i want you to imagine standing in the middle of an already collapsing house, and having everything suddenly flip upside down; or after years of homelessness, picture yourself being told you had somewhere you could stay for good, only to wake up just before being handed the keys. these are some of dangers of making places out of  people.

1. don't ever turn a human being into a home unless you are prepared to be evicted without warning.
2. when you start to notice their arms taking the shape of a roof over your head, you have two choices: run, or wait for it to cave.
3. if they ask you to stay and burn with them, you have the right to say no.
4. it is not your responsibility to save anyone, and it is not your fault when you can't.
5. salvaging the photos from a house fire will only re-break your heart every time you pull them out to look at them.
6. when the basement floods, hold their hand.
7. if you are not a strong swimmer, remember that the difference between love and codependence is that one of then will drown you.
8. love will never drown you.
9. i knew this from the start but let you hold me beneath the waves in spite of it, just so you could stay afloat. i can't do that anymore.
10. i don't think i'll ever set foot on your hardwood floors again, but i'll pray that someone new moves in soon.

- m.f.

But still, here I sit
toying with blackened words seeped in sadness
thinking lines like slow decline
broken hearted
so cliche and tear stained pages

clawing my way back from the brink
while shedding verbs of loneliness

isolated desperation clinging like my second skin
slowly flaking from my shoulders leaving only subtle traces
where my new skin yet feels to raw to pick up and carry on

stamping signs of happiness across black lines of begrudged depression
as though a noseless yellow face could succeed where I still fail
to vanquish the unease slowly eating at my restless mind

give me peace from these swinging moods
catapulting me between a selection of unfounded aggression and broken sobbing

I don't want to sit and think
words of how the light seems dim despite its heat

to take beauty out of sunrise
starlit nights and humble silence

take it back and leave me be
though I might not sleep for a week or three
as least I wont sit here late at night
and write depressed poetry

Why is it that I only find strength
when there is nothing to fight against?

Why is it that love must
come after pay day?

Why is it that I only take to writing,
once I have realised I have no time for it?

Why is it I only value living,
once I feel dead inside?

Why is it that people only look at me,
when I've given up
and walked away?

Why is it that the words come to me,
only after silence has fallen?

Why is it that I find myself dreaming,
yet can never get any sleep?

Why is it, my darling,
that when you touch me,
you feel nothing at all?

what you need to understand about me is that i am nothing more than misplaced passion and a pair of blindly swinging fists that tremble with unrighteous anger. so allow me to apologize in advance for the fires my subconscious starts. i am a clumsy compilation of ill-suited lines that will never see life in your poetry. at least, not like they used to. you are a book filled with with pictures i never got to take, and every day i am forced to sit idly by while she starts a new roll of film. the missile crisis reincarnate is inside my chest, so forgive me for not being able to control when i shake. forgive me for fumbling with syntax so crassly. i know better than to spew hate and call it poetry. please understand that the endless series of sinking ships in my head makes it difficult to form coherent thought. my thoughts, will **** me, if your absence doesn't first. i think about your hands more than i am proud to admit, and when i picture them reaching for her i feel so sick. i'm sorry. i am so sorry that i haven't yet learned how to moderate the volcano in my throat. i'm so sorry for spitting fire with my eyes closed. forgive me for confusing anger with bravery and burning down too many houses to count. in my misguided thirst for blood i weaponized memories and threw them like daggers in every direction, but the only one being hit is me. i am so tired of bleeding, i am tired of this one-sided war, i am tired of being a war. i tried so hard to be catharsis personified but i have to face the reality that my arms would only hold you like a grave. i loved you like rainwater, and lost you like time. you were never mine. you were never mine. you were never mine. i have to say that to myself every day because it eases the pain of watching you belong to anyone else. but i can't ignore the surplus of "what if's" wreaking havoc in my consciousness. i think that's why i get so angry when i picture you laughing with her instead of me. i am blocking out the memory of the night you told me my laughter could cure your sadness. ******* it. i am trapped in a nightmare where the walls of the home we built are lined with photographs of her. this is why i can't breathe at the thought of her smiling when the flash goes off. they say that nothing good stays; i have never been good at leaving, so i guess that makes sense. you once referred to me as an anxious mess you would spend the rest of your life cleaning up, and i can't get that out of my head. i hope you know, that after everything, i would still sit and collect dust on a shelf in your house forever, if that's what you wanted me to do. but i know it's not, so i'll go back to apologizing. i'm sorry that my rage doesn't have an off switch. i'm sorry for being a literal spitfire. i'm sorry for being an earthquake under her glass slippers. i'm sorry that my mouth is a loaded gun and that i have ****** aim. i swear to god i'm trying not to shoot so often but this is one of the hardest things i have ever done. so until i learn control i will burn in silence with the safety on.  

- m.f.

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

What
          are we,

                       but
            dead
   and dying leaves.

                                                       Swimming back -
                                                       Yearning for the warmth again.
            Second year without the
                                                  Spring(s)
                                                                ­  In my heart.

Sister's turning. . .
T̶w̶e̶n̶t̶y̶,
More years ahead
Than
Behind; our bent hands

                                         Can write. . .
                                               Or scratch The
                                                                ­          tiniest .holes.
                                                         ­                 In our minds.
                            While m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ a̶t̶o̶m̶s̶                                                 
     ­                                                             and stolen organs are
                                                                ­         Attempting to find that
                                                            ­             One perfect meaning
                                    That seems to be
                                                              ­           Right there.
                                                       ­                                           Off of the east coast,
                                                          ­   You know?
         Right out of reach.
                                   Beyond your misunderstanding and
                                        Way past the point of freezing.

But there is never
                        Any                                   turning                                      back.

We still   h
                   a
                     n
                        g
             On    by
                   a
             t
           w
           i
         g.

  Our last seed
Is                          out there,
      somewhere.

             You haven't lost it. . .
                                                   But,
The message is not what it means.

                                             I guess
                                                  That, that
                                                            ­is why

                                                            ­                                            We are
                                                             ­                                                        The dead
                                                          ­               and dying leaves.

For the passage of tomorrow,
I cut myself a key.
Hoping that by walking on,
I will come to see

all the beauty frozen in place
and all postmodern lust,
the temples left to ruin in sun,
now covered in ancient dust.

For the promise of a taxi,
I walk on through the rain.
Hoping that I’ll sober up
In time to catch the train,

that will take me off to Europe,
that will take me to my room,
that will undress me by the window
and kiss me like a groom.

I plan to marry Bratislava,
kiss Amsterdam on the cheek,
run away with Budapest,
away from times so bleak.

For the programme of education,
I grew myself a tree.
Under the eaves I dreamt of you
and all you were meant to be.

I hope you’re living at frightful speed,
I hope you’ve learned to shout.
It’s been far too long since I’ve heard your voice
oh, it’s been far too long without

your words grunted in the morning,
your words in any form at all,
I see your ghost in every corner,
And I see you in the hall.

I have stopped thinking about winter. I have stopped thinking about anything at all. It’s a new methodology I’m trying out. It involves pacifying wants with better hydration and sipping green tea like a whiskey sour. I couldn’t tell you if it works, it’s Day One. It’s always Day One. The only thing I ever truly understood is this: that everybody is guessing their way through life. Homeless preachers, mothball billionaires and the child bride on stilts; all as baffled as the next. What is the use in regarding winter, when it will pass like some face in a crowd?

So I’ve stopped thinking of you, too. I have stopped thinking of you and instead, I listen to hours of positive affirmations play through headphones. I’m told I radiate joy and positive energy, but the voices don’t register the ground up cannabis in my nails. There’s no census of friends, only the binaural beat of false creation but still, I am told repeatedly of my brilliance. It’s enough to go to anybody’s head. That, coupled with old fortune cookie prophecy, leads me to believe in a signpost reality.

I have stopped lending misery to others. Look at my face now and you’ll see absence. It’s an old trick of Buddhism and the new one of fashion. I’ll not smile painfully your way, nor will you catch a scowl in the small reflection of the window. Impassive through and through, I assure you there is a beat somewhere in this chest. It’s still going. I know that because the drinks are still flowing for everybody else but me. I serve you and your friends. You thank me, tip me, pour me over your ice and then forget me by the next song.

I have stopped caring greatly about friendship. Coffee shop dreams and foreign coastlines are imagined only in solitude. Faithful book and the illusion of depth. All inept artists do the same. When nothing else is blooming to art, just turn yourself into it. So, I have stopped thinking about winter. I have stopped thinking about you, and them, and the times I took off my shirt. It’s Day One, but already I am liking what I see. I will wear this indifference like the patterned scarves I’m soon to leave at home.

He's clutching his cash
in the torrent of the market,
she's dreaming of friends
just to keep them in her sight.

She's getting to work
when the sun is non-existent,
he's thrashing in his sleep
the whole time before that.

He's talking to her
with one eye upon the cradle,
she's ordering wine
just to keep him in her sight.

She's dreaming of Paris
and the sighing violinists,
he's watering down
all the drinks at his bar.

He's a drinker most nights
when work is non-existent,
she's smoking all day
just to tolerate this life.

She's opening her legs
to the thud of empty guidance,
he's kissing her neck
to dominate the land.

He's looking at ****
and jerking off in bathrooms,
she's painting her nails
a deeper shade of lime.

She's fouling all her make-up
to cover tender eyes,
he's nervous in the aftermath,
he's playing out his time.

He's playing with her hair
as she's cradled on the couch,
she's covering her *******
from authoritative eyes.

She's hiding from her father
in the cellar of the house,
he's looking for his own creation
that has somehow gotten out.

She's shaking in the hallway
as he holds her by the throat,
he's laughing at the daughter
he claimed to love the most.

Come, paint me by the fruit bowl,
power me with cheap coal,
keep me running for as long
as I could care to stand.

Come, walk along the mountain,
we'll meet beside the fountain,
I'll give you back that hour
you gave to me back then.

Come, talk to me over coffee,
in the softness of the city,
in the sweetest desperation
of a tune.

Come, listen to my sadness,
and preferential madness,
come listen to me play
my autocratic flute.

Come, indulge all my sorrow,
all the poetry I borrow,
from the poets with the sense
to avoid the 'I love you's'.

Come, meet me in the canopy,
high atop the balcony,
be the one to make
all my lucid dreams come true.

Come, hide under the bedsheets,
we'll play criminals and junkies,
we'll play until the birds
begin to sing over our ***.

Come, relax in my eyesight,
born upon the morning light,
come, kiss me in my new self,
on lands where only love,
is ever considered wealth.