I hope between dreams
You hear my breath breaking the cold night air

I hope in slumber  
You feel my nail edges tracing your mysterious skin; warm and bare

I hope in that evening sleep
You turn and smell my tangled hair

I hope some nights you wake up
And if only for a moment, forget that I'm not there

Don't allow me to lean on you
Don't answer when I call you out of the blue

Stop asking me questions
Stop finding ways to let me know you care
When I dry my eyes and turn around
Please promise me you won't be there

He came before and after you
So it's not fair to stick around
And make a mess of what you left of me
I thought I left you when I left town

You know full well I care for him
So if you truly care for me
Stop pretending that you've changed
Stop speaking of this elusive "we"

I'm dying can't you see?
If you love me leave me be
I'm your remedy
But you're my disease

With each of your confessions I waste away
You cling to me as I decay
You think of me and ruin my day
My existence hangs on the words you don't say

So as my blaze fades to a dull glow
Please find a way to let me go
Because I think we need to perish or slow
Before I can relearn how to grow

she and I run to and from the waves
like little kids at play
at a beach on a sickeningly sweet day

we run toward the ocean and get swept up in the tide
these fickle boys that sway our life

you're always there for me when the salt water licks my wounds
and I promise I'm there for you now-even if we can't be in the same room

I guess a storm came in and made us go inside
the lightening made you cry, the thunder made you hide

but summer will come in the nick of time
you'll lay under the sunshine
with a healed heart and a free mind

when he doesn't remember
when he doesn't text or call
when he doesn't think of me
when he doesn't think at all

when he doesn't miss me
when he doesn't let me know
when he doesn't say how he feels
I fear he's letting go

now we are
where we were
where we always should have been

we've come back here
to try again
to be now who we were then

I'm not going anywhere
my time with him is cemented and fluid in my mind
it runs through my veins and steins my every thought

wake up to the sound of your fleeting heart
and all the bands you show me and books you recommend, they reserve a special folder in my thoughts and in my soul
and even the things that are mine-the things I share with you-they are no longer completely mine
the smell of you lingers on these things that once defined me

where am I gonna land if I fall for you?
I think it's been happening and I was too scared to admit it.  Because these things are so fragile and if I say it out loud maybe it will evaporate like warm air on cool Maine mornings and the cool will be too much for words so soft.  And once they turn into silvery swirls of reality-I will only catch a glimpse that they were real after all and they would be gone permanently

like a river flows surely to the sea
I know this life is flowing
and I know many things we must find peace with
I know often times the river forces us along and we must let go of things never meant to be
But I'm not ready to let you go
and I'm ready to fight the current
but I'm secretly hoping it's pulling for us

can I be close to you
and for everything that night was, for all the beautiful moments we shared, my favorite was lying there because I could hear your heartbeat and it was racing.  For the first time ever you weren't composed or mysterious or unknown. For the first time ever you were exposed and raw and I could see it in everything about you...you were scared too.

moonlight through the pines
so when I come back this time I just need to remember your smile and I am comforted because when I think of you smiling, I am reminded that I am coming home.

of all the people I'd hoped it'd be you*
and so the two of us laid there and tried to figure out how to be one.
I fell asleep to the sweet melodies that had promised me you so many times.  And everything was perfect because I woke up to the last song on the album which was my favorite.  I thought I would wander back into the beautiful sleep that had only just recently relinquished me from its soft and consuming grasp.  But then you did what you do.  You turned and kissed me.  And it was a goodnight kiss.  But it wasn't a goodbye kiss.

You’re not finished here so don’t you dare
Treat yourself with such poor care
You are still beautiful and you have worth
You’re scared of the things that no longer hurt

Your past battles haunt you relentlessly
I can here them whispering when you are near to me
I fill your ears with words of new
And calm and pure, and wise and true
I fill your hands with mine to hold
In case one day you find loneliness growing old
I fill your head with thoughts of tomorrow
I fill your lungs with laughter-I empty your eyes of sorrow

But when we go our separate ways
I fear the fog, I fear the haze
That eats you whole and clouds your view
Of all the things you’re capable to do
Everything gets heavy and everything seems out of grasp
And I can feel you quitting-your breathing turn to gasps

I pour these things from me to you
And hope they will suffice
Until you learn to do it for yourself
Until you learn to treat yourself right

These are the words that I scream into my pillow
The ones that sink in the back of my throat
They boil and melt and escape my body in tears

This is the frustration
The gripping, grasping, clinging thing
This is why I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth when I run or climb or crunch and sweat

This is what keeps me up and when sleep does find me
This is what wakes me in the middle of the night

The things I should do but don’t
The things I should say but can’t
The things that I ought to understand but fear I never will

They are constantly gaining on me and sometimes
They catch me

the night recedes and so enables the day

    push and pull: the struggle that creates the fabric
       the fabric that sifts through the liquid moments
          the moments that remain over time

               the people that change the mind
                the mind that changes the thoughts
               the thoughts that change the one

       the water roars toward the shore, swift and strong
    the water glides back to its mass, apologetic and sullen

the day recedes and so enables the night

Lying there I've never been more filled with words
Words that mostly formed questions
But I didn't want to soil the moment in questions that would inevitably surface answers
The ceiling whirled with specks of light; stars
And they beckoned us to lie beneath them in the murmur of our breathing and heartbeats
And the stars sat in the absence of words with us

I'm still shaking
like I did in the field
and at the gazebo
and in the first few seconds when I get in your car
when the cold air is still so desperate to seep below our surface
and lately I've been thinking
I won't ever stop shaking
from this unique and horrible cold
-this cool reminder that you are so far from me

my words are spent
my tears are shed
but now I lay awake
revisions in my head

what could I have said
to prevent the inevitable
were the words I gave you not loud enough?
was the handwriting illegible?

I don't write these words to hurt you
I don't say these things to make you cry
I just fall to pieces here
helplessly I stand by

I've decided that should anyone
years from now
discover my body
I want them to find me blind-
not from grief and sadness that I saw
but from the beauty my eyes beheld.

I want them to find
the disks in my neck worn-
not from lifting my nose at the inferiority of this place
but rather due to the fact that I was constantly gazing up
simply to remind myself that I get to be a piece in it all.

I want my lips to have trembled, smiled, spoken, gaped
my ears to have listened, to have listened, to have heard
my wrinkles to be evidence of laughter, evidence of worrying

my hands to have been held,
to have fought, grasped
and most importantly to have let go.

When they find me
I want my piercings to be evidence of my interest in pain
and the calm that follows.

I want my body to be riddled in love
agape, philias, eros, storge
I want my scars to be testaments to
my fearlessness, my carelessness,
my courageousness, and my curiosity.

Should they find my spirit gone
should they find my body dead
I want them to know
I want them to know I lived.

To write
To speak
To express
The communication that forms this mess
One voice that sparks a movement
One voice that seeks to prove it
To prove to you your strength
To speak with you at length
To share with you a story
Of deep sorrow and golden glory
To articulate these things unsaid
To express these thoughts buried deep in my head
I grasp for ears and words
Anyone to listen
Anyone whose heard