I'll never be more disappointed in the words
Their job is to conglomerate into cohesive, coherent expressions
Always, they've done this for me
True, their message has changed
But their capacity to carry out meaning, order, and a clear, articulate thought has been unwavering
But I turn to them now and they are clumsy, weak, light, and foreign
I fumble on these useless and tiresome words as I think up a way to communicate to you just what it is you mean to me
I love you
Is white noise
Every combination is an understatement
Photos can't capture it
My paintings can't replicate it
This love demands to be felt and that is all I can do
With every intracacy and nuance of my existence, every book I ever read, every lesson I've ever learned, everything I was, am, and will be, ever aspect of my being, every ounce of my soul, all that I have
Because I can't translate it to words, I will have to suffice in keeping it in it's rawest form
And while I will never be able to express it to consummation,
I feel so wholely and genuinely in love with you

One more season we pass through
Remaining me, remaining you
While some things never change
Others are set in an opposite motion
Hurtling continuously, inevitably, inherently toward "change"
I know we'll never be the same now just as we will never be who we were at the end of summer. But winter is coming and spring and I can't we to see who we become. Who we've been. Who we are. I'm fine with change so long as you remain constant in this change with me. Love you dearly, love you often. Happy months happy time happy season

Crash break sleep take
My heart and make it your's too
One in the same, melt, weld, stain
All my thoughts and memories and love
Melt into all the forms of love that I give and receive, ebb and flow
you and I
Til that's all that I know
So encompassing
Promising taunting and teasing
Miss me kiss me and stay just a little longer for a little while once again and again the day after and again and again
I will always want to play with you
To chase you
I will always love you for making me this way
For showing me it was there all along
For helping me discover a part of me I didn't know existed

I resent the moon and stars and the clouds that allow them to glow
The hot cold air and transition-dusk
Once filled me
Inspired and cooled the heat and sun and reality that encompassed the day
Nighttime meant love songs and promises and dreams
And dreams
But now that the nights weigh more than the dense days
Since you've filled my head and heart and left them heavy with concern
All I can do is worry and analyze and occupy my nights with day dreams of the nights I dreamt of you and you only

the bounding bouncing onward downward trail of the decent
(falling)
coming down, down, back, back with our pack packs
back to the earth
to lower elevation
to safety?
the return
coming back
switch back in the path
going back
sliding back
to how things were
how I miss the summit

this is for when
you mean to remember but don't
you want to be there but you won't
and when you're running late
or you've forgotten that we'd made a date
for when you're meaning well
or when I'm upset or hurting and you can't tell
when you want to find a way to fix what once was missed
you don't know what it is you've done wrong
for when we fall asleep listening to heartbreak songs
this is for when you can't come through
like you sometimes tend to do

it's ok
because I know that you will make it right
I know what we have is worth the fight
I know (even when you don't) that you're a good man
I know you're doing everything you can
You would never intentionally make my cry
and if you were in proximity, you'd never just stand by
You're trying so hard to always do it all
and sometimes in the juggling act I'm the one that falls
it's ok this time around again
because before we were "us", we were friends
and I know you better than to get caught up with petty fights
I know when I deserve better and I know when what I've got is right

"'Help,' he said, 'is giving a part of yourself to someone who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. So it is,' he said, using an old homiletic transition, 'that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part.'"

I want to keep your attention even after you go
I'm trying to be the girl you wanna know
I wanna be smart and mysterious
serious and hilarious
genuinely beautiful
sincerely intentional
but I'm burning out-trying so hard to shine for you

I think if you do it right you're comprised of places you grew up and people that love you. Things that didn't change when everything else did and those little unexpected moments of gratitude for your inifinite blessings.  To be made small, not in an insignificant way, but to be given perspective. To be consumed in love for friends, family-extended and immediate-by blood and by acquaintance-by circumstance and experience. I think if you're doing it right you wake to great the day, just as she has you, and this silly life fills to the brim

ending things before the begin
shutting people out before they get a shot at getting in
there's this piece of me
that's scared of everything
and she's ruinin it for all of me
I'm scared to look but I wanna see
all that I'm running from
how bad can it be?
I'm a let it all catch up with me
baby keep runnin
one of these days I'll tell you everything
one of these days I'll give you all of me

Herds of sea monsters licking at my toes and they tell me it's just seaweed dad handing me the fishing pole "3,2,1 jump!" Grandma sitting on the dock with me, her toes in the lake and she'd laugh and squeal so loudly it held a weight all its own it echoed, carries, drifted like pollen dust and covered my childhood coated the surface of the lake, settled among the crevasses of the fire pit and buried deep into the particles of my still damp towel unsure of how to care what day or time it is or whether my clothes are on right side out only the certainty that I will jump in the water and dry under the sun a gazillion times before the day's end deep green dew covered grass, sweet light green stems, the seeds and bruises of all the backyard fruit bruises on me too and splinters bee stings cuts and slippery band-aids that don't stand a chance against today's adventures when any and everything we wonder about is on our block walking running skipping distance in dirt and sap soaked flip flops til we abandon shoes altogether (unable to keep up with us) we go onward barefoot and raw like writing this all flowing into each other because it's the only honest way to do it

If you love me
find a way to let me know
but should you find that you can't,  
Please find it in yourself to let me go

the law of conservation of energy states that energy is neither created nor destroyed
it cycles
like hurting
sometimes you get hit
sometimes you get hurt
and other times you're the one doing the hurting
and for as much as it hurts when you're on the receiving end
I'm starting to be convinced that when you're doing the hurting it's twice as bad
because you wish you didn't have to and you wish things were different
all I have to offer anyone else that comes my way is the same pain I got from him so long ago
I wish had something else to give
but I guess that's the way of pain, of hurt, of heartbreak-there's this finite amount out there amongst us and we gotta cycle through it-giving and receiving until hopefully you can escape it, find love, and be good to each other

I'll love you because you taught me how to run
You used to run by my side
But now I run from you, with half the strength, twice the speed
I don't know if I was always broken and it just surfaced
or if I was, in fact, whole before you
I'd love to blame everything on you but something runs deep inside me that didn't want to trust even before  you
granted, you confirmed my fears
I wonder if you still think about me and if you do I wonder why you don't reach out.  I wonder if it's hard anymore
It's already been so long and we're both only getting older
And while time can be healing, I think for us, it's sealing the grave that was our relationship
I wonder what happens to the love we had
I wonder if you still ever worry about me
I wonder if you care
Because I still miss you and I'll never let you know
I miss summer baseball games, playing short stop, you yelling from the sidelines
I miss road tripping back with you and talking about nothing
I miss how smart you made me feel
but mostly I miss how proud I made you
They don't warn you how when someone believes in you, encourages you, enables you, loves you
That they can take it all away when they leave
I don't know how or when or what I did to let you down
to make you let me go
I know I started running from you long before you let go
But I ran because I never expected you to quit
I never expected you to stop running after me

night hiking:
pro:
-if you're at a steep part of the trail, your headlamp will only illuminate what's in front of you-there's no knowing when it will stop being so hard and so the leveling of the ground beneath your feet is more often that not a welcomed friend rather than a long anticipated and frustratingly far relief
con:
-while ignorance can be bliss, missing out on the view can be a ******

day hiking:
pro:
-the flood of light is intoxicatingly beautiful and you can see everything around you in the incandescent sunlight.  No illusions
con:
-no illusions

let's sit across from each other
lay down our weapons and shields consisting of words and see what the silence makes of us
see what truths surface
maybe we'll stifle a laugh at first-
a natural awkward reaction to the taboo act of staring at someone without reason or explanation
to look directly into someones eyes to (if nothing else) reassure them of  their own existence
to remind them that they are seen
and so pass the first thirty seconds
two hundred and ten more beautiful horrible seconds that unfold themselves between us
and once they past we are again allowed access to the gift that is expression
to communicate, talk, listen, laugh, cry, ask, answer

but what if when the silence ended
when the honesty presented itself?
when we were stripped bare; made simple?
what if after all the wordlessness and contemplation there was nothing left to say?

I wake up to the glow of sun shining through curtains and blinds
I stretch my body
stretch my mind
I'm preparing for the day ahead
waiting for it all to start as I lay in bed
I find my muscles sore
the good kind of sore you get when you're not bored
when your mind is stimulated
and your heart has been elated
and your back hurts from rowing
your legs from running, you arms from throwing
the restlessness of spirit that wakes within me in the glow
mind, body, spirit; I'm recharged, ready to go

to fill a hole
fix what's broken
say what needs to be said
and leave unnecessary explanations unspoken
we're seeking the same thing
to simplify our lives
wrap up in what we used to be
find it fabricated in lies
you want my insight
but I gave all of me to all of you a long time ago
and while you're missing me
I'm letting you go
let's not complicate this further than need be
let's keep it simple and let it leave
on terms its own
that we can't conceive
you should have had some foresight
you should've known I couldn't always wait
I'm not one of your fish
I'm not going for the bait
It suddenly feels like it's been so long
since I felt lied to
since I felt wronged
I don't miss you like I once did
and it gets a lot easier with most of the passing time
and I harbor less resentment for you now
looking forward to having you in my life again down the line

I've done things on my own
gotten to relearn pieces of me regrown
I'm still making up for the way things were
finding the girl I was when I was her
boy, do you miss me yet?
I'm making myself proud
I've found my voice, I'm getting loud
And I'm not quite there but I'm en route
haven't yet attained it but I'm in hot pursuit
boy, do you miss me yet?
and of all the pieces of you that fell away
the music we shared just seems to stay
it stays and stays, won't go away
it won't diminish, it won't decay
boy, do you miss me yet?
And just like I used to listen to you singing in your car
I can hear you forgetting me, tires kissing tar
it's been two solid years and I need to know
boy, will you ever let me go?

I'm gonna trace it down on wooden end tables
on tiled floors
on carpet runners and floorboards
on asphalt, cement, brick walls

I'm gonna trace the cast shadows on my good days
when a moment seems too good to be true-too fleeting
I'm gonna walk around getting it all down just the way it was

the grand shadows of the trees lining the street to my house when I'm coming back from long boarding
the delicate shadow of the glass vase on the table at the cafe when you smilingly whisper to me the secrets you're composed of

I'm gonna outline the shadows of moments with white chalk
like they did in the movies when someone died
because these moments are coming and going too

and memories aren't enough for me anymore
I need solid proof it was all real
shadows of moments just the way they were

"please beware in a mysterious way God is here
please beware he's your pity
he's your pain
he's your fear
please remember my son that I taught you as much
it is God who will take you from here"

professor told me the chemicals and minerals in this paint could leach toxins into my skin if I let it stay on the surface there
but the way I see it I've picked my poison
either it's paint on my skin or you on my mind

he walks around suburban streets afraid of breaking things; toys, bones, lives
she sees herself as the problem because that's all her mother ever yelled at her within paper thin new development plaster
they get it implanted deep inside them somewhere along the way that everything they touch is tainted and I don't know how to enable them to see the radiance that is exuded by the things they presumabely ruin

Letting you go is made easier in knowing you're not the same person I let in

spring runs at night
when the air feels like summer night air
air that's been warmed up by the sun and then left to be consumed by stars and darkness
it always reminds me of night swimming
in summer night water
because you hit these patches of cold and warm when the air or water can't decide which it will concede to in the time of transition

I can feel my heart rate slowing
my thoughts caught between going a million miles a minute and lounging in the tempered water of those smarter than me
I am simultaneously comforted and overstimulated by this modern artist who attempts to explain himself in a media foreign to him: words
His reality exists in color fields and weathered linen
In re-stretched canvas and the gentle pull of paint layering itself before him in a matter so beautiful that he's afraid to **** it-ignoring the fact that he's bringing it into existence
To see his work and grasp a whisp of what it is he is trying to convey
This is my drug of choice
To be drunk on the sobering reality that we equally overthink the merging of memories and hapinstances and movement; light and shadow, tints tones and hues, a balance between respect for what the art is trying to do and trying all the while to control it in a manner that it may capitalize on its investment in itself-on our investment
of time, of thought, of failures its taken to get here, of learning
Why would I go searching for something to stimulate my mind when it's nearly 3AM and I can't get it to stop?  Nor do I desire to make it stop
May I be strung out on this gift all the days of my life

What if fate forgot about us?
In the grand scheme of things she forgot to intertwine our broken lives
What if this isn't how it was supposed to end but
We slipped through the cracks and there's no going back?

"Hanging a song on another wind
It was timeless and timed all the same
These words are a blessing a breaking away away
And all of the stories of why you came, they get prettier every time
You are something special you sing the way we sigh
And  I thought about changing my name and then moving far away
And wherever you are I know you feel the same
And love is a pattern of drifting wood in its own kind of watery smile
Who hides with the maker of night and stays a child
And saving the best of what's left of ya for the one who has stolen your seat
And too many questions will grind away your teeth
And I thought of the sun goin down over there and thank it for the day
And wherever you are I know you feel the same
The longer we're standing here breathlessly are we making a bigger mistake?
By taking the matter at hand into the grave?
But wouldn't you want to know anyway?
Where your heart was just dying to go?
And hope is a whittling down of what you know
And I thought about something we might have said about doing whatever it takes
And wherever you are I know you feel the same
The colors you drew in the country air
Like a willing and shattering fire
Too hard were the benches, too cold for your desires
And tell me again what you're doing these days with that beautiful, curious face
The lines of your memory are breaking away away
And I thought about nothing particular and down came the rain
And wherever you are I know you feel the same
And wherever you are I know you feel the same"

this once more I think summers coming soon
and she'll offer nostalgia to heal these persistent wounds
with softer winds
for paling skin
and empty promises full of good intentions
she'll preach to me unlearnable lessons
she'll take me deeper into the hot cold night
out of mind out of sight
when things don't need answering
and I'm most in tune with her being
It's just like you said this time last year
"Don't worry, I think summers almost here"

Have you ever tried to run with any kind of baggage?
Maybe it was the airport and you were late for your flight
Maybe it was a purse
or a backpack
or groceries
if you have then
You know the agitating experience of not having full range of motion to get were you're going
You know the gnawing temptation to put down whatever it is you're carrying
Only I can't put him down
I can't let him go
and it's a hindrance not to where I'm going
but rather where it is I've been trying so desperately to leave

The words of pages you lent me steal my thoughts and consume my helpless mind, my helpless heart.  
My helpless heart still loves you and you didn't know.
You didn't know that was the last time I'll see you for some time.
Some time apart is all I can do because I can't do this anymore.
I can't do this anymore and I didn't tell you.
I didn't tell you that I can't afford your presence.
I can't afford to sit by while the seconds count the times you break my heart.
My heart can't take the conversations we have.
The conversations we have can't stop hinting at the future we might have had.
The future we might have had consumes my helpless mind, my helpless heart.

I've been sinking back into old familiar negative spaces
Missing him is home and I've felt so nostalgic tracing fingertips along the abandoned walls of the place
Missing him was not once such an empty promise, but rather a means to an end.  The end came and left but the missing didn't.
I'm letting myself miss him once again, this once more

I harbor a profound appreciation for humans out there in the world that shatter the silence.  If you've met or heard of them-if you've shared an environment, a conversation, a moment.  There are people in this world that don't speak for the sake of speaking, to be heard by others, or even themselves.  They don't seek to fill the silence.  Rather the silence holds a mass all it's own and the spilling of their words into the already filled space causes this overflow-this unrest in the space occupied.  Their thoughts and sounds and words drop like smoothed stones into a body of silenced water-with rippling affects seemingly infinite.  They acknowledge that silence and expression are not juxtaposed but would in fact be non existent without the other.  Silence and there lack of.

And every time I'm left or every time I do the leaving
there is change
there's new music on my sleep playlist
there is the imprint of words shared, or maybe not shared
theres the loitering of scents in the deepest particles of my cloths

And every time I'm gone from his life or he's done the going
there's his name doodled in the margins of my notes for a while
there is the shadow of his hand on the small of my back
and the trace of his lips on mine
there still remains the sound of his breathing, of his heartbeat

Whether I am the leaver or the left, the heartbreaker or the broken hearted, the winner or loser: there is always this time of transition.  This testament to how intertwined our lives were for a period.  But with him it never ended.  I am still so utterly haunted by his absence and as the others fade I watch his absence become ever present, ever growing.

I still have what's yours
and I tell myself as long as I have it
I have the insurance that you will come back for it
this is my guarentee that I will at least see you again one day
at the very least
but what if not seeing me outweighs what it is I have of yours and you abandon me all the same?
I'm just hoping you won't forget to gather up what it is you left here
I don't want to be stuck holding onto something you're never coming back for

piling warm loads of laundry on my bed falling asleep with you amongst the miss matched socks and wrinkling jeans feeling like everything can wait

Why do we so long for that which we do not know?  Why is it the knowing, the safety, and the comfort drain us and the only way to fill up and live again is to be fighting and scared and so consumingly unsure?
Why does she go looking for trouble in all the right places?
And why are some days so very much heavier than others?
The light ones almost seem to drift away in the memory taunting the mind to recall whether they were real at all or just existent in the crevasse between sleep and dreaming where all misplaced and beautiful horrible things go to linger a while

the sickly soft and sentimental sensations of yesteryears seep into the sequentially searing scars of last nights mistakes
and the smoke simultaneously serenades my soft tissue into sorrow soaked sleepless sunday mornings
and we silently seek solace in the safe haven of wordless songs

I need to break the trailhead and sweat the sadness through
the pores and holes and missing pieces of me that let it in for you
I'm forever shaking from exposure to the elements;
this irreversible coldness resulting from your negligence
I can't go on like this; so very different from who I used to be
I'm scared of who I will become if I don't soon recover the old me
I'm in search of steeper trails to bring me closer to
the clearer, blissful, happier me I was before my soul made room for you

Young nameless girl wandered between lost and found. She applied her makeup mask too heavily on her faceless face and spent timeless times waiting for careless boy to care.

in the spinning circles of mass disorder
and the emotions that run rampant

in the inconsistency of the love I deserve
and the ones who want to love me but can't yet

in the influences that taint my blood and mind and will
the caffeine, the smoke, the alcohol that sits for days distilled

in the fluidity of these numbered days
and memories only made beautiful because they're gone

in the never ending collapsing of one thing into the next
with my bewildered mind never escaping from itself to get some rest

Within the whirlwind that is my life right now I am anchored, I am humbled, I overflow with gratitude that in all the inconsistency He waits for me the same.  The sameness in His presence; the unchanging, unwavering, unalterable presence that is Him.
He will always love me; always forgive me.
He waits.
And in the shakiness of growing up, He gives me stability.

I leave all my windows down until I can't stand the cold
And my hair is blown by the wind until it's dry

I take to the road until it can no longer take me away
And I think of you until I'm saved by the thought of anything else

I go until all the radio stations sound of static
And I wait for the sun to rise until it hits me that maybe this time it won't

I drive until I don't know where I am
And every time I get a little further

Lying in your room we stop time.
Any other time and place we are left sinking through seconds toward our fate but we float late nights in your room trapped in the amber.

 The fluid and constant second hand clicking away our time together on your wrist, is silenced by our breathing.

And in the presence of each other, encompassed in the company, and engrossed in the solidarity that comes with being together, we don't allow the night to end.

But last night it did.

Our perfect night was finally penetrated by the tick, tick, ticking reality that so desperately sought to break in and rob us of our unwarranted and unrealistic happiness and sense of safety.

the overlap of my headphones playing music and the coffeehouse music behind that with conversation of the strangers around me within that and the growing louder wind hidden below that deafens a clarity and silence to which I have not been exposed.  Maybe it's the espresso but more things make sense for now

I wake up and put it around my neck
something someone gave me once when they loved me
and while it is sweeter and more nostalgic now
while it is no longer burning or complicated
it's still warm and now I can just find it comforting
how sweet

sweet late morning naps filled with dreams of boys and first and last kisses when every touch still means so much

And I think I have much more to say to you than I actually am
But I think I was meant to say it a long time ago when it might have actually mattered

For a little while I forget that you're forgetting me.

The hardest is always day 5
Day 5 is usually when I give in, give way, collapse, lapse
Day 5 is like those Fridays when I was so far from you
Aching for you is the loudest on days like that
But then goes 5 days
5 days without talking to you
Then a week
And every second gets easier
Because I’ve been listening to music
Music I shared with you
But I’m starting to figure out it’s still mine
You never even appreciated it
So I’m reclaiming it
I’m reclaiming all of me
And I’m finding being on my own
And rediscovering myself
Isn’t an act I can do out of spite for the way you treated me
Things like this happen in time all their own
Seconds pass, minutes, hours
I read, I listen, I run, I hike, I experience
I laugh and cry and sometimes the aching still seeps in
But mostly I grow and change and heal
I have no anger for you anymore
In some odd way I'm thankful things happened the way they did
Thankful to have the chance to discover that I still have this within me
Happy to be healing

I don't know how to matter to you