flies.
but memories
have an awful habit
of remaining still, frozen,
unwilling to change or be forgotten.

"Jump!" my little brother yells.
"Jump!"
I smile at him and tap the rain water
with my boot.
"No, jump!" he yells again,
splashing through the rain.
I laugh at his excitement.
"Perhaps another time," I say, and we promptly
circle around the puddle
and go on our way.

I look back on all of our conversations
and all I see are apologies.
They were all one sided.
Pleas, really.
They fell from my mouth,
and escaped through my fingers.
I lost them. They left me
to meet you.
The regret was everywhere.
I fell into its puddles often.
You said you were sorry once--
no, twice.
I will not apologize.
You fell once.
I got up twice.
If I dug deep enough maybe
I would find them again
and slowly take
my apologies back.
They shouldn't belong
to you.

he texted her.
and she waited for the jump,
the butterflies,
the weird flip her stomach
would do at the sight
of his name
on her phone.
he texted her.
she waited for a physical
reaction.
like a boiling *** of water
that overflows,
or an outlet that sparks
when someone carelessly
plugs something in.
where were the bubbles?
where were the sparks?
he texted her.
she picked up her phone.
she looked at it.
she got distracted by another
message from her friend.
he texted her.
the world kept spinning.
and that's how she knew.

what is worse for a dandelion?
to lose its soft, seedy ball of cotton,
blown into the wind
by a whispering dreamer?
or to fail in granting the wish
of a small child, too young to realize
that a dandelion is only a pretty little ****?

he's black, white,
and read all over
by acquaintances in his
circumference of people.
but no one asks,
no one takes the time,
to inquire behind
the gray mix of his
black and white appearance.
perhaps he's a light blue,
or a pretty yellow
that mistakenly ran into
some gray along the way,
but no one knows
because they'd rather spend
their sunday morning judging
a black story on a white page
than exploring the vast depth
of an intricate person.

just like I promised I would.

I found it yesterday, in the
beginning pages

of this journal you gave me. There was
a scrawled note under the only line,

with a careless rectangle drawn around it.
I must've written the note quickly,

a few days after you dropped
me off for the last time.

"I'm sorry I never finished it,"
I wrote. And I am. 

I'm sorry I never finished it for you
to see. I hope this one will do.

let go of the things not meant for you,
but hold on tightly to the things that are.
allow yourself to feel the pain when your heart biffs it,
but don’t let the pain hinder your growth.
you are an open wound.

the rain will sting.
but the blood will always wash away.

when your small,
little world spins
crazily
             (madly)
out of control,
take a moment.
take a breath.

and let it go.
it will come
back to you.

The thing is, you can't wait around
for someone, expecting them to come back.
You can't wait for them to wake up one morning
and have it dawn on them that ****, they lost someone
irreplaceable. You can't do that to yourself.
You deserve someone who sees you and sees the world.
Someone who sees you at your absolute worst and still
thinks you are the absolute best. You can't wait
for someone to change their mind about you.
Someone else will come along one day, and they will choose
you over and over again, every single morning,
and you will be glad you didn't spend anymore time
wishing for a person who didn't love you enough to stay.

she reads books
that touch her soul
and finds songs
that move her to tears,
but she has yet to find
a book on the shelf
that feels the words
she wants to say,
or a song on the radio
that listens diligently
to the rhythm
of her heart.

rainy days
sleepy gaze
romantic films
on the couch we lay.
never stopping
to consider the storm
raging outside
our bright red door.

Keep things where they settle.
Settled.
It settled there, so keep it there.
Wrapped.
It's wrapped there, in bubble wrap;
Placed in the box, very carefully.
Bubble wrap fits nicely in boxes.
The pretty box is labeled:
“DO NOT DISTURB. DO NOT TOUCH.”
Don't open Pandora's box.
"I won't." Just a little touch...
She slips and it blasts open.  The wind billows
throughout the room, knocking her
off her feet.
Torn pieces of paper dance in the gusts of wind
and settle, placing themselves in a circle
around her.
She's wrapped
up in words unseen, unheard.
Unsettled.
Keep things where they settle.

I swear this is the last thing I'll write to you:
You were my first love, the best "first love"
I could have ever been given. For that, I thank you.
I swear this is the last time I'll write your name;
but I've actually never written your name, not in poetry anyways,
so instead,
I will never speak your name again.
I say this every morning
and every night I count the times I messed up.
This is getting long, but I swear I will never check my snapchat to see if you've seen my siblings on my story.
Or my instagram, to see if you saw that pretty dress I wore one day.
Okay, one last thing - I swear I don't really
care but please don't throw away that picture of me. Keep it around.  And that letter I gave you on your birthday -
Keep it. Put it away.
Don't throw away that picture of me; it's my favorite.