You tipped me over. I spilled my words into your hands, they filled the creases in your palms and the spaces between your fingers. You held them as though they were malleable, crushed them with strength and shook them off as though they were something ***** that you couldn't get rid of. I still remember the night I found you trying to pick up the pieces, looking for the hidden message behind what I tried to tell you. Your knuckles ******, your face dripping with sweat, your eyes clothed in desperation. You replaced the heart on your sleeve with a broken one. You never gave me the parts of you that didn't need fixing. I wish you stopped blaming me for being the reason you're still filled with apathy, I wish you would of realized that I spent all this time looking for the right way to tell you I'm not what you're looking for. I wish everything I said was enough for you to leave, I wish my hands were strong enough to push you away. We both know that you're stronger than me; but I hope you wake up one day and realize I stopped loving you before you started. I hope one day you can wash your hands clean ; I hope you realize I never wanted to be the one weighing you down.

I can tell you about the girl.

Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.

She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.

Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.

One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.

I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.

She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.

After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.

Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.

Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."

I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."

She asked, "We will be okay, right?"

I hope.

I couldn't wait for the day the sun didn't feel like it was trying to burn me, or for the day the rain wasn't trying to fill my lungs. I couldn't wait for the day the highway wouldn't sound like it's calling me to play with it, or the day sidewalks quit threatening to swallow me whole. There was something about the way my fear of love made the words wrap themselves around my vocal cords. I'm sorry I've never been able to get those three words out without sounding like I'm going to choke. I couldn't wait for the day my love for you didn't feel like a consequence or for the day I could convince myself that what you felt for me was real. The truth is I'm not used to people staying longer than I'm able to hold myself back from pushing them away. I got in the habit of writing my love to you on the parts of my skin that I'd never let you see, so that tearing off my clothes would be the easiest way to show you how I feel. My veins are filling with ink now, a mix of red and blue filled with words left unsaid. Some nights I talk to the walls, some nights they tell me about where your knuckles made dents when I'd whisper in my sleep about leaving you; I never really thought you'd be the first one out the door. Loving you was making excuses. Loving you was throwing diamonds in wishing wells, knowing my hope wasn't worth the price. Sometimes when the highway calls me, sometimes when the sidewalks threaten to swallow me whole, sometimes when the rain fills my lungs with water;  letting you go looks a lot like the final death of me.

In all honesty I've never been good with words. I never knew what to respond after the doctor would ask me what hurt, or what to tell my mother after I saw her cry when my dad left. Poetry is placing words in all the wrong places in order to build something right. Poetry is taking apart the puzzle and forcing the pieces into spaces they don't fit. I tried to write you a letter to tell you that I miss you, the problem with poetry is that there's no metaphor that makes this emptiness inside my chest any more beautiful. There's no personification real enough to make my sheets feel like you're laying in them. There's no simile literal enough to make my heart feel as though its healing. I wish I could place these words on my tongue and roll them out for you to hear, but since I've last kissed you I can't even find the motivation to part my lips. I always find myself questioning why I keep writing; because the problem with my poems is that you're never the one reading them.

Suddenly, the world went numb. All the pain, the worry, the apathy, the carefulness; it all went away. There was no sound, no hum, no white noise. The light stopped flickering; the curtains stopped dancing with the breeze blowing through the window. All I felt were your hands.
Slowly and softly making their way down my shoulders, tracing my skin like fingers exploiting a map. Gently feeling the goose-bumps form along the surface of my arms, and gently intertwining your fingers with mine.
I could have closed my eyes. I could have convinced myself that your love for me ran deeper than this. The truth is, this was the foreplay before the passionate goodbye. This was you staining your pigment onto my skin.

“Stop. This can’t be your goodbye. You can’t leave me like this”

You stopped. You looked into my eyes; the same eyes I looked into so many times before. As though you had it all planned out, you brushed my shoulders with your lips and whispered in a way that still forms goose bumps along my thighs;

“I have been looking for ways to show you I love you.
Now all I can do is leave”

Feed me your lines, about darkness and despair
And the tragedy you claim, that your heart still pumps and your chest still heaves and your eyes still flutter

Oh, give me dark, raw poetry and tell me that my blood is beautiful on bedsheets


Are you sure you want to do that?
The way you lace those black words together puppeteers my hands, tying nooses with the romance of it all

Keep going, tell your fellow crying souls that one dance with the Reaper is greater than what comes without the knife

Hear me just this once:
There are fine lines in life, like fine lines on our wrists, so dance along them carefully, thoughtfully
There is nothing tragically beautiful about my mother finding my cold, dead corpse
Will you romanticize my mother's tears in the moments after she finds me?
Tell me that it's all so beautiful, then?
Are you sure you want to do that?
Do you feel like a literary genius now?

Don't hold my deepest horrors in your hands and fold them into stories

I'll wait for you forever
till stars forget to shine,
and oceans become puddles,
words no longer rhyme

Till deserts turn to gardens
where flowers go to bloom,
the grass is red, the skies are green,
the dawn brings out the moon

Till rain is something very dry
and butterflies drive trucks,
when every pond is chocolate sauce
with candy coated ducks

Till basements have a penthouse view
with windows three floors high
and stairways are a place to swim
no matter how you fly

Till mountains are a level path
that you will go to walk
and silence now becomes a way
for every one to talk

Till everything we've ever known
is gone and disappeared
The world does end, there's nothing more
just like we always feared

Till broken hearts are happy,
tears a welcome site
Night comes at the break of day
and daytime looks like night

I'll wait for you forever
until the end of time
It matters not how long it takes
if I can call you mine

how many times do I have to say
I miss you until it becomes poetry

how many since it mattered

how do I tell you I haven't let
anyone touch me since you
because as long as your hands
remain the last
you still exist here somehow
how do I tell you that doesn't even
begin to describe it
how do I tell you all the places you
touched me still sing
like a phantom limb

how many days did it take
for your mother to ask about me
if I'm ever coming back again
what happened to me
what happened to us
what did you tell her
and how bad did it hurt to say aloud

how do I tell you even the simplest
things are crippling without you
how breathing is wasteful
when there's no other lips to taste it
how badly my body has pined for
yours again

how cruel must you have been
to make me want like a child
to lead me senseless
to the brink of everything
I ever wanted
to lead me giggling and trembling
touching your face
and to leave me here alone
without a warning
heaven was not heaven when I
entered it alone
all this love I have to give
is shot to hell if I can't give it to you

so how many times
do I have to say I miss you
until it becomes poetry?
because I'll do it
I'll do it and do it until it matters
to you

I want to be buried
beside the river
that drowns you.

-

The way the sky sits.
Our sleeves
wrapped in wind.
I kiss your lips.
You are my end.

-

Sequins and swans
on the dress of
the universe.
I want to be warmed
by the galaxy's grasp.

-

You are my water:
You move beside
and against me.