Hills are climbed for coasting
Trudging the upward *****
crunching your breath
legs burning and aching
pressing the pedals to the pavement
for the thrill of the drop

but darkness can hide in overactivity
insufficiency
inadequacy

and after the climb
I find myself pumping the gears
desperate to catch traction on the fall
to keep pushing
when all the wind wants me to do
is

    release.

Bury yourself under leagues of depth and absence of breath
Breaching the surface beneath some fabricated ideal of ****** appeal
Ha.

I wanted you for a moment
Within me and daunting,
Apathetically haunting the halls of my body

How ideal

Till playfulness and zeal gave way to a sadistic rope of detest and resentment
Wrapped around my throat

In drapes of kindness and soulful touch
Eclipsed by the blush of
Nervous lust

Ha

You never were a friend to me
You just want my body

Well kindly get in line
and you will find
The stagnant flaccid undermined
Ability to invalidate my bisexuality
Because god forbid

God forbid

You actually ******* want me for me.

i got to hold you yesterday

                               all seconds of the day

and bring a smile to your face
on a difficult monday

i hate the tears in your eyes
but i'm so glad i get to wipe them
  
                                  before they dry

I can talk about it

Easy

How my body slips between the sheets
The things I do while on my knees

It’s beautiful

I’m proud of the pleasure of my skin
Always looking for ways to win
The attention of what makes me feel good

I can talk about it

But does holding that pleasure
And lustrous needs
Out of the hands of hungry thieves
Deplete my sexuality?

I don’t think so.
I’m no lesser of promiscuous
Because I pick and choose of us
Those I share myself with

talk is cheap - that's why we bought it.

mourning the loss of people who never existed
you painted a picture


and i believed it.

hearts can lie sometimes.

in the simplicity of the moment, when the ache and burn of need
so purely bleeds

hearts can lie sometimes,

when you awake to find the need has leaked and you must leave a perfect thing for evidently no
reason.

hearts can lie sometimes.

if you get what you deserve
just know it isn't what you've heard

the devil has a way with words.

How to be alone
Is something you claim you don’t know

And I agree

You’ve buried your identity in the ***** of others
People with higher shelves and faces more likely
To recognize in a crowd

And then you polished and shined and rode and dived into endeavors
The others defined
As their lifeline

Including mine

And I stopped and padded and wrought lost savage
And dusted away each
Tribulation nestled in the waves of your skin

To find the you within
That you for so long failed to recognized

And I’m not sure how I thought this time
some frankenstein
Would stay with me
With scissors for hands
Or stitches in your neck
All cosmetic

But internally is where I sewed the thread
Fought to bring your heart to life
The fire in your eyes

So now you tread so easily
Upon the hands that used to feed

You

Day in and day out
Fighting
Defying lying

Compromising

Flashback Coddling and coaxing
Gently supporting each idea of independence

And maybe the mountain I climbed
With you astride
Reached a summit I didn’t want to see

Where you realized you were free

And I carried your dead weight
And led your legs

To stand on your own

Found the fire in your heart
Let it glow

Until it flowed

Into roaring flames

And that’s why text of black on lightened screens within my hands
Holds lists of names—
Demands

That I not forget the ones who stoked my fire
Lit my fuse
And watched me fly

I’ll call them out each and all by name
Because I hope I never gave them pain

The way you have
In bursts and blows
When I tugged you to that summit
On twisted rope
I tore from my body
Combined of my soul

Cared to see you fly

Now you want to be alone

I laid in my efforts and left to your heart
And you took these tools and found light in the dark

Long has since passed of small pathetic tremors
In uncommon bedrooms and soft down white covers

Your ceaseless tears and your face in my neck
Crying of all the things you didn’t have left

and I’d take back nothing to see you fly this high
To see your ascent
And how hard you’ve tried

I knew it was in you
I didn’t do this FOR you
I simply provided the foundation’s
Fortitude

So how to be alone is now what you ask
Maybe that’s how I should’ve let you conquer the task

But I’ll wrap up my pain in ribbons and parchment
Glued with intention and my small sins, repent

now it is freedom you claim to pursue
But if you, from me learned,

Maybe one day you’ll return

my hair isn't as blonde as it used to
but i still use my purple shampoo

it reminds me of you
                    and how you liked the way it turned your hands blue

Am I putting myself first?

       Not enough?                      Too much?
i feel im going to burst .....

It took me long to learn to be selfish
                                and now those lessons

                know no bounds and in certain times
                 I’m found

Being petulant
  
                                                  And aggressive


         with my tongue.


I hate the feeling
         Fighting internal bleeding
                       of my very soul
        
      the one I finally told
                                               to stand up.

As she reveals herself from the pit of neglect
              she rears an ugly head

         is this something I can regret?

Let it go and let her out
                Learn to grow               but I find out

a horror in my capabilities


             Is this unlearning?
        
                                   or is this
                                                          Me­?

You don't have to tell me why
my gods look like you

My hell was populated with gray clouded flames,
merciless darkened waves,
All-encompassing and blinded by faith
of new tastes

and everything remained the same
                                         sickening gray.

But you tasted like spring
with a touch of grace
and suddenly I could say
the things I felt and learned to need

outside of me.

Instead of drowning in ropes of flashflood restraint,
I clung to your hips
and learned to worship

at the ground of something
                                                   holy.

cold sweats in the winter
     are a different breed of agony
i shiver in my heat
         and damp sheets
staring up at the ceiling fan
        begging its blades to drip down the wall
     and surround me
confined to the safe isolation of my room

no more bodies warm my sheets
i'm tired of cycling through empty feelings
           pulling love with my teeth

i'm tired
                                   i'm tired
                 i'm tired

there must be more than this uncertainty

dreams resume

where slipped between the sheets again
with you

lazy afternoons
intrude and coat my rash decisions
with regret

i've spent far too long
              compromising my sense of self
grating my back against the broken shards of angry takers

i'm giving my best to the wrong set
               cracking my chest over and over
and before the breach heals
                 i hand the chisel
                         to a new set of hands
unrelenting and unforgiving

                                  i should still remain a light
                                  i should still remain in love

it's all i know how to be
                            all i can see
is the very best of people
                            even if they're mean

there's no glory in this test
i'm just rolling stones up unrelenting hills
                        
                                  ­      hoping for the best

I wish when you said you loved me
       you didn’t have your fingers crossed

I've already thought of the worst things I could do to you
cyclically
incessantly

a game of control and nothing more

yet it hadn't crossed me to consider
the worst things you could do to me

until i was met unmoving with your heat
and I retreated

                 how uncharacteristic.

                                              ­                         how exciting.

i wish i hadn't spent as much time
                                    fantasizing
i wish i hadn't spent as much time
                                   idealizing

because I passed a stop sign on the road
somewhere in monroe
and i cried
and i cried
and i pounded the steering wheel with tired hands
and i thought about how you abandoned me

i miss the heights of the bridge
above rushing water
i miss throwing pine straw in the cold
when my sadness grew hotter

i miss black coffee in bed
and endless songs
i miss learning the drums
and the long
                                                  saturday afternoons

the blues in your eyes turned from water to ice
the last time you looked at me,

when i realized you aren't nice
                                                                                          anymore.

In the false spring, there was light

                                                               Epiphany

                               Eureka in technicolor

But blinders above centrifugal spokes
                     scattered through prisms
           a deflection of armor
And
                  
                                   The rain came.

                                                                                       Light remained.

But what previously perceived
                       as vibrancy
was shattered in repeat streams
                       of disbelief
over every evil stitch seamed
                       in the fabric of my clothes
                                                                     And Rose-

Colored glasses gave way
                                                without rest
                external tempest
                                                with self-inflicted misery
I could not leave.

                                                                    And now I see
that the foyer of this love
                                               was not chromatic
                                               was not prismatic
                    though gaudy, flashy this all-encompassing
Prison of color
                                  was nothing but
           mediated, alternating, monopolizing
                                  preoccupying
                                                                    Shades of Blue.

                And then there was you.

The false spring melted down
                    to fragments in cracked glass
Wiped my blood from broken mirrors
                    no longer asinine and crass
Still mentally impounded
                                                 in emblems au courrant
Took a sip from poisoned drips
                                                                   just one more scar to flaunt

But every day in smaller strides
                                 the forage cleared and scorched
The winter came with sleet and
                           Rain
                                                             another touch to tortured

And as the ice begins to melt
                       and false spring lays to rest
With you there are no problems except
                                                                         where to be happiest

If my body is a temple
I built it for you
Let you dwell in every room
And corner cribs of cobwebs
Because with sideways glances I’d swoon

I am all for you

I let you set chests and nests and hang pictures of us from the wood of my ribs
Snapping in northbound hotels
Bottles and swells of love
In upcoming absence
Never a doubt

I slipped and I fell and I didn’t do well for you
I know
I know

But before you gave me air to try
To prove that you and I were something good
No temporary high
You tore the shots from the splintering cage
You had recently laid
With me between

Now my bed is as empty as the halls of my body
This temple is nothing but rubble and sully
You said you would love me
You said you would stay
I patiently rode all the swells of your waves

And I’m sorry

I’m sorry the briars that join at my chest
Weren’t polished or silver
Or quite good enough

for you

I’m sorry you couldn’t make a home in me
I’ll curl to your voice and plead you won’t leave

Forever

If you weren’t us
You’d laugh at us

I wish I could believe it as I careful pried vessels from saved beating security
Reached into my chest
And gave you the very best
Of me

I wish I’d been enough

I wish you would stay

My hollowed out beatless heart
Reeks of decay

Of the chance I took on you
So sure
I was sure
I was sure
I am sure

You’ll come back to me

But I’ve always been good at lying to myself
False hope and future blows seem to
Silence the swells
As my life and my love drains in lines down my face

I never thought loving you meant you would break

Me

I’ll still think of Little girls lying in daffodils
Every lit candle, and egg white whiskey sours
And warmth overcoming
The sleek of your skin
I’ll still feel you running
From The weight of my sins

And I’ll be here in patience and kindness and wait
Even though when You ended me I couldn’t take
It

Please stay

But you’ll leave they all leave I’d said nothing to pay
The price of my toll causes none to delay
I’m sorry my head held shadows in corners
And doubted yourself
When facing my currents

I’d reach out and say I’d be better to you
I’d try with my might, all your mountains, to move

It’s you from the wreckage
The scars
And the war

It’s you who’s stayed standing at the stage of my fronts

I’ve seen you forever like none before
And that’s why, though I cried,
Please still know that our door


Is still open



                                 if you change your mind

i got just what was coming
and you got just what you wanted

Don't ask me if i see it,
or throw words in blatancy
if you think i haven't noticed how your bones feel
under me

when i look away or play you off
and hard resist
to indulge those thoughts
its cause i'm caught
in my debilitating illness

sans flaws sans scars in all you are
I'm wary of your mind
because in this mentality,
I fear its just like mine.

it's easy to digress and stress
over predetermined endings
and inevitable sadness
pain granted by the calling for its opportunity
in efforts not to rule out the possibility

it's easy to build bones thicker than walls
of resentment and regret
when the brick and mortar are laid
by the weak foundation that caused it to break

it's easy to place hate in the hands of owing grace
and half smiles face the tides
of even keeled
untimely fate

it's easy to blame the sand
for causing the waves to break
in forgiveness and space
no landslide wretched,
i always remained

with all the change, there was always space
in the marrow of my bones, i built homes
for you and me
plenty
for each time you may leave

and each time i will hope patiently
because maybe
it could be
                   or maybe it couldn't

let's just not rule out the possibility

i tried to put on paper the way you make me feel
blotted onto a back lit screen
and on the pages littering the corners of my room

i tried to make sense of weighted absence in my bed
still sunlight, stripping my sheets,
golden as your hair in the morning

i tried these things and many,
my methodical, logical mind turning circles over and around
the shape of your body and
                                                   the walls of your mind
bouncing over the articulation of your voice
still resonating on the walls of my room

and i came to a comfortably uncomfortable denouement
that liking you
was absent of reason,
                                         conclusion,
                                                                         solution,
no resolution
                                       adequate for the disgruntled mathematician
                        hired for the rationalization of my brain

how insane

                                       so i'll remain

infatuated with the colors in your eyes and the dull thud of your feet on the earth
no attachment to acumen, let my hand off the rip cord
and trust that the fall and the pain it may bring

is so unquestionably worth having you, having me.

I was told once that emptiness is bliss

So I pumped my blood full of

ignorance


And temporary fixes

the throbbing pain of a headache the drugs won't let me feel

call me,

                               i still love you

investment in yourself is highly encouraged
never likely
and usually exciting

but what they don't tell you
that's quite the most frightening
is sometimes they spit it back
and you lose all,

just like me.

I love my family more than anything
I just wish they were gentler
                                                      wit­h me

I am so deep in my insecurity
Only certain that you’ll leave me
Before I even have you

How ******* crazy do I have to be
To show you the worthless and useless
Decrepit pile of wreckage and filth
I call “me”

It’s unending

The tantrums thrown in my brain
In disdain of the atrophied cells in my body
Breeding this feeling
And knowing you’ll see everything

And want absolutely nothing to do with me

my limbs creak with metallic rust
and i dust off the wires in my brain
far less humane
than acknowledging the steady feed
of coded numbers contracting my muscles
and moving throughout the days

i hate this place

but there is absolutely no trace
of life within me
aside from the mundane fog of rolling admission
cycling through the space between my ears
dulling all my tears
and scaring me into a shackled hell
of cycled fear

and i feel
                      absolutely

                                                nothing.

i wish it was easier

            i wish some switch in my methodical brain sent streams burst through the levies

                                       a safe space to land
in all encompassing darkness

  
       but love stays

                                      which makes this pain

                                                                                  unbearable.

im mourning us
                                                   while holding onto what i begged and pleaded the universe
                                        to return to me

But she turned a deaf ear
so now we're here


and I can't yet fix everything.