but given the change in time
and the frequency of which
you came back into my life
so often
doesn't change the fact that
it ******* hertz

spread me open and lay me out on your table like a blueprint (I'm just as hard to read)
nail me on the wall like a laminated world map (put pins on all the places you've been)
oil me up like your old, squeaky boxspring mattress (you remember the one)
give me life like the cpr dummy in middle school health class (mouth to mouth, get it?)
tell everyone how beautiful I look like a dead body in an open casket (we all know what you really mean)
wreck me like the abandoned house behind the railroad tracks (what a shame, it has so much historical value)
wrap me up like a reopened wound (oops, my bad)
bite me like the hangnails you get from chewing your fingers (it's a nervous habit)
drill my pieces together like ikea furniture (you might just have to wing it, I lost the instructions a long ******* time ago)

I'm sorry that my poetry has become a tangled mess of love letters (and the regular letters), I'm just searching for an outlet -
literally, because an electric shock might be the best explanation, and
figuratively, for obvious reasons -
as a way to explain my inconsistencies and fault lines
when all I want to do is love you the best.

I've never been the best at anything, though, only an in-between.

Then again, I never actually gave a **** until you rolled around like the smoothest stone I've ever seen.
I, however, am covered in algae,
but I'm okay with that,
since you said the way moss feels between your fingers is the sole reason touch is your favorite of the senses.

I will always love the
Scribbling scratched out scrawls
You make, whether ink on
Paper or the
Creases on your red lips,
They whisper to me both.

i googled "is it too soon to say i love you"
(at 11:52 pm on december 18th,
64 days after i met you)
countless combinations of 26 letters behind the glaring screen
all spelled the same warnings
it's too soon
it's just lust
it's infatuation*

but i knew i loved you the day we sat in your car for 4 hours and i listened to you talk about your 1st  and only girlfriend and the countless days you wanted to **** yourself and where the scars on your back came from and how you were figuring out that nothing really matters

but even though you want to, i know you don't actually believe that
because tonight, when i collapsed completely under the weight of knowing i wasn't good enough, you were there
you let my tears stain your flannel and you repeated the same words that wouldn't mean **** if they weren't coming from you

"Amelia, everything is going to be okay."*

b e t w e e n
the 1 am drives
the office marathons
the weightless highs
the salted wounds
you became the answer to every question i'd ever asked

you left behind pieces of yourself in every corner of my subconsciousness and i couldn't escape even if i wanted to.

connect the bruises on my hips
from your suffocating grips
you can see our love story, concise but enthralling

this is the first time i've felt breathless but alive

so **** menshealth.com and cosmopolitan for telling lost, hopeful idiots like me to sit around and wait as if tomorrow is promised and keep an unmanageable, starving beast locked in my ribcage.
by the time you read this my soul will be as open as a business on black friday and the simple fact that i trust you enough to not trample my fragile self is enough of a sign that yes,
I love you.

Did you know that if the entire history of the universe was condensed into a single calendar year, writing was invented fifteen seconds ago?

The only thing that keeps me from floating away and imploding in the Milky Way was unheard of at 11:59:44 PM.

When I read this, everything made sense for the first time in twelve years.

(Twelve years ago, I was six, and six year olds don't have thoughts that cause them to question existence and the purpose of anything; seven year olds, however, can and do.)

I don't know about you, but for me, 11:59:45 PM is prime poetry reading and writing time. And that time slot doesn't close until you go to bed and wake up and do adult things and carry on emotionless throughout the day, so if you don't ever go to sleep, you can achieve a state of transparency, and consumers love seeing right through you.

This is my theory, and it's 4:56 AM right now.