It started hot and passionate and blinding.
Then it ran,
ran from me
faster than the alpine highway or
an Afro over your cute lisp.

And a bus leaves for 13 colonies and 14 days and
pictures are all I have.
Colorful but in
50 shades of grey.
Then never a breath from you
on the home front.
And disappointment marks my eyes.

Running all over town with eyes
like video cameras and
minds like a metal detector.
We wish we could be a fly on the wall or a plant in the earth or a new hair on your chin.
All moments,
every moment,
we know.
My fiend.
Detect this on your police detector.
Little blue Honda that looks tan in the sun.

White Camry.
Up the street then back down.
Serpentine through the neighborhoods
hoping to see a familiar body,
but not be seen ourselves.
Every day
till July 15.
Then waving goodbye to an empty house I once knew.
Where I stayed too long and talked too much about nothing.
Too many memories to remember and flash before my heart.
Then I blink and they're gone and we've passed it.

And finally I've mimicked Taylor Swift
and wrote a song about Paris.
And boys in Montreal.
Late hours. Early hours.
All hours.
Spent engulfed in our own music from our minds.

Military men. Marines that cheat and break hearts.
not enough sleep.
Lots of tire on asphalt.
Up and down and up and down and back again.
Not enough French
and a brand new white iPhone.

And the sun sets on another day
and still the one thing I want
doesn't go my way.

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.

One man
can really change the world,
even if it's just by dying.
One man
can really lead thousands
if he kneels down and prays hard enough.
One man
can influence his pale demons
to lay down their pitch forks,
and also to pick them up.
One man
is just a man
is just a father
just a husband
just a preacher
just a speaker
just a man.
And does he truly want to be that
one man
that can really change the world,
even if it's just by dying?

You.
You are 10,000 miles away
and yet, I still want to run  my hands through your
wet, dark brown hair.
I want to press myself against your warm body
and live in the steam and smell of a hot shower.
I want to breathe in your kiss and taste the shampoo
that slowly dripped  from your wet mop and fell on your lips.
Find a cheap motel room and dream there.
Dream the things you live and live the things you dream.
In that dimly lit, musky, hotel room that I'm dreaming of right now,
where we can forget the world.
I want to forget Clint Eastwood and September and the snow.
I can't remember the color of your eyes
because you kiss with eyes closed
and it's been an awful while since I've opened them.
I wish.
I want to watch you drive down California highways--
sunglasses on and my bare feet hanging out the window, my nailpolish sparkling in
the California sun.  
I want to make you laugh, and watch  your perfect eyebrows crinkle with
your nose when you admirably look at me.
I want to take pieces of paper and write my heart on them
then put them in a memory box
and throw them all out the window.
I want to go to the airport and find you standing
all alone,
looking lost .
Then pull over in a car and make the night alive.
Listen to the stars laughing and lose myself inside of you.
I want the games.
Challenging and, well, you know.
I want the way you make me feel.
Like I'm about to burst out of my skin
at any moment
because of passion.
I want. I want. I want.
You.
Find a dark place deep into the night and settle down
for a couple hours and let our minds shut
down for once.
No devil truck or eyeless lips or hand guns to decide our fate.
and just slip away into each other's bodies,
and become submerged in each other's kiss.

In another life, I was born a painter.
Gliding colors over canvas to imitate emotion.
Stepping back and marveling at the impressionism or the modernism or the realism of what I just created.
And people could look and gawk
and give gracious complements.

In another life, I was born a dancer.
Helplessly allowing melodies to transfuse my blood and move my limbs the way ocean waves move water.
Elegance in my bones, loveliness in my tendons, beauty in my ligaments.
Boys would leap toward me
and I would jeté toward them or grand jeté away from them.

In another life, I was born a singer.
A voice of gold and diamonds
that people love to eat
and bathe in.
Like summer sunlight in the springtime,
snow on December 25th.
Things people love to experience.

But, in this life, I was born a writer
so I live with what I must.
And I'll paint with my words-
give them color and life and realism, with just a hint of impressionism.
And I'll make my words dance-
across white pages, dressed in black, the smell of sweat and blood soaked within their skin.
And I'll make my words sing-
sing the ballad of my heart and the ballad of my mind and, maybe, even the ballad of the world.

Words are not inadequacy,
even in a world of painters, dancers, and singers.

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.

I knew.
I knew from the moment you told me how beautiful
you thought I was,
that it would last only as long
as the twinkling of a far away star.
Not even long enough for me to to remember to say hello.
Five A.M. became a habit
and we danced to the songs of chirping birds.
I let you hold me even though I knew
your arms craved a different cold body.
Those long nights outside the church that weren't
long enough.
That cute lisp and curly hair.
Those shivering arms and basketball shorts.
The adorable shyness and humility.
Walk me to my gate one more time.
I should have let you come over that one night.
Hot and sweaty, 2 a.m.,
to sneak in and use my shower.
Fill the room with sticky heat
and let the steam rise out as you exit the shower.
(You can still take me up on that offer.)
Cause I miss the way you tell me I don't smell like smoke
and how you listened to me explain
the theory behind the elder wand,
like you actually cared.
Fern Gully.
You spelled it wrong.
No spaces.
I. I. I.
Your jacket smelled like heaven draped over my legs and
I wanted to live inside the threads.
Walking so far just to listen to me ramble on.
Was it worth it? Ever.
Even after running back to her?
One. One. Only one week
that I was temporarily in love.
Tiger's Blood snow cones with cream on top
and you've never been to a concert so run to Salt Lake with me.
You do like to run, don't you?
Run from your mom. Run from your friends.
Run from feelings.
Run from her.
and Run to her at the same time.
But don't you miss laying in the street at three in the morning?
Or shaking the hand of the copper man?
and watching the summary of my obsession
on  my short green couch?
and holding me?
Even though it lasted a week,
a perfect week,
it's time to disappear.
Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

You used to be a daydream.
Now, you're the one that wakes me up at midnight-
foggy and unremembered.
I wish I could ignite it.
Watch your blue sweatshirt turn to ash and
watch that smirk from a moment in the rain that you waited all your life for shrivel up into nothing.
I wish this Hi-Polymer eraser could erase memories.
The white rubber, mister magic,
never met you.
Never. Never. Never.
Never hating you.
Never letting you learn my name.
Never figuring out that you weren't as bad as I always thought.
Never yes or sure or maybe or a nod of my thick head.
Never take your hand or lean into you or feel your embrace for the first time-
Pulled away in the pool and ran away down the street.
Never cared enough to break someone's heart.
Never let your saliva twist around inside my raw and bleeding mouth.
Never let you give me presents or given you my own.
Never given you myself.
Never said yes to Prom or let myself kiss you four times or stay until three in the suicidal morning.
Never let you come back under the blazing sun or bore your way into my core.
Never given you my every piece of me to set in place of your missing, sad pieces.
Because you thought you were whole enough without me.
But I can't take those pieces back.
Maybe I can try and erase them...

Once, you told me to write a poem about your love.
The crashing and demolishing and devouring
blue lips.
I tried, I promise.
But how do I bury what I did underneath water?
It floats to the top. Always.

Once, you told me to let my soul speak,
but it kept its ignorant mouth shut.
Now it's wailing and pining and crying
out for you,
but it stayed quiet much too long.

Once, you told me if I drifted away,
you would stay with me, laying on the grass,
the moon glowing and gleaming and smiling.
But you left me on the cold
September grass,
although the bitter air feels more like
November or
February.

Once, I was scared of falling asleep-
of Darth Maul and Aardvarks and little boys.
So you ran past trip wires and over laser beams to be with me-
my dream catcher-
but the back door.
You forgot the back door.
A few months later it happened again,
but this time your parents didn't call.
They think you're on a life preserver
this time.
Little do they know how blind they are.
That life saver is headed straight
to jagged rocks.
I a watching.
Still. Always.
A tiny drop in the dashing blue and
foaming white.
A tear drop.

Once, I told you my heart is an ocean of secrets,
and a few months later you found out exactly how.
And you cried thus filling our ocean with more salty drops.
Later, I filled it with my own.
And somewhere, somewhere in that vast ocean, spread out over miles and miles, both our teardrops are running around.

Once, you told me to write about salt water.
The waves and the tide and
capsizing boats.
So, now, when I think of the ocean,
deep blue, caverns, untold mysteries,
I think of you.

The wind whistles past my ear drums and
I am surrounded by green wind chimes,
it seems.
Crack, crack, rustle.
and a pile of fake animal bones.
Climb on them,
to the very top until the world is yours and you can see all the way back to the beginning.
Elephant Graveyard.
Four babies that bathe in the dirt and breathe in
white life.
Blue for you and you and you.
But not you.
Brown. Odd one out.
Come lie on the chests of
almost mothers and
fall into darkness.
The epitome of beauty is to relive the dust bowl?
I suppose to
the plaid men it is.
But not the depression or the
black and white photographs.
Lightning flashes inside green
canvas and
five girls scream with glee
and two girls' recognition
brings deathless happiness.
And with glee, fight back the urge to run a marathon.
To run home.
To run through dust and sage brush
and dung and
dry dry dry.
Eyes watering for lush green
in this,
the epitome of beauty.

This brick.
This bulging pocket of blue jean.
This song player, noise maker, memory saver.
Eternal space.
Secret keeper.
It's my life, this brick.
You think you can touch it? have it? hold it?
Let my secrets run along your nerves and scurry in between your brain cells?
No.
I would rather die an ignominious death and
rot a thousand years in the sea than
watch your eyes scan my life.
Search the deep caverns of my soul.
Watch your heart scream and hear the echoes of blood curdling madness.
Your fingers would burn as
you caress the suggestive sentences.
back and forth and
it comes naturally.
Sad truths.
Depressing facts.
You'd rather pour acid on your
eyes
and have them turn to
dust
than read the conversations,
I swear.
The ability to chirp
and make it appear as if it came from my own mouth?
Ridiculous.
I do not believe in ventriloquism.
Weak images
your eyes cannot behold.
I would feel exposed.
Like "The Woman" bathed
in wool and cloth and silk.
And under memos?
The secret to how my brain works.
Why would I desire you to know the short cut
to my vulnerability?
The grey box to my wiring and the scalpel to my heart.
It's the way my soul thinks.
And you can't know that.
This brick, bulge, memory saver,
it's my secret keeper.
The fidelius charm cast over my own self.
The secret is kept within
the very soul of my secret keeper.
Giving the password up is worthy of death.
You will never hold its life on your hands.
You will never see my
soul.
You will never know my
heart.

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.

The thick black sky lights up
Like a bug zapper.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Like touching static cling
or an overzealous strobe light.
The sky splits and bright yellow light streaks through
and threatens to touch the dry ground and
send an electric shock through the earth and the hard rocks.
Deadly and beautiful and quick.
as humans, we long to be near it.
To be so close our hair stands on end and a burned smell drifts through the air.
Strike the ground right before me.
Pierce the humid air.
Cut though the darkness.
We desire a close association to the thin lines of electricity we don't understand.
We'll never understand.
Not fully.
We think we do. We think we can cut it down to its atoms and find out what makes it rush out of the clouds.
And then it changes on us faster than we can blink.
And we realize we can never understand it.
The way it functions.
Shows up in our life one minute and disappears the next.
Beautiful and deadly and quick.
And you want it most as it streaks across the California stars.

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.

I need to get over you,
But life is cruel and pushes us together like boats
borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I need to get over you,
But guilt hits me like bullets.
I need to get over you,
But I already know you love New York and turf cuts and
caramel coated cherry stems.
I need to get over you,
But I look so cool
with American flags over
my eyes and, hey, we're finally seventeen.
I need to get over you,
But you changed two of those
presets just to not miss me.
And no one knows why anyone likes baseball
or falling in love
or stealing musky sweatshirts and
falling asleep.
I need to get over you,
but cops find us and we're out
past curfew
and "All we did was sit
close to each other, officer, I promise."
Just drinkn' & dreamin' the
longer I run.
I need to get over you,
But you're so warm and I'm so
cold and it just fits
together like it should.
And I can't help but laugh and make
a mess of myself.
But you change your mind so fast.
When will be the next time?
I need to get over you.

There never was anything beautiful about
caribous or
lesbians.
That's what art is for,
and good thing he hates painting.
But he likes foul mouths and petite girls
and Chevy trucks.
So I cower in your presence and let your anger shoot inside of me.
Anger like lava or acid or the liquid of hell.
It seers through me.
It seeps into my veins and
sponges into my cartilage and
threads through every tendon in my muscles and flows over my heart and stomach
and boils me from the inside out.
You may be his sound board,
but you're nothing more than a ***** he uses to make me jealous.
You may have been in his mind for the night
but only because I was busy.
You may think you're wedging yourself in between him and me
like a tick
but you're only giving yourself
Lime's disease.
I hope you rot from the inside out,
starting with your black heart and ending with your
poisonous lips.
Let the buzzards eat your liver
and I'll devour your soul.

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.

She puts her head down and slightly to the left
trying to smile, but not all the way there yet-
like a black and white photograph.
It seems like the world has left her.
The little girl across the black stream drowned in the melting snow.
Pity. Because they sure loved to play in the springtime.
The older boy has given up his soul.
Sold it-not to the devil- but to defeat him.
Funeral attire.
She wore a black dress too.
Abhorrence turned into trust which turned into fondness
but too many rules and restrictions and ridiculous favors.
and now? Now what's left of that?
Everything is so solid and so broken at the same time.
If only Einstein was right and this moment was every moment.
So she was lonely and content and wishful and weeping and laughing and kissing all at the same nano second.
So she didn't have to ever drive away.
So she never had to leave the warm, lovely smelling basement.
So, even though the blonde craving a change had become mute,
they still talked till midnight and later.
So she didn't have to choose a worst moment or a happiest moment because it was all one.

because that is what truly killed her.
Time.
but time is a black and white photograph.

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.

He thought a long while
about the weeks.
Recent weeks, weeks long past,
weeks to come.
Time was always a forgotten necessity.
Cool blue water hardly
protects anyone.
Who knew? Who knew?
Not him.
He dreamed while bathing in the dimming August sun-
about silk strewn across the floor and
betrayal and
the blinking emerald
eye of a cyclops.
Forever was a thing he idealized.
So were flowers and people and her.
and the way he looked at her-
as if the world could stop turning
yet he would be content to just
bathe in her presence forever.
His life was idealized,
the green paper, the sneaking lies,
the stiff men that pressed buttons
buttons
buttons.
But if he could grasp this one thing,
this dainty flower, he could have real satisfaction.
he was dreaming and grasping
and then the phone rang.
But he didn't answer it.

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.

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.

The way I miss thee seems to be unique;
'Tis not the way a teenage girl pines;
'Tis not the way computer lovers meet;
And neither is it how my mother lies.
My hand, alone, knows not to want another,
though loneliness will tend to grow it cold;
My lips, so soft, to taste those of thy brother
would rather rot until ten million old.
I can't forget the scent of thee, it's gone,
though stored away behind turned lock and key
and mixed with words that breath have I grown fond;
And use to fall in love with memory
the way I miss thee comes from love, so deep,
Not vain, nor false, but strong enough to weep.

Let's get one thing straight--
I am not obsessed with you.

I was in love with you.

And there is a
difference.

I woke up to grey today.
It's windy and bitter and stale.
And I feel light as an anorexic feather
and heavy as a binge eating stone.

The sun used to shine in September and October.
It would spread a warm feeling across my back,
a nice break from the fresh, sharp fall air.
The sun doesn't shine much in the month of November.

The sun doesn't shine and I wish you were gone.
You hold me in your warmth and I wish you were gone.
You trace the contours of my face and I feel the trembling of your heart
and I wish you were gone.
I'm writing this poem and you're asleep in your room and I wish you were gone.

Because you make me bleed by trying to heal me
and the blood drips like tears on letters returned to sender.
A stained wedding dress infects my mind and suddenly
I have the urge to rip it to shreds, only to stitch it back together again.
(The internal conflict between staring into eternity or evaluating glass).

I hold your hand and I touch your lips and I tell you I'm glad that you're here
but I wish you were gone.

Hair golden as wheat that sparkles in the sun.
It falls down her back and curls
perfectly in all the right places.
It flows an spreads out
as she dances with bare feet
then falls neatly back in its spot when she stops and stares.
Her piercing green eyes
(can we pretend they're green?)
cut through the soul and make you think you've met her before.
In a dream
or a fantasy
or a memory.
Her lips, red as a rose, lightly pursed
right before she smiles.
Then they come together once more as she gets serious.
Like two rose petals.
Her gentle touch and light movements.
The way her eyes flutter when she sleeps.
Vulnerable.

The only time you'll see me vulnerable.

She becomes I and I become she and,
as my dress turns from ink to blue and back again,
walk again through the castle then fall asleep with me.
Perfection.

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.

Why?
Why did I think of you under
red and blue and yellow last night?
I never dream of things that **** me.
Why?
Why did you leap into this world I've created?
I banished you by mistake and you threw away the key on purpose.
Why?
Why did I imagine your beautiful icy
eyes and tousled golden hair?
Your body was cold and your lips were stale
so
why
Why did I have to believe for two nano seconds that you had
released my own guilt?
Those rapid moments pressed searing pain across my heart,
over the wound I already burned into me.
Why?
Why do I need secrets weaved in between the binary code of "how are you?"?
You want to know
why?
Never come back again.

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.

People tell me that two years
is equivalent to the speed of a bullet train.
But I think they just say that
because they don't bleed when you're gone.
And 'cause they don't hear your name
when the wind whispers through the quakies.
To them, September is when
the leaves change
and the sun dims,
but when you hold me,
September is still too hot and should never be lonely.
People tell me I'll blink and twenty-four months will have
danced before my eyelids,
But they're just saying that
so I don't have to cry oceans at their doorstep
at one o'clock in the morning
because you were busy watching metal come alive.
And letters are good,
even though handwriting is bad,
but pen isn't the same as
hearing your voice breathe
'I love you'
or
feeling it in your arms.
Two years is a lot longer than twelve days,
and because of this
I know they are wrong,
And I have every right to feel like
I am drowning.

Love is a yellow shotgun shell sitting on a shelf.
Love is a kiss on the forehead and on each cheek.
Love is peeing with the door open
and conversations in red sweatshirts.
Love is borrowed sweatpants and back rubs,
and being too deep in conversation to watch the movie.
Love is staying out past when you said you would.
Love is 48 index cards and
one scoop of ice cream.
Love is a family affair-
a sister, two brothers,
laughing in the kitchen and
seriously watching football games.
Love is the massive American flag
standing tall in a Macey's parking lot.
Love is waiting in the car at the gas station
and asking for a key to the bathroom.
Love is Scranton, Pennsylvania
and Burbank, California.
Love is homemade CDs and driving mindlessly through the night,
holding hands in silence.
Love is a bouquet of dead roses
in a vase full of murky water.
Love is the empty feeling you get on Wednesday nights
and the pang in your heart when you drive past the local pizza place.
Love is checking the mailbox every day.
Love is missing you.
Love is an atomic bomb.

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.

A man sits on the corner
with his guitar.
Music comes out of his fingers.
You walkers by are walking past and try
hard to
tune him out.
He does not ask for your money,
yet you look ashamedly away.
He does not beg you for food,
yet you throw it to him
from your car.
He is not poor.
Not cold.
Not hungry.
Only lonely.
He sits with his guitar
named Jenny
and pulls at her strings
so she will talk to him.
They talk about
love, and loss,
and the blueness of the world.
She speaks the words the man cannot,
and the man nods and listens and cries.
His heart too depressed to
work
bathe
mend the tear on the
left shoulder of his shirt.
He is not poor.
Not cold.
Not hungry.
Only lonely,
looking for someone to
sit down and listen.
But you walkers by
turn your heads fiercely,
and litter his lap with
food stamps and wrinkled dollar bills.

I don't know how to start
just like I don't know how I feel.
But that's the paradox of the woman, right?
Will anyone ever understand my brain?
My neurons and brain stem and cerebellum,
left and right brain,
and all the lobes:
frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
Will anyone ever make sense of it all?
No.
No.
But you try.
You skirt across my hippocampus.
Try to pitch your tent there.
Try to make a life there.
Try to dig up and excavate the things that will make me yours.
You're coming close.
Because I believe in tests.
Yes I am one of them.
Yes I do it to you.
I thrive on tests.
I pull them out of my ear drums and fingernails
and from in between the splits of my teeth.
I pull out the ACT, the SAT
the LSAT, the MCAT,
the Bacceleureat.
Everything is a test.
Every answer
every question
every "please come get me"
and jack in a Styrofoam cup.
The way you walk the way you look at me when I breath is a plus or a minus or a smudge on a scantron sheet.
Three and a half hours later
you can breathe clean air again
and your mind can clear.
Holy smokes, yes, but there is is nothing holy about it.
We wont go ring shopping
we've already been house hunting
and we all know the only thing you want.
Wide open spaces and a bed in the center
and me.
Isn't that right?
Isn't
that
right?

You.
You did this to yourself.
You cut yourself open and planted the infection inside of yourself.
This sickness is self inflicted so do not blame me for your muteness and deafness and vivid eyesight.
Maybe I'm just all too much like daisy
And you're all too much like Gatsby, and that's the problem.
Only with us there's no past to repeat and there never will be.
Tom cheated and myrtle died and Gatsby was a consideration because he flattered daisy and made her feel in control,
But Tom was always the past and present and future.
Tom was always.
You were never an option so don't get mad that I didn't choose you.
You created the ultimatum inside your head
When really, mermaids never even existed.
And neither did we.

I don't know what I want from you.
I don't want you like I wanted Snow in Arizona,
but I don't want you to leave me alone.
The silent hum of the sleek car,
hands at ten and two,
feet in the clouds,
head in another dimension.
I breathe in the fumes of grease and coconut, so maybe I'm sick.
A tropical disease.
Blood pours from a facet and I'm reminded of Christmas and summer sandwich shops.
I am an Indian in your Chrysler,
dance around my fire.
Careful, though,
you might get burned.
The flames lick flesh and taste the weakness.
That is how they thrive.
On vulnerable, open flesh.

Mr. Beeson,
that East and West Egg,
that walking thesaurus, dictionary,
thermometer
peeled back the blank skin
from over my eyes and introduced
a whole new world to me.
A world full of color and black and white movies and
beautiful suicides.
A world of stanzas and strophes and meter.
A world of words that bleed out from fingertips and
create the image of one's heart.
I had been looking for something like that,
a way to create my heart on paper,
meandering around authors and song writing
and trying to be beautiful.
I felt lost, but finding poetry made me feel
like I actually had a place and a purpose.
Poetry is something that has grown close to my heart and soul and mind.
And I write because it's a part of me.
I write because I love words.
Words, words, words.
I love diction and description and exposition and narration and parallels-
oh how I love parallels!
I write because I want to sound beautiful.
I write because I feel all too much and I can't keep all
those feelings inside of me so I drain them out of my
veins and watch them ooze onto paper in ink.
I write because I have so much to say but it sounds better
in stanzas.
I write because I love the way my words sound all
strung up together in clauses and sentences
and fragments.
I write because I feel in love with the way
words look like next to each other.
I write because that's how I put my tears and smiles
and fears onto paper and out of my head.
I write because I don't know anything else.
I write because I write to live.

My head belongs in his hands and his lap,
and my tears can be caught only in the
thickness of his faded blue jeans.
My forehead belongs nestled in the nape of his neck.
My hands belong in his hands-
rough and raw and calloused over,
whipped relentlessly by the sun.
My knees belong against his chest,
held tightly to keep out diseases and terrorists and
the realities of life.
My fingers belong against his lip-
warm air bowing life into them.
My feet belong under his thighs,
saving my toes from a frost bitten end.

His cheeks belong under my palm,
rubbing the patches he missed and has let grow too long.
His eyebrows belong between silver fingers,
connected to mine made of flesh,
picking wild flowers-
which have become weeds-
making room for adoration to trickle in.
His back belongs beneath my wrists,
pulling out the stresses of todays and yesterdays
and mostly of tomorrrows.
His lips belong on the cool curves of my uncovered shoulders,
whispering sweetly of strawberries and daisies
and the way little blonde hairs stand up along the dip of the back of my neck,
where brain stem meets spine meets shoulder blades.
His shoulders belong under the weights of my world,
the cover of Atlas Shrugged tattooed nine years deep in his skin.

We are an equation-
an equation to save mankind,
and the equation of a line:
every part matters.
And the sum of my parts is nothing without his.

Isn't it exhausting,
living with so much hatred?
Not being able to let go
and forgive someone who once meant everything to you?
Doesn't it burn your skin and seer through your bones?
Eat you away?
Or have you changed too much
from the man I once new?
Now your heart has become numb.

Longing caresses;
Breakfast between us lovers-
a radiant-esque picture

I heard your voice today,

And then I missed your arms.

I kept a picture of you
above my bed for a long time.
I don't know why I left it there
for so long after you had left-
maybe it was out of hope that you would come back,
or out of the blind faith that you had never really left.
But it stayed and gathered dust and waited.
Waited for a day it thought would come,
the day when you reentered and found joy in its presence.
This picture saw me water
my bedspread every night for months,
hoping that would bring back old flowers that had died in the winter's cold.
This picture saw me hold a fragile piece of
lined paper in my hands
as if the words would revive some dead corpse buried deep
in the hard dirt.
This picture saw me look out my window and
gaze across the dead sea,
wishing to see floating pieces that could be put back together.
But when flowers die there's no coming back.
And corpses always stay cold.
And the dead sea has that name for a reason,
its pieces shrivel up.
So this picture,
it saw it all-
the cold months, the dreadful months, the months of repair and repentance, the months of sunshine and hope-
and for a while it held onto pathetic moments that seemed optimistic.
But pictures are amoral and hold no bias.
It was not fooled by faux-kindness and false hope,
unlike I,
and begged to be taken down.
Every time I walked into my dungeon it moped and wailed, but I was deaf.
Until one day, you ripped off my ears and forced me to hear.
So I took out the picture
and dropped it in the fire,
the death it had been begging for.