You keep me in the breast pocket of a heavy winter coat
Tucked away with crumbled receipts
For shaving gel, condoms, and sleeping medication
Hidden close to your heart

You keep me in the pocket of the jeans you keep discarded on the floor
Under collared shirts and a sweatshirt you got from a club you never joined
Damp with the scent of my sweat and poorly made Chinese food
Because playing with you is like playing house, playing me in the kitchen, you in the office
Us in linen sheets

We're harmless
We're impossible (That's what you told me)
We're just a house that's not real, really
And an imagination that I've let run away from me

We're locked away in a box I keep on my desk
On the torn out corner of a note you passed to me from the pocket of your winter coat
We're crammed between ticket stubs and a cherry stem your tongue laced into a knot
In your sloppy cursive, coated with time in my sloppy optimism:
"I love you"

Little dandelions poked their heads out of the graveyard in my chest
And proclaimed to the permafrost and broken branches
That they weren't afraid of death

So my ribcage shook, the structure burst, the foundation crumbled in
And the dandelions laid flat, made foolish
Never to be seen again

You looked at me with the world on the edge of your tongue and didn't say a word to me
But I guess that's just how things are between us
How they've always been

We traverse the silence between the people around us
In the crawl space that nobody notices hiding behind
The sound of their own voice
That's where you pulled me into you and breathed in my scent

That's where I breathed in you
Olives, oranges, and sadness
You'd break the glass of any bottle they kept you in

I promise I'll never keep you

Could you love me with city lights in my hair
Threatening to go over the edge of our high rise affair
Toes on the railing, sights on something better
Somewhere beyond this eternally empty city

Could you love me with a skyline out in front of you
That's doused in purple and orange, and won't have to sneak out in the morning
To go to a meeting to schedule the meetings that are important
So that I can be prepared to die

Will you love me when I'm just lights in the night sky
Something you'll lose sight of a second time
In the burn of a city that makes you feel
Like you're floating while I'm sinking

Will you ever remember if you loved me
On the streets of a city that can't remember
If I was ever here at all

You're naked in my bed and I'm moving through my own veins
Feeling things that you're unaware my body has forgotten how to feel
Things that tucked themselves in the corners of my childhood bedroom
And hid behind a wall of blue-eyed insecure snapshots, hung by string
And laced so tightly it's been suffocating the air of out my heart

I'm so sorry that my whole life seizes when your hands are on me
And that my heart breaks when they're on someone else
Because we have made a mess out of the stickiness of my love
And you have made a mess out of me
Now scattered across these ivory sheets like little grains of sand that scratch my skin at night
Like legs sprawled across yours, and mouths that don't deserve the taste of each other

Your fingers are tracing out words, I can feel it
But I just can't feel what they are
If they're promises, apologies, endearments
Or option
D) All of the above

So I'll just let you watch me and imagine your teeth on my collarbones
While my innocence takes the trust fall into the openness of your sad eyes
And part of me will pity you because you're naked on my bed and I'm miles away
Searching for my naivety in between words I can't make out
Sitting on the tip of your tongue and holding me
Because you're naked
And I think I love you

I built myself a house with a door that never unlocked
And a welcome matt that said come in
I guess you could say I'm a tease at heart
If you could ever reach my heart that is

There were no blinds on the windows, but there was no way past the bars
You could look in from in between their iron teeth
You just couldn't get past their reach

I laid out teacups in a perfect line, and hung pictures of us on the wall
You could see throw pillows on the couch
And you could see my bedroom door

I built myself a door without a doorknob
And a room without a light

So when you sat on the sidewalk and said you loved the living room
And you love what I've done with the place
I could fall asleep in the darkness of a heart you couldn't touch
Where there's nothing beautiful to see

Your fingers found their way across my spine like raindrops on windshields
Without regret and without belonging there. They only stayed for a little while.

But you're still lingering in the living room
Where you drummed your fingers on his table because something I said was funny
He sets his coffee on that table every morning
It's the table that I've set his coffee on each morning for longer than I remember
He doesn't think I'm funny

My body doesn't remember what it feels like to be anything but his
And I hope it felt like being yours
Being beautiful, being touched, being held
Held is an action, it's a feeling when it's you
I feel held

And are you as tangled up in my feelings as I am?
Because they're sticking to me with static resiliency
They don't want to go
I don't want you to go

And now your teeth are on the tops of my ears
Nipping at my secrets
Because you can't kiss my scars

And your love has found its way into my life like rainclouds on summer skies
With purpose and with hesitancy. Where it will only stay for a little while

We curled up in the cheap glow of cheaper Christmas lights and swallowed romance down like English breakfast tea (your favorite), taking in gulps of candy colored warmth
That's how we kept this thing alive, if you're wondering
We wrapped ourselves in winter scarves on winter nights so that we could see the snow swirling, the Earth breathing, and not each other
You looked at the outline of my shoulders while I looked at the sky, and I wondered whether snowflakes jump from a home they don't feel like they belong in anymore
I'm floating through this dark expanse at the mercy of gravity, I'm pale, I'm different, I'm a lot of things
And when the holiday displays are tucked away and you're finally looking at me
Shedding my layers and naked without the blues and greens of tiny plastic lights
I'll hit the pavement and disappear
They'll be looking at the outline of you and you'll be looking at me
As pale and pretty as I ever was in the flurry of my melting winter melancholy
And in the blizzard of the way you can't quite explain to people what was beautiful about me
You'll think back to Christmas lights and tea
And you'll wonder why it couldn't keep me alive

Breathe in, don't forget to breathe out
Even the streetlights are tired tonight
We're wrapped up and naked in your sheets
And I can't untangle my legs from the soft cocoon of your ivory melancholy

Your breaths are cold, and I wonder how that's possible
Maybe it's cold inside your ventricles tonight
Maybe that's why I've been feeling so numb
Maybe not

Neither of us are speaking, only you're breathing
And I wonder where the thud of my heartbeat ran away to
I think you wonder too, but neither of us want to break the silence
So much is already broken

Breathe in, and we're both picking up on subtle notes of apathy and dissonance
It's a floral blend of apologies that neither of us owe each other
Breathe out and this whole room's on fire again

I'm too tired for this, and I'm too fragile for you
The moonlight is all caught up in your hair
There's a world out there dancing across your answering machine

I wonder who thinks of you when I can't anymore
I wonder who thinks of me
Breathe out and this will all be gone

Pale blue eyes and to do lists on my arms
I guess I'm not everyone's type

Crossing off miseries like milk and eggs
I'm wrapped in another stranger's sheets (again)
I take it back
I'm everyone's type but yours

Poems on crumpled napkins
Red lipstick and tipsy confessions
I guess I could if I wanted
If it would make you love me

As if anything could make you love me

Just bad music that everyone else grew out of
And cold hands from only being held in cold hearts
Why does loving myself feel like an affair?

Cinnamon tea and Splenda
I'm a certain flavor of je ne sais quoi
Good for winter nights, but not my favorite

Apparently not yours either

Your hands are on her waist now and my head burns
Oh, these steady, even, licking flames that tickle the linings of my heart
The sky's gone black and blue tonight

And I think it's a little bit sad, isn't it
That the way your fingers kiss her skin sets me off
Like an alarm that was never unset
Even after our funeral came and came again,
And we all put away our condolences on a shelf that only I'm still keeping clean
And empty

When your mouth is on the lines of her neck, the curves of her mouth, on her
My heart implodes
An inky, sticky stain that drips down into my bone marrow like rain, a deep and apathetic life support
A midnight blue promise that streams into the bullet-holes in my shoes
Promise me that this is not what morning looks like

And I hope this is how you feel
Battered.

When I find hands to fall on me too, and I really hope someday that I might,
I hope your blood gets viscous and gets caught under the edges of your skin
Just black little blurs peeking out unabashedly from behind your paper-thin touch

We all fall down, but I collapse quietly
Beaten to a small, smiling carcass that you can put away on a shelf
Discard me until the Spring thrashes against the frozen ground and strangles our winter
I'll be here, despondent

Her skin is warm and clean, I suppose
Yours is not. The ash will find you too
And I'll be here.

Search all you want through the strands of her hair
You'll never find it
And morning may never find me again

We both can only love me drunk

There are hands all over me, searching for something I'm not sure I have to give, something that's no longer mine to give if it's even there at all
There are these scathing, tracing, imploring hands all the ******* time, and their grasp tightens when I pull away, whispering "what's the rush, sweetheart"
And then kissing my shoulders, my neck, my hands.
God, these hands. This burning.
There are hands that are constantly touching me where I can't even touch myself, where I can't even stand to look.
Don't touch my stomach. Don't touch my thighs. Don't touch my scars.
Just don't. *******. touch. me.
Please, just... please?
They're in my hair now, on my waist then
around my neck
And still they're always wanting more. What part wasn't enough, I wonder.
Or maybe it was just all of me. But I'm so soft.
I'm so beautiful.
I'm so ****.
So I go back then, shameful, shameless, so **** ashamed, back into the dark, caressing cold
To spend another night shaking in another pair of hands to hold me
Please, just.... please
Why can't anyone please just hold me?

At eighteen I'm the scent of second-day hair with perfume in it
It smells like your bed, and my sweat, and your exhales, and my Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy . How middle school of me.  
I'm the cool touch of unwashed sheets on bare skin because the thermostat is fussy and I like sleeping naked
Just me, you, and this body that I don't like so much right now, but I'm eighteen, and I'm working on that.
I'm leggings while they still pass for pants, and the chewed up ends of pens in twenty different colors
Chinese homework has really turned me into such a biter, and I claim to love all those darling pens equally, but I show my blue pens the most love
I've teethed them half to death
I'm not even close to halfway to death assuming things go well for me. Oh, please let things go well for me.

At eighteen I'm the taste of chai and menthol because that's what's **** these days
I'm all about what's **** these days. Apathy, really bad electronic music, bare midriffs.
Funny since at eighteen I don't want anyone to touch me
This body is my project, please don’t even look at me like this, all insecure and exposed. Please just let me curl up, and please let me be by myself.
I wish my mother were here to bring me a popsicle. My throat hurts from all the screaming I do these days.

At eighteen I guess I'm still a little angsty, but I just want you to love me
God, do I want you to love me.
I want you to patronize me with the warmth of your arms and undress me with strong, resolved hands
Don't touch me, just look at me and tell me that I'm perfect and naive because at eighteen I'm still milky white, soft, and broken
I'm a sight for sore eyes, a new sight, your sight
For god's sake
Just love me.

I would dig you an ocean if you'd swim in it, but you would always insist it's too cold. And I could take all the energy I invested in your happiness and warm the entire ocean over, but then you would say it's too warm, or too *****, too big, too small.
I would build you a home if you'd live in it, but you would complain about how the floors creak, and how everything isn't just exactly how it should be. I could sweep all of the dust under the couch where you would never see all of the leaks, and holes, and cracks, but you wouldn't even like the furniture. You wouldn't like any of it.
I would take all my love back if I knew how to - how to drain an ocean of years upon years of tears that I wasted on you.
But you took my love with you when you left for the other side of this country. And while you sit in a beautiful new house, looking out at a beautiful new ocean, I'll be here, in this miserable dry spell, hoping that if I swim all the way across this ******* ocean that it will bring me back to you.

I. You said you would always be there for me
II. Then you weren't
III. It's fine though
.... I'm over it

If I could be anything I would be the imprint your bodyweight leaves in your mattress when you pick yourself up (again). I would like to be the curve of your back when you're tired and it's late, but there's still work to do, and the way your shoulders start to cave under your sense of obligation. I want to be the way your heart breaks when your father calls, and the knowledge that he will never love you like I do. I want to be the cracks in the tiles where the ground split open under the weight of the sadness you discard on the bathroom floor every time you step into your shower. I want to be the misery that runs down your drain as you wash away the dusty coating this world has left on your skin. I want to be the place your eyes wander to when you can't look at me: the broken sight of your self-loathing. And when the acid in your stomach has torn through the dwindling reserves of your tangled sense of place, I would be the anchor restraining the winds that rush through your sails. If I could be anything, I would be the way you inhale every time I leave, and the gravity that I'll never understand that brings you back to me.

It was just the tips of your fingers and the way they weren't ashamed to be between mine. The way your skin's not mine, and mine will never be yours, but you loved its freckled smoothness anyways. It's just because my heart broke when every word you passed to me in two a.m. dizziness turned itself into a confession, and the way your eyes gave you away, and apologized for wanting to not be alone tonight.
It's raining today, and I'll never be the weight upon your chest at night, or the pitch you'll tune your self-acceptance to. But I will be the grogginess of morning that never lasts forever, but never fails to come back, and I will love you like the very saddest memory I keep away in my chest. It's not important, but it's where my mind goes when it's windy, so I guess I'll love you there. In the spaces where no one sees it, because no one sees us.
It's just because your smile broke when you said that nothing hurts you. Well, that's certainly not true.
But I will love you like the ocean at midnight, a stillness I'm never allowed to swim in, and can only love from  distance.
But I promise to love you anyways.