Palm of hand touching hair touching cheek touching
you for the first time
Lend me your hips like
a sweet favor
I will teach this body rhythm and
the music of us will echo into
the bricked walls, syncing together melodies of
contact, electrical wire sparking in this blood, your
heart beating its way out of chest,
the softness, a catalyst for fire, I almost
swear I can hear the air particles kissing,
speaking, they are singing,
closer, closer

"gravity, is working against me"

the dark means nothing without
a glow under covers and
wrinkled sheets holding us eager, silent learning,
don't let go just yet,
we are falling,
falling
further into each other,

"just keep me where the light is."

I fell asleep at 6 a.m. and woke to find
that my bed smells like someone new-
I don't know where you are tonight

His lips kissed me like they were
looking for a light switch in the dark-
I don't know if you think of me at late hours

I pushed him back slightly and he asked
if everything was okay and I said yes-
I don't tell him where my thoughts are

Tired, I'm tired, that's my excuse for
losing myself when I'm with a stranger-
I don't always know how to find my way back

I'm trying, see I am, really but
there's a reason I kept coming to you so easily-
I don't know how to find familiar in someone new

The scent of my attempts to move on is
making me sick and I can't do much about it-
I don't know how to get you here again

I stayed up until 6 a.m. with him when really
you're the only one worth losing sleep over-
I don't know if that means you're winning

I don't know where you are tonight-
I don't know if I want to know

You are, almost
Tell me your first memory of happiness.

Maybe a swing set above wood chips or
collecting ladybugs in your pockets or
a perfectly cut sandwich you didn't make
or the smell of grass mixed with chlorine
and sunscreen coating your skin under
a sky brighter than any future imaginable.
Pink frosting from cake dyes palms
into a canvas of sugary pigment
A popsicle melting down between
the webbing of eager fingers
Teeth are covered in chocolate and
face a mess and
all smiles,
it is funny how joy always seems
to be synonymous with
sweetness and
giggles and
the memory of being too young to remember anything fully.

19 is poison for a clock
it is reminder to wake up
after pretending to be
something you were not for too long
time is eating away the comfort
from your bones, I wonder
does candy still taste like candy
when it has grown stale?
when the shell has cracked and
all that remains is what's inside,
is it still desirable then?
will people still want to know
what you feel like against their tongue
after you've already touched the ground?

The same texture but time
has made its evidence on you tangible
The juice once spilling from your hands
has become wine
The summer sparklers have become remnants of
cigarettes on your nail buds,
ashes of trying to forget,
you are no longer afraid of fireworks
the hairbrush holds another version of yourself,
a near stranger with similar freckles who
once insisted on only wearing dresses,
now you struggle just to get shoes on,
it was easier when someone did it all for you,
everything is, that way.
I don't know when laughing became
a side effect instead of a soundtrack but
it still rings familiar, sometimes.

19 is more sour than lost
it is possible to know whereabouts with
a bitterness between your lips but
not all of your past is disintegrating
there is a love for saccharine that still remains,
more honey than cloying and
19 may be taunting down a candle to its wick
asking to be noticed but
it is ready to be uncovered
19 is golden
You are, almost.

I can't remember
If I told you I loved you
The first time we had ***
But knowing me,
I probably did
My fingernails digging into your back
Your face in my neck
I most likely whispered it into your ear
Said it softly but loud enough for you to hear
I said I love you
Like it could make you stay
Like it meant mutuality
Thinking that maybe the lack of space between us
Could hypnotize you into believing
That you loved me too
A part of me certain that the air particles
Could somehow sew us together
And that the inevitable reality
Lingering in the background
Could never detach us
Convinced myself
That we were an atom in pure form
Incapable of being split apart when we were this close together

***
Is not synonymous with feeling
I knew this to begin with
Love and lust
Like oil and water
Can be separated with ease
Television and movies
Trained me in the art of one night stands
But I never intended to have you for one night
I didn't wanted you for a week
I wanted you for the amount of time
Where we forget how long it's been
Memorizing every single one our limbs
Ribcage
Arm
Hands
Skin
Then ******* the demons out of each other
To rectify our sins
Making love until we have no recollection
Of who we were before we learned each other's bodies
We were nobody
Before the conquer of this foreign territory
I wanted to surrender
From the moment we touched
But making love is so similar to make believe
That it gets hard
To tell the difference sometimes

When I slept next to you on your couch
My back pressing into the ridged corners of the sharpness
It was not out of convenience
It was out of purpose
Believing that withstanding the ache
Would show you how much I cared
Forgetting that your heart
Belonged to someone with a different name
In different city
Yet every night you still called my body home
Coming back to it repeatedly
Like a drunken wanderer
I thought if you did enough times
You would never want to leave
I convinced myself
That letting you **** me
Was one step closer
To getting you to stay

***
Is not synonymous with permanence
We should have never done it to begin with
Knowing quite well you were here
With the intention of temporary
I talked myself into your skin
Thought if I wrapped myself in it
Deeply enough
You would do the same
To me
My body
Was nothing more than a grave yard
For you to hide your secrets in
No treasure,
No gold

I buried my love for you
Into the curve
Of your collarbone
I bet it would still be there
If you looked for it
But I know
You wont.

So, I've decided to talk in pen, because pens are smoother.
Pencils scratch, pens slide like honey out of your spoon in to a cup of tea.
A pen does not stumble, a pen does not falter, no, a pen makes a bold mark on a blank piece of paper.

It stands out.

A pen is shouting loud into the sky,
"I am here, I am permanent, I am not to be taken lightly, I matter."
A pen can make mistakes, but they are ******* hard to erase.
Because, you know what?
A mistake is part of a pen's path, and what it has written before matters just as much as what it writes next.

I have decided to write in pen, because my voice is never going to be erased.