,'
     I go on squeezing him,
    filling all of the ridges created by my bone structure
    with his torso's curves-
     They are warm to the touch.
'How much I love you.'
    I push the tip of my nose into the nook under his chin
    and attempt to breathe in his beauty.

What I am, I don’t know.
What I do know, however, is what you are.
My eyes have traveled over your person for hours, and I have studied your intellect.
I observe, I don’t make conclusions –
for that would be a sabotaged investigation of the potentiality of your existence.
The ‘you’ I speak of is nobody at all really,
it is the world around me in all of its embodiment.
I soak in the culture as I live amidst the chaos,
and my mind becomes oversaturated with sensation.
In San Francisco, yes, San Francisco, the sweet smell of diversity,
the push of movement walking up Powell Street and the creak
of the old elevator in Rasputin Music.
On top of a hill in Indian valley, a moment of freedom –
the air and I, we hold hands.
The wind and I, we run along picking daisies off their stems
until only the unwanted ones are left standing.
In the middle of a crowd in Golden Gate Park, waiting for the band to appear onstage;
I don’t know his name or hers, but they are very close to me.
Sitting here, on my bed,
flipping pages and pages as books progress;
if only my own storyline were half as intriguing.  
Way up here in the air, this plane’s motion makes me tremble.
Occasionally I am distracted by the beauty of what’s outside the tiny window,
and the feeling of omnipresence I attain pushes past my anxiety;
the world is below me and I am defying its weight.
In precalculus class, I reach a strange state of tranquility;
I can finally revert to the robotic motion of pencil and calculator,
a momentary lapse from the stress of the day, and the world.
All in all and end in end,
poems are poems but it mostly depends,
everything is contingent,
and it’s all ambiguous of course.
That may be description of the world – or rather, one of myself.

A sanctuary, your features have found the warm tranquility of my skin
The soft touch of your lips, and the squeeze of your embrace
entrance me with shivers;  this is the only bona fide calm I ever encounter.
The beautiful sensation of your breath as it tickles my collarbone,
and the simultaneous movement of our two bodies;
I engage in the exquisite process of soaking in your persona as you absorb my own.

The brush of your vanilla-chapstick lips on mine releases a butterfly cage in my stomach –
butterflies of cherry red and periwinkle blue,
a momentary lapse in their usual shades of black.
The pressure of your body resting on mine, pulling closer and closer
ceases the trembling stutters of my lungs’ perpetual struggle
to breathe under the weight of the world.

We become immersed in our reverie of each other,
and I synchronize the patterns of my breath to match yours.
This beautiful symphony of affection that is your nose buried in the crook of my neck  
leads me to finally venture to define the word love –  
It is you, in between my chin and my collarbone.

When your eye first caught,
a passing glimpse of mine,
all the world was not
in response to you, divine

If my love, by you were to be received
hand in hand, pulled in tactile knots
a love story, to write and to read
all other essences forgot

Join me, as one essence
conviviality of our arms
to watch a moving picture, mesmerized by luminescence
unequivocally present, a moon and its stars

Walk down our favorite street with me,
as I jump on the red fall leaves
my radiant smile back at you, sweet
a kiss forever carefree.

The needle drops, and
there is a light pull
on a lover's hand

The needle lifts to rest once again
Fingers brush, not sure
if they are permanent

A multiplicity of canva
Each being filled
With a lover's new muse

The needle drops
Fingers brush, never
To touch again

‘Right now they’re dancing in a barn, like in footloose,’ you told me.
We don’t need to know how to dance.
Our love is lying curled around each other on a couch,
talking for hours.
While we sit, our souls are everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.

‘They even dance in math class.’
You –
always on my mind, always,
dancing with my soul.

Well, tonight they’re dancing somewhere else.
They’re dancing alone together to the sound of the record turning,
twirling around an apartment overlooking the night lights of San Francisco
at 3 in the morning when our half of the world is asleep.
They couldn’t care less about the rest of the world;
they’re stuck in their own gorgeous equilibrium.

Tomorrow night they’re not dancing at all,
Our souls are still in that much-imagined apartment in San Francisco,
but tomorrow night she is laying on the bed we share.
Tomorrow night he is grabbing a bottle of wine and climbing in with her.
Their lips are dancing tomorrow night.

The perpetual waltz of empathy,
the swing of our daydreaming,
the rhythm in our time spent doing absolutely nothing.
I live for each and every dance.

‘I don’t trust you anymore,’ I said.
It was playful, as it resulted from a humorous exchange of kisses
in which I was seduced and then kissed in such a way that provoked a cringe.
I was feigning frustration as I giggled, as I had been fooled once again.

Though, when I said that, he let out a little whimper.
The implication of what I just uttered, had it been sincere, was momentous.
At the same moment, we both knew.
‘Oh baby that’s not what I meant, I trust you with my everything, just not kisses right now.’ (laughing)
He then kissed me deeply, and things went quiet again.
Running through my mind, constantly –
‘I trust you with kisses too.’

Trust is a fickle thing.
Twigs fallen from trees look quite elegant until you snap them in half and try to put them together again.
A spine can recover from being broken, but not without suffering.
I suppose I don’t really understand at this point –
I have never had half of a broken twig in my hand,
and I have never had the feeling of spinelessness that must come with losing who held me up.
I have never had those kind of tears in my eyes.
I hope I never do.

Most sticks get stepped on in the end,
and that is why I am afraid.
I cherish so greatly our moments intertwined,
laying in my bed,
laying on the couch,
sitting in a classroom.
My body is still my body, and your body yours,
but sharing mine with you and having yours shared with me
is when my body feels comfortable on this earth.

I got in my bed tonight, and I took off my bra.
It was done up in a way I would not have done it up.
I keep it tight, tight enough to leave imprints in my skin.
‘The tightest setting,’ I always tell him.
Tonight I didn’t remind him, and I discovered it to be on the loosest setting.
Intentional or unintentional,
I felt love when I took it off.

1. His hands travelled over my back, reaching for the edges of my bra that he had undone.
       I was comfortable without knowledge of my clothing’s organization.
2. He was fumbling in the dark, and his fingers landed on the clasps keeping my bra loose.
       I’m not sure if he’s tired of seeing marks on my skin
       or if he just unconsciously assumed it shouldn’t be too tight.
       Or maybe it signified nothing at all,
       and I just am always finding new ways to love him.
3. Tonight I feel him all over me.
       Hands on my skin, words in my head.
       The lullabies that the movement of his body sings and the beauty that grows with every word he speaks
       are overwhelming the whispers of sadness and anxiety within me.
       His love drowns the negativity out of my soul tonight.

I’m not sure of anything.
Whatever trust is, I don’t think I could define.
I only know we have it.

Tonight feels like salt, but not enough wounds to pour it in.
There is no relief, no distraction
from the feeling taking my lungs' motion away.
I can't breathe, I can't see,
stasis and the puddles that accompany it.
The crushing grip of unproductivity
shakes my soul as a giant would a doll.
Wasted, wasted, another day wasted.
When will the spaces on the clock be worthwhile?
I am perpetually shoving myself off of an edge into a pit of something menacing,
I can't seem to give up on tearing down my own walls.
Two lines, or three, streaking down my cheeks -
a signification of my misery for everyone to see.
Embarrassment, now comes he -
with his lance, sticking it straight through me.
Stop looking, everyone stop looking,
I can't do this anymore.
When tears do not reveal my weakness,
my expression does.
I am quiet, disengaging from what I enjoy -
and they notice, how dare they notice,
I  don't want them to notice!
Curiosity and compassion are two very different things,
and the former is in overabundance.
I feel like a raincloud must, though I don't attain a pleasure of release -
my eyes spill out my insignificance,
therefore it is endless.

Once the garments are put on
It means the world to take them off
To be naked is a figment of the population's imagination
A demonstration of the incarceration of our figures
What was naked before we covered up?
I cannot decide if these rags that I wear
are a bomb shelter or a prison cell,
Either way I am trapped inside of myself.
It is a terrifying place to dwell and maybe
that is why I should not expose my body.
The indecency of telling me
that the most natural thing I can show you is indecent;
we are hypocrites.

i'm not sure
but i think
that i think too much
but am i overthinking that too?

is it okay if
i see but do not look
for fear of something
that might send a shock wave
through my pupils
and into my mind?

is it okay if
i hear the world
but my brain filters it out
because i am too busy
listening to my own thoughts?

i am not alone
people surround and smother me
so is it possible
that i am lonely?

so many questions
yet so little time
to find answers

then again
who needs answers now
when the intellectual marbles
will inevitably be lost
and the answers with them

thoughts swarm without purpose
in and out of my head
and the taste of new wisdoms
overwhelms the tastebuds of my intellect
i am lost
high on the ultimate ecstasy of knowledge

i am no longer
viewing the world
the world is viewing me
for being inquisitive
in a world so full of certainty

The sun has set, and my side of the world has all fallen into dreams.
I am lying here, naked, a conglomeration of bones with skin pulled taut over them.
I feel as if I am nothing more, and my eyes turn into puddles.
It is at this time that my internal storm arrives.
My pain is without subject, and my tears without provocation –
I guess existing in this world is enough.
My lungs lust for the ability to scream, to shriek until they all notice,
but the feeling is suppressed again and again.

Breaths pushed in and out of my body – I can’t breathe,
I can’t breathe.
Intermission between inhalations shortens, and my knees curl to my chest
as my entire body trembles  under the weight of that which I cannot identify.

“You are sad every night,” he says.
Yes, I am, for the night is when I am forced to spend time with myself.
Lying here, my skin is asking to be clawed off of my body
and hopefully the imperfections will go with it.
Every word I have uttered filters through my mind, and every word is wrong.
With the façade of my successful existence now sprawled out on the floor next to my bed,
I lie on the mattress in emptiness.

The tears come like a flash flood, and I am overcome with anxieties of my inadequacy.
The shaking is my earthquake, an earthquake that is unending.
But, I’m not supposed to be feeling this way again.
I suppose I don’t deserve anything better.

Oh, there he is.
      MOM, he's on time,
      I’m not on time,
      I made him wait,
      Am I annoying?
Oh, he's hugging me.
      He smells nice,
      He smells like he knows he smells nice,
      Does he like me?
      Or does he always smell this nice?
Wow, this movie theater is big and dark.
      I better not trip going up the stairs,
      I can’t be that clumsy,
      Oh, I tripped a little, oh gosh.
      It’s okay I guess,
      he giggled at me.
Now he's sitting next to me.
      Do I wait for his reaching?
      I lust for his hand in mine.
      We sit and watch the movie,
      and it almost seems like we're there to watch it.
Well, now his hand is in mine.
      Our fingers feel lovely, interlaced like that
      He grasps my hand tightly, but gently
      I can tell he is a gentle boy.
      I’m glad.
He pulls me in a little closer,
      His hand is on my waist now.
      It feels nice this way, but a little uncomfortable.
      Why do people do this in movies anyway?
At some point, our heads turn.
      And we take each other in,
      eyes traveling this way and that –
      observing what we have yet to fall in love with.
Eyes close, lips touch.
      The kiss... It feels new.
      I’m not used to such elegance.
      Sharing breaths, nervous breaths,
      I can feel my heartbeat rising.
We pause, you look into my eyes.
      We once again watch the movie for a while,
      but not for long –
He suddenly pulls me in and is kissing me again.
      'I can't let you see the end,' he says, and I smile.
      I didn't want to see it anyway.

When I look at you,
I am transported to another state of being.
Another time, another place –
a consciousness in which I am unconscious
of everything but you.
I want my eyes to wander along every inch of your body
and commit it to memory.

Memory, memory, yes, to memory.
I would rather rid the ocean of its waves
than forget the curve of your spine.
I want the freckles decorating your cheekbone and neck
to be the stars in my internal sky.
My mind is the canvas;
you are the painter.
Be an impressionist painter,
not because it has to be beautiful
but because it has to leave an impression.

i walk down into the bar i still call "my favorite in town"
and there he is
hands around my waist
breath on my neck
kiss me and dont ever tell
there he is
here for someone else
as i make a scene, slumped up against
the chalk-soaked brick
and the band continues to play all the same
we catapult down into the basement of another must-visit
filled with the neon light of a cursive sign
cheap gin and tonics to match
and there she is
with wandering hands under shirts
and the oscar-winning performance
of two women, pressed close
against the wood pillar
now steeped in stale desire
and the well drinks pour all the same
we stumble past the still-unclean fraternity
i can taste the light beer that he and i used to drink
chasing the whiskey that kept our affection afloat
tongues down throats,
marlboro reds, lucky one flipped
until the very end
and the ice melted all the same
dark bar, dark porch, dark bedroom
where they were ****** and forgotten
until muscle memory brought them back swinging