You pulled my hair, left bite marks and handprints on my skin and left me sore all over, but it was a good kind of pain.

It was the kind of pain you yearn for the second it begins to heal.

Honestly, I didn't mind the markings either, they showed that I was yours and yours alone.

So unlike the markings on my heart, the scars of all the other men who had hurt me, not out of love, not out of pleasure, but out of hatred and malice.

So, know, when I tell you that pulling my hair doesn’t hurt and that I like it when you leave your markings on my skin it is true, because the pain you inflict on me comes from a place of love and that could never hurt me.

I close my eyes and hear wind and rain slapping the sides of my house.
The windows are open and I am chilled to the bone, but it isn’t because of the storm.

As humans, there are just certain things that we could never ever know.

How are we to know that there is or isn’t a god?
It is merely belief in one of the other that keeps a god alive or dead in one’s heart.

But one thing I know with absolute certainty,  without a shadow of a doubt, is that you are the most beautiful collection of stardust and bones I’ve ever seen in all of my existence.

And I am certain there is nothing that can ease the fluttering in my heart that comes at the thought of you.

You said
“be quiet.” “hold your breath.” “not a word.”

Only not in so many words.

Lifted a finger to those familiar lips and signaled that if I made a sound, you’d stop.

You must have known what blissful torture it was, caught between pleasure and the inability to tell you of it.

She was never one for dancing, but the way she arched her back
and rocked when we made love, was enough to tell me that she just hadn’t found her song.

He means to say, “I love you,”
but leaves it at “Goodnight,”
because to love involves falling,
and she’s afraid of heights.

He was a man made of silver,
but you were gold
like the sun and moon,
two different kinds of magic, that
seemed to enchant anyone who
dared a glance your way
electrum, you thought,
but you melted hotter
and he lower, and unless properly
contained,
he would run away
it saddens me to see a woman
of your worth treated like
you’re no more than iron,
worthless the second rust
sets in.

I’ve spent what feels like months in a haze.
I can’t seem to shake it, it won’t go away.
I breathe in deep, to try and clear my mind.
Even if it leaves, it comes back every time.

You asked if he was my other half.

I said “no,” and your face lit up like it never had before, and it fell when I said I’m not a half.

I’ve got a lot of bad habits.
I stay up late.
I drink my weight in coffee, daily.
I forget to text you back every now and then,
and when it comes to others, rarely at all do they
get a reply.
I often don’t listen.
I day-dream a lot and find myself in fantasy more than in reality.
I rarely go outside.
But if there is one habit
I have no intention of
breaking, it’s the constant
stream of thoughts that orbit around you.
I refuse to stop loving you and I refuse to stop thinking of you.
On the off chance that I’m not by your side, all my spare time
is devoted to thoughts only of you.
I’d have it no other way.

You’ve got this aura, this soft magic about you that keeps me in orbit.
I couldn’t walk away even if I wanted to.

Split down the center as if there were two.
The energy of one is colored a happy yellow,whilst the other is a saddening blue.
One light, one dark.
It is hard to know Gemini’s head and heart.

Saw you standing there
beneath the dim gas station lights.
You looked so out of place like
the sun out at night.
Kept your head hung low, still
your eyes met mine.
Even though you tried to
hide its glow, I saw
your stardust inside.

you’ve got galaxies in your mind,
and endless stars inside your eyes,
so, won’t you tell me why
you seem so terrified?

if only you could see how
terrifying a town
my mind is now,
you’d want to get out.

darling, it seems they’re right
when they’re saying things like,
there can be no darkness,
without also, the light.

I tried to forget you,
I did, but you took root in me,
wrapped yourself around my
collarbones, and day after day,
I am reminded of how hard it is
to breathe without you.
Day after day, I pick the flower
petals off and am reminded
that you love me
not.

Flowers do not cower and close up their petals when someone does not like them.

Flowers do not exist to please others, but instead their singular job is to make this planet a better place for everyone.

I’ve been drifting for days, floating.
Restless, like salt-battered wood that goes wherever the wind pushes the waves.
Somehow, I always end up at your feet, awash in foam on those white shores.
Tell me, will you drag me out and set me on fire?
It would be more than drifting aimlessly on the breeze.

Fireworks sound inside my chest every single time I hear those voicemails you sent me at 2 a.m.

I want ropes, not roses,

I want teeth marks, bruises, not black eyes,

I want lipstick smears, not tear streaks,

I want passion, love, fire

but

I don’t want to get burned.

This isn’t just a wildfire, springing up with heat when the right wind catches it.
No, this is an ember, slow and smoldering.
I’m not angry with you, I’m hurt.
I’m not plotting my revenge,
I’m planning my escape.

I need him
I tell myself things like
things will be better soon
I don’t believe that
it will be like this always
I know that
he treats me this way out of love
there is no way
he meant to do it
I know in my heart
that deep down he is good
still, sometimes I think
I don’t need him



Re-read the poem up from the bottom.

Diamonds and gold,
honey and ice,
glittering,
should the two ever mix
it would be chaotic
but somehow,
they are charming
draped ‘round
her caramel
throat

Everything I want already exists.

I will be happy when I wake tomorrow with the rising sun.

Nothing in this world could satisfy my desires, because I’ve already got you, and I desire nothing more.

He was a desert and I was rain but he decided he liked the feeling of sun on his skin better than raindrops.

For so long I have been suffocating,
in a world where no amount of oxygen
could ever ease my pain
I have tried time and time again to
fit in, to please, to belong somewhere
I was never wanted in the first place
and it is this excruciatingly vast effort
to be something, someone I am not
that has not only suffocated me, but it
has stifled and stunted my growth.
I was always trying to build something
beneath someone else’s weight and
I kept crumbling, but now it’s different.
I was trying to push my way through the
pavement, but instead I put down roots
in field I better belong.

I know we’ve known each other for a while, as friends,
but there is something you must know.
I see the way you read and the way you play the piano and
the way you quote Shakespeare, and there is an aching in my
bones to be the thing that steals your time and focus the way
the simplest of hobbies do.
I want you to read me the way you hungrily read books
cover to cover, scanning every word of the story, knowing it in and out,
the way one only could through careful scrutiny.
I want you to touch me the way you play the piano, striking
the keys with such emotion at times and hardly grazing them at others.
I want you to make me sing the way you make the piano sing for you, love,
songs that no one else knows the words to.
I want you to speak to me in such a way that my heart melts
between your words, sentences so eloquent and intimate,
made only for my ears, sentences so carefully wrought and woven,
sentences so softly strung together that the slightest breath might blow them away,
sentences that Shakespearean sonnets couldn’t dare hold a candle to.
I want to be the one not only who takes your time, but also the one who
consumes you completely,
just as you’ve consumed me.

You look lovely in
spring colors, chrysanthemum,
drop dead beautiful.

Red, purple, and pink
are toxic to me, I think
poisonous nectar.

Yellow and white shades
steeped in boiling water
become amber tea.

Haikus made around
chrysanthemums in the ground
have a pleasing sound.

cry me a river
build a bridge
and get over it

he said,

but if only he knew how many
oceans I’d cried for him and
how many bridges I’d burned
trying to get over us

If riches, beauty, calm, humility,
compersion, contentedness, and
inspiration are all secrets that
are tucked between the pages of
one book or another,
why have you not yet read it?
You struggle with your sins, yet you do
nothing to combat them.
I know it isn’t because of your lack
of desire to read, if it were, I would
find the most luxurious vellum,
richest ink, and I would write a book
just for you if that is what it takes
to get you to understand that
these things you do, are not only
darkening your soul,
but they’re costing you your friends.
I know that without the darkness,
stars could not be seen, but
I would rather lose you to my mouth
than to the dark.

I’ll never forget
the night we had
on the rosewood floor,
the way you looked,
the way you smelled
the way you felt
on my skin.
I’d have the floor taken
up and I’d cover my walls
with it to evoke the
memory of you every single day,
more clearly.
I’d build my casket out of it and
bury myself alive, if that is
what it takes to get
you to see that
I am dying without you.

I never asked you for your body count and to be frank, I honestly don’t care.
The number of lovers we shared our beds with is irrelevant, so why do you waste your precious air?

If the big bang created everything we now know,
if the sun brings us life,
if the moon, turns the tide,
how can we not be moved by the stars?
We’re practically stardust, ourselves.

My dear, you are so wonderfully lovely, and I want nothing more than to write you eloquent poems, and sculpt you from the ground up.

I want nothing more than to paint you in a million different colors and sing songs of your beauty.

But I’m no artist, my dear, and all I’ve got is “I love you.”

I don’t ever want to be apart from you again, my love.
I know happiness is never far, when you are near.

I just want to smoke my cigarettes and drink my coffee, alone.

I know they won’t last, nothing does, cigarettes burn, coffee cools, but while we’re hot just let us be together, alone.

“Hey, how’s it goin’?” you said, calling me up on your cigarette break.

Good to know how you think of me between puffs of smoke.

I’d like to think of myself as more than just another one of your
addictions, but you know how vices often go hand in hand.

I never thought I had an addiction.
But I’ve tried to quit drinking coffee nine
times and yet again, I stand in line at the
shop, waiting for that consoling dark brew.

I know later, I’ll come down from
that high and when I crash, I’ll
feel lead-***** and dead inside,
like a car running low on fuel.

But if you told me right now, it
would mean the entire would to you
for me to give it up, I’d dump this
out on the pavement, and quit
cold turkey.

If you wanted it, I’d quit.
If it were cigarettes and you asked
me with earnest blue eyes,
to put them down, I would.

Not out of self-preservation, but
because you mean more.
You always have and always will.
I could never give you up, though.

Rock n’ roll music, Folger’s, and paint-smeared hands.
Dresser drawers filled to the brim with undeveloped camera film.
Blue bonnets and overgrown grass, pecans and crunching fall leaves.
Dirt roads and river-rocks, typewriters, polaroid cameras, and feather-quill pens.
Those hand-me-down blue eyes and brown ones that are “sometimes hazel.”
Crystal clusters and Lord of the Rings.
Countless mosquito bites and play-pretend games in the clubhouse.
Early-birds and night-owls.
Trudy; and Randy Hayes.
“Don’t touch everything you see,” and “If you say you’re bored, I’ll find work for you to do.”
Sweet tea and okra and southern dishes blackened and drenched in cheese or gravy.
Grandma always burned everything to make sure it was fully cooked, and to her, it was never burned, just “well-done.”
Cigarettes and carpentry and cookbooks. Wild blackberries and birthday parties at the lake.
Sleeping in all day and staying up all night and procrastination.  
Shepherd's Pie, potatoes, and four-leaf clovers.
“Nil Desperandum. Never Despairing.”  
I’m from a whole house that eats eggs for breakfast, and I’m allergic to eggs.
And trees as tall as buildings and buildings as tall as trees.
“You should never take the lord’s name in vain,” and “Jesus loves you, so you should love others.”
Day-dreams and stargazing and thunderstorms.
“All or nothing,” and “There is no try, only do.”
Old family pictures in dust-glittered frames.
We are crystals. We have facets, each one makes us who we are.
With only one window of our lives to express, we’d merely be glass.
I am a part of each of these things just as much as they are each a part of me.

I always admired the lake-leaves
weightless, almost,         with
lilies of pure white resting
atop the water, as if they had only
              truths to tell.
I wish I could drown     beneath them,
  the     light burning      holes in my
spine, through the cracks in the green,
     purifying me, making me new.
How my tongue drilled       into the dust and
my skin                 willed a lie.
     I couldn’t stop the bleeding        this time, though.
I carved a hole in the dirt and poured
myself into it, the earth       wrapping
               around me
      like soft palms comforting.
The dust falls upon            the skin of my thighs      like dew
on the wings         of the first pale moth       of morning.
And my heart sighs       knowing that I cannot simply
      fly away, that I cannot dig my way out, and
that I am the one        who put me here.

I am calmed by the soft petals of the lotus
flower, the same petals of the same lotus flower that
rests upon the shoulder of my yoga teacher, whom I
see every Monday and Wednesday afternoon.

I am calmed by starting out in child’s pose, hips back,
arms out front, stretching shoulders wide.

I am calmed by the cool water that runs like a river down my
parched throat during our first break in the practice.

I am calmed by the soft sounds of the music that plays in
the background and the tiny thuds from the basketballs
hitting the backboard, in the court on the other side of the wall.

I am calmed by the turquoise blue of my yoga mat and the
matching towel beside it, which I never get sweaty enough to use.

I am calmed by all the warriors teaching us strength, endurance, and balance.
Warrior one: arms up to the sky, Warrior two: arms out to the side,
Warrior three: one leg held up high, and Warrior four: arms are spread out wide.

I am calmed by all of the cats and cows and tabletops and chairs
that we become, and all of the forward folds.

I am calmed by savasana, or corpse pose, at which we arrive in the end.
we lay on our backs, legs out wide, arms flat, facing up, and eyes close.
there we stay for what seems like an eternity.
Then, when we’re ready, we roll over onto our side-body, into a fetal position.
Then, we slowly rise up into a seated position with our eyes still closed
and our hands folded softly at heart’s center.
Finally, we stretch our arms out as if it was the first grand stretch of the
morning, and it’s usually followed with yawning yogis.

I am calmed by shavasana, the death and rebirth between classes.

I am calmed by the blank space my mind becomes when I close my eyes and just exist without a worry in the world.

I am calmed when we bow and say, “Namaste.”

Last night, I had a had a dream:

We were driving down a snowy-city street.
It was the biggest city we’d ever been in
because we just kept driving and driving
and driving without ever turning.

We had heavy winter coats on and
you were describing your time at work,
which seemed more like a big corporate office,
rather than a small city newspaper.
Your voice was as sweet as silk.

The sky fell to dusk, and we came to a mall
and there’s people everywhere.
The evening chill just vanishes as the
double-doors close behind us.
And we were walking together, talking
and window-shopping and enjoying
each-other’s company.

It seemed like an eternity passed before
we left the mall.
We were walking down a chilly street,
but where our hands joined us, it warmed
me to the core.


I was distracted by the cold, grey,
overcast sky and the snowy streets of the
wintery metropolis we strolled through
when you turned to me and said
something. though I didn’t hear
it in the dream, I know I’ve heard
it so many times, before.

Sometimes, it comes soft as a
whisper, and sometimes a
scream of passion.
I love you.

Tell me,  darling,  do you know                                                             ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                       what it feels like to see                                                              ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                             all of the stars fall from the sky?
Because that is what it feels like, watching the              
                                               ­          light leave your eyes as the sadness in  
                                your bones floats up from somewhere deep inside of you.  

I tell you that                                                             ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                          you can tell me anything,  not for the satisfaction of                                                               ­                                                                 ­                                                   my own curiosity,  but for the sake of your own sanity.
                                           My love, do not bottle up your stardust,
                                                      but tell me of your troubles and together  
                                                      ­      we can fashion galaxies
                                                        ­                         with what it means to
                                                           love and to be loved,  not what it means
                                                           ­                                    to wallow alone in despair.

For once, my room has good lighting.
It is not from the lamp that hangs from the ceiling, casting a yellow glow.
It is from the moonlight washing over you. Washing over me.
For once, I truly see you. You are so much more than the writer or the artist or the brilliant mind.
This night, I see the stardust in your bones.
I see you are more than the flesh and blood and teeth on the outside.
That beauty stops on the outside.
But my dear, you are beautiful, inside and out.
Your stardust is beautiful.
And for once, I see you.

There is some kind of sadness in my heart when I hear this one song. It just comes alive and dances with the melancholy notes.
I do not know where it comes from, only that it is a part of me, and I’ll carry it with my always, even if I am to hear the same song each day.
I’ve learned to embrace every part of myself, the light and dark parts, the happy and sad, and if I am to spend equal time in happiness and sadness, then **** it, I will at least learn how to harmonize with it.

Your eyes are like the ocean, that blue a vast, limitless expanse.
Dark and twisting as thoughts are pulled beneath the tide.
Eyes so blue that I could become lost in them forever, if only you'd let me.

I will not take the blame for
any atrocities
my curiosities
may commit against you.

You told me you required
a potion, or a few
an elixir, or two,  
here's what I've brought for you.

This first red potion will do
it will heal your damage,
even if you’re ravaged.
With magic, it’s imbued.

The second, a blue mixture
a mix that makes you sleep,
a slumber that's so deep,
You'll be out until noon.  

Next is a strange elixir:
green and made of venom,
keep it clear of vellum,
it will eat it clear through.

And the next I have with me
is a dark purple flask
don't dump it in the cask
lest' you'll turn the wine blue.

And next, I’ve got a rare gem
a glowing white tonic,
to heal you of chronic
pain with a swallow or two.

Here is a real concoction.
This one is a deep black.
Don't store it in your sack,
or it will surely spew.

Next, I have this yellow one,
a decanter of wine,
used to make scales shine
like a sheen of fresh dew.  

And here is a fine mixture.
It's a sparkling pink
drink that makes you think,
clearer than you're used to.

At last we meet the end of
this long alchemist's list.
Brews from the willow witch,
hand-crafted just for you.  

There's one for every color
in the rainbows above.
For everyone you love,
I'll be sure to send two.

I sway,  o p e n  to
the music, as I am in such a
v u l n e r a b l e  state, as if my walls
have come down, and my soft shell
has been e x p o s e d , and the music is a dagger that
moves straight through to my heart and
s o u l .

I sat at the corner of my bed awaiting your reply.

The phone buzzed and as I looked down at it, a second wave of love washed over me.

I never understood why a dorky text message from you could trigger such a thing, but it did and what a sensation it was.

It wasn’t even a phone call or a voice mail, I hadn’t even heard the sound of your voice in my ears, but I’ve fallen in love with you
once more.

This world is so incredible, but it pales in comparison to you, my love.

I am head-over-heels, madly in love with you, and I long to be so sinfully close to you that even air could not come between us.

That being said, I’ve come to believe that the most beautiful thing in the world is not love, nor is it the act of making love, but rather, the act of falling asleep beside you, that I’d leave myself open to you all night long, dreaming in my most vulnerable state.

That is the most exquisite beauty of all.

I love when you are
sleeping, for you are
so very lovely
yet, so unaware.

I love how you are
peacefully at rest
in such an open,
vulnerable state.

I love the way you
smile- that hidden smile
I’ve only caught a
few brief glimpses of
during the day-time.

I love what you have
become when you are
dreaming, my dear, the
way you appear more
dazzling, dreaming
beneath silver rays.

I love you for the
creature you’ve become
and for the creature
you’ve made me in this
satin paradise.

Found poem in The 1975's album title, "I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It."