My mother's not an alcoholic but she's plenty of things I'd like to sing
Thanks for criticizing my skinny jeans and ****** up child hood teeth.
Here's to making my first girlfriend cry and squashing my beliefs,
a toast for being paranoid and obsessed with what you lack.
Better swallow all the car keys, mom, cause I may not come back.

And dad, thanks for slowing down the car so I could stick my head up
for knowing my mom is unstable and when I should just shut up.
Here's to holding me down and bruising my wrists and daring me to leave
because what I found and loved and lost is more than I could ever begin to believe.

So here's to my brother who got the short end of the stick
cause I was born so ******* intelligent
And here's to the buddies who left me on my own
Because we're all too lazy to pick up the ******* phone

Said I'll splatter my brains across your bedroom mirror and serial killers don't have motive,
not everyone knows enough to know what they don't,
but if this isn't the so-called "real world" I don't know what is.

So here's to death, Mr. Portuguese, zodiac signs, poor stitching and the trees (and their leaves.)
So here's to now, Mrs. Angel face, you've finally got your perfect family (and you see)
SO HERE'S TO THIS, my dear bestest friend, to laying in the tub at 2 am (til 4 am)
And here's to wrinkled toes and kissing, to grass stained jeans and living where you are (you've gotten far)

And you can try to end it all but they'll probably just hit you,
And when you go to therapy I'd like to be there with you
Because I don't think they know what they've got
No they don't know, they don't know
they don't know.

So here is you, living on the streets. I'd give it all away so we could be (why not happy.)
So here's to you, open heaven gates. Jesus knew that death awaits us all (well all fall down.)

Everyone I love is dying, everyone I love is dying (screaming) x how ever many times you feel
And I
am
dyyyyyying too.

I like how this all started - history notes then a drunk hike.
I like that I believe you when you tell me it'll be alright.
I like how we can talk for hours and neither of us get bored,
and even when I ramble, I'm still not ignored.
I like how much we laugh and all the inside jokes we have
like "sea slug," "guacamol," and watching awkward dad.
I like that when we argue, we always talk it out
and how you know that something's wrong by just the slightest pout.
I like all of the silly things you do to make me laugh
so that when I'm sad or worrying, it never really lasts.
I have never liked anyone quite as much as I like you
and I like that I'm lucky enough that you like me that much, too.
I love your smile, the way you think, and everything you say.
I'm happy I can call you mine and that I find new things to love each day.

Ten milligrams of adderall, bought from the girl across the hall.
Speaking in a British accent because I'm lovely at lying,
and even better at believing it myself.
I'm from London, Liverpool,
I'm from the deepness of the cut on your leg
from those flowers that looked harmless but they
scratched
at his truck, destroyed my luck while I was high
and you were too.
The tent is my place to be with you
with my thoughts being misconstrued.
I spoke with your name coming out of my mouth
staring at the ceiling and I didn't stop
giving up.
Stepping off a curb at the wrong velocity
can hurt your ears the way we
hurt me.

I thought I'd miss your mouth the most,
worn down teeth all uniform
from grinding them in your sleep,
chapped lips, refusal to use chap stick.
I thought I'd miss your laugh the most,
uncomfortable and weary
unless you were with me,
and I thought I'd miss your body
hip bones making bruises on my inner thighs,
pull me closer closer when you hold me and my hands
never stopped.
This morning I miss the way you smell,
and I can't describe it.
Scent is most closely tied with memories.
I want to smell you on my shirt the next morning
before I even roll over onto my side and kiss those chapped lips,
see those worn teeth smile
feel your arms around me pulling me closer.
I want to wear your shirt to bed,
but it means nothing now that the scent has left.

I remember when you told me my body would rot,
and I agreed. I remember when you told me I am
nothing. I agreed, and said it back. You are nothing
to anyone else but me. I will not leave. You first,
please. And you agreed. God my feet were bare
and you loved me, last. Early to bed, five A.M.
I didn't sleep. I remember when I told you
we have lived before. And will live again.
And you replied, we are nothing. And I said no,
you are nothing to anyone else, you are nothing now
to me. I want to help you bleed, but you scab over
too quickly. I will not agree. I am more to me
than I am to you.

On February twenty-fifth
exactly twelve days from today
I'd like to show up
outside your window
with a ukulele and a cake
with frosting that reads "congratulations
baby sweetheart darling lover
you are on in a million
not one in the three-hundred-fifty-something people
in Connecticut who gave up
on themselves and on their lover
darling sweetheart honey
I'll be outside your window always
if only you'd call me.

Color me green like my aura
and the needles of the Christmas tree.
Begged, color me free like the forest
and the algae beneath the sea.
Color me blue like the waves up above
and the sky even higher than that.
Pleaded, color me new like the bird's feathers
and the widened eyes of a cat.
Color me pink like a winter nose,
the blanket I clung to as a child.
Yelled color me sinking within myself
when your bloodshot eyes go wild.
Color me black like the darkening night
or the air cupped between my hands.
Screamed color me back into your arms
and I promise to stop my demands.
Color me red like the blood 'neath my skin,
like a rose plucked fresh from a plant.
Sighed, color me dead like a graveyard
as the final word spoken is "can't."
And color me yellow like sunshine
and the rising of christ from his tomb.
Spoke, color me mellow like dreaming
as I look towards my healing wounds.
Color me indigo, color me teal
color my sins. Not forgiven- still healed.
Color me ancient and reborn once more,
color me brighter since I'm still in this world.

You are not the ocean because I do not know that well,
you are not a meadow nor a stroll around the park.
None of these things mean much to me, although
they're beautiful in and of themselves.
You are the scent of incense that used to attack my nose,
eventually I craved it, now the smoke in my room grows.
You are laying on my back in the middle of the road
a kickball flying over me, no worries in the world.
You are a caterpillar making it's way across the street,
climbing onto my open palm so that we may personally meet.
Suction cup feet, pipe in it's mouth a formal way of greeting me.
You tickle my taste buds like peta chips,
you're like sleeping through Christmas morning
(something I could never miss
on purpose,
but if I'm tired enough, I might accidentally oversleep.)
You are grass with ants on each blade
but I lay in you anyway
roll around
breathe
it in
laugh, think,
when did this begin?
When I stopped appreciating little things.
The freezing water of a pool in the shade,
baked beans and a fire place.
New York City vendors
selling handicrafts.
My town written down
tucked away with other maps.
You are
an apple all sliced up without the skin,
you are the worm inside it, too.
Where did this begin?
You are a tree,
now trace my roots,
later trace my skin.
But only when I've figured out
what's missing from within.

Sometimes I turn it into a game to see how many boys will promise to teach me how to swim, since my swimming lessons never stuck and I never bothered to learn when I grew enough to touch the bottom of my aunt's pool with my tippy-toes. Sometimes I like to count on my hands how many times I've been told that I'd be taken ice-skating in the winter and that, because my body is like a ballerina's and I can't dance, maybe I can skate and be brilliant at it. I've never seen a panda bear in real life, although we had made plans to go to the zoo over the summer. Skinny dipping is still only a silly idea to me since the water was "too cold" and "we might get caught." The movie Pulp Fiction was skipped for ***. So was the trip to the mall, playing video games, talking. My sister taught me how to ride a bike. I want to thank her.

I spent my past few days sleeping through daylight
waking only to taste the raindrops collected on the outside of my window,
begging the sky to feed me more and the moon to lay me back to sleep.
Sweet dreams as pristine as snow grazed my cheek
screaming softly for me to embrace the weak and the months ahead
enveloping me in cool air, praying with cloudy hands that I'd stay awake, get out of bed.
But I looked to the stars and said please, I want to wake in the night
stay alone with my pen and my dusty floor, it's only right for
sheets to stay chilled without our bodies atop them
my heart lies somewhere else with a ferris wheel operator at the traveling carnival
bearded women and great lions that aren't really tame, only for a piece of steak.
But that's where I want to be- a traveling sales man. Buy my advice and keep me
close in your heart with each passing home. I'll sell you away and sail to the moon
with my traveling circus and on my name signed
wrote "Things do get better, it's all in your mind."
Award winning books with this written on each page
my friends and my lovers said it wasn't me that they'd need,
it was themselves. I agreed. It's myself that I want and myself that I hold dear,
I've gained enough courage to say this without a sneer. It's yourself you've got for good
with others passing daily. Sometimes stay for years, but you shed them like dead skin cells
and that's okay. Because the beauty underneath is worth all the rage
from losing a lover, fighting a friend,
missing a mother from letters unsent, unopened. Tied to balloons to get to her final resting place.
I'm rambling rambling lions tigers bears,
trees have been piling upon my back for years
but they're resettled themselves to build a home.
Everything I've collected makes sure I'm not alone.
Every memory and scar, each piercing word
ties me closer to myself and no one else.
"Things do get better, it's all in your head."
I wrote this on a book, I swore it. If it were a lie, I'd be dead.

I have residue in my blood of every lover I've ever had,
pulsing through my veins,
making my head swell,
making my legs shake.
You call me Siddhartha
Siddhartha Gautama
I am The Buddha, you say.
Understanding everything is connected.
At total peace, gone to pieces as
my heart pumps blood so hard my legs shake to the beat.
Om above my bed,
every of the seven chakras jumbled because
I have trouble letting go.
More often,
I have trouble holding on.

Maybe tomorrow
or the next day
     the next?
Possibly I'll find a loophole
to avoid getting this fixed.
And next week I'll crumble
from neglecting my head,
next year there is a chance
that I'll be bled out and dead.
Hell, an hour from now
a plane might fall
dive into my building.
I wouldn't mind if a disaster
accidentally killed me.
Tomorrow or the next day
or the next day or the next.
I'll never get it done, I know,
I'll never be my best.

You are a ferris wheel operator because
you keep guessing why.
I'd like to tell you
that you've taken me higher than ever before,
made me see what I couldn't
don't know if I can anymore.
Because I swallow too many pills that are sweet on my tongue
listen to the same songs he showed me the summer before love
making it to the middle is absolutely good enough for me
if you can use me like a ladder and get higher than the lows of the sea
we are polar opposites.
Balance each other out,
we're the flat planes of Kansas and we're going down.
It's been said that a person is only an atheist until they're dying
I say everyone keeps loving until they're told they're lying.
Only the truest keep fighting to hold onto the middle
and never let their love weep like the tree of willow
said every single person deserves a second chance
until they use that one to pull a gun
and blame it on their parents.

Indecision holds my passion;
I love hard from loving rarely.
**** out the marrow of your bones
while the flesh of my wrist
has barely been kissed
by anyone else.
Wanting to devour you
starved for something true,
like icicles so cold the heat pulses through
turning the tops of my hands uneven and red
I love like roadkill
sticky and dead.
Black rubber tired marks over the head
of an animal begging to leave or be left.
If the timings not right, those leaving are left
and the ones who hold on are swept away on tides
on the rain water missed
by gutter grates, reaching out
empty and dried.
Depending on a single element results in no fire
no breath or no way to walk,
no source of life.
If the timing's not right
those leaving are left
and not for a second did I anticipate death.

I'd be more afraid
if I believed
you were able to be attained.

I like it when you **** with my head
and hope we never speak again.
Call me up, please, break me down
tear me apart,
bruise my bones and body.
I feel sick to my stomach
feed me more poison in the chicken soup.
Your eyes were warm once, I don't remember
when. You fed me chicken soup you
said, "I will keep you safe always."
And my throat warmed from the broth,
and I smiled as the poison was swallowed.

Heart beat- rhythmic,
Sleeping- poor.
Not even for a second did I think
we'd be less
than more.
Crack me wide open,
scream to my lungs,
bite at my muscles,
cut out my tongue.
Burn all the ropes down
keeping me up.
Not once in my own thoughts
have I been enough.
I've slept in far too many beds,
too many hands have touched me.
I've tasted far too many boys,
made love just once under the sea.
You're beautiful but I am not,
I am three-fourths used up.
I know I've lost a lot.

This is the way the earth curves
while gravity keeps you away from me.
I'm in Chicago, you're in Shanghai
with not even a minute to say goodbye.  

And this is the way the world turns
as I love you and he loves her
in running shoes and perfect hair.
I couldn't be here and you weren't there.

This is the way the ground shakes
with tiny quivers then giant quakes.
It splits up the land in smaller bits
as I lay here and my chest aches.

And this is how we fall apart
with promises and beating hearts.
I laid you down to go to sleep
but you did not even dream of me.

This is the meaning of life itself
to learn, forget and repeat the pattern.
This is why I love you so
with breaking bones and blood all splattered.

And this is why I can't let go
no matter the cutting and breaking of ropes.
My body stays tangled miles above
and the life within stays filled with hope.

This is my breath upon your face
as we slept inside the summer air
This is everything I've given you
to lose a love yet still think it true.

She's sick of synthetic happiness,
smoke that makes her smile.
She'll kiss you in the moment,
thinking wow it's been a while
since she has felt alive,
or anything really.
She still didn't feel it with lips against hers,
***** and coffee (that's a thing, she learned.)
French toast at 3 am, let's drive around
scream at the tops of our lungs
"Did you make it to the milky way to see the lights are faded?"
the colors are faded,
I'll watch her blood fade as it mixes with hot water
swirls around the drain.
She's done telling me that the red won't change a thing
because our breath won't change a thing,
and the drinks won't change our heads
and the lips won't fix my missing you
I don't want to be here,
but where.
Run around the car three times at a red light,
try out listening to that new band.
Go to a club, wear something tight.
Drink more, stumble, laugh,
kiss someone you don't have feelings for.
Thank someone for saying you're pretty,
smoke another cigar. Inhale through your nose,
smile big in pictures,
smile big at people who smile big at you.
Slow dance drunk in the common room,
crack your back, love, call him up,
throw things. This isn't a poem.
It's a list.
Of what
has not
once
made me feel okay again.
Here is a list of
what makes me feel
at all:
you.

There was a lemon tree that never bore lemons
still growing in the backyard of my grandparents' home.
Years passed climbing every tree around it
but never did my sister or I dare to yank on its branches.
"It's weak. Rotting from the inside out,"
but still standing.
The cherry blossom tree towers over it
sneakers often scuffed from the bark and knots.
Climb higher, so I did. I was the smallest.
Gaze down at the lemon tree from the highest branch I'd dare rest my weight on.
I have faith in you.
"Grow," but it didn't.
I spent all my years climbing every tree around it,
and the lemon tree stayed weak.
Stayed growing.
I stay faithful.

In the middle of the night I went to Wakelee and the wind whipped at my face
like the way your thrashing words would wash up on the shore of my mouth
and I'd spit them back out at you just the same if not a bit more eloquently.
At Granada Street I remarked on the place in the road that our bodies would meet;
this is where we collapsed because the way we hugged goodbye admitted defeat.
I didn't make it to behind the school where the tree we lounged underneath grew
as we sat as a lioness and a lion completely content to bask in the shade,
but I know after the fall and the winter, that tree still stands the same.
There wasn't time to drive by the house where you traced the tops of my fingers
after inhaling two lungs full of smoke. Where you noticed the way I wrapped my hands
around yours like a knot that couldn't be undone while you were in that state of mind.
But I saw the water we saw when we were ready to duck and cover and the way
the tides of a reservoir can be stronger than any other.
I sent each word out on a separate paper boat lit with a candle as the
"I" floated further than the rocks we threw
and the longest word was sent out second while
"love" drifted towards the beach and
"you" swam away from me.

Bruises on my ribs from a rock beneath the floor of a tent,
bruises on my neck from your teeth and you have a beautiful
jaw line. My fingertips dip, you say. That isn't normal. And
colors in your eyes are impossible to replicate in my mind.
I'll study your face, the skin on the back of your hands and the
curve
of your bones. That word makes me nauseous. Curve
away from me, grow like a bonsai tree
I say please then whisper apologies
too often
I know exactly what I want but refuse to chase it
because I am temporary, I'll wound you and leave
a beautiful scar. You have a beautiful jaw
line.

Don't be a stereotype, don't be afraid of blood - I want you
to hit me in the mouth and promise me the moon.
Pledge to a different flag every lunch break around noon.
Kneel on rice and claim to the world that you've been praying
to end the hunger of the masses,
to keep the evil ones from staying,
to stay awake in all your classes.
Laso the moon and yank it down
one pull for every year
if you forgot the ropes at home
I'll lend you thread to bring it nearer.
If that thread snaps before eighteen pulls
I'll check my pulse and declare myself dead and gone.
Don't kiss me on the mouth, don't let your eyelids hide the life -
the scratches up and up your arm are symbols of your constant strife.
Not subtle like the rest, you take pride in every switch
that recoils faster than your mind can see the glitch.
The rhyme scheme is poor and getting dull
like the needle in your arm.
Don't be a stereotype, please,
don't be afraid of flesh.
Don't be hollowed out and full of air
what's inside you is the best.
Don't cause yourself harm.

I'm going to the city on Friday
while I wish still that I could be holding your hand.
I realized a while ago that most of my poems
are directly addressed to you.
Take that as an honor, take a bow.
Take my hand and shout
you didn't want me every second of every day,
just when the weather was warm in the morning.
I want to tell you I'm done
falling against my dresser drawers
getting scratches on my back from anything
(except future lovers.)
I want to let you know I'm through
with scrolling down my contacts, clicking you
and giving up hope before it even rings once.
I want to inform you that I'm tired
of sleeping alone mentally with his arm around me physically
and the confusion that fills for when my heart quivers a bit when he-
let me stop there. I want to make sure you know,
I'm lying. That when
he looks into my eyes I feel nothing
but guilt.
That could very well be because I can't see clearly
through the tears blurring my vision,
when I try too hard to let go it leaves me scrambling
to my feet to catch my breath but it seems to have never lost me.
I'd still like to garden with you, wander New York City
you looking handsome and me looking pretty.
I'd still love you to be in my bed ev-er-y night
your breath on my neck
my eyes towards the ceiling tiles,
and they'll smile
because they already know your name.

Some things I should stop doing include
reading about your zodiac sign
checking if you're online
wondering about your scent.
The infamous "something-missing" won't shake
from my spine ever, it ran back quickly
when I let what was mine slip.
I should stop writing you poems although a wise boy once said
if you keep writing, maybe he'll leave your head.
And you'll get sick of his name in every word, every keystroke
I agreed with more poems but asked, what if I won't?
What if you bloom like cherry blossoms in the cracks of my bones,
like the watermelon seeds I'd spit outside my grandparents' home
that turned into a garden of green rounded fruit.
Asked, what if it isn't
that easy to shake you?
Some things I should stop doing
but I know that I won't
include
thinking of me as a sailor
and you as a boat.

There is nothing
left in my lungs
lingering on taste buds at the tip of my tongue  
underneath fingernails, toenails alike
caught between follicles skin cells or pores
nothing that’s hidden
not anymore
no fragments of letters or commas or ink
no residue, evidence that I could once think.
From the backs of my knees right up to my chest
there is nothing
no evidence
not a single bit left

My night was spent freezing the fat on my body
and listening to a boy, younger than I,
speak about shooting his mother and sister.
Twenty-five minutes, scrolling through pictures
as I listen to a voice devoid of feeling
thinking about how I do not feel.
When I hear a gunshot, I flinch.
When I hear your name, I flinch.
And I repeat repeat repeat
I love your name in my mouth,
the taste of your tongue in my mouth,
the smell of you when I push my lips
scrunched up to my nose.
The scents on my body have changed,
and I flinch when I hear your name.

I'd like to place a cigarette between your lips, cup my small hands around it
and proclaim that you are a writer living in a small apartment in the city.
You wear trench coats and I follow on your tails, doing my best to appear pretty.
But your words are soggy like the suede of your clearance shoes
that have stepped in the puddles between blocks striving
to get you through to the next privately owned book store
where you leave half-written poetry on notecards
and slip them into J.D. Salingar's fingertips
without having had read a single book he has written. (Neither have I.)

How have you been?
I think I'm forgetting the touch of your skin
on mine and it's similar to the feeling of an ocean in my ears
water blocked my hearing and nothing is as near
as it should be. I might be hit by a train
because my senses are telling me it's far away.
I have time
to let you go like the monkey bar handles
don't want to fall beneath so I'll cling to the candle
lit bedroom I once had with my first lover ever
wanted incense and kissing and hands moving slower than heaven.
With you it was quick
like a pin to my chest
and you pulled away too early
so I bled and I bled.
It's healed over but I'm so tempted to pick
that little hole back and let the blood run thick.
At least then I'd know that I bled in the first place
instead of wondering if it was a stomach flutter
and not the lightning bolt
I wasn't looking for.

As you were sleeping
and possibly dead
I stripped the skin cell
and sweat soaked sheets
from my bed.
Scrawled two quotes
on the whiteboard that read
"Wait,
they don't love
you like I love you."and
"What you think
you become."
Poured milk into every bowl that we own.
Fed the fish and my pen
and the fire-bellied toads.
Kicked down the garbage pail,
rolled on the floor.
"They don't love you like I do. No,
they love you more."

I woke up this morning, thinking my god I've gotten older.
The edges of my dream, knawed at the corners of my eyes
go back to sleep.
Happy Birthday, July.
I had ***** poured into my hands,
I drank it
for the soul purpose of not wetting the bed.
Let's go for a birthday dinner in November,
get a tattoo of a word I think of the hour before,
smoke a cigar til your lungs get sore.
"My god it is beautiful
that I can still believe in god,
if I choose to."

Maybe when it crumbles
there will be something better underneath.
For some reason unbeknownst to me
every time I think of the future
a lion is there inside my skull
roaring all orange and tangled up
stronger than anything I've known before.
It is hidden under the building,
the cities painted with reds and blues
faded into whites.
Blood, honor, purity.
We all wonder who
built this city with a lion
underneath.

I am more nostalgic for the roughness of your hands than
Christmas morning in a time when I still believed in Santa Claus.
The sound of your voice when you first wake up holds a bigger place in my heart
than Jesus in a manger when I was in 2nd grade,
signing in the choir as an angel and praying like hell that I'd get into heaven when I died.
And the color of your eyes mean more to me than
the authentic reindeer string and jingle bells I used to show off.
I want to show off your thoughts
to the world and scream "This is the greatest gift of all."
God didn't lift a finger to help me get it
and I didn't lift a hand to stop from losing it
again. I look at the music you listen to every day
more often than I think of taking naps at my Vovo's house while she made bread.
I need some holiday cleaning of my soul;
to kick you out, I'll burn a hole
straight through the walls of my flesh.
And I owe you this much because you were not once second best.
I need more room to love someone who loves without waiting
instead of breaking my jaw and constantly hating
the world. I'll make it better by kissing the wounds of those
who want more than anything, when they realize they've died,
to live.

I'd like to tell you about my desire to have freckles on my face
that reflect the sky on the warmest night of July
standing in front of my parent's house at the top of the driveway
and of the people who have gotten lost inside my head
from too many sleepless night spent trying to unravel every word ever said
ever spoken from me to them, and in return.
I'd like to tell you about how I'll never learn
and how there was a snake in the grass in the eye of my childhood cat,
a man with an ax banging on the back of my wall,
I'd like to tell you about how I've seen it all.

You're first,
name shows up in letters spelled out in songs,
the name after that one resides in the people I call friends. Your last
name is written on the calendar in my room
that starts in January but I believe all life began last June.
I've researched the buses and trains and your eye color
and none of them can take me as far as I'd like to go fast enough.
But one day eventually I will show up at your doorstep ******
from the heart that's swollen so much that it's purple and pressed
against my rib cage, breaking straight out of my chest. And I will open
my swirling constellation of a naked mouth, uncensored and raw
while sun and planet will aim to thaw you out.
What happens next

You make my mouth dry,
palms all sweaty and cold
my brain works quickly and I feel
quite old
when I was up in the morning
with just edges of a dream
I don't understand
can you
stitch up the seams
my blood is clear like a ghost
whispy and thin
I don't want to forget but then again
what happens if I do and you cannot
adderall, alcohol, caffeine and ***.
smoke in my room, sweat on the sheets
you are everything I was meaning to meet.

There are some silent decisions made at two in the morning
unshaven legs poking out from under the covers and sweaty palms reaching towards fresh air.
This is the time for missing and this is the time to breathe
but everyone whose face I've ever studied for the sole reason of having a better chance of dreaming of them,
they all know that this can't be a time for both.
Balance seems to be the word of the day although I've never quite learned the definition.
Getting by on synonyms like "harmony" and "symmetry" do the trick.

You have the body of Jesus
strung up on the cross for everyone to see,
but it's only me you've sacrificed for.
Pale and thin, rib bones begin
right above the indent in your stomach.
I've cut you down from your cross,
no longer an example of imperfection.
I'll kiss the wounds left on your side by soldiers,
I'll kiss the wounds left on your hands by myself.
Lay you onto stone, your skin stays smooth
the cold no longer will effect you.
Remove all the light, wash off the dried blood
clean the dirt from your knees, that tears have turned to mud
put you to rest, bare and mute.
I'm sweating like I've walked for miles
in your boots.
I'd walk more
if it meant relieving the pressure of the cross you once bore.

Last night I realized that I ask people the most personal questions
in an attempt to know their depths in a hurry rather than allowing the answers to flow naturally.
I rarely make it underneath the skin.
"What's your middle name" followed by "Have you ever been in love" and
"What was your SAT score?" "Favourite subject?" "Favourite way to hurt yourself?"
Margaret after my great grandmother, but if we're being honest I'd say it were April
and I once fell in love with a man whose eyes I only met for a second on the train
while I was dreading making my way home again only to be scolded for not trying.
I've been scored on how much sweat I'd let out of my pores just to reach the tip top of
your spine, how early I could fall asleep and how many scars you remember me telling about.
The notebook my mother bought me for math is green and filled with fragments of
seventh grade, nail polish and the hope of a small room with someone who'd like to kiss
every single one of my fingers as I count every one of their hairs and eventually,
as we talk about family and falling off swings, we come across the father of your father
whose name is right between your first and last.
Once I've scratched the surface, I stay if I see red.

Sometimes I think I'd prefer an addiction to rain.
****** will either **** me or make everyone feel sorry for me
or bring me praise when I recover. That's a better life than constant
disappointment and showering others with the same. What goes around
comes back around so why aren't I happy? He said I saved his life, I asked when
and where is my angel to take me away and love my addiction to the rain and the city?
Isn't it a pity? How long have you felt this way? That there's a hollowing in your chest that
just won't go away. And are you all the way empty, or just evaporated slightly? I wish I was able
to aide you in the fight to fill yourself back up; it's something I'm working on myself, you know.
Or did you? I apologize too often when I really don't mean it. Say I love you before I can
look into the person's eyes. My skin is so thick I can't feel your heart beating as I lay
directly, face to face, nose to nose, breath mixing, toes crumpled-
I can't hear it.

There are pins and needles in my feet made of guilt and cheap *****,
bits of me are missing left in kisses and paint
                                            everything else I put my heart into
too early and yanked it right back out
too quickly. I'd make promises like icicles pressed hard to my tongue
as if it wouldn't melt. The tissues in my dorm were used up
before forget-me-not's toppled  to the floor,
the dirt strewn on my slippers that I just threw out
and left the mess there for weeks
stayed in bed above it all,
acupuncture can't cure this ache. Pumping my stomach can't empty
what is already empty. It's like a quarter on a string placed in a vending machine.
I get what I want and leave
with exactly what I came with
and more. But on rare occasions the coin is left on the floor.
I don't bother to pick it up because maybe it belongs there,
dancing among dust bunnies and clumps of hair.
There are needles underneath the first layer of skin on my fingertips
and they don't hurt. It's a feeling of uneasiness like a knot
in the chain of my necklace. I'll work it out later.
Pro-cras-tin-ation. You are the crab on an aluminum can, a moon lit with moths
a ninety year old man who burnt down his house from lighting too many candles.
Take it all in
                      for yourself.
It's not selfish, it's right. Because the sun burns the top of my head
even when my body is cold. Without you in my presence, my own hand I will hold
to cross the street.
Don't count your blessings until your hand is around their necks
so they have no way to escape without suffocation.

Wake up, it's 3:07
and I don't think I'm at all what I used to be.
I think in times and have music playing inside me
while I kiss,
trace skin with my fingertips.
Whistling while you snore disrupts the chorus,
stop. I want to wake you up
and say I'm sad now, let's talk.
Dig deep to my core, but the dirt is damp
and it's easy. I haven't even given you a shovel.
I'll unearth myself on my own,
give your thoughts a place to call home
bury it back up again and
send you back to sleep.

You've been waiting in my backyard for a train since last September
and I haven't gotten anything to feed you but some crackers.
Methadone makes your father stumble, but what if he didn't take it?
I've never tripped on acid or shrooms. I fell down my basement
stairs, hit one by one. Onto the concrete and I only cried because it startled me.
There is an entire forest back there with horses and movie seats
both can take you somewhere. If the train never shows, I'll go too.
Hold my hands, they're bare, and raw are my feelings for you.
Raw is the piercing in my nose, the ground outside has frozen
I'll take nearly any challenge if it means an opportunity to know him
better than I know myself. That isn't really difficult since the way I look
into my full-length mirror only shows the surface. Never every nook
or crevice of my body, you viewed all of me cold in a shack.
I know what's there because I've never faced away, never been given the chance to turn back.

Dancing without music
means more to me than ***.
Avoided it completely
when there appeared a next.
Although the universe would never
have the ability to make
another you
or I
if it tried billions and billions of times.
I will save dancing for you,
                  black coffee, too,
                  everything that I once knew
          keep the songs we listened to
together sacred.
But let the other inside my body.
Never my mind,
never my mind.
If it were opened he would find
****** ****** suicide
always low and never high,
smoke has choked my lungs, they're dry.
Every breath becomes a sigh.
Every word I speak- a lie.
Nothing lives above the sky,
there is no white-bearded guy,
light is in-creas-ing-ly shy.
These thoughts belong to me, they're mine.
You were too, and then we quit.
Gave up, went deaf and mute and this
is you, at the tops of buildings now.
Your gun aimed at my head and, wow,
I wouldn't blame a single cell
inside your body
for pulling the trigger.

Cracks in glasses
             on a screen
             on a gravestone
Drops of sweat
                          on me.
And you
               are the salt in the water of the ocean,
               can change the tides of the sea
                                                             ­      in a single wrist motion
I could never
                      comprehend why I was pushed away
                      stop from being pulled back in by the waves
                      avoid being smoothed down like sea glass
                                                           ­                   empty clam shells
What I know
                      I cannot tell you
                        will not admit
You are
              the fire
              the knot in the pit
of my stomach.

My nose hurts so badly it will be difficult to kiss,
my mouth tasting of Portugal,
socks smelling of smoke.
Did we gain an hour today, or yesterday?
Whichever, I know where I spent it,
in a room
filled with ash
and truthful "no judgment."
Where a pregnancy scare started in a closet.
Where that same scare ended on the couch.
And if I had an extra hour every week,
I know exactly where I'd spend it.
Next to you, in that room.

What you say consists of
fifty percent the sound of your voice
and fifty percent the words.
Why is "dreamed" a word
but "nightmared" isn't?
When you have cancer, I don't dream,
I suffer with you
because however unfortunate it may be
your heart is tied to my hip
like a hand bag
that I keep nothing in
except a lighter and
a gum wrapper that you took the gum out of.

You were in the reflection of the car window at a stoplight,
sitting on the "rent-a-center" couches.
You are the highs in my voice as I'm screaming at the top of my lungs
the scuff on the front of my shoe.
You are dried salt at the corner of my eyes begging to be mined
used to save meat and people from themselves.
You are a blackened screen of a cell phone, you are lonely without light.
You are an empty bottle of pills, you are the scars left from a fight.
You are everything with meaning, yet you only live at night.
In the morning when I wake up you are not there.
You're a whisper from the open window, pushing in cold air.
You're a single word at dinner that I can barely hear.
You're the warmth held in the blanket from my toes up to my throat,
you're a crumpled up old letter, the word "love" scrawled in a note.
You're the biting cold upon my fingers that I cannot seem to shake.
You are everything to me at night,
gone in the morning when I wake.

Chances are
you will not be anyone else's first kiss ever again,
if ever at all.
Anyone else's first love.
Being eighteen
you must have seen
promises scrawled on a picnic table
"4ever & always"
Chances are that ended at about two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon,
when the perfect boy for you
decided to move
five hours away for school,
and you couldn't take the missing him.
Forever ended.
I was twelve in my neighbor's basement
playing hide-and-go-seek.
I kissed first because I'm tired
of waiting, always have been
the one to leave my eyes open
just a bit.
You'll be perfectly okay when someone who has loved
someone before you
loves you now.

There is text on tectonic plates
that reads “This was the time when
constellations would guide
every living creature to
death after life
Before ashes to ashes shone
light through the cracks
and to love and be loved in return
was pushed further back
behind survival and ***
above god and all prayers
there sat rocks under earth
before the growth of our fear
for the devil and sin
and not living like Christ
to reap the rewards of following advice
When the breath leaves my lungs
when I’m merely a shell
I’ll go into the ground
and recycle my cells.