Why are you so sad,
For a man that let you go,
So easily,
So simply.
A man that said,
“We will never get this right…”
And left with no other reasons.
Why do you mourn him?

Because I loved him
In all the ways he thought
He shouldn’t be loved.
I loved him in ways he will realize too late,
If ever at all.

But, I do not miss him.
I miss the way I allowed myself to love him.
I miss the way I fought for him.

It makes me sad to love him.

But only because he will never realize
The ways in which I did.

This morning I had coffee with God,
or the divine being, or the top dog..
Whatever you want to call her.
Sometimes I call her a *****.
But that’s the thing about Gods, right?
They are what you need them to be.
So she strolled in around 6:45,
blasting Jay Z’s “Encore” through my Alexa and asked me what the **** I was doing.

It went a little something like this:

“Get your *** up, we need to have a chat.”

“I don’t remember calling you..” I groan as I put my hand over my eyes.

“Yeah well, you never call me anymore.”

“Yeah well, I prefer to think you wouldn’t answer anyway.”

“Been a long time since I’ve heard you say that one… I think you were a kid, still.”

“I dunno.. probably”

“What’s the matter? You look a little hungover?” She asks as she begins to bang the back of a frying pan with a wooden spoon.

“Is that my ******* pan?”

“Yeah, Lp. It sure is. Did you want me to stop?” As she hits the pan harder.

“Okay, okay… what do you want?”

She puts down the pan, hands me a cup of black coffee and sits on the edge of my bed.

“This isn’t you. Not all of you. You’re allowing the parts that are missing as an excuse to crumble. That’s not you. You don’t do this anymore. I raised you better than this.”

“You raised me? You never stepped foot inside that house.”

“Whining over trauma you worked so hard to get past? That’s what we’re doing, now? Fine. Crumble. Drink too much. Push people away by trying to scare them off with your nonsense about being too much. You want a grenade to throw into your life? Fine. I’ll pull the pin and stand clear…”

“Being an accomplice doesn’t really seem like your vibe.”

“You really are a ******* sometimes. Stop trying to rationalize giving in because change is hard, because you miss them, because you’re worried you won’t be someone that someone decides to take a chance on. You are better than the you that you have convinced yourself that you are.”

“What if I’m not? What if this is just… where I am, now?”

“Then you’re a brat, and all the courage you’ve built, has been wasted. Get the **** up. I won’t coddle you next time.”

And just like that,
I blink and she’s gone.
Back to wherever deities go
after dishing out epiphanies,
while leaving no blueprints of how to do so.
I spend a couple more moments
with my face in my pillow,
“99 Problems”
pulsing through an otherwise empty house.
Before I get up,
mutter to myself that she’s a real pain in the ***,
and pour every drop of ***** down the sink.
Clean my kitchen.
Fold the laundry.
Change the sheets..
Because she’s a ****,
but she’s right.

I do believe,
without intention,
that I have somehow,
in some way,
become undeniably,
enchantingly,
horrendously,
addicted to you.

I don’t miss you as much as I should.
Or maybe I still miss you too much.
I never understood grief very well.
I was always told I grieve too long,
the “stages are too long and you get stuck”.
Ten years in October
and I never reached acceptance.
I guess I did get stuck.
I blew right past bargaining,
I wasn’t wasting time.
Straight through to anger,
before settling down into pure, unadulterated grief.

I miss you.

And when I don’t miss you enough,
I force myself to miss you harder.
Because no one speaks about you anymore.
And I can’t tell your story,
Because I got stuck in the stages,
lost swirling in the catacombs,
a pan’s labyrinth of nostalgia.

Sometimes,
I wonder what you would think of me.
In the world you said you couldn’t fit into anymore,
because there was no space
because you loved me in all the ways that I couldn’t love you,
all the ways I learned to love you, too late.

I wonder if you would be proud of me for walking away,
or staying so long…
I wonder what you’d say to me when I told you stories of how I never quite got it right.

I think you’d tell me to write more.
I think you’d tell me to love less,
because you never thought anyone was worthy.

I hope we would still yell at the top of our lungs when we were angry,
but never forget an “I love you.”

I can’t hear your voice as clearly as I used to.
But when I close my eyes tightly,
I can still make out how you looked at me,
All those nights on your front steps,
under the stars,
When we truly believed we’d never have to miss each other at all.

Remember that time I read you poems in the dark until 2am?
and the way you used to hold my hand until you fell asleep
...You know I hate when you do this.
Can we have an actual conversation, please?
Oh, right. Because I’m always the bad guy.
Would you just listen?
I love you.
What about that time we made love in your truck?
There is something worth saving here.
What about all the nights we spent laughing until we cried?
Yeah, well you’re never willing to try, anymore.
I’m not crazy for asking if there’s someone else.
You’ve always said this would never work.
I’m ******* trying, here...
You’re tired of all of this?!
Yeah, me too.
No... *******...
Babe, please... people fight...
Don’t tell me it’s not me.
It’s not over. It doesn’t have to be over.
Let’s give this a real chance.
Fine, ******* go then.

Wait..

I gave you
everything that I had.

What the **** did you think
would happen to me?

I have this recurring dream where I’m running.
Running and running.
Full speed,
sprinting towards everything
and nothing at all.
And I don’t know
what I’m running from,
or running to.
I don’t know where I am,
There’s no history of what I’ve done.
In this place I know nothing,
and I am nothing.
I just know that I have to keep running.
Because there’s a pounding in my chest,
and my feet are aching to keep moving
and there is this subtle
but paralyzing fear
that if I stop running,
only for a moment,
if I stop running,
if I can place where I am
if I can remember who I am,
if I stop for one single moment,
I know that I will die.
So I run.
In some versions,
tears stream down my face
blurring into the lights and sounds.
In other versions,
I am laughing with intoxicating bliss,
like some animal that has been kept
locked away,
only to discover that there is an entire world
outside the iron walls of everything
I knew before.
Sometimes,
I keep looking behind me,
like I’m waiting for something to catch up to me.
Sometimes I look nowhere but ahead,
to the horizon,
the rising moon,
never-ending ground.
Sometimes there is pavement,
and street lights melting together,
as if the lens of my consciousness has been left open,
sometimes I can’t see at all,
I only hear my own breath,
the rhythmic pounding of my soul hitting the pavement.
But always,
I am running.

Long ago when Eden masqueraded itself as a paradise
Back when the tree of life bloomed with the sins of fallen angels
And Eve picked the apple that the snake had offered her
And once the juice trickled down her lips
So the snake laughed and writhed with glee
At the idea that woman had condemned us all
With her feminine wiles
And selfish urges.
Back when god scoffed at his muddled creation
For being weak enough
To take temptation by its supple fruit
****** us all
She did.
By being human.
How could woman be so stupid?
How could woman be so vile?
Did she not understand what she was doing
Did she not understand what she was setting into motion.
That all of this
Could one day be her fault
For being hungry
For being human.
Did she not understand that the fruit
Was poisoned.
Wasn’t it?
Woman be ******.
For isn’t it your fault.
It must be.
That the monstrous ways of men were born.

Looking back,
maybe most of it wasn't as beautiful
as I thought it was.
Maybe most of it was
in fact,
afternoons I spent trying to guess what you were thinking.
Maybe most of it
was me asking too much,
you telling me that you didn't want to fight.
Not here.
"Not like this..."
You said.
Looking back,
maybe you were trying to let me down
easily
over and over again.
While all the while,
I fought you until you conceded
for another day,
until you just couldn't anymore...
I think now,
that most of it was me loving you,
thinking that I wasn't asking anything of you.
When really,
I was asking everything of you.
That was never fair.
I focused so ******* the magic,
the single fleeting moments,
that I used them to fill in the gaps.
I created this story where everything was beautiful...
when all we really were,
were shards of shattered glass being hit by the sunlight.
See,
those moments glittered in my mind so brightly,
I forgot that they were sharp.
I forgot that things weren't supposed to start that way,
jagged and broken.
You blinded me.
And when you finally did leave,
I walked across those memories
over and over again
until it began to rain,
until there was no more sunlight.
And when they stopped glittering,
I looked down to see my feet,
covered in the open wounds you left behind...
And my feet bled,
and my heart ached,
and I cried.

I cried so badly for the loss of you.

I cried over all the things that I had never seen coming,
because I had been so worried
about never expecting anything from you,
that I had forgotten to protect myself.
I had never prepared myself for the moment
when you wouldn't be there anymore.
I never had a plan for how I would handle
the way you had looked at me
would inevitably haunt me.
And it did.
You did.
For weeks I cried for you,
in the quiet moments between doing other things.
You broke my heart.
And then you came back...
Came back as if I would still be here.
And I was,
for a while.
But I can't be here anymore.
I can't love us enough anymore,
can't pick up the slack another moment,
because my heart is tired,
and my feet are bloodied,
and my hands are broken from trying
to hold the pieces of this together,
while all the while you were pulling us apart.
You can't come back here.

I'll admit,
I thought I wanted you to.
I waited for you.
I wanted this.
I WANTED this.
I ******* wanted this...
didn't I?
But now you're here.
You're here and I realize,
how few good moments there really were.
So many of our days,
weren't good days at all,
were they?
So many days you left me devastated.
Left me questioning who I was,
what I'd said,
what you were thinking.
I spent so much time waiting for you to leave.
So,
I think it really is time now.

I think it's time for us to really just...
Let us go.
Because I could spend forever wishing
that I'd known our last kiss would be so,
so that I could kiss you just another moment longer.
I could wish for one more drink,
one more iron table,
smile at me one more time,
look at me that way,
brush your hand across mine,
smile at me,
make me laugh,
ask me what I'm thinking,
hold me in a parking lot,
tell me that you thought of me today,
tell me that you thought of me in general,
miss me.
For the sake of ******* everything,
miss me just more ******* time.

Please...

But the reality is,
none of that would change any of this.
You'll still be you.
I'll still be me.
And I'll still love you.
And you still won't know what to say.
You'll never let me inside of you,
and I'll forever be at the mercy of you.
I can't live like that.
I don't want to know you,
if it means that we have to pretend that none of
this was real.
That isn't fair to what this was.
This was broken and dangerous from the beginning,
but when the sunlight hit it,

Baby, this was magic.

So leave me here,
like this.
Let me heal.
Let me miss you when it rains,
but let me get over you.
Let it be enough,
because it has to be enough now.
Walk away,
because I'm not strong enough to do it on my own.

So if you ever loved me,
in any way,
set me free.

Set me free, for the last time.

I love you,
L.

I’m going to miss you tonight.
Every single part of you.
Every last ounce of who you are.


And tomorrow,
well tomorrow...

I won’t.

I cleansed myself of everything that was left of you.
So in turn,
I disappeared too.
For so much of me,
had been you, for so long,
I wasn’t sure there would be anything else.
You had crawled under my skin,
made your home in my headspace,
and you just... lived there.
Unkempt and untamed.
Wreaking havoc.
Weaving your smirk through the darkest corners
like the cobwebs that never seem to have a keeper.
Appearing in dark corners with no other evidence of the architect.
You were the spider,
that left your masterpieces for me to stumble upon
before retreating underneath the memories you thought I’d never unpack.
The pile of film reels,
Our first kiss,
the last kiss..
Everything in-between.
There, you hid waiting,
for my guard to come down,
Something, anything, to remind me of you
giving you time to weave your last words to me
in your silken strands
So that when I returned from nostalgia,
there they were.
You needed time.
You needed space.
You were sorry,
because I really was great
But it wasn’t the right time...
All the *******.
All the lies.
Enough.
Enough now.
So I went into every corner,
cleaned out every crevice,
scrubbed down every wall with bleach,
until all the remained of you,
and therefore all that remained of me,
was that empty room,
and a hollowed chest.
And when I finally found you,
cowering underneath the last cardboard box,
the one with the last of the memories
of how you used to look at me,
I killed you with my shoe,
walked out of that room,
and slammed the ******* door behind me.

It
still
rains
when
I
miss
you.

Listening to you twirling in the kitchen
singing songs in made-up languages
laughing at jokes you haven't made yet
and I wonder,
my sweet little girl,
with the fire in your soul,
and the freedom in your eyes...

What will break you first?

When will you stop dancing with abandon?
When will you stop singing in the hallways?
When will the house grow quiet,
because the first boy broke your spirit,
when he broke your heart.

What will be the first thing you don't tell me?
Will it be the boy you couldn't say no to?
Or the one you thought you shouldn't have to say it to.
Will you be too afraid to tell me?
Will you worry that I'll think terrible things
Will I?

I wonder,
who will be the first boy you change everything for?
Will you know it's happening?
Will you try to stop it,
but follow through,
because the love feels real,
and the love has to be worth it.
And when he breaks you, again
will you believe him when he says it's your fault?
When he tells you that you broke this,
when he tells you that you should've
been better,
been prettier,
been smarter,
talked less,
talked more,
been less emotional,
tried harder,
****** better...

Will you believe him,
when he tries to tell you
that you existed for him and failed?
Or will you know that he can't be right,
because you existed without him,
and you'll exist again.

Will you exist again,
without him?
Will you know who you are with him,
and without him...
Will there be a day where you stop knowing the difference?

How many men will break you,
before you settle for the one who is safe?
The one who convinces you that you can be a better person,
takes whatever you had left,
strips you of who you could've been,
before letting you down, all the same.
How long will it take for the inspiration he sparked in you to fade?
Will you know to walk away?
Will you be braver than I was?
Will you be brave.
Will you.

Be brave.

I’d like to think that this ends
much like a dying star.
That it burns and boils with fury and passion
until one day it implodes into itself,
in a beautiful spectacle of cosmic mourning.

But there’s a feeling in my soul
a quiet, dreadful haunting
that this dies uneventfully.
Like the anticlimactic withering of the last flowers before the frost.
That one day
we just realize it’s been awhile,
but neither one of us really has anything to say.
And the final petals fall
without anyone really noticing
at all.

There once was a boy
who told me they must have cried when I left home,
"I bet the entire state cried for you."
He'd said.
"because a girl like you must be once in a lifetime,"
and he'd keep me around if it killed him..
he'd promised.
"After all, girl.
he'd said
I'm a snake charmer.."
And at that, he had rolled up his sleeve,
to reveal the grayscale serpent baring it's fangs,
wrapped around his forearm.
He made that joke a lot.
Over he course of falling for me.
"Don't forget, babe.."
"I'll break a girl like you eventually.."
And I'd laughed and wish him the best of luck,
after all,
that's the polite thing to do,
in scenarios like these.
He would go on to tell me,
that he knew what to do
with a "body like mine."
He would make them wish they had never let me leave.
Whatever the ****,
he'd thought that meant.
And I let him believe that,
until the day that he didn’t.
Because really,
from the beginning,
we both knew no one was crying over me.

I had never noticed that bar before,
the one hidden amongst the neon signs.
I'm sure I'd driven by a hundred times
over the course of nights
I spent stumbling down those streets..
I'm sure I'd even looked at it once or twice,
unable to make out the name
or the sign on the door..
Just passed that alleyway
in the pursuit of other things.
So when I met you there,
I was apprehensive,
hands shaking,
heart pounding,
in anticipation of what you would want me to be.
Anxious of who you would think I was,
after a "couple of drinks"
on a Friday afternoon..
And my hair was a mess,
in a faded Biggie shirt,
and a pair of converse I'd worn since the tenth grade,
but could never seem to throw away
because they had meant something then,
so they must mean something now..
Because I'd worn the soles out
sneaking back into my parents’ house,
after my virginity was stolen,
tripped over the laces the morning my father had held my hand,
as he walked me into rehab and told me to be brave..
And the first time I was brave enough to see that headstone,
when I’d sobbed alone in the pouring rain,
and they filled with water through the holes in the sides.
They had been there.
Every time my heart had shattered,
so no matter what,
Capital Ave couldn't be too bad.

I told everyone
that you were dead.
I accepted their condolences.
Smiled politely,
while my chest hemorrhaged.
Somehow,
that just made sense.

I was doing just fine.
I didn’t miss you.
Not at all.  
Didn’t want to call you.
Or text you.
Or even see that stupid smile...

Then I saw something that made me laugh.  
Drove past a place we had talked about.  
Saw a commercial about a joke you made once.
Heard a song that you had mentioned.
Did something awkward, I’d usually tell you about.
Went to work.
Ran on a treadmill.
Put on those jeans you liked.
Closed my ******* eyes...

And there you were.

What the ****
am I doing.
And why can’t I
quit you?



...why don’t I want to?

Are you thinking about me?
While you’re laying wherever you are
with whoever you’re with,
am I crossing your mind?
In the quietest moments
with bloodshot eyes,
and that sinking feeling,
are you wondering
if I’m thinking about you?

The magnitude
of what is happening here
is something I don’t think either of us
can comprehend.
Somewhere along a line
we set a wheel in motion
that has been spinning uncontrollably
ever since.
I think we’ve fallen
into what Salinger could only describe
as an intimacy
from which
We will never recover.

I don't cry anymore.
Not since I cried for you.
Nothing seems quite worth it, since you left.
So I don't cry anymore.
Just on that one day...
that seems to roll around a little faster each time,
as the years continue to mount since the sky came crashing down.
The day the war ended,
and the white flags began to wave.
The day all the songs suddenly played out of tune.
When the phone call came,
that was mostly silence.
Just two people connected by the absence of speaking,
while we attempted to comprehend the news.
They had found you. You didn't make it.
So I cried.
But, your sleeve wasn't there to wipe my eyes on
anymore.  
And when the anger came,
you weren't there to say my name the way you always did,
when I was angry with you.
There were no more 2 am phone calls,
there wouldn't be any again.
And I didn't look at the passenger's seat of that red Subaru anymore,
because you wouldn't be there rolling your eyes
while you serenaded me with that one Dave Matthews's song...
The one you hated,
because you hated all of them,
but I had insisted that it was "our song" one night at 4am,
when I told you that it made me think of you, and us
and everything.
There would be no more arguments that always ended in "I love you"s,
there would be no more fighting for each other,
fighting to love each other,
fighting to figure out if we mattered to anyone other than each other.
So they laid you to rest on a rainy Saturday.
I didn't go.
I like to think you understood.
Because the war was over,
and I was tired,
and I never wanted to remember you like that.
I was a coward.
You deserved better than that.
I just sat in my apartment,
cried every single tear I had ever been destined to cry,
and I didn't cry anymore after that.

The boy with the crooked smile,
tells me that I have riot eyes.
That when he looks into them,
all he sees is the chaos and he just...
gets lost.
He says he can remember when he met me,
and my eyes were soft,
when they twinkled playfully in the Christmas lights,
that hung in my bedroom window,
while we laughed and danced,
and loved,
until the soft morning light lulled us to sleep.
"Do you remember that?"
he says.
And I look away,
unable to look at him.
Because I know the answer,
and he knows the answer.
He knows.
"Can you remember that?"
His voice more pleading, than asking.
And he looks at me,
like he's looking for who I used to be.
Looking for any sign that the girl he loved all those years ago,
is still breathing,
somewhere.
But there's just silence.
"What happened to you."
he says.
It isn't a question,
just a statement that he finally whispers under his breath
from across the bed
while we sit there,
drowning in the final dying remnants of who we used to be.

I think you like the idea of me.
Because I’m unexpected.
I’m not obligations or schedules,
staring down the barrel of 25 years
that have already been planned out.
I’m spur of the moment
“Wanna grab drinks?”
and blowing off other plans.
I’m heavy breaths in parking garages
accidental brushes in passing.
I’m windows that slowly fog up
in your front seat
while we whisper even though we’re alone.
I’m kisses pressed up against alley walls
because you couldn’t control yourself one more second..
Headlights bouncing between irises in stolen glances
“Tell me you want me.”
I want you.
You say I’m intoxicating...
You like the idea of that.

But I like you.

See to me,
you aren’t an idea.
You’re laughing out loud for the first time in a while.
You’re hands shaking while I drive to meet you
lighting one last Newport
to calm my nerves in the parking lot.  
You’re silent wishes that you’ll kiss me around the next corner,
and forgetting we’re in public
because all I can see is you.
You’re whispering while I kiss you softly
because you’ve left me speechless,
and I'm scared to speak too loudly,
for fear that you'll disappear.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I can’t.
Because this is real for me.
You're real, to me.

So how much longer do I wait
to be real to you too?

I didn’t expect to see you.
I never expected to see you again
if we’re being honest.
Despite the habit I have developed of glancing
at the door when I'm in all your old favorite bars...
Even though I still order all your old favorite drinks,
since it's all I have left that tastes like you.
I didn’t expect anything.
Didn’t look for you in every old Lexus,
or glance at the exit signs that I knew would lead me
to your old house.even though you moved away
years ago,
I took the long ways home.
Just to be sure.
I respected the way we left it.
Tried to retain that image of you walking away.
The one where you don’t look back...
Because everyone knows that if you look back
It isn’t over.
And you didn’t.
So it was.
I respected that.
I never prepared myself for seeing you again.
I didn't think I needed to.
After all, I had buried you in my graveyard of lost loves
with that blank headstone.
Marked simply as “the one that got away”.
I think maybe that through all the years,
over the course of all the moments of forgetting you,
I had convinced myself that maybe I wouldn’t even recognize you,
anymore.
That felt safe.
So I lived on
And you loved on.

So when you walked through the door
That I wasn’t glancing at for the first time in a while,
I don’t think I thought you were real.
Lost myself somewhere between being mistaken
And seeing a ghost...
But, there you were,
staring at me,
staring at you,
attempting to figure out where we would go from there.
There we were.
Almost like a dream,
the music faded,
the crowd thinned,
and I watched you,
trying to decide what to say.
And my heart was pounding in my chest,
and my hands were shaking,
while you got closer.
As you did,
the scent of that same cologne you used to wear suddenly flooded over me.
Drowning me in the images of lying naked next to you,
your hands tracing the words written into my ribs,
the only one I’d only ever explained to you...
All I could see was us.
The war that we had loved through flashing before me,
as you stepped closer through the crowd...
still unsure of what to say.

Time stood still.
Until I watched you change your mind.
With the saddest eyes, I had ever seen you have,
You just turned away.

The crowd filled in.
The music returned.
And I stood there hollow.
Unable to breathe,
as the room suddenly became stifling.
The air too thick to breathe,
my drink too strong,
I ran.
Ran like some depressing cinematic vision into the now pouring rain,
down the street to the closest corner awning,
to light my last cigarette,
I just stood there...
shaking...
Crouched on the ground in six-inch heels,
with my head in my hands.
Fighting the tears and the *****,
and the suffocating panic.
I waited for it to be over.
And after what seemed like a lifetime,
when the shaking had slowed,
I slowly stood...

And there you were.

Standing there.
Looking at me, looking at you.
Still unsure of what the right words should be,
after all the years of trying to forget each other,
we just,
stood there.
My eyes met yours.
You didn’t say anything.
Just stepped closer
soaking wet,
putting your hand to my face,
wiping your thumb across the tears on my cheek,
like you had in that hotel room,
that one time,
until finally,
“Hey.”

We said,
we wouldn’t turn nothing
into something.
Said we’d refrain
from “what ifs” and
“maybes”.
We agreed that nothing
could never become something
because it didn’t make sense
didn’t fit into the ideas
or the plans,
of who we were and what our lives looked like.
It didn’t “line up”,
how you felt,
how hard I fought it.
It just didn’t make sense.
Nothing couldn’t become something,
we said.
So, we were so careful not to be honest.
Made so sure we treaded lightly.
Tried so hard to lie whitely.
We planned our lives around nothing.
But we never prepared ourselves for what we would do
if nothing suddenly became...


everything.

He says,
"I don't know what to do with this. What is wrong with us.."
And I stare at the text like I'm waiting for it to disappear.
Waiting for it to be unsaid.
Don't say it.
Please.. just..
don't say it.
Give us five more minutes.
Five more minutes to feel it.

Then we won’t.
Because then I'll say,
"I know.. I'm not sure.. we don't have to do anything with it."
Because what I want to say,
isn't what you want to hear,
I know that,
and I can feel you waiting for me on the other end,
maybe sitting at a red light,
or glancing down briefly while you merge onto 84..
waiting to see if I go there.
Don't worry,
I won't.
You don't want that.
So, I'll respect that..
I say,
"We don't have to do anything about it.
We don't have to do anything.. at all."
The disappointment is palpable,
even through the air waves that carry those fateful words.
Because then you respond with,
"Good, yeah. Let's keep it uncomplicated."
And I tell you that's fine.
Of course it's fine.
Because that first text didn't disappear.
It wasn't left unsaid.
So here we are,
agreeing to be something we're not.
Agreeing to ignore something we are.
So it goes.

I think he may be right,
the boy that calls once a year,
five years too late.
I think he's right.
About fighting to love
and be loved,
only to be remembered
by that unheard voicemail,
that “missed call” notification.
Those photographs we didn’t keep,
and the stories we stopped telling
long before it was their time to be forgotten.
It shouldn’t be fair,
the forcible forgetting of the nights
they spent asking me to try harder
begging me to love them just a little bit more..
It shouldn’t be fair,
that I was so quick to say no
so quick to shut down
so quick to refuse such simple requests.
It shouldn’t be fair..
But they should be honored,
all the boys that exist now,
only as black and white adjectives
in simplified prose.
Penned only during the loneliest hours
when the world is dark
and the nightmares are calling.
It should be an honor,
being buried in the worn pages of
these Moleskin graveyards..  
After all,
poems are where all great love stories go to die.

I thought I'd quit smoking
to be a better woman..
My mother always told me
it wasn't something pretty girls did..
until about three beers in
when she would ask to borrow a light
and say,
"It's great that you think that shirt is flattering,
but maybe a size up would be more.. comfortable."
And I thought I'd quit smoking
to be a better lover..
Because it "wasn't ****" to keep a lighter
in the back pocket of my jeans,
and it "gave off the wrong vibe about me"
and I always tasted like smoke..
Then, I thought I'd quit smoking
to be a better person, I guess..
Because I moved to the suburbs,
made friends with other moms,
who got wine drunk on Tuesdays,
and talked about nail salons,
playdates,
and brunch.
So I thought I'd quit smoking
to live longer, they said.
Because the warning was printed
and the science was in..
and the only thing,
they said for certain,
was that cigarettes killed.
But my mother found new criticisms,
and that boy left anyway,
The suburbs were terrible
and people I loved died regardless.
So, I realized,
**** that.
and opened a new pack.

"You can't always win, L."
he says.
He always says that,
the boy from Ohio with the lopsided grin,
"Sometimes, you just lose..
and that's okay."
Emphasis on the "okay".
Because he knows
that's the one word
I won't hear him say.
He knows this,
because he always says it.
When I tell him,
I don't feel right, where I am.
And it's worked before.
So it should work now,
he thinks to himself.
And perhaps if I were sitting next to him,
like I used to,
in that one room apartment,
in Victorian Village,
I would hear it.
I would hear it,
and it would resonate.
Before he punched me in the arm
and asked if I was done being dramatic,
so we could turn on the game,
because he just got a text that OSU is down by 7,
and he's pretty sure it's because he's not watching..
So I would laugh,
shove him off the couch I got at Goodwill,
and he would grab two more PBRs from my fridge
that only sometimes worked,
and it would be okay.
It would.
Because to the sound of him yelling at Braxton Miller
through the tv
like he could actually hear him,
and the hot summer breeze pouring through the open windows,
it made sense.
What he said,
made sense.
But we're not in that apartment,
and he can't hear how hard my is heart beating
from 700 miles away,
can't see the look on my face
when I tell him I think I'm losing my ******* mind.
Suddenly his voice sounds so far
and so foreign.
And he knows,
he knows it's not working this time
but that's the farthest he ever got
so that's as far as he goes.
And the long pause is deafening.
So in one final act of desperation
he simply says,
"Love you, kid."
And I just say,
"I know."

I knew a woman once,
with worn couches,
and gentle words,
that would describe me as doe-eyed and wild-hearted,
though no one would ever notice that again.
And she told me that my body should be thought of
as a work of art,
instead of a shameful relic.
I thought that over for awhile,
the idea that the scars I had accumulated
over the course of this lifetime
could be considered beautiful.
And I began to paint my canvas
with beautiful things,
stories of past loves,
past lives,
the places I had once considered home..
So I painted birds across my back,
in honor of my wandering heart,
and the daydreams I had as a child,
of being free.
Inscribed words on my ribs,
from the book that had once so closely
resembled my own soul
I truly believed that they had been written for me.
And you.
I painted you,
my love,
on my shoulder,
as a dragon,
for all the nights we spent
across time and space,
miles and phone lines.
All the hours you had spit flames upon my demons,
sent them cowering into the depths of the night,
all the while saving my soul from
the great unknown.
For if what they say is true,
and my body is temple,
then you have been inscribed on my soul,
like the Gods were inscribed on the walls
of the temples of Delhi.
It is here.
It is here.
"It is here."

I remember the last time,
I felt like I was flying.
Do you remember?
In that club on High Street,
with too many shadows,
and too little sincerity.
That time
that song came on,
the one that had suddenly convinced us
that everything could be beautiful
that for three minutes and thirty six seconds,
everything could really be this easy.
Life could be this simple.
We could own the night,
our destiny,
the rest of time and space as we knew it.
That song,
had somehow
negated the existence of anything
outside those florescent walls,
a world where we were merely human,
because to the sound of that bassline,
we had become gods.
Do you remember,
how I looked at you,
and smiled,
as you threw me onto your shoulders,
and I threw my hands into the air,
as the world turned faster and slower
all at once.
That night,
for that song,
in those three minutes and thirty six seconds,
if never again,
in that club on High Street,
I was flying.
And I was infinite.

Screaming rings out through the glass panes
of the house across the street.
And it sounds just like them.
The nights she spent screaming about
the mistresses
and the nightmare she felt was her life.
Before he would leave.
He always left.
Well, mostly.
Some nights she would come into our rooms,
****** us out of our tossings and turnings
and run.
But only one of us.
She only ever took one of us.
And we would drive the twenty minute ride
to Martha's house,
where I,
or he,
would pretend to sleep on the couch,
while she drank,
and commiserated,
about how he didn't try.
And he didn't care.
How the **** from the emails,
didn't care that she was destroying a family,
or a life.
Or whatever the ****,
she thought she was fighting for.
But mostly,
most nights,
it was him leaving.
It was the sound of the door slamming,
and the engine of his '93 Volvo starting up
in our dirt driveway
as he disappeared into the night.
And I never understood.
I never understood why he left,
every time.
That is,
until the day came,
when I, myself, started leaving.

The boy with the frat tattoos
calls me again,
to tell me he still loves me.
He always will.
The annual surrender
to his overly wasted heart.
Tells me he's never met a girl
with so many secrets,
a girl with so many different lives.
He reminds me that no one will ever understand
the way my eyes turn grey when I'm sad,
or deep blue when I'm angry.
Asks if I'm still as angry as I was,
back when he used to show up
at 3am,
to my unlocked door.
He tells me he knows what I'm thinking
in pictures that he sees,
based solely on the colors of my irises.
Says he knows me,
Because he always knew me,
despite all the secrets,
despite all the lives.
He says loving me was like
trying to survive a hurricane.
And knowing me was like
attempting to choose what to save
while your home went up in flames.
But he loved me.
He says.
He'll always love me.
And I let him talk for a while
about the good times.
until I can hear him getting tired,
and the tequila setting in.
I wait until he starts to get quiet,
starts to tell me that he had to let me leave
because loving me was too exhausting.
Because I refused to let him in.
Because my skin was too thick,
and my eyes were too cold,
too much of the time..
It is then,
when he gets quiet,
that I remind him that there were no good times.
I was angry for reasons,
that I never told him,
because he never asked.
Because for all the 3ams,
and all the unlocked doors,
he never stayed long enough to appreciate
that I had let him in.
And he weeps.
Quietly,
so that he thinks I don't know.
Tells me he hopes that one day I stop spinning,
"One day,"
he says,
"I hope the sky that is your soul finally clears."
before hanging up for another year.
But he always knew I was a hurricane
and you can't tame a storm.

So what the **** did he expect?

The insomnia hits harder than it has in a while.
My head pounds,
My eyes ache
And my feeble heart is a wanderess.
Roaming through nostalgia like a gypsy
With a curse
Or a ship lost at sea
Following the voices of sirens that never actually existed.

Running equations in my headspace
Wondering where I went wrong
Or where I went right..
I honestly couldn't tell you,
I was never good at math anyway.

Too many variables.
Too many unknowns,
My life is the letter x.
And I'm sifting through square roots
At 2am on a Thursday.

And I can’t close my eyes
Because it only gets worse.
The racing and the wandering.
The backs of my eyelids become pull down screens
Like the ones in the cheap banquet halls
With the slide shows and “cash only” bars.

And the slideshow just flickers
With every blink
Every flirtation with sleep.
In bold Times New Roman
Black letters flash

“Do you regret it?”

“Was it all worth it?”

“Is this where you thought you would be?”  

My chest tightens.
My heart begins to race.
There’s a test at the end of this presentation
And I forgot to take notes.
Everyone else is so well prepared
So I look around for someone to cheat off of
Because I have to pass this test, right?
It’s my life,
I have to pass this test.

The answers have to be easy.

“Did you regret it?”
No.

“Was it all worth it?”
Yes.

“Is this where you thought this would be?”
Well, sure I guess...

I mean, how does anyone know?
Am I supposed to know?
Do I have any lifelines?
Can I phone a friend?

But the buzzer sounds.
The lights go dark.
The film reel starts.
Another study session begins.

The moment you fall in love with him.
Do you regret it?

The look in his eyes when he tells you he doesn’t love you.
Was it worth it?

The color of the sky when you find out he died.
Is this where you thought you would be.

No one will ever love you
the way that I have.
And no one will ever hate you
the way that I do.
I hate that there is nothing left of you here
nothing for me to hold on to of you
nothing to burn in place of you.
Because the only things I have left
are the images burned into
the deepest layers of my brain garden.
Past the wall where
Kurt Vonnegut is reading poetry,
the shelves that cradle the words of “Catcher in the Rye”
the lyrics of “American Pie”
past the wild flowers planted
by the sweet giggles of my daughter,
the orchids nurtured
by the smiles of my sweet boy..
deep
deep in my brain garden there is a corner,
behind an old iron fence,
where the images of you play on repeat..

I don’t walk back that far anymore.
I don’t open that gate.
For if I do,
if I cross that threshold,
I am bombarded by the times that we laid in that hotel room
and laughed until we ached,
where I awoke from a nightmare
to you stroking my hair
and holding me tightly.
Or the night
we made love in my apartment
and I caught you looking at me
like I was magic..
Before you shook the thought away,
just like that,
and the moment was gone.
Before you,
I never knew that you could fall in love with a moment.
Never knew
that you could fall in love with an instant,
a single solitary second where I thought
I could’ve sworn,
I saw you love me..
before I watched you
refuse to acknowledge
or accept even the idea
that you could love me.

I held onto that moment.
Planted wilted flowers in that moment.
And waited.
Waited for another fleeting moment
when you would let your guard down
and love me.
But while I waited,
your flowers began to grow
thorns but never petals.
After that moment,
those thorns engulfed my garden.
Every second
that you convinced me
that you didn’t love me,
those thorns spread,
twisting
and curling
around everything that attempted to flourish there.
Through the books I had loved,
and the songs I had danced to,
they covered the memories of past loves,
past lives
I had lived before you
until it was only thorns.
Until I truly thought
that gardens were supposed to be just...
thorns.

You.
Destroyed.
Me.

Then you left me.
Left me standing in the dark,
***** ground surrounded by nothing
but cobblestone remains,
walls that had crumbled
until there were only structures
that had once resembled castles.
And everything became just
dark.

Until one day,
when I met a boy who brought a single rose
into my desolate paradise.
A single rose
that would go on to multiply into a thousand different flowers,
flowers that would cover my brain garden,
grow higher than the clouds
you had covered me in
until the sunlight shattered the sky.  
Together,
he handed me brick,
by brick,
until there were castles again.
The books that had burned
in the trails of you insincere actions
rained down from the sky as beautiful new stories,
laced with golden scriptures.
And your thorns,
the thorns that you had planted,
retreated back,
back into the farthest corners of my garden.
And I built that gate.
And there you stayed.

When the first boy comes,
he will inspire you.
He will paint roses in your hands
and stars on your soul.
He will touch you gently,
like he is holding something
that would shatter the world
if it were to fall onto the linoleum
in his mother's kitchen.

When the first boy comes,
he will enchant you.
Your mouth will shiver with each delicate kiss
he leaves upon your naive lips
and he will change you.
But you will not understand the importance
of such deliberate,
cautious
tender actions.
You will not appreciate that he
is just as cautious
as you are.


When the second boy comes,
he will be less kind.

Write something beautiful.

I tell myself,
"Tonight,
I will write something beautiful."

I think..
as I drink wine from the bottle,
wine I chose because that particular taste
seems to **** the loneliness better than others.

Cheap moscato.

I feel somewhat like
the sad counterpart to a jay-z video,
sipping bottles and writing rhymes.
But my writes don’t rhyme,
and my bottle was $6.99,
bought by my cousin because I’m still too young to legally drink,
but somehow I can vote and go to war..
I could die, if I so chose, for the very country that tells me
it’s illegal to find some sort of way to **** the pit in my stomach.

But this is the alcohol talking,
and I’m starting to sound like I do this often...

Then again, the way I’m writing, if I told you I didn’t, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

So yes world!
Cruel, sad world.
You drove me to a bottle I cant even own,
and somehow I’m still allowed to be



this
*******
sad.


Riddle me that...







..But then I remember that my problems pail in comparison
to those in other worlds,
and my demons are child’s play compared to victims
of all the other sins of evil-doers...

But you know what?
Tonight, I want to ******* feel sorry for myself,
and I don’t want to be sorry about it.
Because, my family is terrifying.
And I ran away from the clutches of a life I still believe
I’ll fall victim to in the end.
And the boy I still cry over,
finally told me that he loved me,
but regret it twelve hours later
when the whiskey had worn off.
I haven’t spoken to
any kind of god,
in longer than I can remember
and I doubt any of them would listen anyway.
At this point,
the men I’ve slept with no longer have faces
except for the one, with the whiskey and the sweet words..
and all I can do
is lay in bed
and wait for the world to slow the **** down
so I can figure out which ******* direction
I'm even going in.

So **** it,
that’s it.

There’s your something beautiful.

I love the very beginning of a relationship.
Where you’re both still nervous,
your palms still sweat,
your hands still shake.
Where each kiss is still tentative,
and each touch is private,
personal.

Daring to go further
but not wanting to go too far.

Daring to say everything
but not wanting to say too much.

Everything is real.
They say it isn't.
But it is,

right?

It's pure,
so pure
in the beginning..


I wish we could just stay like this forever.
In this sort of secret place,
where every glance
and every word are so deliberate.
Because it is real.
It is.
In this place, it is real

I wish it could be like this forever.


I wish we didn’t have to get used to each other.

I gave you
three years.

three years of my life.

three
*******
years.

How the **** could I let that happen.

It makes me

so sad

to

love you.

There are tears I should have shed for you.
Sometimes I feel them in the backs of my eyelids.
Where I stored them
so long ago
when I lied
and told myself that I would never cry for you again.
Three years in the making
our tragic end
the heartbreak heard around the world.
When I told you I'd stay
but you didn't ask me to.
The one where I packed my bags
and moved across the country
leaving you in the wake
of the storm that had been us.
The torment of fighting for you
of fighting to love and be loved by you
Three years of holding you while you hated yourself
and your life
and everything.
Only to get you through the darkness
and have you throw me back to the wolves
from which you had crawled out of.
Bloodied and broken it was there that I would wait
wait for you to need me again.
wait for it to be convenient to love me again.
Three years of playing your game
of always getting two steps ahead before always falling a lifetime behind.
Waiting for the conditions to be right
and the music to play in tune.
Waiting for the sky to turn
that shade of blue
that it always seemed to be
when we would lie together
and you would trace my tattoos
tell me I was perfection
tell me that I really was loved.
The early morning blue
when everything was silent
except the sound of your breathing
while you finally drifted away from me.
Three years of leaving without saying a word
kissing your cheek while you slept as I got dressed
before leaving without a sound
to drive home alone
and wait until I was worthy enough
to be loved again.
A thousand mornings led to this.
to the morning I left
drove home alone
and didn't wait.
The morning you didn't come after me
where there was no cusak moment.
There was no music.
No breathing.
Nothing that made this worth it.
That morning I took what I had left for you
what was left of the heart I had placed in your hands
dropped it out the window on I-81
as I drove
and drove
and drove until I saw the ocean.
Where I dumped your memories into the sea
stripped off the person you had carelessly made me
swam naked and unattached
as I wept for the years
for the moments
for those mornings.
And when the water had finally washed you away
and I was clean
I took the last of those tears
and placed them in a secret place
deep behind my eyelids
perhaps as a reminder
or perhaps just as a memory
of the three years that I loved you.
Before you let me walk away.

Life is fleeting.

That much we know, right?
We can't see the future
and the past is a filthy liar
that often makes things seem
so much better than they were.
Coated in some fog of nostalgia
that allows us to forget the pain
or disappointment
or even failure.
So where does that leave us?
Right here.
Right now.
But in the tick of my watch hand,
we're suddenly older than we've ever been before
and further away from the moments we shared.
Every second,
those moments get blurrier
until one day they're just there.
And they mean nothing
because they aren't real anymore.
They've been distorted and warped,
mangled by time and space,
anger and loss,
love and longing.
But our story...
Our story doesn't deserve to be watered down,
falsified by years
of wanting a better ending.
Our story deserves to be what it was.

So that's the story I'm going to tell.

I think that maybe I loved you,
in the darkness,
and in the lowlights.

And I think that maybe I held you
in my heart
or in my hands.

I think that maybe I misunderstood
all the little things,
or maybe the big things,
the things of which the size, I couldn’t comprehend.

I misunderstood everything.
Every moment that was spent thinking that I understood the world,
thinking that I understood us.
Who we were,
and where we were going.

Everything was supposed to be black and white.
I expected it
to be black and white.
I tried to avoid all the grey areas where the lines were undefined,
sought to avoid the questions and confusions.

But I couldn’t.

Slowly,
the universe seeped through the eyelids I had attempted to keep forced shut.
Strands of color.
Threads which shot across the darkness,
of my lonely ceiling,
weaving galaxies,
and forming Gods.

I watched all the stories being written
in the form of harlequin dreams.
Surrendered to the kaleidoscopic visions,
of everything I’d originally witnessed in passionless monotint.

Everything became chaotic,
complex,
as I laid there in what was now
nothing more than the remnants of a former perspective.

I think that maybe that was the moment it all made sense.
All the things that didn’t make sense,
all the things that were never meant to make sense.

I became suddenly comfortable with this *******-like perception,
where everything was smeared and splattered together
as an illustration of pure and continuous creation,
providing a canvas for both reason and insanity.

I think that maybe it was then that I loved you
for everything that you weren’t,
and everything that you would never be.

I loved you for all the expectations that weren’t there.
For all the things you didn’t ask about,
and all the secrets I didn’t feel the need to tell you.

It was all clear,
when the lines blurred and the colors mixed.

I think that maybe I loved you
simply because I loved you

Three years ago
my best friend died.

He got too close to the water,
they said,
and they named it "accidental".
And that was that.

I never bought that.
I think he just..
gave up.
I couldn't tell you why,
not an answer
you would accept anyway.
Just a feeling that lives
deep in my soul.
A feeling that tells me
that he knew
what his decision would mean,
and he jumped.

Took all my secrets
and demons with him.
He took
all the things
I'd only ever told him,
and he buried them,
then he left me here.
Without him.

I've never felt that kind of pain before.

I thought
I'd felt it all.
But I was wrong.

That night I sat on my floor,
listening to the same song on repeat.
The tears refused to stop,
along with the shakes,
so I got drunk
and tried not to feel.

But that didn't work either.
So I drank more.
Cried more.
Smoked another cigarette

and I tried to write him down.

But I just stared at the screen.
Blank.
Waiting for words that never came.
I think I thought
that if I wrote it down,
it would be too real.
It would mean that he was really gone,
that there was no going back.
And if it was real,
then I would have to miss him.
I would have to let myself feel that..
And I wasn't ready for that.

So I told myself that
I would wait to write him down,
wait until
I didn't miss him so much.

I would wait until the words came.

But they never came.
No words came.
Eventually
I refused to write at all
until I could write my best friend down,
until I could tell OUR story.

But suddenly,
three years had come and gone,
and I didn't miss him
any less,
and I didn't write
any more stories,
and it didn't change anything.

At all.

i'd wait around
all night
for you to
come around
lay your sweet head down
upon my chest
and breathe with me.
just for a little while.

let me love you.

and i don't think i've ever felt this way
for quite some time...
and i'd let you
i'd let you
sink deeper into me
while you let sleep take over you
and let my heart consume you.

let you love me.

I fell in love with a boy, once.
A boy with brown eyes.
They didn't sparkle.
And they didn't gleam.
They were brown.
Simple, ordinary brown.
And this boy was an ordinary boy.
He didn't speak beautiful words.
He didn't sweep me off my feet,
or sing me love songs.
His kiss didn't send fireworks through my veins.
Nor did his touch make me shake.
He was simply ordinary.
I was never undeniably addicted to him.
Never felt my heart in his hands,
or felt his soul in my chest.
He was what he was.
I was what I was to him.
We were what we were,
at that moment,
when neither one of us wanted to mean something to someone else,
when neither one of us wanted to feel.
We, as we were, were ordinary.
They will never write love stories about us.
And he will quickly forget about me once I am gone.
Because to him, I was ordinary too.
He never dreamt of me.
I was never what he felt he's been missing all this time.
I was just a girl with blue eyes.
Blue eyes that didn't sparkle.
Eyes that he never thought to gleam.
Ordinary blue eyes.
But now and again,
part of me thinks that maybe he fell in love with me too.
Some moments I think that maybe,
well maybe the fact that we didn't say much was okay,
maybe it was okay that we were ordinary.
I always thought I wanted this extraordinary love affair,
filled with this insane, violent, addictive passion.
Where we hated each other,
yet we couldn't survive with the other,
where we couldn't breathe without the other's breath.
I thought I needed someone who would take responsibility
for whether my heart was capable of beating or not.
But then I fell in love with a boy,
a boy with ordinary brown eyes,
who spoke ordinary, quiet words.
A boy who touched me in an ordinary way,
who took ordinary breaths, at even intervals.
I fell in love with a stupid, ordinary boy.

I honestly thought that without you,
I would die.
Not die,
in the literal sense,
that’s far too dramatic.
I don’t want to admit that without you,
I couldn’t survive.
But I thought…

well I kind of did think that.


I thought that my heart wouldn’t beat without you,
that my breathing would become shallow and weak.
I thought that the sun would burn out,
and the sky would come crashing to the ground.
I expected time to stop,
noise to cease existence.
I thought…

well I thought that without you,
everything would just grow quiet.
Lonely.
Sad.
Quiet.
But it didn’t.
Nothing changed.
Nothing stopped.
The world survived you.
So,
quietly and bravely,

I decided that I would too.

I loved you.
There.
I said it.
Wrote it down.
It's real now.
I loved you.
And I still love you.
Love the silly look on your face
when you realize you've said something that made me laugh.
Me.
The dutchess of the straight face.
The queen of the dead pan.
And I love that stupid smirk when I've bested you.
When I've gotten to the punch line before you even knew
What the punch line was.
And I miss you.
Miss us.
The way we were.
Back when you let yourself admit that I had stolen your heart
The heart you had sworn to never give away.
I miss that.
Miss the times I'd lay on your chest
And we'd laugh at the little things.
Miss the way you'd glance at me, and I'd catch you.
Better yet
When you'd catch me.
But I was never any good at playing coy.
Not when it counted.
And you knew that.
And you loved it.
Maybe just liked it.
But somewhere
Deep in your head
I like to think you considered
Falling in love with me.
Even if
Now
It's too late for it to matter.
I like to think you considered loving me.
And when it comes to you.
That's enough.
That will always be enough for me.