My mom used to grind tomatoes every October
for canning with this metal monster that kept it's mouth
clenched on the edge of our kitchen table
for weeks at a time. I used to climb up the stools
just to barely crank the tail around and around,
watching the vegetable guts spill into a cauldron.

She would give me a mini Krackle bar
if I could count all of the jars to at least ten,
their gold rims like little crowns that she would carefully
twist over their heads, the reflection from the setting sun
bouncing off my Kindergarten cheeks. My dad,
pretending to be a cartoon character behind her back
as I covered my mouth in secret laughter. I can't prove it,
but I bet she smiled as she rolled her eyes, pretending
not to be totally in love with a forty year old man
who's heart was as young as his daughter. Now,

she can't even stir Campbell's soup without crying.
The sound of the crank is only like the sound of the car
as they tore apart it's skeleton just to find my dad's baseball cap
stuck in the glass of the windshield. So instead,
now ten years later, I tuck pictures in places
I know she won't look, say prayers when she's gone to sleep,

and pull the curtain over the jars
of the homemade spaghetti sauce in the cellar.

you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

I want you in the rawest form.
I want you while you're crying on your bathroom floor unsure of your worth.
I want you naked in my bed with your legs shaking from exhaustion.
I want you while you're angry and throwing everything in your path voice as loud as it can get.
I want you happy and dancing to your favorite tune at 3am in your underwear and my t-shirt.
I want you in your most vulnerable parts.
I want you in your strongest moments.
I want you all the time.

come here
limbs laced in cotton sheets
my bottom lip between your teeth
tell me the blood drawn tastes like cherries
when we both know it's made of tar
trace a world map on my hipbones in bruises
mark the capital cities with your fingernails
millimeters deep into flesh
let your breath on my neck tell me stories
about who you are and where you've been
your mind spilling ink on pillow cases and skin
and with the left side of this mattress weighed down
let me pretend your hollowed bones
are more than a momentary home

you
you're not a poet
and no matter how hard you try, you'll never be one
but what you are, is even better
you're a poem

everytime i look in your eyes
i see new lines, freshly written

when i touch your face
echo's of ancient words are heared deep inside my soul

i haven't made love to you yet, and i can't even imagine
the poetry i will feel that day

so even when you will never be a poet
you'll be the only poem i ever want to read

When I was in the thick of it,
struggling with that depression and all it's horrors,
if I was having a really bad day,
I would climb out my bedroom window
and put a blanket on my roof
and lie there until the sun went down.
It's my favorite part of the day.
It just makes you feel good,
seeing something so beautiful, you know?
That's how I feel when I look at you.
There's a million sunsets in your eyes
and everything feels okay when they meet mine.
You are my favorite part of the day.

*~ Matthew Walker ~

My heart is racing faster than ever before,
my thoughts refuse to slow down,
everything inside of me is shaking,
all because the possibility of you and me.

I have never been this terrified in my life,
and you haven't the slightest clue,
you're causing flash floods in my veins  
every time you speak my name.

When you say I'm a good man,
I start to forget how to swim,
but if this is what you call drowning,
I don't ever want to breathe again.

I want to tell you how I feel,
but I'm trapped beneath the waves,
forming syllables is walking on water,
and I'm still caught in the storm.

*~ Matthew Walker ~

Back in 2003 I found a piece of me
buried, like a shard of pottery, in the sandbox.
A Hot Wheel’s car, little rusted with one tire missing
that I used to shove in the little zippered flap
of my Powerpuff Girls backpack. Older, fifteen,
I carved another piece of me out and pasted it
to a vanilla letter, sliding the envelope through the slits
in his locker door, and I lost it. I’m not even sure he read it.
Nineteen, faded and little stolen, I threw another piece of me
into my mother’s grave. Plush petals, rosary beads, crystal
liquid drops infused with microscopic memories. I cut
myself in slivers and jammed uneven edges together
just to gusto the void, compact the space, walk solid.
And now, twenty-three, I press my face against a mirror
and slide my arms into a flannel, grandpa, hammy-down.
You took the last piece. You crawled into my guard, tore the lining
and spit your black blood on the blank memoirs I had hanging
next to the split.

Take me, now, if that’s how it’s gunna be. You wanna live
with the dust bunnies in my baggage? Feed off my insecurities,
my staggered breath, or my mercury dreams? I don’t want to be saved.
I’ve made my own maze with only one way out, so you’re trapped
in the Miss Havisham model I’ve made, rotten cake. Build yourself
a new girl from my discards, suckle the marrow from my bones,
and blow, like a glass ornament, a pretty replica of who I am.
Isn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t that part of the chase?
The sweet idea that you could pull some perfect women out of the rubble?
I bet that’d be nice to show off, you *******. But here’s the catch,

I know I’m broken. You don’t need to remind me. So take
the smiles I’ve learned to draw on my lips for two cents,
and give up the **** fight I know you won’t win.

i’m always all too conscious
of moments hanging in the air
like watching helium balloons slowly
fall down the wall to cover the ground,
i keep stepping on them till they pop

like looking out the window once the suns starts to set
and you can’t see the light fading, but then you
blink and you’re sitting in a dark room

sitting next to you
with eyes closed and breath held
in a moment
that doesn’t feel real

like i’m looking down at the earth
while standing on the moon

and i know i’ll miss it once it’s gone,
but i can’t seem to figure out
how to freeze the hours that feel like seconds
passing by and

then it’s time
to leave and i held your hand
while you drove me home,
thinking about how real everything felt
with the lights blurring past on the interstate,
how i wanted the road to go on forever,
watching you rap stupid songs and
talk about how to feel grown up
without really growing up
and then suddenly

it was gone,
like it was never there

and i sat on my bed
wishing i could walk back into
the hands on the clock and
your hands on my face, but it
disappeared, floated up to the ceiling
carrying my heart with it

and all i have now are
memories that feel like dreams

to play back in my head
until time fades back into you.

I'm not bitter. I've bit my bottom lip too hard twice too many times, but I still wonder why my lips are bleeding. I've said few too many prayers to a God that shut me out before I even reached salvation in the first place. I've swallowed too many handfuls of dirt and sunflower seeds in the hopes that something beautiful will grow inside of me. I'm sad with a boy that loved me so much that it hurt him, and I'm sad without him. My windows are nailed shut, but the curtains won't stop blowing. I'm still trying to figure out how many times I have to get drunk in a church parking lot before I build the courage up to tell you I'm sorry. God speaks in tongues, but I was only ever taught to bite mine. Okay. Maybe I am bitter, but I have the right to be.