The sky, once holding it's light inside like it was underwater
Finally exhaled.
The Heavens could breathe once more
And I saw the morning peak through the clouds.
It was still cold
But a little warmer after the sun's relieved sigh.
I threw my arms open,
The swing of my ribs was horizon-wide -
Something inside me was alive

I never realized how intimate the thrum of music is through a pair of cheap, distorted, BIC headphones. Outside of the drum, the world will peter through crooks and cracks to listen in on whatever is allowed.

That must be why I never noticed how in love I was with this song.
I never knew how to feel until it cornered me,
a wide-eyed listener,
into a vacuum of noises and floating words where just the two of us lingered,
cupped my face so passionately that I can still feel the red etchings burning on my cheek,
and warmly told me what truly felt right.
I hadn't realized that I wasnt listening before.
I think it left an imprint on my soul.


The chorus sang with thousands of tongues
like an ensemble of angels holding small flames in a dark night,
waving with same sentiment that those do at a vigil.
The beautiful clatter was louder than it had ever been before,
yet somehow,
still too quiet for someone a few feet away from me to hear.


And then I looked at you.


And the shallow noises of the world were nothing more than a dull, numb throb.
We -
in this unspoken singularness
- locked eyes for a moment.
Yours widened. I'm sure mine did too.
Goosebumps cascaded down my spine like the fierce tides of a messy waterfall.

Thousands of ideas fired through my mind of what would happen if you and I truly - really actually - had followed through and built a future together.
My synapses roared with desire.
My heart howled,
Stroking the tinder of a waning want that was now rapidly reawakening.
And I, the victim to these chemical emotions, was forced to look at something that was so right but yet, wasn't real.

And as the chorus paraded on like the pulse that was thudding violently beneath my skin, I realized that it was telling me how I really felt all along.

I love you so

It told me what I was feeling before I even knew it.

I love you so

That at the end of the night, you are the last person I want to talk to.

I love you so

That in my dreams, you always find a way to steal the performance.

I love you so

And that I actually am in love with you.

I love you so

My cynicism for what had transpired between us was suddenly nothing more than a passing yellow light, holding together the long silence between us like one holds their breath underwater.
I felt like I was the runner at the Olympics, and someone was telling me to steal the never-ending fire and run as far away as I could with it.
I really wanted to.
I still really do.

I must add, for the sake of conversation, that being alone with you feels kinda wrong.
It feels obtrusive, and it feels as though what shred of innocence it once contained has now been burned with reckless abandon.
It's what keeps me from talking with you until sunrise like before. It's something we knew would happen.
It's a little awkward.

However, it is right. This is not an opinion, it is a fact. You challenge me to grow. You change my mind everytime. I see what you're meant for. I see what you're meant to be. Us together is more right than anything else I've ever known, I'm sure of it.

But all day dreams aside,

The moment I admit that this interaction had any effect on me - that it was leaving my heart squealing in my stomach, more so - is the moment I loose face and everything that I worked for is lost. And I can't do that. I don't know where you are. I can't do that. I can't get hurt.

I love you so

I am in love with you, and I just wanted you to know.

I love you so

Please don't be the one that got away.

the silent hum of peace is strumming on my heart.
i turn my head to the sky, freedom on my lips.
the horizon is pink with whimsy, with slumber,
and i think of the mountains in their stoic ways.
i think of you when you fled to the clouds
in their richness, in their roar of rain to come.

it is not a question of will i see you again?
as i close my eyes, a smile creeping forth.
it is not the scars ripping open again as
the tears bleed themselves into life.
the cold shiver of peace is firing through my veins
as dawn breaks, cleansing and free.

it is a knowing peace - i think i love you enough
i think i know - i know that i know
*i will see you again

And so I've learned to swallow it.
The counter arguments. The insults.
The countless times you've done worse.
I could win every argument you throw at me but I won't,
Because I'm hurt over it.
Because I'm enraged.
Because you and your senseless words spell that
No matter what I say, no matter what I do
I am pathetic.
I am the lesser.
I am nothing.
I have learned that victory is tasteless around you
Because I still end up wrong,
Because you never hear me.
You never heard the weight of my emotions,
My anxiety, my OCD, the reason I went on the pills,
The reason why I drink myself to sleep some nights,
The reason why I'm different.
Why bother?
It always falls down the empty void of
"You're too sensitive. You're too sensitive. You're too sensitive."
I have learned to swallow it because I have learned that
You don't want to listen to someone who is burgeoning with emotions no one else knows how to hold.
I am shaking and my throat is burning but I'm not worried
Because I have long since memorized the hellfire of anxiety.
I know the dance of panic attacks step by step.
I know how to laugh it off even though I'm dry heaving in the bathroom stalls because
I know how to ******* endure.

I will swallow this encounter and swallow every insult you hurl at me as this wrong against you keeps rising from the dead
Because even though I'm the devil to you,
You wouldn't have it any other way.

I am something a spectator, heart spilling with whimsy.
The sky is a carnival, closing its doors all too soon
And I am the last guest standing.
Mouth agape in utterings of wistfulness,
I am dripping in the sort of sun-drunk awe that falls in love with
Spinning lights and
Phantom screams of laughter.

The world was pushing me cotton white lillies
But all I saw were rose petals flooding in the breeze.

My kisses were stars in the sky
Never ending, bright as can be
But even those started blinking out,
Flickering like candle light.

Wide eyes stuck on the moon,
*I never could keep my eyes on the road when driving with you.

I like the way you look at me
As you watch me leave.

I like how you gaze at the sight.
Just as the sun slowly watches the sky darken
Before the night.

I think of you on airplane flights.
Head in the clouds
Dreaming of home,
The dizziness of touching the sky has gotten to me,
I swear
There was never much air up here anyways.

Exceptionally so, I am completely myself cumulatively by everything in my past; a shadow of all that once was, folding and stretching before all that is to be. Yet in the same way, I am tied together with you. All the threads that have sewn us into a whole are now bound together. My completeness is not founded by nor complimented by you, but so heavily compared to yours, that I do not wish to live without you if I cannot stand it.

You call me
I am running, ripping through the night
I am running towards you, again and again
I see the smoke rise and I feel my feet move,
Sparks blitzing from my toes.
I am running to hear that I will be free -
You still see through me like hushed glass in a window.

You know that
I am not running to feel your warm touch
I am not running because our hearts are kindling
Though I think I am.
I am running when you snap
Because the flames are dancing once again
And I have yet to realize that

*I am not your fire
I am just your matchbox.

And suddenly, I felt the stares heavy on me.
Eyes snapping and pinching into my bare skin,
Gazes bearing marble-weight,
Boring into my little black dress like eternity.

*** in the air, dreams in my exhales
Flashes of a naked me as my drinks fall on their tab -
As I love my angel wings away
One feather at a time.

Something of a me is stuck on the secondhand, swinging
She is letting the stars sing to her
About memories scattered beneath the night sky.

I loved learning that little language of yours
In the midday noon highs
When the sun would tick from golden to red
Setting ablaze to all our study time.
(We rolled down hills in fits of laughter.)

I never could quite catch that accent -
The way you'd allign your stars and rest your pride,
Or shake off my stupid little wrestles
With just the double tap-tap on my thigh.

Your voice is gone now,
Except for howls on the midnight eves.
It soars on winds, lost in tornadoes,
Quick and blitzing on the summer breeze.

We are a strange blend of flesh and soul,
Ripping through the dead grass of another's
Night-time moans
And morning-time groans
Absentmindedly,
With our eyes turned towards
A map of stars
Hidden by a strange sort of azure -

We chant for the hot meat and cold drink
To wet our lips,
To slide down our throats
Ravenously,
And fill a place within us that we know
Will always be hollow;
A place that will never know the pleasure
Of being whole.

Those were the days,
When spring time was everyday,
When every morning was the smell of fresh cut flowers and dew,
When clouds lolled lazy in your eyes
And song birds burst forth like laughter in the sky.

Then you'd called me Peaches,
Or sometimes Peaches and Cream,
And though you used the term sparingly
I could hear the gold in your voice,
Or see the pink in your cheeks,
Back in those pink days.

It was yours, all yours,
And no one else's.

I thought I was worth a song
A bouquet of flowers, a love letter
But I soon learned that
My curves were just harpoon meat
Drowned under cheers
At the whale sightings

But beneath it all I'm just a child:
Wide-eyed,
Petrified,
And by chance adept at
Hollow construction
And steel walls.

How can I continue to build what we have
If you're so hellbent on deconstruction,

How can I love you
If you keep destroying me.

A morning with you and your rumbling stars,
Dancing about the room with smiles running off my face.
There is someone tapping on my brain,
There is something telling me that this wrong,
Reminding me that tomorrow would think twice
Before giving you up to me.
Can't you see the diamonds in my eyes,
Can't you hear my heart blitzing on it's toes
As it makes a break for the Heavens above?
Can't you see that we would be the best of the best,
We'd be precious, like you would say, love -
My God! We'd be great.

There is a scratch in my voice when we part ways, though -
It is the part of me that knows that you
Will never hold my hand
Or long to kiss my morning lips,
Heavy with slumber.
You will never know a day-dreaming me
Screaming giddy as her character dies,
And you will never see me as I crawl across the sheets
To fit into the groove of your arms.
I swallow my next breath before the truth
Rips itself into existence -
I will never let you know.

the touch of light on the pavement tells me that you are still here.
you are just a few feet away, bustling among the business of your mind.
you are apart from me by just paper thin walls.
whether that sets me at ease, or sends my heart in frantic sprints for the door -
i do not know.

In the thrilling saga that is
My Neurosis
I have finally decided to
Seek help -
Popping prozac,
Coupled with telling a
Kind woman
About my three hour WebMD purge sessions
And
My deep fear of speaking out loud
For about
Fifty minutes a week.

The next chapter will be titled
"Support Groups: Sitting In a Circle With Strangers As We Compare Our Obessive Spirals on Fears of Death, Fears of Living, and Fixations With Folding Laundry."

And it always comes in like a bombshell -
For the next few days the world is whitewashed,
With all the lights incredibly bright
And for a while,
My ears are wringing out all of the
Tumtulous
Noise waves, washing away
Everything but
what's essential to survive.

I broke the spell,

Skin raw with burn marks,
I look towards the sky -
The clouds are still gorging themselves
With a deluge of dancing fire,
But I no longer wince with pain
Yearning for you.

I'm free.

And I've given you upwards of a thousand songs,
Cementing tunes
Into my everyday blues

and like a broken down carousel,
your expiring love notes
have a way of making my world spin
once again

And the Earth -
always, the smell of the Earth haunted his dreams.
He always woke lost to the scent of pungent pines and vegetation,
or soaking soil with the dust after rain drifting away from him
like a night-companion that knew nothing but
morning-after abandonment.

He couldn’t shake those nights -
they were a disease that plagued him, tauntingly,
letting him function in the day but still
keeping phantom hands across his heart.

The pink sky is abridged, forever and free
While my breath is tuned to sing like clouds -
Impossibly loud, but soft like slow music,
Bach, Beethoven, and free.

I break every rule for you.
We walk the thin wire between sunrise and something more,
With ****** feet
Two blots, horizon bound,
Wobbling and free.

You try to kiss me
But my words send a flurry of gusts into
The fading night.
They are crimson, they are gasoline,
They are scattering colors over our skies
As you take my breath from mine
Forever and free.

Blue and pinched, blue and finished
My great escape from warm knuckles brushing
And passioned fists clenching
Was drawn up, sketched and written,
A thousand goodbyes swarmed in my lungs.

But the watering whites welled for the first time,
Cracking your marble silence
and spilling consequences left and right.
My plan screeched, I stopped dead in my tracks.

And I thought,

Even if this ******* hurts
I oughta stay and stick this one out.

Which means I've hit a bottom.

I just need to tell this to someone:

I can't do it with the fatigue.

I can't. I just can't.

I'm so ******* ******* myself that if I loose my energy, I loose my grip. I'm done after that. I can't do it with the fatigue.

I'm going against the doctor's orders, but I think that's okay. I'm scared, **** it! I'm scared about a lot of things, and most of all I'm scared of depression. I'm so terrified of it. It scares me.

So tomorrow I'm going back to my 40. Back to my 40. Back to my 40.

And it'll be fine.

you stand so close to me,
but you can keep doing it babe -
it's sort of reckless to for me to like it,
but it makes me think that there's beauty in a racing heart.

one hour ago and

My hours with you are spent tiptoeing on a fence, white picket, strange and thin, and I don’t think I’ve ever known the footing needed to keep that kind of balance
With the lightning showering down beside me, arms length away and angry,
And the wind whistling around me with the sort of aloof fingers that do not linger playfully in my hair like they used to.

two hours now and

My hours with you leave me wandering home with scratch marks on every inch of  my skin but my body welcomes it, I think truthfully these limbs are a little giddy
And somewhere above the insincerity of it all the stars are peaking through asking me to believe in a sort of sadness that is now foreign to me
But God I don’t want to, God that felt so good.

I don't want to believe in her valley lights.
I don't want stars in my eyes,
Baby fever
Stuck to sunday sermons and sticky sin.
They say
The indica tinted company
Leaves me burning through heights
And cooing for eternity.
They say
I need a shower
And missed the mark in all places,
Including my voter's ballot.

My life is in boxes
And a valley of people are praying for me.
My life is in boxes
And i just want to breathe.
My life is in boxes
And my parents say they will miss me -

The knots are untying,
my god i'm ready to leave,
My life is in boxes
And i'm actually
Just starting
To finally feel
*free.

My cat died and from there it only got worse.
I keep doing the things I said I wouldn't do,
Like listen to sad songs
And think about you.

there are blinking lights riding with the stars,
they are casting shadows on the moon.
my blinking lights are locked on the stars,
did you ever wonder if this was all for you?

Why do we think we can save eachother?
How would rings dressed in silver,
Whole and ceaseless,
Make us complete?

You can have the skies,
You can have the seas!
You can have the whole **** world,
But you can't have me.

We would find eachother in the mornings
With pine dancing on the still breeze
Dew bursting green, kissing the sky
You and I would talk all night.

Now youre roaming hospital halls,
Flowers clutched under that ghostly pale face
And none of these bustling nurses will tell you where to go
Before the petals whither and die.

What have I for you?
Flesh and bone, curves for clutching,
Or maybe there's more.

I don't want to sit in the car with you for hours
And pick through your brain;
I don't want to comb through my memories
And give you a piece of me

No

I want to **** you around and kiss you
Like I've been waiting my entire
Adulthood
To do this;
I want to hold you, and be next to you
And swim through the sheets
With your starry eyes
Staring up at me

Lights

cross into forbidden territory,
Years stretched into eternity before I knew:
I have never felt this way before

You were sitting there,
Golden like a goddess,
With your eyes wagging lazily
Between the clutter and clatter of
Four jagged edges that made up
One sticky bartop.

The piano bounced in heavy thumps and steps
Like six inch heels
On a graceless girl
Who is dragged through the streets
Only by the sweet bait
Of a lover's giggle
To a hotel room that feels
A lot like home.

Your hands and face and eyes
Are pink as they pick through the pile,
Slotting in and out of Coach and Lucky
For a little black dress.
The thinning hallway smells like burnt cigarettes
And used condoms.

Arms folded like laundry,
Hair falling like linen,
I can smell the Coco and pushed out ahs
Fogging up my sight, dizzying and sultry,
As you dive beneath what feels like a thousand white sheets.
Sticky, wire-lashes sink
Under mountain-high, colored-cotton threads.

Your eyes are the glow of a casino.
You look right at me,
And I've won the lottery.

And when the evening retires, curtains drawn
You hear nothing but the shattering din of failure
Echoing in your ears.
Behind your eyelids, you see nothing
But the teetering memories of horror
As they sink themselves into a framed existence within your mind.
And in your chest, your heart is contracting far too fast
In dancing spasms, it is heaving, leaning on the
Blanch white counters for support
Asking why the world is spinning and will we be okay?
Somewhere beneath the tireless groans of your flesh
You look at the moon hanging in the night once more
And though the blood is tumbling through your veins
At a speed that yearns for cleansing from the cringes of today's mistakes
You take a deep breath - breathe -
You let the warmth of repose reach your bones -
You are doing your best, you tell yourself,
*You will be okay.

I fumbled through a description of what I was feeling, with little to no decipherable plot and/or chronology of the events that had happened to me. I picked through the memories and seasons of on and off depression as a child picks through blades of grass absent-mindedly, abstaining from truly feeling and connecting. I was afraid. She knew it. I knew it. My body knew it, and spoke in silent volumes to convey that it did not want to be there. How powerful the human consciousness must be then to override the desire to bolt, finding purpose in the unknown - or perhaps, how invertedly weak to find danger in fifty minutes of in depth conversation.

I could listen to you talk
From midnight to morning rush hour

I would watch the headlights pile up on the 101
And the sun climb up the horizon
To the hum of your voice

Pretty boy, pretty girl -
Big **** and big ol' brown eyes -
Somewhere between the moon,
The pink twisted clouds,
And the slow setting sun.

And some days the hours run like
Black and white films.
Flickering shadows,
Blank noise,
The hours tick by
Like clicks on a Kodak roll.
Between it all,
A mind as handsome as
The fool on screen
Taps the light
To bring the scene
To an eggshell cream.

i like to think you like it when i hold you
you like to prove me wrong

All the loose laces of my childhood
Are being strewn into one
Big,
Fat,
Lethargic
Bundle
And I am
Knot sure
How to feel

Cortisol and oxytocin

The conversation rolls on like fields outside a car window

Sometimes, it's jagged like mountains, cutting between debates and interruptions

Other times, it shines like city lights, filled with sweet "mmhmm"s.

I'll talk your ear off if you let me.

I want to unbutton myself

tick-tick-tick

I want to unzip my mind
And unclick the years
That have settled into memories
Because I love the way you change these things

I want to show you it all
It's self-indulgent, I know
My words turn to clutter
I haven't gotten any older, have I?

I Want You To Meet My Cat.

I Take More Pictures Of Myself Smiling Because Of You.

Also I Told My Mom About You, So It's Basically Official Now.

I Know I Orbit You A Lot Sometimes I Just Can't Stop.

Something About Looking Into Your Eyes Is Different Now.

Looking At You Makes Me Think That Love Is Underrated.