Hearing your name ripples
mountain ranges down my arms.

I can't help but grimace
in complete lack of surprise.

I no longer find my interest
in you to be amusing, and
I'm reminded once again
that every mistake has a shelf life.

I wonder when
I'll stop finding myself here.

Backed into a corner
by my own misguided taste.

It is often in the most mundane moments that I am caught by sense of perspective altering awareness.  Awareness of the ache in my toes from straining to see through the window of what might one day be.  Awareness of the truly humbling way that life can take everything away, leave you sweating against the rock floor, only to show you the beauty in having enough strength to pull yourself back into the light. Awareness of the gratitude that pulses in my veins for the people I have landed amongst.  It is here, in these moments, with pressure reminiscent of hope, disbelief, and wary elation expanding against my rib cage, declarations of affection catching in my throat, that the floors drop.  Endless free fall is the only capacity within which I understand what it means to adore another.  With feet firmly on the ground, I'm guaranteed to lose my way.

Some things exist behind curtains of experience.  

Those whose tongues have
tasted the holy fire know the touch
of something divine.

Those who have laid eyes on
their sleeping bodies, and walked
away to places unknown, can grasp
the idea of an inbetween.

Those who have groped in the darkness
for something to believe in again, who
have longingly looked over the cliff edge,
know that true despair does exist.

As for me,

I know that true fear can
come in the form of footsteps
behind you on the empty street.

The person at the bar who insists on
hollow compliments and free drinks.

Friends who scoff at your anger for
men who yell out their passenger side
windows about the treasures beneath
your clothes.

True fear can come in the middle
of the afternoon, as you face
off against the four floor staircase
to your apartment, when your steps
are echoed by the man in 2b who has
a wife, son, and a taste for resistance.

Don't tell me I'm overreacting,
when the single most terrifying thing
I can do is walk alone under the street lamps.

Don't tell me I'm too uptight just
because I've learned that flattery
can come with a horrifying price tag.

Don't tell me I'm wrong just
because you don't understand.

Look me in the eye when you have
waited until a security guard can walk you
to your car.  When you have held your
breath in a shared elevator.  When you have
lowered your eyes to the men who yell
obscenities at you, because standing up
for yourself could prove deadly.  

Look me in the eye when you have held back
the curtain of experience, and walked in the shoes
of someone who lives every moment knowing
this could be the day someone decides to steal
from me what is only mine to give.

Then look me in the eye when you tell
someone of your wound, and they reprimand
you for daring to walk this world as a woman.

For as long as I can remember,
I've been practicing safety drills.
school, home, the work place, even planes.

Everyone wants to be prepared
for those so-called natural disasters.
It's stunning how they never think to
prepare you for heart break.
It's so much more common.

You are the earthquake that has me
braced for an aftershock. I am hiding
under doorways, diving for the protection
of restaurant tables. My survival kit
is fresh out of healing, and my wounds are
growing agitated. Why wasn't I prepared for this?

Algebra and Grammar won't help me
get out of bed tomorrow morning.
Testing door handles to see if they are hot
will only keep me away from flesh wounds.
Zoology taught my to dissect a frog,
but your vital organs are so much harder to locate.

Is there even a heart inside your chest?

I've been so focused on trying to survive without you,
that I forgot the years I lived before I heard your name.

I tried for so long to make peace with who I thought you were,
that I didn't realize who you were actually becoming.

I've spent so many hours wondering why I wasn't enough,
that I failed to see how much I truly deserve.

Sometimes it feels as if I am tattooed
with all the roads I refused to walk.

Whether they made me who I am, or shed
me of who I'm not, it's rather hard to tell.

I suppose it's all the same,
since I kept on walking anyway.

You can't fall in love during the summer. There are no shivering hands or burnt tongues or worn out coats. Sandy beaches are a poor substitute for autumn leaves, especially in the Midwest, and the heat will burn out new passion much too quickly. Love requires coughing on bonfire smoke and learning the difference between grey skies and rain.

You can't fall in love during the summer, but that's when I met you, and I think I'm starting to realize that not every rule is made to be broken, but every broken rule is made with consequences.

You can't fall in love during the summer, I know because we tried, and look where that choice has landed us.

Every minute without a word from you, was a reminder that you were thinking of someone else.

And every hour was another reason why I understood.

And every day caused another piece of me to go numb without your touch.

And every week reopened the wounds I had stitched up with your smiles.

And as the months have broken me down, I realize soon there will be nothing left to break.

I plucked words from your mouth like petals from a flower and let them settle in between my bones. So that when you stumble home with fire in your fists, your once-soft " I love you"s would soothe my aching skeleton from the inside out. But petals often wither, and their silk touch turns to dust, and these days you don't say "I love you" to replace the ones I've lost.

Does anyone have tips on collaborating with another writer on a piece?

I want to take 2am walks through towns so small,
that cops are sleeping instead of keeping watch,
and street lights glow only dimly because  no
respectable person would need their guidance at this hour.

I want to tell teachers that their textbooks make me tired,
challenge them to teach me every subject with the trunk of a stately oak tree.
One that has seen more than we could ever craft into notes or test questions,
and breathes out a life source healthier for us than the toxic tangents
lingering in this academic air space.

I want to take my romantic notions of life
and press them into the pages of a non-fiction book,
so that when you tell me I'm naive,
I can present you with the research
that keeps your cubicle heart pumping.

I want to cleanse your body of its lead paint logic,
and use my lips to tattoo all the natural beauty
you've missed behind classroom doors.

I want to show you the beauty of broken glass in small town alley ways.

I know a girl who tries to read people the way she reads books.
But people aren't two dimensional, and they can't be pressed into
page after page of dialogue and action. Black and white stand as a
testimony to truth, but reality comes in a variety of shades and
when her blood comes out red and sings a tune sweeter than any book
or bible written by man, she is left somewhere between fiction and non-fiction.
The badlands of indecision, where her beliefs search for a home built on rock
instead on the sand.

My creative writing teacher from last semester just emailed me.

I am the 2013 recipient of the James Haba Award for Excellence in Poetry.
And 6 of my poems are going to be published in the Mid Rivers Review!

I am so excited!! Thank you all so much for your support and your constructive criticism.

The light fell through the window shades,
one sliver right between those amber eyes,
and it struck me how little I know of you.

How little I know of anyone.

Every day it feels like there is a new way to hide
from the world.  What are we all so scared of?
Intimate touches are minimized by the fear of
being left alone, and with no one taking leaps of faith
we've ended up with our feet weighted to the ground.
Cemented by our inability to push past indecision,
solidified by our lack of communication.

Your eyes may be bottomless, but that shouldn't
stop me from diving in. If I should drown in your
subconscious, I would revel in my lungs collapsing.

Mint green nails, trailing across your faded black tattoos.

The ability of bandanas to cover up out grown roots that I'm
too broke to touch up.

Long showers when no one is home to yell at me for wasting water.

The way your lips feel against mine, so safe and familiar,
and how your mouth tastes like a bad habit.

The white of battle scars against my summer tan.

You came to me tonight with questions of loyalty
in your eyes, but all you found was my breathless
and naked body on the soft carpet of my bedroom.
My vanity mirror was cracked in all the places
you had called me beautiful, and you saw my lipstick
drawings of skeleton girls scattered across my bed.
Curse words clogged up your throat. Your teeth chattered
out a Morse Code version of " how could you?",
and when your hands stopped punching the walls,
all ****** and broken, you used them to crack open my rib cage.
Searching, I think, for some swallowed suicide note.

You knew the only thing I could stand to eat,
were the words I wish I'd never spoken.

If I could, I'd buy us enough acid to last everyday
for the rest of our natural born lives. Just hoping
that the trip would take us back to the night when
you painted rainbows on the insides of my eyelids.

If it was possible, I'd brand your fear of needles
onto the surface of all my organs.  So that I would
always remember the time you let me see the
scared sick little boy still hiding inside your skin.
So that maybe, he could hide inside my skin too.

If magic were real, I'd use a spell to make a
quilt with our story on it, the way it should have
ended. And every time I felt alone, every time
the panic threatened to close my throat, I would
pull the quilt over my head, and be able to live
in what could have been.

If I could,  I would crawl inside one of the
pink and yellow capsules the doctors gave you
and after you swallowed me down I would
climb up through your blood vessels to the brain.
Stopping only to see the heart I love so dearly.
I would build bridges over your broken synaptic cleft
and bribe your brain chemicals to walk the
straight and narrow. I'd tell them how their careless
vagrancy has left your eyes empty and your aura dark.

It's like when you have the stomach flu,
and the first thing you toss up is your favorite,
homemade, blueberry muffins. How after that,
even though you've eaten them for 19 years,
just the thought of violet-speckled, baked goods
makes you want to hunch over the nearest toilet.

I don't remember when I stopped being able
to stomach irony.

All I know is I spend every morning gargling
minty antiseptics, trying to rid my mouth from
the aftertaste of dreams, but still its ghost lingers
in the back of my throat. I try to wash it down with the
taste of his ****, and the smell of his cologne. Thinking,
I guess, that one day I'll be able to love him like he deserves.

As opposed to wondering what happened between us.

Your catchphrase was," There's nothing to say."
It wasn't until now that I understood.  I wanted so
badly to find the right words. Wanted so bad to mend
what was  irreparably broken.  But you knew that every
time you opened your mouth, you were in danger
of coughing out your heart. Of spewing out a ******
mess of feelings that I didn't yet understand.

Now, as you come to me with olive branches, all I can
do is choke on my own aorta. So understand when I sound
like your broken record, that I'm just trying to hold it together.

I can't seem to get out of this dry spell. What do you all do when you have writer's block??

I fell in love with a boy at a coffee shop
who always ordered vanilla chai.
I knew it was love because I could
never get up the courage to speak to him.

I fell in love with a bony fingered,
anorexic boy in my math class.
I think it was the way he did the problems in his head,
so he could use the paper for listing
everything he wanted to eat that day, but wouldn’t.

I fell in love with a girl who had dreadlocks
and burn marks on her neck.
I always fantasized about touching them,
asking if they still warmed up her skin.

I fell in love with the older man at the tutoring center.
I failed Spanish so that I could spend the next semester
eye ******* him from across the study table.
I've always had a thing for married men.

I fell in love with girl who pushed up her
*****, and pouted for football players.
It may have been unrequited,
but at least I didn’t catch anything.

I fell in love with the person
who left death threats in my locker.
I’d never known someone who felt
the same way about me as I did.

I've always dreamed
of standing atop tall buildings.
I guess the romance with height
stems from my small stature.
There is nothing more seductive
than peering over, toes on
the edge, and knowing the
one and only outcome of a
misstep.

You can run the risk
of saying the wrong thing
to the right person, but
when leaping from a skyscraper,
one will always find
you fall.

They told me to write about the family dynamic,
and even though they were careful to say

"The" family dynamic,

I was quite sure they wanted to say

"My" family dynamic.

The way I'm quite sure that when my mother asks if I'm gay,
and if that is the reason I'm sporting a gay pride belly ring,
that she is actually saying,

"I swear to God if you're a **** that's the last straw."

Catholic upbringings seem to only account for politely covering up
hidden agendas, not actually purging them in place of acceptance.

My family dynamic is the blank stare I gave my mother that day.
It is the uncertainty I feel on a daily basis. A constant debate on
whether or not I should send her fragile ideals about me spinning
off their axis, admit to being bisexual. In my mind I always look
her in the eyes and say something along the lines of,

"Don't worry mother, I could never be gay. I enjoy a good hetero ******* too much."

In reality I smile and shake my head.  Leaving her to go on living in a world
where daughters don't have premarital ***, or lose babies, or try to **** themselves.
In a world where her good catholic daughter could never be gay.

The summer air, I fear, brings a sort of mania.
Starting with the breath of mother nature's warm breeze
through my car window, and ending with my face pressed into the ground.
A sort of emotional and drug induced black out. In between is a madness.
Flowers bursting from their shy buds inside the bones of my arms.
Fireworks up the filaments and out the anthers.  
Sparking the tribal chants and patterns trying to live inside
my white blood cells. Forcing them to expand
and break, releasing a fever for sun and soil.
A sort of combustible stage production inside my veins.
Yes.  The summer air, I fear, brings an awful mania.

When I close my eyes I can still feel the swaying.
Side to side, back and forth,
constantly tilting one way or the other.
My mind is still standing on sea legs.

It's funny how much faster we adapt on the outside.

When I first stepped on that boat,
I didn't know where my point B was exactly.
Only that my point A was a place I couldn't handle anymore.
So I took on the sun and salt.
Before long my skin was a cocoa bean.
My hair waved with the water.
My fingers and toes grew calloused but quick.
I'd traded in "street rat" for "sea urchin".

You could see for miles on that floating piece of heaven.

Something happened out there, though I'm not sure what.
I didn't get off at the first dock. Or the second, or the third.
I'd lost count after awhile. The sea was my home.
I could fill a night with talks of trade winds.
I thought I'd made a home out of misfits and maps.

My mind hasn't quite caught up yet.

It doesn't understand why I left.
One day we stopped, and I just started walking.
Sand, grass, and dirt replacing soft worn wood.
The forest draped down around me in an eerie green embrace.

I knew there was no turning back.

I still have skin like cocoa beans, though it very rarely burns.
My hair still waves like the beautiful pacific,
but it's become decorated with flowers and leaves.
My hands and feet remain calloused,
but now they are stained with berry juice, and tree sap.

Digging my toes into the earth, I wait for my mind to meet up with me.

Your lips are a permanent marker.
Inscribing your love for me over every inch of my body.
They have written your name on my collar bones.
Covered my hands in your fantasies.
Left adjectives of affection on my stomach and thighs,
and turned my back into a portrait of your lungs.
Promising to spend every breath you have left with me.
You laid out our someday's, and sealed them with a kiss.

At night I place my hand over my heart.
Feeling for the beat that means I'm still alive.
Still here. Still breathing. Still worth it.

I can remember the day you brought me flowers.
You showed up, shirt pressed, with that same sad smile.
I didn't want to tell you the truth.
That my lips had already known another man,
that my finger tips burned at the thought of his skin.
So instead I told you that I only saw you as a friend,
despite the weeks of rough *** and stolen time together.
After everything, how could I admit that you were so much more?
I'd already proven that you were clearly not enough.

Tonight I'll place my hand over my heart with tears in my eyes.
Praying that for once I'll be able to believe it's beat means I'm still alive.

I spend Mondays pulling pieces
of glass from the bottom of my feet.

Every shard reminding me of you.
Every line of blood bringing out your face.
And I smile with a bitterness,
as I throw the pieces away.

On Tuesdays I try to make
everything symbolic.  

I sit at my window in utter bareness,
and whisper to the cold panes that if everyone
stopped lying, we'd all be left naked.

Wednesdays are the days I drink
only water, and eat only celery.

Hoping to purge my body of poison.
Hoping to drop another pant size.
Wanting to get high off double zero skinny jeans.

Thursdays I always attempt to draw,
but never get past the art of words.

It's so much easier to stay in
my comfort zone.  Hang out with
punctuation, margins, and lines.

Fridays have a way of
being rather nostalgic.

It's never a happy trip down memory lane.
Too many wrong turns to be made.
Too many *** holes to get lost in.

Saturdays I binge on pizza,
realizing how much I love to eat.

The strangest feeling I'll ever know,
is that of feeling full.  I'm so used
to feeling completely hollow.

Sundays are horribly predictable,
that I can always count on.

To diffuse my energy I break wine bottles.
You'd never believe how it feels to walk
over something you've completely destroyed.

Life doesn't stop,
even if you don't know
how to keep going.

Everyday I still have to
wake up without you.

So much is lost in language, something I remember every time I fail to describe your eyes.  Maybe words are just the reality of life, truth without all the romanticism, but I can't help thinking that everything looks worse in black and white.  The newspaper tells me about the **** that happened down the street, but the printed words can't describe the woman's screams as she was pierced in a way that will forever leave a scar.  It doesn't give us the vindictive sense of power that the monster walked away with, still uncharged and roaming the streets.  Words can't breathe life onto paper, but that doesn't stop us from trying to make a body out of ink.  Something to hold close at night when sobs are held in and rib cages are sore.