If you stare too long I'll disappear
Rub my skin hard and I go numb
Speak too loud and I won't hear
Come ******* nothing with your tounge
Inhale deep and smell my fear
Then like all others turn and run

she was not fragile like a snowflake.
she was fragile like a bomb.
and i didn't know which was scarier-
                                                        ­  her explosion or her calm.

i used to dream in black and white,
grays blending together the scenes that
spin spin spin
until i can't differentiate black from white.
i dreamt about shriveling flowers and endless hallways
and never being able to scream;
and then i met you.
suddenly i was dreaming in color,
a luxury i thought would never come to fruition,
flowers popping and life breathed back into trees.
i never knew how beautiful it was to have someone hold you at 3am,
to kiss your bruises and tell you your scars are angelic
even though the way you acquired them isn't.
i never knew how beautiful it was
to dream in color.

you told me you liked blondes,
so i bleached my hair.

you said you preferred coffee to tea,
so i made espresso every morning.

and you told me you loved me,
but then you found a girl with dark hair,
who actually liked coffee
and didn't love you back.

so you boxed up my heart,
and mailed it to me with no return address,
because you told me i had changed.

and i went back to brunette,
and drank my chamomile with two sugars,
and never opened that box again.

I’m a poet who doesn’t understand poetry.
I see all these words and phrases stacked up against each other
And they sound pretty
And they sound meaningful
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish there was a dictionary for poets
That tells you what things mean in plain English

Because let’s face it,
Poems aren’t written in English,
or any language that normal people can understand.
Poems are written in feelings,
Which is why I think that there’s no such thing as a bad poem.
Because no one speaks in someone else’s poetry.
We get a choppy translation
And sometimes that bad translation can make it seem like their language is gibberish.

Sometimes you can learn to speak another language,
But you’ll never be fluent.
Because as soon as you learn a word,
It’s going to change.
And every time you relearn it,
It’ll change again.
And even if you think you’ve got it down,
There are ten other people speaking ten other dialects,
And everyone thinks that theirs is the right one.

I’m a poet who doesn’t understand poetry.
Because I don’t write in English,
And I don’t know anyone who does.