Once I had a dream that drifted, scarred and sang and fell.
That echoed through the now empty cave that I refer to as my heart.
It danced through my head where it planted and began to grow.
It blossomed and lulled me into a trace.
You met me there, the blooming buds of roses, red like rubies or crimson blood.
Unlike roses, though, you lacked any thorns.
With all the passion of a storm you blew into my dreams and stole my attention and my affection.
All the corners of my mind were drunk with my affinity and captured by a vague impression of your beauty.
But all roses have thorns and I was a fool to have ignored the horned demons I clutched so tightly in my hands, the very ones I held in my heart, the ones I allowed passage into my mind.
I held the thorns with twisted bliss, the intoxicating agony that was your innermost self.
Clouded by the poison I held fast but like the delicate and masochistic rose you were, you withered in the heat.
The sun beat down and while I stood, sweating, crying, fighting for us, you fled.
You fled. You left. You ran and left me alone in the sun, drowning in the heat,  with broken hands and broken heart.
My hands, callused and scorched are left with holes, holes from holding you despite your crime.
My heart is left with holes, holes from your hands which took hold of it and wrenched the life from it.
Once I had a dream that drifted, scarred and sang and fell.
A dream of us, of me and you, of our flame which ended with a word.
A word, a single word, a word which turned the flame against us to burn and scar our hands and our hearts.
A single word which you uttered with all the passion you could muster.
A single word which took the moments, the memories, the smiles.
The heat of your breath, the touch of your skin, the warmth of your smile, the fire in your eyes.
All for nothing.
Once I had a dream that drifted, scarred and sang and fell.
That dream was you.
Thank God I woke up.

sometimes I wonder if I have ever really seen your face
there’s nothing left to explain
to this day I don’t know
if you were ever real (there was
nothing to say
maybe I just don’t remember) sometimes
my hands (my lips) still imagine your skin
the plaster of your ceiling hangs like blood clots
in my veins (the color of the walls mutating
before my closed eyes
I have never felt closer to neverland)
I don’t talk about you
I never did
no one has ever looked at me that way again
(maybe it was something about talking
to the other side of the world
that made me into a moment instead of a past)
maybe the thing I’m most sorry for
is that I will never regret you
(your name still tastes like peppermint) it is summer now
and I still remember your hot phantom hands
on my frozen cheeks
(I remember your voice like dragonfly wings)
maybe that’s why when I remember your eyes
my blood is lighter than it has ever been
I can feel your smile like starlight in mine
you breathed into my lungs once
and you have been there ever since
you were not my north star (though maybe I was yours)
you were my ocean (and
to a child’s eye all the stars look the same anyway)
maybe the thing I’m most sorry for
is that I don’t miss you because
after all these years
your anthracite eyes are steam beneath my fingers
(there’s a kind of purity in dirt and
there’s a kind of innocence in you)
after all these years my footprints dot your foreign soil
(there’s a kind of hope in me)
because after all these years of swimming
of air that tasted different with every breath
of eyes blinking against the epileptic cosmos
(stars lips teeth hips)
after all these years of running
it was not even strange to be in love with you

you've got a galaxy in your eyes, *but it isn't mine..

One: Sleepy
When your spine takes cat-like curves into the recesses of blankets
And crickets and thunder and howling wind all sound like peace
And puzzle pieces fitting splendidly against each other
You’re sleepy when your eyelashes are weakly magnetized
And pull gently towards one another in soft but stuttered motions
When white noise and static fill your ears the way that water can sometimes fill a glass a little bit past the top without spilling
And you look forward to the lure of dreams or of dreamless nights
Because you know you’re sleepy when the only reason to be awake in the moment
Is so that you can appreciate the split second of falling
When you finally lose consciousness

Two: Bored
When you switch from counting ceiling tiles to counting the colors that you can find when you close your eyes with varying degrees of tension
And you’ve become so bored with distracting yourself that sleep seems like the only genuine option
Even if you’ve only just woken up
Even if you’re not feeling comforted by darkness and silence yet
Even if distractions are abundant
Because they just aren’t distracting enough
Sometimes boredom summons misery just to occupy your mind
And you’re bored when you remember you were supposed to be in bed an hour before
And you actually listen to yourself and go

Three: Drowsy
When you wish you had longer limbs just so you could properly drape them from the edges of your mattress and stretch at better angles
Suspecting that maybe the odd crooks in your bedframe are the crooks that have been thieving in bits of the night and stealing the ends of dreams and the beginnings of alarms
You’re drowsy when you can feel the burn of smoke sloping against the walls of your lungs
Even when you’ve been breathing clean air all day
And the dizzy spin of the room is more of a waltz that’s moving just a little bit slower than expected
Until you turn the music off

Four: Fed Up
When stress is snapping at your synapses and igniting fizzling fireworks at the back of your throat
But the forward corners of your eyes pull together to shut out the world
Because ignoring is a temporary retreat into forgetting
And permanence isn’t something you’re in the mood to believe in any way
You’re fed up with the world, and with existing
Or maybe just being awake
When you know there are better things that you could and should be doing
But shutting down is all you can manage right now

Five:  Faint
When the world appears not only blurry, but verging on translucent
And there’s a steady hum lacing the edges of reality
With sporadic jolts of memory forcing twitching sensations down your back
You’re feeling faint when you’re hopelessly holding onto consciousness
Because you’re a little bit afraid of falling
But you would never admit it
Because there are too many blank spaces in your vision to allow for any vagueness in your thoughts
But sometimes the body can’t keep up with the mind
And you collapse all the same

Six: Weary
When time seems to thicken and stick to your skin
Weighing down your movements like steel beads of sweat
And pressing palms to your eyes almost seems to drown out sound as well
You’re weary when the grass feels a few inches too long and the ground seems a few inches too close
And the ends of your limbs feel as though they have been reaching for something a little bit too far away
And you have only just given up
So you grab handfuls of the clothes you have on and pull them tighter against yourself
Forming an artificial blanket
And imitation slumber

Seven: Exhausted
When you can feel static buzzing through your veins
Stretching capillaries into threads to keep yourself sewn together
Knowing that consciousness could spill from the cracks in your skin all too easily if given the chance
And your eyelids hold together like the grand doors of a cathedral
Opening only with a struggle that everyone tries to make seem effortless
You’re exhausted when you’ve been writing this poem for days trying to find the words
To properly describe different degrees of fatigue
And you’re sure that you’ve probably recycled a metaphor or two but you don’t bother to double check
So you keep trudging along
Until nothing makes sense anymore
And the seams that encase your consciousness begin to strain
And snap

Eight: Hyperactive
When despite all reason dictating that you should be experiencing the drag of being awake for too long
You see clearly and think in double time
With energy flickering behind your irises
Foreshadowing the dread of sunrise
You’re hyperactive when you’re knitting your voice with your friends’ voices in a collage of laughs
Each indistinguishable from the last
And you start counting the stars with flashlights until
Like sugar and smiles
And fast cars on icy roads
You inevitably
Crash

Nine: Emotionally Drained
When you’re worn to the point that mental distress manifests itself physically
And you can feel the chains of your own thoughts around your wrists
Almost wishing they were tighter so there would at least be proof of their damage
You’re emotionally drained when you can scream without making any sound
And you've perfected the syncopated rhythm of a nervous twitch
You realize that you've been grinding your teeth for the last two hours
So you switch to biting your tongue
And you don’t rest
You don’t rest until there are tears mimicking a Jackson ******* on your pillowcase
You don’t rest until the clock is judging you for testing it
You don’t rest until you feel empty
You cannot rest when you feel empty
No matter how desperately you wish you could just fade
And drift away
You do not
Rest

Ten: Tired
Just…tired

I just wanted to be the sunlight
that woke you up in the morning,
the warmth you wouldn’t mind
slipping through the curtains.
But I suppose it’s enough
for me to be
the memory
you hope to forget.