The sad thing is that sometimes you're still there
In the back of my mind
In the tangle of my sheets
In the afterglow of our love
And no matter how I try to wash you down
With an overdose of one-a-day lovers
Who love me even less than you did
You're taste is still there
Forever written across my tongue
Like the bitter and inevitable
"I miss you"
That I still taste of
Every morning

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

My spine is kissing the ground
And I’m looking up at planets dying out

I wonder if my death will ever be that bright

There’s a constellation of bruises on my shoulders
In the pattern of raindrops
And everything is dusty and damp

It hasn’t been bright inside of me in longer than I can remember

And I don’t remember what you feel like
I don’t remember feeling at all
Or what skin feels like when it’s not puckered into white lines

I’m as dark as ashes

Maybe that’s all I am today.

The sounds of your breath in the morning
When there are thunderclouds waiting on the stoop
You crawl into my veins like rainfall
My ventricles feel damp

And heavy.
Caught in the tangle of how your words feel
And how your hands feel
When rays of sun can’t find us

I lose myself driving through this mist
Of the sounds that form from your throat at midnight
And I emerge soft and dazed with something burning
In the center of my chest

The way your fingers trace out maps on my ribcage
Directions away from a person I don’t have to be again
Your clothes smell like promises
That I’ve been whispering against your chest while you laugh

The softness of your mouth on my temple
When you let the door shut behind you
And leave me in the quiet of your morning fog

I’m rooted in the secrets that your sheets hold
And in the kindness of your hands on my back
Pulling me away from the stormy place that I’ve been
For so long

And into you.
Honeyed, tempered, and warm.

I’m walking across these stones like they are photographs mapped onto the tapestry of our togetherness
Threaded with the feeling of beads of sweat on our lower backs and *** backstroking through our veins
Walking under this night sky feels like moving under the impenetrable tunnel of the summer that I met you

And the times this sky was the only witness to the way my eyes learned to search for you under its cover
Or the memory of my arched body under yours that only these spaces can recall

This space will hold you if ever I cannot
And will be impressed with the gravity of your existence if ever I no longer am

Under this particular scattering of distant solar systems
No run of time will ever obscure a history already traced onto these roads
Or the scar of our entangled youth on these rooftops

Walking across this corner
Of this island
Of this universe
There is a feeling of being familiar to these trees and this elegant passage of time

As if in a moment in which I have never existed before
I have already been and somehow become what I already know I will never be again

The sky is dark and studded with associations that will rustle under my feet come October
And rustle still at the equinox

And the path is long and yet gone beneath my feet as I walk along
Under a sky that knew you when I did not
And will hold you in its grasp for as long as I may go down this alley
In this city

To which these stones
Our stones
Will always belong

I leaned out the window and breathed in
And it didn’t taste so musty
Today it wasn’t so dry

I peaked the tip of my nose out into the world of 3 years later
And my hair dripped down onto the pavement
Fifteen stories below me
Like this September’s first thunderstorm

Dropping everything to be right where you are
I scaled the walls of this fortress in the middle of a heat spell
And if my heart is going to break then ******* it I’ll do it myself

I have a heart of graphite and secrets
And it’s been hiding in the margins of your life for so long
That I wonder what it will feel like to erase myself from you

I’ve been feeling inky and insignificant lately
Because you love me
Like doodles on the side of a skyscraper I just jumped from the balcony of

And when I hit the world below me
I shattered like glass, lethal and bright
And you ran out of me like I ran out on you

Welcome to the scent of asphalt
Here’s to something sad etched out in my penmanship
Flashing down below the skyline

Here’s to something new.

I’m lying at the bottom of the universe staring upwards.
I guess I find myself here a lot.
With the sand making love to my hair and the stars running away from my fingertips so that I can never touch them, I wonder if this is over. I can’t feel the Earth’s heartbeat anymore and no one can feel me. I’m wind blowing across the speed bumps of my own body. If I scream in the middle of this forest will anyone ever heart it?
Can anyone hear me at all?
I’m drowning in plain sight just at the sight of all these things I can’t hold onto. You’re slipping away from me light years at a time.
Summer’s leaving and I’m still trying to sterilize this endless expanse of bleach white that coats my body. I think it used to be my skin but it’s your skin now and I can’t slip out of it. I’m slipping into something from which I do hope I never escape.
I’m underwater. Just down here looking up.

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

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

I was fifteen and as sober as I'll ever be
when a man I'll never know told me more than God ever did
With a broken embrace and hands that fell singed and irrelevant as parchment
He said he couldn't go yet
I told him no one wants to. He told me everyone does.
Because dying is inevitable
It's a lock that can't be picked
But everyone wants to die happy
And he had never been happy

That's what he said to me.

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

I knew how to be silent. How to hold my tongue and close my eyes, and just wait until it was over. I learned how to be as silent as midnight until their words sunk into my ocean of self-doubt and drove ripples towards the surface I had learned how to keep as clean as morning

I learned how to feel like the smallest piece of life left on this earth, invisible from the skies that only I couldn't reach. I learned to curl up, contain myself, and remain as small as life would make me.  I learned to be everything small: small words, small dreams, small person.

I learned to hate. Hate everyone. Hate everything. Hate myself.

And then he said I was beautiful and I told him that couldn't be.
Because I never learned how to be.

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

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.

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?

We both can only love me drunk

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

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.