You pretend not to know me
In front of him
Like you didn’t come over at 2am
And we didn’t spend hours talking and cuddling
And you didn’t plant a row of kisses on my shoulder
Or scratched my back until I fell asleep

Is that all I am to you?
A secret you’ll carry with you to your grave?

In a world full of artists and  writers,
It’s hard not to compare
“Are the poems I write good?
What makes them different from anyone else’s out there?”

My poems don’t rhyme
At least, not all the time
And my words may not be exquisite
Hell, they’re hardly even elegant

No, my poems may not be the best
But, they do come from the heart
So who’s to say
that isn’t art?

Do you think there’s a god?

I haven’t felt Him around much lately

I am confused by your hand resting on the side of my face. As if you’re holding something fragile, that you don’t want to break.

I am confused by your gentle eyes that stare back into mine. As if I hold every answer to every question you wondered. Like I am your god-sent sign.

Could it be true?
Could you actually like me
Like I like you?

My life is a series of questions that come at me like a 90 mph curve ball straight to the chest, and I don’t have a bat to answer them.

If only I was a baseball player, and could decipher one pitch from the next

Because the only pitch I can knock out of the park is the question “why are you sad?”

And my home run answer is

“I don’t know”

I am the ocean
     And you are the moon
No matter how high I rise
     Stretching and yearning
I can never seem to reach you
     And you never notice me
So when you leave,
     I fall back into a puddle of salty tears
Waiting to see you
     So I can try all over again

I am very confused
By this boy I met in school
He talks to me all the time
Is it April fools?

But it’s not April
And this guy I’m starting to like
He holds open doors for me
And is actually really nice

“No,” my mind screams
“Don’t fall for him.
Remember what happened the last time you let someone in?”

My heart stops in its tracks
Remembering that pain
How many nights I spent wide awake
How I still don’t feel the same

He left me broken
Lonely, empty, bruised
He only wanted one thing
And now I feel used

“This can’t be true”
My mind convinces me
“This new guy doesn’t actually like you,
Are you too blind to see?”

So I cut him off
And focus on work
But that boy still won’t give up
And my heart is starting to hurt

“I’m scared” I tell him
“To drop down my walls.”
“You don’t have to be,” he says
“I won’t leave when you fall.”

So I show him the lines
That run across my thigh
I’m nervous about what he’ll say
But I’m not afraid to try

I tell him my story
About all the nights I spent wasted
Trying to forget how you felt
And the way your skin tasted

He opens his mouth to speak
and my heart starts to sink
But what he says surprises me
It makes me rethink

“I didn’t want you because you’re pure.
I already knew you weren’t.
I can see it in your eyes, you’ve experienced a lot of hurt.

But you still smile really wide
And your laughter fills a room
You’re kind to everyone you meet
And your eyes rival the moon

No, I don’t want you for what you’re not
I can find that in any girl
I want you for all the times you’ve fallen down,
And here you are
still facing the world.”

I heard you’re going to Alaska
To work on a fishing boat
Spend the summer under warm skies
In a place you’ve always wanted to see

But while you’re out there
Experiencing the world
You’re forgetting me
The girl back at home
Who has glasses too big for her face
And an unruly mess of curly brown hair
Who has a list of everything she knows about you in her notes
And hundreds of poems written about you
That you’ll never see

I can feel where she is
If I close my eyes
the grass between my toes
the soft, cold wind raises goosebumps on my skin
the stars high up in the sky
the sound of crickets in the field
If I close my eyes
I can feel where she is

But I can also feel the ache in her chest
The sharp pain in her side
From months of running and searching for you
The broken, roughed up skin on the bottom of her feet
The mud on her legs
Her crazy, wind whipped hair
She falls to the ground and takes deep breaths, exhausted

She is done running for you
Searching high and low for your eyes and your hands and your skin

But she still isn’t ready to come home
Not just yet

My love for you
Could raise mountains
Create blue skies
And grow flowers

My love for you
Was laughter and sunshine
On a warm day
It was an endless road
With the radio turned up high

My love for you
Was deeper than the oceans
And more vast than the stars in the sky

My love for you
Still is

I loved you endlessy
Wholly
Hopelessly
Desperately

Every molecule in my body
Every breath I took
Every beat of my heart

I gave it all to you

So how did I expect you to love me in return

If I didn’t have anything left of me for you to love?

Love
Is not a quiet thing.
you cannot deny it
It’s something you feel in your bones
Something that anchors you down
Plants your feet into the ground
Makes you sturdy and strong.

Love
Is also a gentle thing.
It warms your insides
And floods your heart
It’s something you can feel radiating off your skin
It makes everything seem alright

Love
Can be painful
It rips your chest apart
It wakes you up in the middle of the night,
Screaming out for the other half of you
It is the tidal wave that forces you back under the covers in the morning

But love
Is also strong
It is an iron fist
That chains your heart to the other
It is waking up after a heated fight
And not giving up
But trying again

That girl you talked to
The one who laughed the loudest
And liked star gazing
The one who wasn’t a drinker
And didn’t have scars on her thigh
She’s gone.
As if on that night, January 1rst
At 5am
My body tore in half
Split right down the middle
I don’t know where she went, but she ran
I can take a guess though
She probably went to that park we always went to at 1am
Or under the covers of your bed
Or in the shower at your uncles house
Running barefoot across gravel and dirt
Frantically
I think she’s looking for you
Desperately searching high and low
For your hand to hold
But it’s time for her to come back
I need her to come home
I miss her

I would do many things
In order to forget about you

I would stub my pinky toe on a wall
Or get a big and ugly tattoo
Lose all of my hair
And constantly have the flu

I would let a spider crawl on me
And run naked through the streets
Acquire a horrible sunburn everywhere
And only eat frost burned meats

I would get a paper cut between my fingers
Or bid my favorite book adieu
Even give up writing
Just to have one day where I don’t think about you

Ahh, yes. There are many things I would do, in order to forget about you.

But the truth is, there are even more things I would do, to be loved by you.

Today, I had a drink

For the first time, the purpose of it wasn’t to numb the pain you left

But to simply

Have fun

It is easy to get over someone

If you never seen them.

The hard thing to do, is to be able to look them in the eye

And say to yourself,

“This is not what I want anymore”

And the most important step that needs to be taken

Is to accept your emotions

And not think yourself weak because of them

No matter what you do for him

He will never feel the same as you

You have left me abandoned so many times,

I have the lines on your back memorized

better than the ones on your face

I want to yell and scream and claw myself out of this cage
And tell you what this new girl has done to me
She drowns me in alcohol
And uses my body as her canvas
She likes the way all my muscles contract at once
to expel your memory out of my stomach at 3 am
After trying to forget you at 1 am
It makes me feel alive
And she likes the way her drawings on my skin make me feel less emotion
And more grounded

But every time I go to open my mouth
To plead
To tell you  
She won’t let me
Writing is the only thing she can’t control
So I write and write and write
Words that are mushed together and silly
That pour out of me too fast to catch
I’m trying to tell you, it’s not me, mom.
I wouldn’t do this to me
I’m not me

Momma says to eat your greens
but that spinach looks like something that you could pull out of a shower drain
I never listen

Momma says not to talk to strangers
but I’m too friendly not to talk to the guy who said hi at the grocery store
I never listen

Momma says he’s seems indifferent
but that boy has the sunset trapped in his eyes, and causes my side to cramp with laughter
I never listen

Momma says I should’ve seen it coming
but I actually believed him when he kissed me and held my hand
I never listen

Momma says not to turn to drinking
but this alcohol is a life jacket, and holds me above the waves
I never listen

Momma says not to harm myself
but that blade helps me feel something other than empty
I never listen

Momma says she’s sorry this happened, and that she wished she could take the pain away
but no momma. you warned me

I’m sorry I never listened

you left
you left me open and all alone
broke me and made me pick up the pieces
now everyone looks at me like i’m fragile
and that they have to be careful with me

why?
why did you leave
right when I needed you most?

Like an abandoned dog
I sit here and wait for you to come back
but you never do
and now I don’t know where to turn to
or which way to go
so I wander aimlessly
helplessly lost

and I am not sure what I am more upset about
the fact that you never loved me
or the fact that I can’t seem to remember myself

before you