If you let it,
The ocean will carry you.
Feel yourself bobbing up and down
With the pulse of the universe
And just trust
That it will bring you back,
To lively shores.

Like a ballerina twirling as she dances lightly on her toes,
She is free.
And as the Earth swirls in her own sorrow, painting her poetry in the newly sun-less sky,
She is free.
And like the plump and pigmented cheeks of a child experiencing her first snowfall in the biting winter,
She is free.
And as the roses bud in the birth of Spring, the birds sing of their anxious wait for the comfort of her petals,
She is free.
And as the cotton candy dizzily gathers in the candy store windows of her childhood dreams,
She is free.
And as I tied back my hair this morning and pulled at the laces on my shoes and painted my lips with my favorite shade of happiness,
I closed my eyes and batted my lashes as my head filled with the music of
I am free.

I will not put melodies behind your madness,
I will not create metaphors for your mistakes.
I will not write poetry for your sadness,
I will not turn this into something beautiful.

That is not how this works.

Kids don't just go skateboarding anymore to fix their problems. They drink or they smoke or they put a ******* knife to their wrists. That's the way our world stays in orbit these days.

I looked up as you watched the vultures kiss my neck
Just like you used to.
Of all the people who have pushed me towards the edge,
I never thought you would be the one to throw me to the ground.

Hold my hand a little tighter,
Let me know that you aren't going anywhere.
Leave the door wide open as you walk out,
Let me know that you aren't going anywhere.
Put your arms around my waist and leave your hands off my neck,
Let me know that you aren't going anywhere.
Turn out all the lights as you set this fire in my heart,
Let me know that you aren't going anywhere.
Say it just one more ******* time,
And let me know that you aren't going anywhere.

The lullabies you wrote in my mind are starting to sound like screams.
And meanwhile she is writing the words "I'm sorry" like it's all that she has left,
Because maybe as she throws up on the bathroom floor
Maybe it is all she has left.
And he's running circles in my dreams begging me to get him out
As though I'm the one that put him there,
And I'm starting to believe that maybe I did.
And he's writing down clichés for me in places my mother would not approve
And he titles them as ****** love poems,
But he still believes they're better than mine.
And I'm writing my own obituary on my hips
The same way I used to write suicide notes along my wrists
Because your lullabies are screaming that maybe that's the only way I can feel again.

He could be anything in this ******* world,
But he is never going to be you.

Just tell me that you love me.
I do not care
If you mean it right now,
Or if you mean it next week,
Or if you mean it next month,
Or if you mean it next year.
Just grab my hand
And kiss my lips
And let those green eyes
Meet the worlds that live inside my blue eyes
And softly tell me the sweetest little lie.
As long as in our little forever,
We find a day where you think that statement to be true.

I do not love you.

I fell in love with the way
You asked me to hold your hand
And you squeezed so tightly that
I couldn’t forget that you were there.
I love the way you lit up my sky with
More than just falling stars
And crescent moon spotlights,
But with those bright green eyes
And that sparkle in your smile.
I love the way you let me
Hold your arm
And mess up your hair
And sing you songs
And cry into your sweaters
And fall asleep against your shoulder
Like when I fell apart silently beside you.
And I think I fell in love when
You kissed my wrists because
I really don’t think you knew
How much that meant to me, did you?

I’ll swear to God that I’m not in love with you,
But that won’t keep me from falling.

She started to write again and her eyes were reopened.

You were the rainstorm of joyful souls
Filled with vibrance and life
With splashing puddles against dancing feet
And the feeling of having more than just a pulse,
But possibly a purpose or a reason.
You were the light for the hopeless,
The lantern of chances
That shined through the darkest alleys
With shadows cast by the moon.
You were the calm and crazed paradox of the ocean
With a heart that was created to live
And a mind that was made to be tame
But a life that was caught in a whirlwind of riptides and tsunamis.
You were the green of the grass
And the pink, purple, and orange of the sunset
With the varying shades of blue and green from the sea.
You were the wonders of my own world
And the Hell of your own.

"I want to have conversations with you at 4 am when we're both out of our minds and dazed in sleep deprivation. I want to sleep in a twin bed with you lying next to me in my high school sweatshirts and plaid, baggy pajama bottoms. I want to kiss you like the bees kiss the flowers and like the sun kisses the sea. I want to sing to you in the car and listen to the quiet buzz of you humming along. I want to be there when you find beauty in not only the sky, but the world below it. I want to navigate my way through that maze of a heart just to find even more beauty and love in your soul. I just want to be so deeply in love with you that drowning becomes a privilege."

I have found
That alcohol
Is just another person
With an empty promise.
Someone who will course through your veins
And leave a spark on your tongue,
But abandon you in the morning
To clean it up on your own.

Torches stood tall before you
As you gasped for an unattainable breath,
And the wind came through with the flick of a flame
And you dropped your wishes
Like the bottle crashing to the bathroom floor.
Because a city boy doesn't deserve another birthday.

Matthew
I'd rather drown in your ocean than swim another sea.
Nickels & Dimes
Your fish lips had a capacity for too many secrets.
Constable
I guess our forever had expired when hers was renewed.
Jacob
I never thought something so beautiful could be so ugly.
Perez
The only time I even cared was under the sheets.
Brown
Our two broken hearts could not seem to fit together.
Adam
You gave into her like a bleeding little blue boy.
Z
I never ordered arrogance with a side of passive aggression.
6'2"
Don't make me have to write a poem about you.

my eyes were more blue
but you never did tell me
you liked green seas too

You and I are just two lonely souls
Pretending we have something to hold onto,
Because when my eyes drift off into sleep at night,
I will realize that I never truly desired to be laying next to you.
And when you wake up in the morning to the smell of my perfume and the sight of our stained pillows,
You will find that a broken heart and a fractured mind cannot simply be won over by one-liners.

I always swore I never could
And never would
Fall for a pair of brown eyes.
But when our palms met
And our feet were in sync
And your eyes smiled bigger than your lips,
I wanted nothing more
Than to get lost in that world.
Your irises held their own secrets  
That I was destined to unravel,
And your pupils were pens
That told the story
Of a thousand shades
Of golden brown.

An alcoholic’s daydream
Became my neverending nightmare,
And a pair of promising eyes
Became my favorite little lie,
And a mind put on hold
Became the emblem of society,
And the matrix of my life
Became my own worst enemy.

Like smoke in my lungs, it is an acquired taste that I could not bring myself to quit. And now that I have, the flavor is unprecedentedly toxic.
2. Your name is merely a catalyst to my relapse. You turned your head away from it then, and I know you will turn your head away from it now.
3. To hear that beautiful arrangement of letters coming from my own lips only reminds me of the genuine smile on your face that you can only have when I am gone. And every time it makes me wonder if I truly mean it when I say I am happy for you.
4. I cannot reconcile what is with what could have been. Maybe if I was still yours and you were still mine, it would be endearing to say your name.
5. When it's 4 am and I am falling apart in my half empty bed, I cannot find the breath to utter your name between sobs.
6. I have spent too much time pretending that your absence has had no affect on me that I have not yet grieved. But, I could never pity myself without shouting your name into an empty void.
7. Maybe I am only idealizing you, but his name left a bitter taste and I have been craving yours on my lips.
8. I cannot say your name because I know that if you were to turn your head in recognition, I'd get lost in those blue eyes and fall for you all over again.
9. There is no logic behind how I inherited the right to say your name. Since you have left, this complacency is eating me alive and I am only left to wonder why someone so beautiful would have ever touched a soul like mine.
10. I cannot speak of your name any longer because it is no longer my privilege. It is hers to say now.

We always talked about watching the sunset,
Laying on the roof
Watching the lights of the city below us
As if they were stars forming constellations,
Pointing out people walking by
As if they were ants below our feet on the sidewalks,
Tracing each other scars
With the tips of my fingers
And your smooth, perfect lips.
But we never talked about the sunrise.
The moon doesn't stick around for the morning,
But neither did you.

You broke my walls down
And I let you.
But now my roof is crashing down too,
Because that was your escape route.

Her temple is beating against her brain much harder than it should be
As she lays in that hospital bed and counts the stitches on her best friend's eye
As if they are stars forming constellations in the sky over the sea.
She pulls at her hair, wishing her head would stop pounding.
But what if it wasn’t pounding?
What if that ***** in her chest stopped pounding against her ribs?
She cannot see that it is the only other likely outcome of such a disastrous night.
She can’t thank god for the chaos in her life
Despite the fact that it is the only thing keeping her alive.
This chaos is the recipe that is being pumped into that IV
Through her veins
And to her beating heart,
Keeping that ******* pulse beating heavily
Against her beautiful mind
That sees scars as constellations
In the sky over the sea.

Next time you make an empty promise
Shatter it against the concrete
And rip open my flesh with the sharpest point,
Pour salt in my wounds
And leave me to rust.
And then tell me again
How it pains you to see me suffer.
Darling, all this time you were killing two birds
With one stone,
But since when can I fly?

This roof over our heads can't make us a family.

We fell in love
In the summer
And as the colors changed,
He did too.
Only,
His change was not as beautiful
As the choreography
Of red, orange, and yellow leaves,
But rather the remains
Of the dead tree branches,
Leaving only
Cold,
Empty,
And eerie thoughts
Whistling in the autumn wind.

You were my calm before the storm,
But little did you know,
When you weren't around
I was dancing in the rain,
Under the limelight of lightning bolts.

The day you left me
I lost my mind in a bottle of Svedka,
And found the old me
Hiding in a blade.

I looked at you
And I saw stars in your eyes.
The kind of stars
You see in a winter night
Hanging in front
Of a deep blue backdrop.
And every color of the galaxy
Was imprisoned in your irises.
The more I looked,
I found that your heart
Was more unique than your eyes.
It lacked four chambers
And arteries
And veins.
It was not like every other heart.
It took the shape
Of a crescent moon
That seemed to shine brighter
Than the sun.
And I was envious.
I was just another robot,
With a pulse
But no purpose.
But your captivating beauty
Was merely a test.
And seeing that my lips
Can no longer verbalize
Of anything other than your eyes,
I clearly have failed.

Your name might as well be the bullet
In the chamber of this gun
Held at my temple
With a steady pulse beating against my brain.
And if that is the case,
My hands might as well be the ones on the trigger.

If you haven’t fallen in love with the way my lips call your name,
Then you surely cannot kiss them.
If you haven’t gotten lost in the riptide of my bright, blue eyes,
Then why should I point them in your direction?
If you don’t smile at the thought of me every time you hear Bruce Springsteen,
Then you should just change the station on your car radio.
And if the thought of me doesn’t terrify you more than any nightmare you’ve ever dreamt,
Then please darling, save us from ourselves and just walk away.

I am feeling very 3 AM.
Restless and lonely,
Craving a love,
Or a friend,
Or someone to fill the emptiness
And silence that consumes me,
As if the clock is stuck at 3 AM.
I'm used to 3 AM.
But one of these days,
I will feel 11 PM.
Invincible and alive,
In love with love,
And filled with joy.
Maybe one of these days,
I can feel 11 PM,
Even when the clock on the wall
Tells me it's time to feel 3 AM.

I may be a white rose,
but honey we have shadows too.

It's like every night,
I relive September 26.

When I was four I cried to my mom because I thought that one day, I was going to die.
And at about four o’clock this morning I cried to myself because all I wanted to do was die.

WHY THE **** WOULD YOU PROMISE TO BE MY ROCK IF YOU WERE SO UNSURE OF WHAT YOU WANTED. WHY THE **** WOULD YOU GIVE A BROKEN GIRL YOUR WORD IF YOU’RE ALREADY BROKEN YOURSELF. MAYBE BECAUSE YOU'VE ALWAYS HAD THE LUXURY OF HAVING SOMEONE PICK UP THE ******* PIECES FOR YOU. BUT THE BAND AIDS ARE LOSING THEIR STICK AND I’M RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE SO IF WE’RE JUST AN AVALANCHE THEN TAKE ME WITH YOU AND MAYBE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS MOUNTAIN YOU’LL MAKE UP YOUR MIND AND WE CAN PUT BACK THE PIECES TOGETHER.

I said goodbye
And stifled the tears with a reassuring
‘I know they will be back’.
But maybe,
Maybe I don’t know this.
Because I always thought you would come back,
But I haven’t seen you since the world last had color
And the birds still seemed to sing.

Leave me here
Up on my roof
Where the sun kisses my skin,
And the moon takes my heart,
And the lights of this town
Make up the stars of my own universe.

I thought you were too good for me
And then you reminded me
That my music was much louder,
And my eyes were a bit bluer,
And my hands were slightly gentler.
And that was when I knew I was ******.

I would ditch the keys
And walk to the end of the Earth.
Dancing along the way,
For the music is only in our heads.
The reflection of hope
And courage in your eyes
Could lead us down this road
To our own special place.
Along the rocks,
Amidst the sunset,
And below the breathtaking moon,
Where nothing else exists
But you and I
And this sad, empty town.

You loved me because I was innocent.
Naïve.
New.
But, darling
Your eyes were too blind
To the deeper meaning
Behind long sleeves
And solo cups.