And this girl with the rough edges
And the sailor's mouth
Just might be the most beautiful thing
I've ever seen.
It's not a secret that
I like a girl who can hold her liquor,
But it might be a secret
That this girl,
With her tattoos
And her piercings
And her ****-'em-all facade
Fits so perfectly in my silly dreamer's heart
That I sometimes forget
She isn't mine.

Imperfect expanse,
Rolling landscape,
Sacred and ordinary.
Scars faded almost invisible.
Stretch marks slashed red on lily white,
Reminiscent of the wounds
From the straight blade I kept in a drawer.

Canvas thick with paint,
Layers of love and hate
Painted on by lovers, strangers,
Self, and others.
Cigarette butts and crushed beer cans
And masterpieces on the walls.
Cherished and reviled,
Wrong for society's standards of beauty,
Exactly right
For me.

my body is still warm in the
places where you pressed
  against me as you
****** out from my bones
any ounce of apathy
I might have had left
  and my guts flutter
violently like a moth trapped in a glass box
  and I can't wait
to never have to see you again
because I could love someone who is
seven times better than you
        but right now
    my waist can't stop remembering
    the places your fingers sometimes liked to rest

I suspended my disbelief for you
but you forgot me somewhere
   like a flea
   behind the cigarettes and ******
   behind the pretty girls who tease
   behind the marrow in your knees
but some mornings, you wake up panicked
swollen with the sweat of something you might have once dreamed

gentle awareness as though you've
framed my heart in roses while I
slept atop the pellows

I have these dreams that haunt me when I wake
and I'm not sure
if I believe in god but
I don't think I'm strong enough
to believe in nothing
  and survive it

I guess I should be
grateful that the pollen
doesn't make my throat itch
   like it does Naomi's
and it doesn't make my eyes itch
   like it does Naomi's
        but it does make me itch
to get out of this godforsaken place
            once-and-for-all

In my dreams I walk through
fields with needles where the grass
should be but when I wake the
crickets, birds, gossipy girls
whisper when I pass
and its so hard to stop listening
  (the streets swell yellow with the ***** of spring)

Somewhere in the middle of a ceaseless rain's drum
That led to your forehead smoothed under my thumb
And shivering stopped by a single warm hug
I felt (for an instant) the depth of our love

it feels like the first day of spring
and I keep turning away from the sun
because every time it hits my legs
my body convulses and tingles from the heat.

sixty-eight degrees outside
I'm wearing a winter hat and sweater
minty green with patterns that look like Cheez-Its.
my shoes give me ****** blisters
but I wear them anyway because they're new
and complete my ****** outfit
and my feet will question,
                                              and ache
                                                               and plead

you are my feet
you bolster my body
every bone, limb, and muscle
and I constantly destroy you
******* you, scratch you, dismantle.
I am that one pair of shoes in the back of your closet
that never feels the tension of your toes
because after an hour of my presence,
you remember why I was stashed there in the first place.

and even though I'm new to you
I can only hope to complete the transcendence of your outfit, too
complete your already perfect everything

and despite my careless bruising
I long to be your favorite shoe.