we were in the back seat of his car the first time that he kissed me. it was sweet and it was young and it was innocent and i couldn't fully focus on it because i heard a song through the speakers on the dashboard and laughed about how wrong the lyrics were when i sang it to myself

take me down to paradise city,
where the tips of his calloused fingers softly run over the tops of mine because he is too shy to actually hold my hand;
                  where the air smells like the ocean and the sky is as bright as his eyes are when he's  
                  passionate about something;
   where the woods are always empty but we still run through them every
   wednesday night because those are the nights that his mother isn't home and his father still
   breaks out tequila and gin because he didn't get the daughter he wanted

oh, won't you please take me home?
and he better not ask me what my address is because he should know that a home is different than a house and my home can be found deep within the far away corners of his wandering mind, and in the valves in his heart which are accompanied by a slow heart rate because he's built like an athlete even though he's too timid to try out for football like his brother did

people usually name islands in the caribbean when asked about paradise, but if the textbook definition is a place of a extreme beauty and happiness, my answer will always be honest when i say that my paradise is anywhere i can get lost with him,

like the back seat of his car

sad brown eyes
should feel beautiful
again

i.* tell me one thousand things you hate
about yourself. tattoo your face with flaws,
and i will correct each and every one of them
with my lips brushing lightly against your
bruises.

ii. we sit underneath an empty sky and you
are telling me about your parents' divorce and
it's times like these when i have to remind you
that you are not your mother, or your father,
or any of their mistakes, and you just nod but
your eyes tell me everything you've been
hiding from me and i bit my lip until it tastes
like ancient rust and melancholy.

iii. you were the one who told me that stars
shine brightest before they fall, and if that was
the case then you and i are shooting stars
flying in opposite directions, just waiting to
hit the ground and leave a crater in each other's
mangled hearts.

iv. my twisted heart strings wrap around my
my chest to leave an unwanted reminder that
i love you, and i loved you, and i'll love you,
and it hurts. you shined like sunshine,
i burned.

memory*
n.* the power of the mind to remember things.

i may not be the best psychology student and
i might not understand how something is either
filed into your long term or short term memory,
but i think the entire concept is strange because
i can't even remember what i had for breakfast
this morning, yet i can remember everything
about you.

i thought being an astronaut was something
that only little kids dreamed of becoming,
but i wanted nothing more than that when
i realized that your eyes were planets
and that i could float around in them for
the rest of my life and always be satisfied.

two kids run past me one day in a walmart in
the middle of nowhere and it's eerie because
they are like the ghosts of you and me.
they race shopping carts down the food aisles
and laugh when the employees chase them
and it reminds me of how you knew who you
were and didn't care what anyone else thought
and i can still feel how much i envied that.

sigh no more by mumford & sons comes
on the radio and the only image i can see
is myself, hanging on to the very edge of a
cliff made up of emotions and "i'm sorry's", and
you come into the picture with a heartbeat
so powerful that it causes earthquakes of
anxiety in my brain and you say nothing as
you watch me fall and crumble to the bottom.

i don't know why i can't remember what
i ate for breakfast, but what i do know is
that i would rather have that memory than
suffer with the ones created by the words
you said that rattled my bones and sometimes
i shiver because i can still feel the cold breeze
you left behind from you walked away from me
for the last time.

to: her
from: me

i may not like you but i love him,
so i'm writing this to you to ask
that you be patient with him
and kind to him
and never take him for granted.

you don't love him like i do
and i know this because
you don't know how he likes
his coffee (black), or what his
favorite movie is (hotel rwanda) or
why he's afraid of airplanes (his
sister died on 9/11)

please do not get frustrated with
the fact that he can't take a compliment or
that he might forget your birthday or
that he will put his family before you
in a heartbeat.

please do not think that because
he doesn't ask where you are or
seem interested in going out or
spend every moment with you,
that he doesn't care about you.
he is an introverted mind with
a breathtaking soul and you will
be surprised by how quickly
he will make you forget the name
of any other boy that you have
ever been with.

the last thing that i think you
should know is that he has a
very fragile heart and you
cannot fix it no matter how hard
you try. so do not try to rid him
of his repressed memories and
reoccurring nightmares. promise
him you'll never leave

and do not break

the promise

like i did

i have broken too many bones
to keep bending over backwards
to try to prove to you that
i'm exactly what you need

how can i support you
when i no longer have a backbone
to support myself?