we were drinking wine out of mason jars
and spinning records on the floor.

getting kicked out of our basement bedrooms for burning memories and starting fires.

we were young and leave each other every other week. you and i, we pass each other on the street.

you're in the car that almost hits me and honks instead of apologizing, but you get out and kiss
me after.

we stop traffic you know.
 as time progresses for everyone else but loops around and pauses for the two of us.

if the stars were to say we're a fatal combination
i'd say, **** the stars,

nobody speaks for the dead except the people speaking for God and what right did they have?

what cult do i have to join to get to heaven?

where do i sign my body away?

when i signed the papers to become an ***** donor my mother asked me if i was okay with somebody taking my eyes,

nobody sees with their eyes it is beneath them, they can take them.

you, you take what you need.

you put your hand in the cookie jar expecting to bite so you never know sugar but honey.

i am here.

in your waiting room

in your bookshelf

in your breath.

you’re dreaming of a better place.

i'm never leaving before you wake up.

10 things i would like to say to my ex:
1. you really had me going for a second
2. your wounds will soon wake you
3. my mom had this perfect idea of us together, but it was never meant for me, and all you had to day was say "I love you" back.
4. i still wear your clothes, they get bigger every time i put them back in the drawer
5. my sister insisted i invite you to the wedding
6. my bipolar is getting better, i finally found the perfect way to handle it, and this time, its not the ***.
7. your mom still calls me to tell me she loves me and asks when i'll show up again
8. you don't know me like you though you did, i don't even know me
9. I'm over red-head boys, so don't come back around
10. i don't love you anymore, and i will not apologize for the epidemic of this tragic love story in which you thought i'd be the one to stay, and you'd be the one to call me weak.

I was told they found her with mascara down her cheeks, and his picture in her hand.
Allie always told me, straight faced, that she wanted to **** herself but it was never the right time.
there were too many things to get done and too many colleges to apply for.
don't worry, Allie isn't going to **** herself 20 more seconds into this poem; that's not the kind of story i'm telling here.
Allie told me, sipping codeine and sprite, that the walls were talking and that the chair was singing, but not to worry because my time wasn't over.
i didn't know what that meant at the time but i do now.
It means that despite all of the crazy **** that is happening around us, not to worry because we have not lived it all yet.
we have marks to leave on this world and Allie left hers.
it was the scar on my cheek that keeps me in remind that she fought a hard battle.
I remember when i got the call that my little Allie was 33 pills in and half a bottle out,
her life was gone and she was cold.
my whole world fell apart and i have no idea where my mind has gone.
i miss the old Allie,
she might still be here but she isn't the same.
oh how i miss her.

it's like holding the world in your hands
and letting it slip from your grasp.
like owning the most beautiful, priceless
piece of artwork the universe will ever let their
eyes get a taste of, and letting it burn in the fire.
this is the emptiness they tried to warn us about.
it's burning aches in the middle of the night
because you can't quite close that wound.
it's constant pain that no amount of medicine
can fix.

and just like that;
he was gone
without warning
without sign
plain as day
in the middle of nowhere.
i wish i could tell him i still love him
or that his clothes are still on the floor.
i wish i could run my fingers through his hair
but i have this iron mouth
and i cannot talk to him.
he's been gone 7 days,
and everyday i find myself at his grave
half hearted  
empty as ever
considering my own death.

i try to get rid of the pain
with other people
but ****, they aren't you.
none of them know my hills like you,
or my rivers.
none of them can outline my constellations like you can.
none of them can put my pieces together like you can;
none of them.
because they aren't you.

it's been 4 weeks
one month
30 days
since the sky decided it needed
a new artist.

10: I don't think, i breathe.
9
8
7: Hold it together, the ticket to life is almost leaving.
6: We are almost gone.
5
4: Just a few more seconds and we are on...
3
2
1: My journey is almost over and my fears are almost gone. It's time to leave this life, remember me when i am gone.

the fear of loneliness consumes me
wraps me up in a red blanket
kisses my cheek
and tells me to stay wherever there
is company
because sometimes staying awake
in a puddle of my tears
is better than falling asleep
and seeing him in my dreams
only to wake up
and him not be right beside me.

it's not that i don't love you. it's the sound i heard when i was 9 and my moms boyfriend slammed the front door so hard behind him i swear to god it made the whole house shake. for the next 2 years i watched my mother break her teeth on ***** bottles. i think she stopped breathing when he left. i think a part of her died. i think he took her heart with him when he walked out. her chest is empty, just a shattered mess of cracked ribs and depression pills.
it's not that i don't love you. it's all the blood in the sink. it's the night i spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after a boy she loved , told her he didn't loved her anymore.  is the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and the white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood.
so much blood.
it's not that i don't love you it's the time that i had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her ex boyfriend ****** his ex.
i swear to god she still has tear streaks stained to her cheeks. i think when you love someone, it never really goes away. it's not that i don't love you. it's the six weeks we had a substitute in english because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn't handle getting out of bed. when she came back she was smiling. but her hands shook when so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. and sometimes when things break you can't fix them. nothing ever goes back to how it was. i got an A in english that year. i think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays. it's not that i don't love you. it's that i do.

I was 15
it was a Sunday night,
and my curfew was 11.p.m
we slipped outside of our homes and into her 2016 Hyundai making sure to leave in minimal time keeping in mind that we had $20 and 1 phone number.
it took 6 puffs and i was no where but everywhere at once
it was the brink of happiness
it was the brink of being a teen

i won't ask you to save me when i start drowning in my own tears, so check my side of the bed to make sure i'm still breathing.
2. there will be days that i will not want to talk to you, please do not take it personally, my thoughts convince me that they are my only friends.
3. you are a pure work of art, no Picasso could recreate you, no Van Gogh could shade in the light of your eyes, any artist would be lucky to throw your body on a blank canvas and call it art.
4. i still listen to the mixtape you gave me in high school, i cry every time track 3 plays.
5. i will love you regardless of the consequences of this unbound love that i am oh so lucky enough to call my own, you my love, light of my life, have made me so full that the flickering no vacancy sign that i used to wear so proudly has finally been put away. you are utterly beautiful.

For a time i was alone
and i was fine
until my urges awoke me
and i found myself under his grip
smiling into his eyes
and breathing into his lungs.
We lived off of each other for quite some time
until i could no longer
receive his oxygen.

i dread living
and i dread waking up
everyday only
for it to be worse than
the day before.

If you're every lucky enough
to love someone
as much as i love him
please tell him
everyday
as many times
as possible
all of the reasons
you love him
and i assure you
he will use
those reasons
as reasons
to love himself

have you ever wanted something you just can't have?
alcohol, ****, pills, burning bridges, fast rides, you?.
my mom has always said "i'd rather you bring home a black
boy rather than another girl", this made me feel almost proud
like i could bring you home and they would be less disappointed
but; you're still not allowed over, so i'll sneak you out of my window
in the morning, and we'll forget until it's time to do it again.
"he's only 2 shades darker then her" by now my mother
is trying to feel less ashamed
but the blood that boils in his skin is no different than mine
his mother still drinks her self to the brink of insanity
but he says i help him breathe
momma oh momma, i can't tell you how many nights
i have wanted to scream and beg God to make your eyes
contrast things differently
but everyday his skin becomes something new for you to
agg yourself onto, maybe if we take his skin and put it
in the equation, you'll forget that you're smoking your
lungs black,
momma his hands feel so much like home,
when i am with him, that sadness which sits upon
my chest cascades out of my body,
momma i have never felt more like myself.
please forgive me.

i remember the first time i saw you,
standing there like a lost soul waiting
to be found
or saved.
i remember watching you behind the walls i built up.
one day we starred at each other, for what seemed like hours but was only seconds, i could tell you were hurting in the same ways as me.
and that’s when i wanted to fix you more than i’ve ever wanted to fix anything.

it was never about the way your hands
fit around my waist perfectly
or the way your lips pressed against mine like a puzzle piece.
it was all the gaps in between
it was all the fuzzy phone calls
it was kissing you in all of my favorite places,
the places i swore i would never take anyone.  
it was running my fingers through your hair.
it’s jumping off of the building
knowing you will be there to help me fly.

they say you must feel what you write,
but i can't feel anything anymore.
and all i can hear is your laugh and your abscence replaying in my head,
the closest i will ever be to you is the time you got the flu and both of us
were crying in the closet because the world wasn't what we wanted it to be.
oh how i miss you and your smile.
because you never had to teach me how to survive i learned to cut
open my palms and hold you in my wounds just to keep you warm.
i never got the chance to say "i love you" back because i slammed the door so hard.
my knees fell to the ground because i knew what i did.
you left the closet and took all of the air with you.
i am in here suffocating
wondering where it all went wrong.

on most days I'm not even sure
if there is a heart
living inside of me
but then I see blue
and green living inside
of those irises
and it's like I hear you beating
on my door
but the beating is coming
from my ribcages
and I can't stay still long
enough to kiss the satin
touching my shoulders

all of the atoms in my body
have tried to conjugate different
reasons for your absence
but all they can come up with are grossly
overused analogies and misplaced eulogies
i want to go back to the time
when we were stealing socks
and kissing in movie theaters
jumping over fences and scraping elbows
but instead i'm laying in my bed
tasting salt that drips from my cheeks

as our late night phone talks come to a pause
i study your heart beat
right up against your wall.
you said i made beautiful things with my lips
and i wondered how much more beautiful i could make you
but the answer to that was impossible.
i smiled my dim smile and went on with the conversation
as if we were two strangers
who just met up at the wrong place
at the right time.
we talked about our urges to leave this small town,
and you called me beautiful.
i didn't want to fall for you
but you had a different hues of blue in your eyes,
and i wanted to stay on the phone forever.

this boy is so hard to write about, he’s so different from the others;
he is boring
natural
typical
he isn’t you.
i want him to be you. i want him to be you so bad.
i miss us, i miss you, i miss your face, i miss your voice, i miss your warmth.
i cannot take my words and throw them to the ****** but i can sing them to the heavens,
i know God hears my one wish, that you will be mine again.
i am on my knees bleeding from my mouth, spitting up apologies and half-hearted hallelujahs, cracking my skull in half trying to be what you need.
love me, want me, choose me.
i am for you and you are for me.
why must this hurt so much? loving you shouldn’t cut me so deep, loving you shouldn’t keep me under the current, loving you should feel like fire in my veins and flowers in my ribcage
i crave a love so deep you could go for a swim in it, and maybe that’s my problem cause i only ever learned how to doggy paddle.
i’m screaming your name only you don’t hear me,
by the time the damage is done,
he is here taking care of me under his arms.
i imagine they are yours.

your brown eyes help me see things that my soul cannot grasp
and your tan skin helps me soak up the sunlight
that my pale skin craves.
i have never seen something more beautifully destructive
i have never felt something so peaceful.
if loving you is sin,
tell God not to wait up on me.

i would like to know the girl
you melt at the knees for.
the one who makes you laugh
more than me.
the one who’s eyes are brown
and not blue.
i know all about her
trust me i do.
she’s nicer than me and more gentle.
her legs don’t buckle when you want to
take walks.
her lips are softer and
her knuckles aren’t purple.
she’s better at making decisions
and your mom actually likes her.
when she hears her name her mouth
doesn’t taste sour
and her ears don’t ring.
i know all about the girl who makes you
smile.
so never tell me it will take years to move
on past me.
because she didn’t have to work like i did
all she had to do was laugh.

the only good thing that comes out of a bad break up is good poetry.
if been sketching my head trying
to understand why God uses
these hands to write art that curls at the tongue.
some days i’m no good at it
other i’m left crying over the sink
blood dripping from my mouth
from biting my tongue trying not
to scream the words out of the
box springs i hid so deep
in my throat.
in school they called me chatty cathy
you would never see me without
a mouthful to say
i didn’t know this was bad until i was made to feel that way.
i stopped talking the older i got
focused on writing
and before i knew it
my legs were shaking at the
words i was molding.
my eyes have always been fixated
on the brighter colors
but these days it’s all
grey.
your absence has drained me
but not these words.

i can hold myself
when i need to
but that doesn't mean that
i enjoy being lonely
or that i'm okay
with taking care
of myself.

the closest i will ever get to you
is in my dreams.
when you're old and weak
and i can barley see a thing.
i reach my arms out to
touch you but you crawl away
and with every bone in my body
i break down until i can
no longer feel.

i have this undying
underlying feeling
that everyone
is out to get me
and that no one
not even myself
can be trusted.

its been 40 weeks,
286 days,
6847 hours,
412475 minutes,
24748569.. 24748570.. 24748571.. seconds,
a whole pregnancy since
you decided to vacate this unbalanced soul of mine.
a home you said you would never leave;
but when the walls caved in and the roof started leaking,
when the paint started peeling and the floors started creaking,
you grew tired of paying out of pocket expenses
to repair a home you no longer felt safe in.
so you packed what little you brought,
and left with what plenty you had gained.
anytime a person enters they soon leave
because your ghost still dances in these halls
your eyes are the color of the walls
your voice seeps in through the window.
your scent still lingers here and it has
made its home on the furniture.
when the sun rises we see silhouettes of your body
cascaded across the bed sheets.
your soul still lives here, wandering around these rooms
kissing the window panes.
your body left this house, but you still live here.
haunting me.

sadness swoons my
whole entire body
not a single happy
relic lives in these bones.