I loved you like a forgotten dream.
        Searing so vividly into
        the recesses of my cerebrum.
        Like fire.
        Setting my heart aflame with
        gasoline-slicked words
        that felt like a balm on my
        dry skin.

I loved you like the air after it rains.
        Breathe in, breathe out,
        but I could never
        get enough of you.
        If words could cradle
        a broken heart,
        as tangibly as callous-roughed hands
        and bumpy veins running like ivy
        down your arms,
        then drape me in letters
        and knit poems around my shoulders.

I loved you like light in an empty space.
        Because that is what you were.
        And even though you left,
        I still feel your warmth,
        still feel vestiges of heat
        tucked away in my dusty corners.
        Don’t fade.
        Don’t fade.
        Be the night sky that my eyes
        drink in like glassy pools of stars
        for a parched astronomer.
        Be a Category 5 hurricane, where I
        make a home in your center
        using pieces of stolen debris.

I simply loved you, and as much as I’ve tried,
I cannot find an image more beautiful than that.

Born to live
Born to die
Born to be high
Born to fly
Born to drown
Born to be let down
Born to fight
Born to be the light
Born to find
Born to be kind

Born to be me
Born to be free

I had said it first
I love you

maybe he didn't hear me.
maybe he didn't want to.
he eventually answered,
it took a week... or was it two...

It was bitter with shame
I love you, but I can't

Something about my belief in life after life
I didn't want to have heard it
Keeping it in the dark where it would hurt silently.

Maybe if I keep saying it
I love you
Maybe it'll be true again.

He hurt me first
I should've told him.
I don't love you

He hurt me first. I didn't want to get hurt anymore.

you're a cold-hearted *****! Why would you ever do this to someone!

Sometimes it's better to be the villain of someone else's story than to never be the hero of your own.

My body is not poetry.
My spine is curled up
into a question mark
from centuries of insecurity
and the weight of the
worlds trapped in my skull.

My thighs are canvases for
atlases, road maps, and
interstate highways that lead to
nowhere. Or everywhere.
They’re big enough for both.

Not when my hands
are the kind that are meant to tremble
not the kind meant to be held.

My hips are not made
for you to skim
your hands over.
They are guideposts:
between (here) and (here)
lies a dreadfully broken girl.

My body is not poetry.
Because it won’t last as long as
dried ink on yellowed, musty pages.
Because it breaks more easily
than the cracked spines
of a beloved, well-read book.
Because it is not something that
soothes the soul and
makes my heart ache all at once.

My body is not poetry.*
Mostly because I’m
just a little afraid
of anybody who would be able
to read me so well
to put me into words.