I ask how you are; you look at me like each word is a stab through the heart. I’m murdering you slowly. Your **** was quick, precise and clean. I’m dragging you behind me. Beating you about your eyes.

I just want you to smile again. To hope with your heart and your eyes. I want you to lift onward, upward. You’re allowed sunlight, you’re allowed picket fences, and a God if you want it. I don’t want to break you; I don’t want to hold you. I want to lift you, light you brighter and more beautiful than you thought possible. I want  your mind to stay clear, and your head to stay light. I want you to build your innocence, toil over self love, I want to watch as you grow to more, grow farther. I want you to love with a purity you thought gone.

I want you to give your love completely, maybe not to me, or anyone, but to yourself.

You are beautiful. You are loved. You have a future. You deserve better, you’ll live for more. Don’t stop pushing, start hoping. Stop thinking, start building. Put pen to paper and scratch. Your life, your love, take your own advice.

Live Again.

Reclaim the beauty and your ability to make art, forget work and school and me. Don’t sit back and watch the wheels. Stand for something.
Even if it’s just yourself.

I don’t love you dear, because you make me laugh, or smile, and never judge.

I don’t love you friend, because you’re almost always on my side.

I don’t love you because you make kick-*** coffee drinks, or because you don’t try to understand my pain.

No friend, I don’t love you because you’ve seen me at my best and worst or because you’ve seen me high and sober.

I love you because you’ve helped me.
Because you never ask why.
Because you found a way out of the labyrinth.
Because you pushed past the pasts.
Because you hate my pain.
Because you give everything, always, even if it means you hurt.


I love you dear friend, because you’ve struggled, lost, failed, and you’re here, pushing on.

Moving Forward.

And I’ll be there; I’ll be your mother, your sister, your shoulder, your spine.
I’ll be your guide, build you up so you can keep up, keep moving.
Because, friend, I’d only be returning the favor.

Since you’re moving on, it’s okay to talk. It’s okay to share, because she’s taken my place. She’s shaken your foundations, buried herself deeper in your soul than you buried our pain.

Since I’m moving on, it’s okay to tell you my discoveries. To show the happiness I’ve found. To hide the anger at your failure to tell me about her. And the guilt I feel at hiding him from you.

Since you’re okay with pretending we never loved. I’ll be okay with it too. You buried your pain deep, you say. Mine, mine is the surface, flaking away with each kiss, each whisper, each smile, each intake of smoke, each shot of liquor.

I’m making new playlists, learning new songs.
You’re posting more poetry, finding new loves.

You’re driving new places, losing more weight.
I’m watching new movies, and gaining mine back.

You’ve discovered liquor.
I’ve discovered THC.

I’m trying hard not to break a heart, finding that slow-growing love is just as scary as the unexpected fall.

I’m learning to give and take: compliments, favors, anything really. I’ve found new eyes to explore and a new face to map. I’m kissing those other boys. This time though, I’m still here, I’m still me.

I still don’t want picket fences, or a God. But, he doesn’t either. We don’t plan further than two days in the future and savor the moments. And now we’re spinning faster, farther than I thought I’d go anytime soon. And what you and I had fades fast. Faster than I thought possible. I’m pushing forward. Moving past pain, and anger, and jealousy. And the fear that I’ll never be the same.

I’m letting people in, letting them help. Sharing the weight, alleviating burdens, letting myself be loved, be healed, be anything.

I just want happiness. For you, for me.

I want to see more than flat plains and a familiar college campus. I want to explore the unfamiliar. I want to find truth in a new mind. I want to say with absolute certainty that I’m past us, and you. That I’ve let go of our eight months, and grabbed onto my present.

Since I’ve let go, so have you. Since you’re unburdened, so am I.

Since we’re both moving further and further apart, I guess I should say Good-Bye.

It seems that something has been flipped, as i sit in classes about literature, about music, about life. It seems I'm capable of recovering from love lost, in the best way possible. I have hope. I remember the things you taught before you broke my heart, and begin to mend the pain. I feel the soothing of my own heart beating against fear and self-loathing and sorrow. And I know that I can be saved. I can  be pulled from the depths of this ocean. Not by you, or by another, or by a friend, but by me.


I kick and struggle until there, i see it. The most glorious light. New and beautiful and free. I'm torn, i can't just give up on our love; but I can't take it with me, not in the same form, of course. So i mold it shape it into something I'm proud of, into something innocent, and pure, and lovely. That is closer to our beginning than our end. I swim and swim. Until I'm walking ashore. Until I'm free of pain, and fear, and guilt, and sorrow. Until I come closer to the thing I've been searching for. What I've longed to find. Few others gather round, each knowing the purpose it will serve us, save us.


I take in the shear power of it above me. It grows and grows with no beginning and no end, there are some climbing up, and others slowly descending; heading towards yet another beginning, I look back once. To remember the things I'd learned, I loved. I stretch for the first bough and foothold, frustrated when I can't reach. Then up and up I go, I look back again, and there you are, helping me on my journy. I pull you up, too. And then begins the adventure. We will ever spend oure days climbing higher the limbs of the tree of life. Living, learning, always looking up, moving forward.


Pushing each other along  until we can survive on our own. Until we know our love and ourselves. Then there will be joy. Then ther will be progress. There will be change. There will be sacrifices, failures, success, trials, love and hope. Mostly hope, fo a world and i life that means more than a past. Fort he ability to give up tomorrows and yesterdays for right now. To froget what if, just to live. To give yourself completely over and over agian with no fear, or strings attached. Just Hope, and maybe Love.

The current trend is breaking down, then breaking up. The right thing to do is reexamine the relationship, they say. Everyone’s stepping back, pulling out, cutting short, calling it quits, giving up the fight, but quitting only leads to an easy exit.
Let’***** the gas, push past the carnage and tears. Pull each other close, and listen to breathing hearts and beating lungs. Forget the trends, or the rules, or their advice. Lose it all, gamble your entire heart. It’s the only way to win big; it’s the only chance you’ve got. Forget what you are with others, be who you want together.
Relearn the old strategy of giving until you’ve got nothing left. Then receive until you’re full again. Form your words into sentences, paragraphs, stories, that expose everything.
Fall in completely and don’t flounder.
Forget the silence; fill it with music, with laughter, with anger, with lust, with sighs of sleep.
Then share the beauty of it, show them the strangest loveliest thing in existence.

I want summer like I want you, constantly. I’m tired of cold that snatches my breath and hope. I want the trees to regain their decency and cover their bare limbs. Wearing the greenest fullest blouses. I want the grass to grow. Thunder to roll and rain to fall. I want fat drops to bounce of the pavement, to wash my face and hair.

I want the sun to bath my skin in beauty, making it glow with warmth. I want dresses and shorts and skirts. I want brown legs and flip-flops. I want turquoise pools and florescent swimsuits.

I’m sick of cold fingers and toes. I’m tired of heaters and blankets. I want to roll down the windows. I want sweat on my back and only sheets on my bed. I’d love warm nights, drinking sweet tea, and making love beneath the stars. I wish for glowing street lights and lake nights. I want to sit in the windows of cars at sonic.

I want barbeque sunflower seeds and the fourth of July.

I want field parties with only beer and red bull, and only bonfires to see by. I want fireflies and chigger bites. Lemonade out of mason jars.
I miss cotton, and sandals. I miss volleyball, ***** feet, and ponytails. But what I miss most about summer is freedom. Those summer night driving under an endless sky of stars.

There comes a point in summer when I begin to wish for winter. When I tire of sweat and lukewarm showers.

There is a day when I’d like every tree in sight to stop covering their pain, and expose the reality of grey and withered limbs.

There is a night I wish for twelve blankets on my bed, only my nose exploring the freezing atmosphere.

There is a minute I wish to replace sandals with boots, and tanlines with skin like moonlight.

There is an hour I’d rather you and I hid away, with cold toes and frigid fingertips, than go to the lake and sip beer with plasticine friends.

There is a second I spend wishing for grey clouds to cover the mocking sun, for bitter gales to replace a dancing breeze.

There is a month, I wish the grass would hide its bragging leaves, and the snow would come out and play.

There are a few hours I spend pretending, I turn on every fan, dim the lights, put on pajamas, drink coffee, and cower beneath one solitary blanket. Hoping winter spies me, takes pity, and make the hours-minutes-days-months-seconds his.