Dear poet,

This is not a love letter.

I only want to write about how my heart does this juxtaposing speed up, slow down, make me lose my ******* mind in the absolute best way thing any time you just… catch my eye.

Cliche, I’m aware; but since I met you, your eyes have been my favorite color.

Do you want to know why you’re the one who whispers sunsets? You speak, and I am instantly overcome with the glow of the sky. The soft oranges and reds, the delicate pinks and the comfort of the purples. I always want you to watch the sun set and remember that that is how I feel when you speak.

I never want you to be afraid to uncover your pages with me. I would submerge myself into each binding and memorize each curve of your letters if only it would bring me one step closer to being a part of your mind.

Your mind doesn’t scare me anymore. You tried so hard to keep me out, you put up road blocks and keep out signs but I refuse to listen to any more dusty U-Turn signs. Each time I take one step into a place you are afraid of yourself, you try to push me away but I decline your offer for a life raft. "Life rafts might keep you afloat but they rarely get you anywhere and I’ve got places I want to go."

I sit in silence so often because I hold back so much. I don’t want you to know how badly I want to take you back with me and spend hours on hours on days on days just sharing other people’s words and other people’s melodies with you. Months have passed, people have been in and out of my mind, but I still firmly believe that there is a reason I have not lost a single knot in my stomach when it comes to you.

Dear Poet,

I believe that nothing is as pure as an organic human connection, and I have found that in you. I look back on the hours, the days, the nights I spent with you and they feel so illusory. it is a time I am constantly craving to relive.

I’m not sure why you left. Maybe you were scared, but I was sure as hell terrified too. And this is exactly what I was terrified of. I opened up my entirety to you and you walked away without so much as an explanation. Its okay if you needed time to think. You just left me to wonder where things went wrong. I am left here with this hole in my being i can physically feel. I can feel the emptiness in the cavity of my chest, under my ribs. I feel empty, sore, and my heart is retaliating.

Our time together was short, but I have never experienced something so real in my entire life. I am constantly looking up from whatever I am doing hoping to see you pop up somewhere, but instead I am stuck searching for pieces of you in every little thing around me.

I cry because I am missing you so badly, I can’t distract myself long enough to keep from going insane. I have no idea why you can’t speak to me. I can’t close my eyes or attempt to clear my mind because the second I do I am consumed with memories of how your body felt next to mine. I hear you whisper "I feel safe with you." I am aching for that. I am holding my breath just to recall hearing you lose yours when we kissed.

I just keep losing myself.

But I have to keep snapping myself back to reality to avoid crying in the middle of a world full of people who have no idea what is happening in my head.

I still believe everything you said, except for "I’m not going anywhere." I can only hold on to the few things you left in my room in hope that its your excuse to come back.

These days have been such a run on sentence; no escape, no end, no breath, no relief.

Dear poet,

I feel like every day I am away from you, the tiniest strand of our little red soul string snaps. I feel like the hours of pavement between us weigh down on my elation of revelation.

Dear poet,

When your lips were stained with wine, your tongue was stained with “I love you.”

Months later, after you had left and we had both lived our lives like we had never happened, I asked you if you meant it.

"I love you, Katie."

You break my heart, just the same way you break my face into a perfect smile every time I hear your voice. We share a piece of the very same soul.
And every time you tell me the other half of you is twisted like the bark of an ancient tree carved by the ancestors we never knew I will bite my tongue and never tell you,

Dear knotted soul, dear twisted heart.
Dear soul mate, dear poet. Whatever type of person you may be, we still share that piece of sunrise together. Polluted sky, I see the knotted string in your eyes just like Andrea says.

I wait for that little tug.

my body is an empty shell,

a cave of stalagmites with history on the walls,

and my heartbeat echoes your name within me.

your silence is sitting on my chest like dead weight,

and your voice is lethal in my veins.

i never wanted to write about you leaving.

i want you, glossy eyed and smiling.

warm, and forgetful.

i want you in the morning with the messy hair

and at night with the sleeping breaths.

i want you in the summer when your skin turns

and in the winter when your body is hidden.

i want you every way possible

**but i do not want this.

please don’t touch me.

i’ve lost all feeling in my body.

i cannot tell if you are scratching at my flesh,

or caressing the skin i once had.

i consider both to be the same.

fingertips burn like cigarettes,

lips sting like venom,

bodies slice like blades.

please don’t touch me,

for i’ve lost all sense of comfort.

a warm bed has become a prison

and a held hand has become a shackle.

i no longer know what it’s like to be freed.


all this has become a truth-

being that i remember soft skin and a gentle touch,

but not in the form of love.

If only it were possible
to slice open my skin
and carve open each vein,
I could drain you out of my bloodstream
So that when I lay my body to rest each night
I don’t feel you being injected into my heart
And I don’t hear your name ringing in my ears
And I don’t feel you rush to my lips when I sing.

i am healing myself one body part at a time.

today, my fingertips. tomorrow, my ears.

but what happens when the parts i think i’ve healed

go back to being burned?

when i knowingly put them back into the dangerous places

i know i should never go again.

i made that choice

but i suffer in silence.

and i start again tomorrow

healing my fingertips.

i’m overwhelmed and i’m swallowing all the words i don’t want to say

and every day i feel things that i don’t want to feel

and every night i dream things i never thought i’d dream

but you will never know because i don’t want to say.

i can’t understand what is happening in my heart or my head

they are constantly conflicted because

i want nothing more than a new body by my side

and words that match the passion.

i haven’t held a promised hand in so long

that i don’t remember how it feels to wake up secure in someone.

but

i crave the security in you.

i’ve been fighting the same war since spring

let go, let go, just wait.

battles always won by opposing body

bringing me further into the woods, i’m so lost.

My body is itching for the touch of your fingertips.
If only I knew how to make you miss me
And everything we once knew.
When I’m alone in the silence of midnights and 3 AMs,
I am reliving all of the firsts and the lasts and the where-I-went-wrongs.

Am I doing this? Am I starting over?
Do I have to heal this wound from you all over again?
Do I have to recount the days since I last wrote about you, dreamt about you, thought about you?
I am a recovering addict of self-aware fragmentation; and tonight, I am thinking of you.

I still feel the sensation of my heart swelling against the frame of my rib cage.
2. The sunrise will always remind me of the time I couldn’t look away from the morning blooming in the sky, and you couldn’t look away from the sleep blooming in my eyes.
3. You always felt like a dream to me. Even now.

Being both the sunshine and the rain;

Holding everything in your hands,

but hindered by the scars on your skin

that not many are able to see.

I see.

(Only because i have them, too.)

Blind by biterness. crippled by forgotten words.

But i still linger to distract for reaction.

"come here, you’re too far away"

yes, i am keeping my distance,

i have learned my lesson, you have taught me so well.

i have learned not to play with fire, and your skin is an inferno i know all too well.

i refuse to kiss my own blisters again, wrapping them in the one night stands of other lovers i know nothing of. this is what my healing is made of.

so when you come back to me with apologies, but all i see is the worn out deception in your eyes.

you play it out so well, the “i need some time, i’m not sure, i need space” card, the time the space it takes to find your way down into someone else’s world. i cannot be your back up plan again.

i am not a second string, i am an entire orchestra all on my own.

please do not be reluctant to sing along, but don’t you dare silence my voice; i’m not going to burn in your book of forgotten nights.

i am the kind of girl who deserves a ring, i am the kind of girl who walks down the aisle in a white dress while the choir sings, i am the girl who deserves your everything; and if you don’t believe that is me, please do not hesitate to leave.

I wish I could’ve written down every word you’ve ever said to me

So that when I’m drowning in my mind

Your voice covering my ears

I will remember what it feels like to be loved by you.

I wish I could keep your warmth in a blanket

For the nights like this when the stars don’t burn as brightly as they should

And the moon hides behind the clouds

And I want nothing more than to be tangled up, wrapped up in you.

I want to put your laugh to music and

Let that song be stuck in my head all day just so I can think about your smile.

did you know

that the air right in front of your nose

after you breathe it in

goes into your blood

and

becomes a part of your body,

making your heart beat

making your muscles tense

making your lungs fill.

so when you share the air in front of you with someone

and they exhale

and you inhale

their air is a part of your body

your blood

and they make you a human being.

I wish I was a mind reader.

I want to crawl into the corners of your mind where no one else has ever dared to go

and I want to dwell there.

I want to open up new worlds of your brain

that you never thought you could live in.

I want to know what you’re thinking at this very second.

I guess I just want to know if you’ve been missing me.

Hey,

do you ever stop and feel that ache in your chest,

way down deep like,

and think

****,

I am seriously missing something there, and

I better see a doctor to

fill this ******* cavity in my chest

because that’s what I think.

Or do you ever see something that

makes you think about the time we never spent apart?

Those times we were surrounded by people who had no idea

we were sharing secret glances

because we were both a little tipsy

and we were both surprised we kept our hands off each other for

so long.

Well if not,

I think you should know,

that you have never left my ******* mind.

Not even for a second.

I have lied to myself

day after day.

I don’t need you, I don’t want you,

but that’s only because I don’t have you.

you make everything in this world
nowhere near as enchanting as it once was

the summer isn't nearly as warm as your body heat
and i so badly want to feel it

the stars are nothing compared to your eyes
so bright and strong and brave and bold

the moon is not as alluring as your smile
so excuse me if i stare when you laugh

i want to tell you all of these things
but you scare me
(and i like it).

i want to fight for you
i want to tell you how smart you are
i want to tell everyone that you're a part of me
and kiss you good night
         and good morning
         and good bye
and i want to cry when you cry
and laugh when you laugh
and tangle with you between blankets.

please tell me its okay to want this
to want you
please tell me you want me too.

i have so much inside of me, my ribs crack open to show fields and fields of beautiful gardens of the most exotic flowers i have yet to discover. and these people walk through these fields hand-in-hand with me, plucking the petals off my beautiful flowers.

"oh, it’s okay. it’s just one petal. it was an accident." and i forgive.

but it happens again, and again, person after person, one petal.

one petal.

one petal.

and now i sit here with these partially destroyed daisies and empty stems that no one is going to accept as a gift.

but what i don’t understand is, why do you ask for the key to the garden if you have no intention of watering it? why do you walk though nature if your only plan is to destroy? why must you visit a place with destruction on your mind? how could you see something so innocent, a place with vibrant potential budding upon green leaves, and walk away with your vision in gray.

you say you love the sunshine, but you thrive in the rain. you close your curtains each morning at the thought of the sunrise and at the idea of a new day.

ultimately, i am the one to blame for sharing the blossoms within me with those who are not deserving. maybe that makes me naive, but maybe that makes me the stronger human being. because though they leave with pieces of me, they return to their monochromatic world with a piece of my flower.