i was not meant to run
through fire or hold
stars in my hands, but
my fingers are calloused
from trying.

do not worry - you
will not be the
first to die; when
you lie down
you will not be
alone.
            
             instead you
will watch the stars
with cleopatra
or quite possibly a
king.

maybe my hands shake because
i've been told settling is wrong,
and my fingers have been kept
in their skin for too long

(if i shed, i'm sure i'll grow wings)

please don't leave me.

i thought this would be
easier, knowing months ahead,
but i'm scared that
b e i n g  a l o n e
will sound even quieter
than it used to
before i knew (and loved) you.

he said
sorry, i
totally just
spilled my
heart out
to you

don't worry
i told him
**i know the
feeling

i think i love you because
you have strong hands
and a steady smile, and
both of those are something
i can hold onto.

i wish i wasn't
so ****
human

i want saturday mornings to always smell like
black coffee and your cologne

i want to wake up before the sun rises
and walk around in wool socks, sing elvis presley
under my breath because i'll never admit it
but when i fell for you it was relentlessly and without
inhibition and
                          i just
                                     could not
                                                   help myself

i want to carry two mugs back to bed instead of just
one and i want to be there when you wake up
slowly

i just want to
know what it's like
to not feel alone
when i go to
sleep.

i wish my generation would stop
romanticizing misery; if he only loves you
because you are sad, then what will happen
when he's the only one to make you happy

(are you prepared to watch him walk away
for another girl reading bukowski?)

how do i fill this
hole?  i wish
i had never
found it in the
first place

today a friend of mine told me that in china
they only say i love you when they really mean it;
she talked about it like it was a loaded gun,
like telling somebody i love you also meant
i'd **** for you, i'd die for you, i'd live for you.

i don't know how to be brave enough to say that
straight, but if i could, i would fly you across the globe
to help you understand.

i haven't believed in
anyone ever
like i believe in
you.

tonight i wanted to
paint wings across
your shoulder
blades.

i forgot to tell you earlier that
i've dreamt about you every night
this week, and this morning when i
woke up i thought it was winter,
but i was warm anyway.

i used to hate sundays,
but sometimes you hold
my hands in the pews
at church and i think that
i've been saved in more
ways than one

it's gonna be a long time
he says, hands clutching his arms
and i want to pry his fingers
away, kiss the tips and
hide him from his fears

not forever, though
i tell him and
i hope he knows that
scars fade but we are both
talking about something bigger
so he smiles and says

*no, not
forever

i know it's easy to forget,
so here i am
telling you i love you again

(i'll say it 'til the sun comes up)

some days i think
you're a saint, and it's
stupid, because all
you have to do is
smile or refill my coffee
before i can even ask,

but it's more than
anyone else has done,
and if i let it slip
that i'm a little bit
in love,
i wouldn't even be
sorry.

you swear that you know that he
was wrong, but his hands were the
closest thing that ever felt like love,
and if he tried again, you wouldn't
tell him to stop

i woke up to find your name
tattooed on my bones, and darling,
i don't mind at all

at night, you wonder if anybody actually
saw you today, and if they did,
had they noticed your shaking hands?

(sometimes you question if you were
taught english correctly, because every
i love you comes out as i'm sorry

and you are so tired of stuttering)

today i woke up to the radio,
and when every song sounded
like it should be ours, i couldn't tell
if i was dreaming or not

(and i am so gone
on you)

when i asked you why you hate
thursdays, your hands twitched,
and all i wanted
was to hold them close

you once told me that you had always
wanted to climb the water tower
at crescent lake park

so why don't you
i asked, and you shook your head

it's just a stupid dream

(but i didn't see anything wrong with
wanting to feel
above the rest of the world)

for the first time
i am not staying alive
for the good of
every one else

(for the first time
i'm learning
how to love myself)

i wish you would try just one last
time to reach out, so that i could be
the one to walk away

(i'm so ******* proud of myself
for not loving you anymore)

i don't know what
to say to
make things
okay.

.
i am so tired of my bones being
romanticized; being made of
stardust does not make me infinite or
beautiful.

(i picked up
all your old habits,
and i'm not
letting them
go)

he said he believes that
after we die, we come back as birds
(but what happens after that
i asked; he shrugged and said
does it make a difference?)

i started popping pills when i was twelve and
pretended they would save me until i couldn't
feel them anymore, and i'm scared that i'll only ever
love you like that, because i'm beginning to feel
numb when you're around, but i get headaches
when you're gone. &when; the time comes that you
have to leave, i want to be able to let you go gracefully

(i'll spend the next three months whispering your name,
trying to remember what it felt like to want to say it instead of
to need to)

i loved you without
asking first
and i am
so sorry
for
that.

i still
feel you
in my
ribs

where they bend
and (some
times)
break

you had always
kept your
**** together
when you felt like
falling apart, and i

i want to be brave like
that.

my bones are my of glass
    and
        i watched you sink last night
            and
                his mouth says he sleeps but his eyes say he lies
                    and
                   i
              am
        tired
    like
him.

these days, i like to pretend
my hands don't shake and
my lungs don't collapse
when i hear your name
[but you've been tugging at me
with puppet strings
and i don't know if
i can breathe
because you
let me or if i am
finally
free]

i'll keep a compass tattooed on my
forearm so that i'll always know how to
find my way home, and if that needle points to you
when we settle for the night,

i won't question it.

i'd sketch you in charcoal,
then paint your eyes in with
watercolours

(i'm no van gogh, but it
would be hard to make you look
anything less that
gorgeous)

i thought your memory would
weigh me down, but it turned out to be
an anchor; i've never felt more
close to you than i do now
(and with this weight i'm clinging to
it's like you never left)

i've become the person i wanted to be
two years ago, but i've forgotten
why i wanted to be this way in the first place

(it's time to reconstruct myself again)

i wouldn't mind if
for the rest of my life
i never saw anything
other than
ocean.

the most honest i've ever been was with the boy
who lied to everybody else but me; i told him that
i didn't know why i trusted him but i didn't mind if he
never wanted to let go of my hand, that as long as he held on
i'd keep on talking, that all i wanted to be was an
astronaut so i could write first hand-accounts
of the stars, that i imagined creating a new name for myself
every time i woke up so that i wouldn't have to live with my
past, that i didn't know the difference between love and
fear or if there was even a difference at all

in return, he told me a truth that only he believed in
(you're perfect, i swear it)

from then on, i choked on every truth i tried to say, so i ran away
and that night i whispered to the dark over and over again
to convince myself i'd be ready the next time somebody dared me to say it
(i'mscared, i'mscared, i'mscared, i'msorry, iloveyou, i'mscared)

when he asks if you're in
love with him,
*lie

i don't know the difference between
the words you spill when your drunk
and the words you whisper when sober
anymore, even when you're intoxicated
you're a liar.

i am not in love
with you, but i am in love
with the way you smile

when you get simply
overwhelmed by something too
beautiful for words

for all the times you were the only one
who could make me genuinely happy,
thank you

(i mean it)

i've been told time and time again that
we are made of stardust, to the point where it's
not even poetic anymore, it's just
science. and while they're something beautiful in
chemical reactions and the attraction between
us and the earth's core, there is nothing beautiful
about the way biology was ruined for me
in seventh grade when we dissected frogs and i realized
that's actually what we look like inside-
we don't house constellations or milky ways or anything
worth staring at
                            (but even still, i couldn't look away).

i wonder if there's any chance of us being rescued from our flesh,
i wonder if maybe one day after we're turned to dust
again, our remnants will break free of earth's gravity
and we'll get the chance to be stars once more.

(i wonder if the reason we reach towards the sky at night
is because we can feel our brothers calling us back home)

&las;; night was the first time i had faith
in anybody in a long time (maybe because it's easy to breathe
when you're speeding down back streets
and i only just then realized that i'd been
held under too long)

(maybe it had something to do with the way
your hands glided over the wheel like you could care less
about where we were going or when we would come back)

(maybe it was the way you promised that there would be a
next time)

(maybe it was just you)

i'll shut my ears and eyes,
but i can't shut you out
any more

(i don't know why you keep
returning when i have nothing
left to give)