You have no idea how long I thought about that letter.
Or how many rough drafts I wrote, noted, and then ripped up.
Or how badly i thought I would throw up on the way there.
And did you notice how much I was shaking? and for a moment I forgot that anything had changed. That we don't speak anymore.
Then I left, still shaking, but I wish I could have, somehow, still been there.
Known what your parents said when the door slammed shut. Known what you did.
Did you look at them right away? or wait until you fixed your sleepy hair?
Did you walk into the kitchen because your mom wanted to see them? Spill them out onto the counter and she picks up the blue envelope and say, "What's this?" or did you run up to your room-up the stairs and to the right- close the door, sit on your bed, and pull them out carefully and gently?
Were you surprised when you pulled out the envelope? or did you just know that that's how I am?
Did you want to read it? or were you scared?
I wish I could have seen you open it, because I think I can imagine your careful fingers.
But not your eyes. I wish I could have seen your eyes. Because eyes are the windows to the soul and one time your soul was in love with mine.
Did you think , "oh, lined paper. that's just like her."? because that's what the point was.
Was the amount of "I'm sorry"s too much? or appreciated?
And what did you think when you turned it over? Did it make you hate me? or think of me?
Did you have to read it more than once to take it in?
And after you folded it back up, is it sitting on the table next to your bed? or maybe in the drawer or in a wallet or a box or a secret place that no one knows?
Did you relive our memories? or have you already blocked those out of your mind?
Did you fight back the urge to text me about it? or did you just already never want to speak to me again?
And I dont know why, but you told your friends about the letter but not what was in it.
Not waht it said. And if I could know one thing, it quite possibly could be why you didn't tell them what I had said.
Was it becaue you didn't want her to find out?
Was it to protect me from her?
or was it because it was special to you?
That, even though we are not together and we don't want to be and nothing will ever happen, nor should it, you feel the same way and there's still something there for you too?
Was it on your mind the whole day? or was it easy to forget?
and was your tweet at 1:32 a.m. about me?
Can I just pretend it was anyways? because it makes me feel better.
Do you miss talking?
I miss talking.
I miss you bringing me Mountain Dews and going to Roxberry every Monday night for three weeks and Zupas and doing homework together and Stairway to Heaven and taking two hours to say goodnight and shooting stars and talking about Paris and wanting to drop out of school and run away and Disneyland- Man do I miss Disneyland!- and California and watching the color show with your arm around me and Soaring Over California and you pushing me in your dad's wheelchair and holding hands and running to get onto the Ferris Wheel on time and you went in one of the nonswinging carriages for me and overlooking all of the park and I wanted you to kiss me but I was scared and we rode the Little mermaid ride with me a million times and we rode the teacups and you rode Dumbo with me and I felt like a little girl again and you walked through Sleeping Beauty's castle with me cause I love it so much and you got so scared when that little guy jumped out and I really liked you then and letting you drive my car and blasting music when it rains and going to concerts and you letting me choose the radio stations and going to Thanksgiving Point and you hating that salad that I loved and cuddling on my lawn in the freezing cold and "what would you do if I fell asleep right now?"  "I dunno. I'd probably stay here." "Good." and yeah it was a full moon and you sneaking out cause I was scared to death but you got caught and your mom was mad and I had to make cookies and write a note and I think she really hated me and my sparkly Paris shirt that got glitter all over you and "What should I write a poem about?" cause you were the only one I was comfortable enough with to ask that and hanging out with you and Thomas and how you couldn't figure out how to use the library and your truck and making bets on football games and helping you with your eagle project and I didn't know anyone that was there so I talked to your mom and then I stayed over probably for too long and we looked up music on iTunes and we never stopped texting and you making me muffins and trying to steal my phone and read it and how you told me that I made you want to be a better person and that you told me that you think I'm a good singer and how much you hated edamame but I don't know why and you always wanted me to try sea food and listen to your music and how you let me just come over and vent and cry to you when I was in a fight with my mom and I told you I wasn't going home and I would sleep in my car and you told me I could sleep in your basement and how understanding and kind you were.
and the only thing I can still say is I'm sorry.

I'm reading your favorite
book right now.

I look at you and I realize, I don't know you anymore.
Gaunt eyes,
malicious lips,
gnashing teeth,
wicked heart.
The hollow shell of a memory, you are.
But that's all you are.
You can't hold my heart anymore,
your hands are too bitterly frozen.
You can't make e smile anymore,
your jokes are weak,
pathetic,
cursed,
vindictive.
You've disguised the beautiful rose in bushes of thorns,
and that rose is now a ****.
And the candle under the bushel is melted.
Gone.
I was thinking about it today,
I look at you and I realize,
I don't know you anymore.
Goodbye, stranger.

Your feet have no longer stepped along the shiny finish of my floors.
Your smell, no longer seeped into the fabric.
Your awkward presence no longer lingers at the door.
My house is no longer the home you choose to pick.
Your love no longer resting on my bed.
I miss the way your laugh danced around my room,
it loved to kiss my silly head,
the chamber that is now your incarnate tomb.
When you see me, is it still hard to breathe?
When I touch you, does it make you just break down?
Does the way I hug you make it hard to see?
And in the scent of me, you love, you drown?
You're a good actor, fool. ****. Dope.
The way you're acting now is prime.
The way you act like I'm not there, that's what you hope.
And how you really cant see me. How I cry, inside.
Take me back, Imbecile!
We can kiss through the dawn.
Passionate love, kiss me unforgivable.
But you can't even love me when I'm gone.

This house we fool around in, beloved.
this crumbled, shattered, defiled old home
is one of memories I felt true love in.
And winds of change I fear it gone with old.
The sun with awful purpose is setting.
I beg, please stay, just a while longer.
The destructive rain seems to you, abetting
I remember when you looked at me much fonder.
Without that ruined, abandoned, white house
just how will I remember how this started?
All on that roof, you and I, friends about
I released my love for you, once guarded.
But now, you and your fickle heart forget me
and I still love you, and cry in memory.

I almost had my first kiss once.
Almost.
It was on a cold December night and thick pure snowflakes were falling.
Falling to be caught on my golden hair, or in his, slightly darker.
I stepped back into the shelter of my front porch
but not into my warm house, oh no. I was a prisoner.
Locked out and befriended by the cold winter.
But it was fine, because I was with him, but not perfect because we were both alone.
He, shooting hoops and me, waiting patiently and admirably.
So admirably.
In my eyes, everything he did was wonderful and exciting.
Worry filled me n the fact that something was off and something was on his mind.
Was it me? couldn't be. Maybe.
The frozen basketball rolled smoothly, almost practiced, off his hand.
and in his stiff voice he mouthed the need to come inside.
I shouldn't have left. I should have stayed and waited only 30 seconds... 45 seconds...a minute longer.
But, like most people, I fear the airiness of awkwardness
and the moments that you stand before a person and draw a blank and have not a word to say.
I feared it and I turned my back.
It could have been perfect. It would have been perfect.
had I just opened my eyes and seen, because I didn't see.
Looking back now, I see.
My first kiss was close.
So close.
So painfully close it taunts me.
It taunts me when I'm siting alone, pondering.
When I'm alone with him and we talk about things.
When my friend bring up their magical first kisses.
When I remember the fact that I still love him, after all these years.
When his hand lightly touches mine or accidentally brushes my back and I realize, it could've been so much more.
But mostly, it taunts me on cold winter nights
when the heavy white snow is lightly falling, catching in my golden hair or landing on his, slightly darker.

There is a secret I can't tell anybody.
It bursts from within me,
boiling my insides and
scratching on my heart.
It explodes out of me and
immediately,
it turns to mist.
It must.
There is a secret I can't tell anybody.
Secret stolen words
being played on a harpsichord
or a harmonica.
Which one is it?
Both touch my heart,
either in a beautiful spring song
or the lamenting notes of the blues,
coaxing my soul to sleep.
There is a secret I can't tell anybody.
Hidden in each drop of whiskey as we sing.
I still do cling to your picture for dear life.
Desperately.
Or is it slipped into the screws of my sunglasses. and hanging onto the fragments of my cut off jeans.
Seventeen. Seventeen.
Sixteen.
There is a secret I can't tell anybody. It's hidden in the way I feel when you touch my arm.
In between my heart strings when you hug me,
long.
Or the feeling deep down in the shank of my soul
when we say
***** you.
***** me.
***** us both.
and we'll both go to Hell.
Maybe for this secret,
maybe just to stay in love.
Can we please?
Stay in this raging sea?
There is a secret I can't tell anybody.
I will not tell a soul.
For if I do, I will only be causing the damnation of myself and this incarnate heart of mind.
But, I fear, I must talk to you about it. If I don't I will explode
and you will live with my guts on your face and my pulsating heart in the depth of your hand.
But,
I'm afraid if I do tell you my precious thoughts,
being vulnerable,
you will turn your back.
Like you usually do.
Like a bad habit.

Shatter it against the wall.

And you know I'm not the best guard of secrets.
Help me.

There is a secret I can't tell anybody.

Look at this fool.
This babbling fool that stands
over me.

A garden full of burning flowers
visible through his eyes,
but not through ear to ear.

The things that run from his mouth-
which I do not blame them from doing-
**** my brain cells.

He thinks I care.
All I want the former fool.
He who taught me all I know.

The walking book cover,
dictionary, Britannica.
The ultimate thesaurus, movie star.

Bob the Rabbit.
It's in its cage.
Say hi to Bob.

I admire you.
The temperature.
The west and east egg.

All I desire is again
to sit and look up and admirably
watch words spill out of his mouth.

Not these dead song birds
flying out of  his.
Not this spineless man walking

on his tongue.
Not, Not,
Not him.

In the distance, a foghorn yells, "No one cares!"
but he is Hellen Keller's doppelganger.
I am slowly going brain dead......

black.

Every time i see you, my mind goes blank.
Frustratingly, so do all the things i wish to say to you.
For some reason, though, our memories still dance before my eyes.
As i think maybe the same thing has happened to you,
Curiously, i look into your ocean eyes. and what do i see?
Emptiness.
Dead. you killed us. i am dead to you.

The most beautiful woman we both
know
is Tequila.

She wears a glass dress
that clashes when she dances
Makes a high pitch

ringing noise.
Tip her over.
Spill her

out.
Tip her back and drink
in her life.

Then stay the night
until I can taste death and
then become born again.

Is it a sunrise in my room?
Or is that where the sun sets?
I dont know, so

you tell me.
My head is pounding
from this light. The

way it seeps into my brain and
tries to stay.
Push it out.

I want to run away.
Let's get on a plane and fly
to Paris.

Let's just go.
Forget the world
and leave the Greeks and

fugitive slaves behind. Let
them worry about
themselves.

Birds migrate
to a place that's warm and
inviting.

A giant bird of metal
descends into heaven.
A heaven on fire.

We can walk the streets.
The ones I want to dance on,
under the stars blanketed in

the dark sky.
The stars.
My stars. French Stars.

Do you ever just laugh at
them? The stars?
It's silly to think they go on

for eternity.
I just saw one fall.
Like your hand to mine.

Collide with the earth.
Defective star.
Ignorant mass of Sun.

Find me a place to sleep for the night.
Snow white
minus six.

The wasted sun will wake my wasted
eyes.
Then we can walk.

Till the ends of the earth begin
and we can stay in
the beloved

city so
long we could stand
at each painting at the

Louvre
for hours.
Listen to me as I attempt to

be a philosopher.
Look at me like you're listening,
and listening to Mona Lisa.

Then we can go dancing.
Outside.
And maybe we wont be cold.

This time.
And maybe,
just maybe,

it will rain.

I cannot do this.
I fear.
I fear repetition.
Repetition that I crave, yet also repulses me at the same time.
An internal battle between neurons and ventricles and atriums.
My chest burst open today when I recognized the face
under that mocked brim and,
for two moments,
the Doppler effect was just something scientists invented to make themselves feel better.
But it all came crashing down without
the connection of soul windows.
Blue? Brown?
Who remembers.
Remember is such a simply complicated word.

I fear the anger
and the holes in the wall
and the murderous screams.
and ripping church out of ears and heart and mind.
cause that hurts.

I fear November.
My best and worst two days in heaven.
And how badly I would...do...want that to happen again.

Next I fear the eyeless,
lipstick,
lover of hands.
The shallow one with a faux deep soul.
The hypocrite.
Her acid words that burn through screens.
They rip away the moment they penetrate my skin and touch my heart.
I fear her disapproval.
because she will disapprove,
this I know.
Silver tongue like the snake.
Venom pointed at me, her sister.
Betrayed.
So she will disapprove and that means much.

Then I fear giving half of my heart,
that is his,
away.
Well, it wouldn't be half, because is it still dipped deep in love.
So a sixteenth of my heart-his heart- and that is still much.
For us.

It is just a crush. and that is it.
But isn't that how everything starts?
Tender pressings on your heart until they become the pulses and beats and poundings and crushing sensations.
Once.
Once.
Only once that has happened to me.
Still is.
And even if it is unrequited,
I fear losing that.
I fear fearing.
I fear rejection.
I fear losing the one thing that I care about.
and I fear not finding something.
Or finding it to only lose it in a few months time.

So I will refrain.

When did the air of romance die?
When did the beautiful words that spilled out poetically cease to exist?
When did it become that, the part of tonight where all we did was lay there in each others arms- quietly, silently, sleepy- become the part I worried most about you disliking.
The part where our souls were closest, why did my heart feel obliged to ask you if you were bored?
The romance isn't gone, I know that, I can feel it sometimes when you look at me (though sometimes I have to wonder if that's only the boredom) I know it's still there, but the world of modern days likes to come in and corrupt it sometimes.
Like some days, I miss the nights where we talked until we fell asleep.
Or how we told each other everything.
Or when he told me that he loves me because I struggle.
and how beautiful I was.
I mean,
Im definitely not complaining about the kissing, don't even get me wrong, I love that part, but I like when we share our souls with each other. Our hearts. When he opens up to be vulnerable to me... I feel like its been a while...
like my poetic words are stuck behind a barrier that has been built up by football players and a brother and prettier girls and things that I ***** up. (which happens much too often.)
I could let them flow free, and oh! how beautiful they would be.
How perfectly I could describe to him the way he makes me feel when he touches my cold body with his warmth and how he looks when he leans in to kiss me.
Or his eyes.
His wonderful, green-blue, ocean, kaleidoscope eyes.
but I feel awkward for thinking the things and the way I do.
Like my words would come out and feel awkward and void of reality
instead of beautiful and touching.
So I just keep quiet and hope he looks at me as if he had almost lost me
and wish for him to love being with me.

I've been reading your texts all day, trying to convince  myself that you still love me.
and i read the same ones
over and over
thinking...
maybe there's something, some hidden message that i didn't catch
on one late,
tear stormed night that says,
"Don't worry. I still love you just as much as ever."
Maybe somewhere you sneaked in how beautiful you think I am and how much you love my green eyes.
Maybe you tried to tell me how wonderful you think kissing me is.
Maybe you secretly typed how much you love me and why you love me...
that it's all the little things
and that no one could ever take my place
and you could never love anyone as much as you love me.
and I look and I look and no matter how much I try to trick myself into thinking all those things are there,
they're not.