great love to me is frightening
it's all ache and burn
the
rearranging of breath & bones
justifying anything at all to see that
smile in front of me
I can't
rightfully explain it the way my knees can
or my
right hand but
I like to call it floating
I like to feel that &
sink at the same time \
it's confusing and beautiful;
hours become petals,
heartbeats are worthy and
it is cold settling after this.
it is unbreathable
when the warmth gets wasted

the poetry wasn't about her
it was the birds I;
I found it under her bones
cause
we aren't the same while we sleep
we're
so far away &

lately
4:00AM isn't what time it is
it's
me choking
and when we
talk about the weather it's not
conversation it's
burning and
blood just doesn't run the same
once it's been touched

her fists fit perfect in the slow
rooms of this body
& I'd get so high standing on her knees getting saved by each
fleeting leave in her breathing

let's cross straight & never say it
undress my restless legs
& leave them guessing how far
they'll fall again for you

thighs don't have minds but
mine can't forget
your resting neck, please
spare me the muscle memory;
are we street lights or are we better ?
my feet remember how it felt
running to you
my legs, beg for less bruising
but I think that you're worth it

I won't give up the way I gave in &
I hope you see the difference;
I hope that when the taste fades
you remember what it was made of

silver linings don't exist honey;
those are your veins

it's one of those
things; how
coffee, after dinner
sounds good but
you can't sleep when you get home &
how the trees look so beautiful
dying and gold
still, outside it freezes you
down to your bones
it's when you feel like that
last slice of cake that
got left out
it's this
breathing to scream but
don't open your mouth
I've been
digging for reason
buried in doubt
to believe in what's good when
that isn't allowed &
I've swallowed my gun
it was loaded with love but
it shot out my lungs
I learned love's not enough

you know from the moment
you
stop feeling beautiful
she said it
wasn't suppose to matter
and
I always want
what's
gone

& you're always gone
so what's beautiful
without your forearm
without our throats
& when I can't hear you

cause I'm not writing poetry
I'm filing a complaint
in a love letter
to your name

lately
I've stayed inside;
being reminded that
even the grass is
loud sometimes
& I'm
desperate for silence

something to stop my
grinding teeth when
I can't scream the answer

while
everyone's dying to feel
better &
I just want to feel less
but
Gravity gets the best of us &
I'm doing everything I can
to
deny the pressure

I'm inside of the d*** on purpose;
the last couple of plates you've dropped
& kept eating from, and I wish you'd just be careful.

I only wanted for the grass on this side to stay green, but I certainly wouldn't have minded if you sat down.

I don't like trying to squeeze between your ribs but I know I left something good there.
Like, how I should have been less than a stranger the longer we kissed until it backfired and now it's the mouth making all of my decisions while your hand covers my heart.

& It was never about bodies /
I wouldn't know how to worship anything
& peace of mind has never been very gently priced so I'll overpay in the form of self destructive predicaments and overused adjectives, pretending everything's okay when I can't hear any of the rhymes anymore.

I'm still just standing in my own ashes
the debris in which I've burned,
night after night for you

learning there are no breaths
deep enough

& I can't tell if the whiskey is helping
then again
neither is the screaming

try shaking off
what's been chained to you;
pulling skin from bone
shouldn't feel like home
and a big bowl of
whatever it is you want from me

you see, I keep having this dream
where you are
so
happy to see me
& now I can't seem to
appreciate mornings

it's been
a hundred days of bleeding
in need of
something unkeepable
something my arms can't possibly
reach for

when
all my
words
I keep warm for you
straight through my
frozen throat
a broken chest plate
just in case
you need them to save you

all she did was
reach for a glass
and
my eyes became like pens
drawing my love
with every stretch of
her legs
building up until i
felt like the snap between
the stem and the apple
twisted a little and
so completely consumed

I don't want now
to
forget you
but I need
a silent night;
& I am
frightened by the poetry
you've blinked into my mind
& now it's been that i can't
want you
how it
tortures
both my thighs
I have to
pretend I don't love you
& none of it feels right
I'd like to
untie & u n d o
all of the knots that tie me down
to knuckles that you've used
to smooth all of it out
but all your
smearing won't remove
it only
spread it all around
& while you sleep so
far away
I've had to learn to breathe
face-down

I see the divide now
how I'm set on fire
by the
ice
in your
eyes
and how they both destroy my
s k i n
& yet
they heal completely
different
and

that maybe
if
you ever wanted that
fever again
you'd call me

counting you down -
you are my
noun
& I'd rather be
honest with you
than to be
loud
let us be
calm
  let me
renounce
I took you home with me
into my house
I am still
in love with you
inside my mouth
& you should still
belong with me
ignoring miles

she chewed through my ribs
& attached me to wings

subsistent, pretending
I don't need a thing

she pushed through my body
propelling a shriek

her hand fits me close
& her sleep fit my sheets

but I'm done with she's perfect
I'm shrinking in blinks
& I'm sick of this
balancing stilts built on dreams

& I've stopped all this tripping
my shoes are on tight
but I'll  
fall asleep
hoping
you slept good tonight

learning that love is
no more than in moments
I couldn't trade ours
so I frame them in poems

& I've turned down the Joni
turned down the heat
you left on my tongue
you poured
to my feet

I'm starting to see
I have
been-seeing-strings
& I hate that I hate now
believing in things

but I love to remember
& I'm starting to think
that all through these nights
& with every drink
that I still sink for you
& get weak just breathing

I like to
sit with it in days
that way
I'm not driven insane

& you're so easy to remember
the way I love you like winter
you're early November

but those are only seasons
and seasons
they pass
& I'm sad but
so grateful
slow memories last

I won't bash or
be hateful
I like what we had

You held
my hand and my head
& I'm okay with that

I didn't -
fall out of love
I tumbled, backward;
overly-tired
chocking on Z's
and poetry:
my, indecent way of
overexposing my
love for you
and
no one likes to be embarrassed
but
I'd rather be that than
without you
so I tortured myself
I strangle my own neck
over and over again
with palms that
want nothing to do with me;
I'd rather
fall asleep
under water
than
breathe this way
*anymore

what's life
but
p i l e s  of
memory-adding-distraction;
distracting how to
react
when all of these
memories try & attack them ||
now
we are
forgetting forgetting
is easy
like
adding and
halving up
decimal fractions

I'm crawling through
spaces
smaller than me
& I'm stealing
deep breaths
when it gets
too hard to
breathe
I've fallen too fast
made a fool out of speed
& found
you'd never match
the love
I have for *me

how I'm all but
suffocated
by the story of her
wake
& somehow she is always
busy;
I've crawled so far
out of my way

I cannot stand to
sit and listen
to my heartbeat falling faint
its own pulsation makes me dizzy
& veins paint painfully her face


so I can call it quitting
now that everything's turned grey
& all my cannot haves are useless
just like, loving you this *way

I only felt that way waking up with her
& I've shared my bed plenty
it's nothing I can pin point either
[at this point]
it's like,
a knife is a knife
I guess she's just that type of woman
so stunning, her stubborn beauty
demanding love
& me, one of the ones drowning for it

is it still poetry if I beg ?
a n d
am I desperate for mixing
divine with insteads ?

baby. I still have two legs ;
i could run to you

I can still make you laugh
I am in love with you

if what's done is done
I won't punish you
should you ever come back
girl I'd run to you

my dear
please
tell me what you'd do
if you were me
&
I were you ?
now
take your head out of the
ground &
put both feet inside my shoes;
it is defeat and even ruin
this thing most often,
you've been doing
to the organs that I need
still you're my
favorite bleeding being;
yet you'd never take the time
to understand
some of my why's
& all the reasons I can't find
reiterate inside my mind
that your heart's no longer mine
and in the morning maybe I
can find that somehow
I'll be fine

& I hope
that
somehow starts tonight

the hardest move
I've ever made;
I did it with a twist

I let go with my mouth
& then,
I let go with my wrist

I let go of some words
I'm not,
sure of what I said

& I question
if love's in our hearts,
or only in our heads ?

deciphering
the lies between
the lines that we've made up;
how love is blind
gets left behind
I've given my eyes up

to look at you
will never do
the sight it
plights my mind

I've forgotten why I love you
but the feeling stays alive

returning to the bathtub
or the
pillow painted black
to drink the jars of whiskey
till my reasons all come back

I won't have you
always busy
not even evening calls
I remember the name of your sister
I've got no pride to exclaim us
I assume you to care less
you're heavier than tomorrow
I submit the same paper
professing how my skin went with you
you move away from me with a sword behind you
what are you so afraid of
believing
you're good
how can you bare to admit it?

i drank all
this
whiskey
to
forget about you;

there isn't a
sip
that does not
burn or
give me goosebumps

just like you

& now i'm so,
completely
*******

I fell for you
like i'd been dropped
& what a mess i've made
of myself

I should have to
apologize to my lungs
for ever needing
my heart to breathe;

I've been deceived
by my own beating

i'd
ripped up a list
with some
things that i've written
things I have gripped
to survive

a fish made of glass
that's been
swimming in madness
constantly
swallows her pride

salt water drips
from her lids
to her lips
drying ripples on
both of her thighs

but there's something
about mornings &
loving that woman
that keeps me up
most of the night

I've been choking from the moment
I was forced to let you go
I should have spoke it out of poems
so that you would ever know
that I am bowing out & broken
want to unlearn every bone
until my heart re-bleeds the reasons
I keep sleeping here alone

so won't you
untie all my finger-tips
& hand me back my lungs
I was the fool that glued my heart to you
please can't you see what you have done ?

exhausted by the nights & dawn
that break me over you

I've tried a thousand times and still
there's nothing I can do

I've skipped the songs
& cursed your arms
I burn inside my sleep;
to wake now wearing scars
from break-neck-love
made urgently

the truth in me
I'll never speak
of love that wouldn't keep;
my bones they lay
upon the stage
get played with bows of grief

the cellist stripped my ribs
a trick to twist in perfect fifths
& I admit, a love like this
a pain I cannot quit

on quieter occasions
& they were all just moments
I'd close to meet your truth
different coasts, different rooms
that, I'd noticed in you
cause I'd kissed like this too;
like the kiss itself had a mind
it wanted to mean what it was doing;

I generously swallowed my pride

that there is never a right time
never a right place
for anything

it always just comes down to honesty
and reason

and I can't reason with my truth anymore
I don't know how to stop
how to end this, *being in love with you

it's always the same
you everywhere
& me
finding the poetry in shaking
finally finding it silent
then realizing
this
this missing you
this loving you in volumes

it's the noisiest thing

I saw something
I found romance in reflection
before & after coffee
I compared the breeze to you
I felt humiliated
I've been all but
kept up
I've been all but kept by you

What have you seen in it ?

I'll swallow it after it cools down
&
small parts of me will never give up on you

I admit to this
incompetence
existing where you hover

when skin insists
the silent fits
truth is, I fit
the incidental other

my lip or bones
shake to remind
these never-ending hours

from black to fooled
I saw in you
the grab of drowning flowers

what love is well
can never tell
the right in what I do

the finding in
this woman’s hand
what won't belong to you

to run
stay
stand
believe

to love as an action
not as a feeling

to breathe
and to see
as with intention
& not as a need

and to need

these needs are burning wants
& I want everything in terms of
*freeing

to replant or relearn
like they're the same thing
that to swallow a seed
is like eating the tree

water feeds worry
& words tell me
n o t h i n g

but you told me that you loved me
& it is all I can believe

tonight i'm finding poems
in every place you stood
& I am digging deep in gardens
busting knuckles over wood

the grace to understand, my love
is doing me no good
it is the way you burn inside of me
I wish you understood

love is in the silence
the nothing that fronts completion
the smell and ******
trusting in care
it is in caring

quieting down for the loud of your lover
love like this, completely or
do not claim the word
love is in the consistency and not the pattern
finding love in the letting

love is in the letting and moving
the dancing of bodies

it is in forgetting
and pulling it all through

the way two bodies feel in bed
waking up wanting to do it all
over and over and over again

I think somewhere in this, I'm going to figure out, you know .. how it's done & through all the many ways it takes. lessons become teachers because people forget how to treat truth.
but everything is community in my mind. nothing happens without something else; I never understood the need to fight that. i digest in my head but what would I do without my right hand ? it's me and every other part of my body. I'm never alone. lonely is a lie we tell ourselves. there are always birds. always books. I meet a lot of people when I read & I never explain a thing. this reminds me of my love for dogs. to provide without need. a beautiful, beautiful thing. but words get abused like substance & when something is felt, we get confused, trying to explain it, trying to feed it. instead of just feeling it.

in a sense -
"        I tried;        "
still, I couldn't receive
I'd penned :
      bereaved and
believed
                 to mean
       the same
                 thing.

I wanted to see the sunset
so I watched it over my book

& sometimes I wish I'd met you out

I'm digging my feet as deep into the sand as my ankles will allow
i can wear the day like my shoes. the earth as my boots

my gift
I stood present with you
i was
wet paint
spilling herself in a
gallery
when the artist had gone
so I
find myself
touching the knife

except

you let me love your dogs

blown proportions
using bodies as poetry
to run from & out of verbs

upon request you just said
mine and
what a delicate thing
to still believe
in something