You never hit me.
But your insults punched me in the gut.
You never beat me.
But your words tore through my insides.
You never choked me.
But your distrust suffocated me.
You never spat on me.
But your condescension swallowed me.
You never broke my bones.
But your lies broke my liveliness.
You never stabbed me.
But the names you called me cut my heart open.

You never struck me.
But you left me,
My confidence,
My heart,
My spirit,
You left it
Mangled
Bruised
Contorted
Defenseless
Broken,
Fifty
Stories
Be­low
The
Rooftop
You
Called
Your
Love.

Is anything simple,
or is everything?

"Run away with me;
save me."

"You don't have to be alone."

"I want us to stand in the sun together."

Do we just keep rollin?
Where are we goin?

The bright sun shines above;
that baby blue sky I love.

The tires roll,
off the ground we take,
fate
awaits;
Let's get lost in this place.

Subtlety, how you govern
my actions
for I fear dissatisfaction,
not certain the reaction

Do I surrender to the unknown,
to that yet I do not know?
The more I grow,
further I go,
fearful I may be,
is that, though, serenity?

Dive into a phobia,
pool splashes hopelessly,
waves, water, blue,
it has opened me.

Well, not open,
but perhaps ajar?
Is the end, is it far?
Or is it near?

My dear, oh how it could be
with me, oh how you could see,
Hands laced loosely
like a kid with kicks too cool,
loose they hang,
easy stride slow, low
against the breeze
until the darkness does squeeze
the space between us,
and embrace me you do.

Heart, head; aboard a jet.
This is all a dream,
or is it?

Is anything simple,
or is everything?

When glass shatters,
all you can do is
pick up the pieces.

When we shatter,
all we can do is
pick up the pieces.

Things remain broken
only if we choose not to
fix them.

If a picture is worth
a thousand words,
is a memory worth
a million?

I am rich in words.

And even when my mind is foggy
And my eyes are glazed

Your image remains as clear as ever.

Sometimes I think about you.

I know it's been a while,
But there are these times that
You just cross my mind,
A glimpse of what was,
What could've been.

I remember those
Cold afternoons in your
Dorm room,
Your arms wrapped around mine
On your sofa couch,
Watching some cool movie
I had never been hip to before,
The laughter bouncing off our chests,
Reverberating against the off-white cement walls,
****** and maybe a little drunk,
But mostly just high off of our chemistry.

You were someone so different to me,
So full of stories of mischief and misunderstandings;
I used to get lost in your words,
Hanging onto every slightly twanged syllable.

You told me your secrets.
I let you unzip me,
Physically and mentally,
Seduced me so with your blue eyes
That I didn't even mind that you
Smoked cigarettes.

Months that felt like eternities
As I stumbled into a kind of love
I still don't comprehend,
So fleeting yet the moments
I spent with you
Are so vivid,
Sometimes so that I
Can almost feel the
Softness of your full lips...

You might just be that cliche,
That one
Who somehow got away.

We have the kinda love
where I can only love you from afar,
feel you in the lyrics of songs that
I fight the urge to send your way,
see you in the stanzas of poems
I desire to imitate.
I am forced to love you like the
vegetation loves the sun;
distant but omnipresent,
refusing to forget you even in
the depths of winter.

You know that feeling
you get when
you drive at night, and you
just want to feel the car fly, so you
push your foot as far as
it'll go down on the gas,
down to the baseboard,
your engine howling like a wolf in the
moonlight,
yet somehow it doesn't feel
fast enough?

That's what it feels like
getting over
you.

Getting over you is like
sneaking home, trying not to awaken
the parents that you
left dozing,
but every
single
solitary
stair
creaks underneath your weight.

It is the
new routine with the
broken ankle;
the unanswered
correspondance;
the sailing ship on
the windless ocean;
getting over you is the
road taken and laden with potholes;
the refusal of the snow
to melt,
my feet slipping out from underneath me
on the remaining ice.

Getting over you is the
flameless fire,
the un-Happy New Year,
the series of unhappy poems.

Getting over you
is the bottle of champagne I drank
to quench my thirst for you,
the texts I sent you and didn't remember,
the tears I shed as I begged the
universe (and anyone else in ear shot)
to explain why it had to
turn out this way.

You know that feeling where
up is down,
left is right,
inside is flipped outside?

You're gone.

I saw her in the most perfect sunset
And then there she was in the fullest moon;
She is gone,
Yet she still fills the room.

I wish I would’ve let you hold me just a little while longer.

I wish I would’ve let you kiss me a little more.

I wish I would’ve let you continue to touch my skin, run your hands through my hair, caress the features on my face; I wish I would’ve let you stay.

I knew I couldn’t. I knew it was time to say goodbye. I knew we were doing the right thing. I knew it, and yet

I wish it had gone any other way.

I wish that the feelings alone were enough to make us work.
I wish that loving you, being loved by you, I wish that was all it took.
I wish our timing was right.
I wish rights were just right and without any wrongs.
I wish we weren’t just a chapter.
I wish we were the epilogue.

I knew it was time to say goodbye.
But I still smell the space on my pillow where your curly hair rested against it as you looked at me that way you do.
I still feel the way it felt when you pulled me close as I cried, how you kissed the top of my head tenderly.
I still hear the reverberations of our laughter, the things we said in unison, the way we finished each other’s sentences and shared our deepest fears.

We said goodbye to this version of us.
We knew it was time.
We knew it was what we needed to do.
And one day soon, I hope my heart knows it too.

Goodbyes* are the hardest,
but *love alone
is not
enough,
so
goodbye,
love.

And somehow I have
slipped into a state where
my dreams were realities and
my realities will be my dreams...

Love is so complex;
too grandiose to comprehend,
too intricate to explain,
lost in some ulterior realm,
in a universe that is foreign
where the only thing of which I am certain
is that I am in fact
lost in you.

My body goes on autopilot
as my hands grip the sterilely frigid steering wheel,
speeding 20 miles over the limit,
body going through the motions
as my mind slips back into love,
into the all-consuming mesmerization,
grasping at song lyrics like straws,
searching the vowels and consonants for the
y - o - u
that I hear in them.

Reality comes and goes,
but you remain,
even in the moments most mundane;
sipping the koolaid slowly,
injecting your poison deeper into my veins
as I struggle to prevent the come-down.

What I feel buried deep inside...
it dries out my mouth,
creates craters in my stomach,
esophageal spasming,
I fight to catch my breath at the sight of your name on my phone,
the sound of your voice as you speak my name.

A thundering tsunami bursting at the seams of my
pale skin, my rosy cheeks,
the ferocity of my burning love
scraping against the bone and cartilage
to rip through me and
devour you...

And the only way that you
allow me to love you,
it's so small, it's so
momentary,
you only able to drink one
drop
at
a
time,
an entire hydraulic system,
streams and tributaries,
rivers and oceans,
forcefully squeezed,
funneled into daily droplets.

Dreaming of the last time I tasted you,
the times you used
to intertwine your body
with mine,
lost in incomprehensible ecstasy,
I can now only love you
through the simplicity of
conversation
and
of sitting by your side;
however,
even in its relative infinitesimalness,
I anticipate, yearn evermore for the stillness,
for I know that if today were to be my last,
if my hands were to slip off the steering wheel,
my body becoming sterilely cold,
your name would be the first word I would
speak
in my survival,
the last thought I would think
in my demise.

And though those moments
do exist
where I grow impatient,
frustrated with the walls you've built,
the dams you've constructed
to guard against my love's roaring riptide,
I would rather lose myself,
drop
by
drop
to you,
love you in the most minute way,
if it means I can
love you
at all.

Sometimes after I've
Had a drink or two,
Or a few more,
I convince myself that I can
Find what I want
In the superficial distractions,
Building my ego in faked conversations,
Pretending to be the careless girl
I've never really been able to be,
But pass me one more beer
So I can text every other
Y-chromosome in my phone
And pretend the meaningless
Exchange of dialogue
Even minimally replaces the gross
Urge I repress
To send you the stifled sonnets
That lay dormant at the pit of
My suppression.

I just wish I could get my
head and my heart
to play on the same team,
but they are constantly
at
odds.

My heart still yearns for
a man that
never loved me to begin with,
convinces me that
it's worth responding when
he texts me some
empty ******* that
momentarily assuages his guilt
for his selfishness.
On a Saturday night when
all my friends are off with
someone who loves them,
my heart pumps heavy
against my hollowed chest,
trying to manipulate my
fingers like weak little
puppets,
persuading them to send a text
I will regret in the morning.
My heart replays the words he spoke,
the times he made me feel like I mattered,
the way our bodies made art,
how he understood me like
no one else ever has.
What if I made a mistake,
my heart demands of me,
a mistake in cutting him out,
in choosing to ignore his texts,
in attempting to move forward?
What if no one else will
ever open
their ears to all of my secrets,
their eyes to all of my skeletons,
their hearts to all of my mistakes?
What if I missed my
chance for love?
Remember, my heart whispers,
how he stayed up all night
unfolding himself
and
how you shared your poetry
and
how he sent you a text a day with
a new matter to ponder
and
how he knew what you thought
before you said a word
and
how he understood every
face you made and what it meant
and
how the lyrics you heard
always mattered to him
and
how he cared about what you were learning
and
how the minuscule moments
of your life meant the world to him...
or so he claimed.

And then my brain swoops in
to remind me how
he was all words, no action.
Days and weeks went by
without a peep
even though the week before
he had insisted on showing up at your
apartment five days in a row.
All he cared to do with you,
my brain recalls,
is share a smoke on the roof
and discuss life,
but never did he once care to
share in the outside world
with someone who he so claimed to love.
My brain reminds me of
the secrets he kept,
of the woman he lived with
behind my back,
of the gross refusal to make a commitment
even when he claimed
he would think of me in his last moments
and that he had never
felt for another like he did for me.
My brain knows of his emptiness,
of his excuse-making,
of how he blamed everything on his
pathetic circumstances
when he really was just a
selfish ******* who deserves
not a moment more of my time,
ever.
When I get those texts
that claim he's thinking of me
after church or
send me song lyrics in some
pathetic attempt to reawaken our
"connection,"
my brain reminds me to
ignore,
to remember that words are empty,
to wait until he becomes man enough
to give me what I deserve.

My heart makes me weak.
My brain keeps me strong.
My heart wants you.
My brain doesn't need you.
And even though I want
to listen to my heart,
my brain knows better.

You are not here
You are there
You are somewhere
You are not near

You are far
Here is not where you are

I am here
I am not there

You are everywhere
I am nowhere

I used to be there
Not the same as where
You are now
But where you used to be
There was you
And there was me
And there was we

We are not there
We are not here
We are not we

But you will always be
A part of me

I left, and nothing was the same;
I came back, and everything was the same.

I've changed, but you haven't;
this thing between us hasn't changed,
or has it?

You remain transfixed on the games,
and even after months of silence,
you expect me to play;
and I get a thrill off of saying no,
which admittedly is my own way of playing back.

I don't know whether I love you or hate you more,
but homecoming also means coming home to that dichotomy,
to resisting urges and old patterns,
to hoping you've finally figured out where I'm at,
that your path has met mine,
that you've changed with time.

These roads feel the same but also
like they belong to a life I no longer know;
new tracks on new albums make the soundtrack for the drive,
and you attempt to wedge yourself amongst lyrics of redemption
and desire.

I need you to let me go
but want you to come with me;
I need to live the new life I've built
but am haunted by past fantasies;

when I come home,
it can't be to you,
and when I leave,
I'm leaving you too.

You're a cigarette and I
can't find a patch.
You taste foul in my mouth,
my tongue is dried out and my
words taste like tar as your
name rattles out;
I feel sickly satisfied as I realize
I have nothing else to scratch my itch.

You are
You have always been
a bad habit.

I quit.

autumn
is when all starts to change
the wind
becomes brisk
warm summer air
slowly suffocated by
arms of an overpowering
cold draft, bitter, mighty
sun light
bright and splendid
shortens, shrinks, shies away
all the kids want
to stay in bed
for their sunlight,
guide, friend
it hides from them
more and more
as seasons change
and
there
fall
the
l
e
  a
   v
    e
     s
one    by    one
there they go as fall comes
they fall
red orange yellow
splendid eye candy
we see an
array of colors
all seems so
simple and
simply beautiful
or is it
something much more?
the real
fall, the tumble
of leaves
down the trees,
do you know what it means?
autumn is
           change
change to winter
the leaves are
dying,
slowly, rhythmically
they die
           one    by    one
they die.
Beauty? How?
In comes darkness,
in comes cold,
in comes
autumn,
summer's dying soul
that
is
winter.
I
am
winter.
You
were
my
summer.

I am everything
And I am nothing.
I am big
And I am small.
I am frightened
And I am brave.
I am empty
And I am whole.
I am happy
And I am sad.
I am strong
And I am weak.
I am lonely
And I am fulfilled.
I am optimistic
And I am cynical.
I am hopeless
And I am hopeful.
I am right
And I am wrong.
I am selfless
And I am selfish.
I am lost
And I am found.

I am ironic.
I am not quite psychotic.
I am oxymoronic.

I am me.

It's 11:30 PM,
and the steaming hot water
singes my back
as I talk myself out of
throwing my half consumed
bottle of beer
against the
shower wall.
My stomach feels hollow,
my throat feels clogged,
repressed screams,
traveling
from
my
insides
up.

Anger is an emotion
I rarely feel,
but as the hauntingly true song lyrics
blared out of my laptop and
reverberated against the glass door,
I was barely able to contain
the wrath,
tears of vexation slipping down
my cheeks,
dropping to my chin as I
heaved in
a sharp breath.

I'm tired.
Tired of giving.
Tired of waiting.
Tired of having faith.
Tired of loving.
Tired of losing myself.

Are we supposed to give
and never take?
Wait and keep faith?
Love without feeling
loved back?
Let our dreams, needs,
hopes, wishes...
let our souls go off track?

Empathy is my middle name,
but when will someone empathize with
me?
When will I get
what I want;
be provided with
what I need?
When will the love I relinquish
rebound back to me?

I want give and take;
I want reassurance and faith;
the mate to my soul,
the 50 to my 50;

I want you,
your heart,
your faith,
your soul,
your empathy;

I want you
like you have me.

I can’t get your words out of my head
Syllable by syllable I’ve reread
Them a dozen times,
And now I contemplate why
And how I never knew
You felt how I do.

Inspiration,
perpetuation
of fascination,
inclination
to take refuge in
my imagination,
fantasies trapped safely in
hibernation,
concealed within
my stifled grin,
quivering
just above my chin.

Flick of fire,
take a hit
of desire;
inhaling mystery,
exhaling fears,
coughing on
personal history,
choking on
invisible
tears;
setting a blaze
sentiments,
puffing out
resentment;
breathe in
the questions,
taking a drag of
my confessions;

High
on
Introspection.

Of the two lamps in the room,
my glassy eyes can only tolerate the dimmed glow
of the lower light from the right,
my face basking in the slowly rotating,
barely blowing air from the fan above me.
My face feels flushed,
but not from the semi-sticky early summer heat,
but from the fact that
every time I come back to this room,
I'm reminded of why I left.

The lawyer in me could generate a list,
pros longer than any construction of cons,
yet your name will always reverberate
in the unforgotten corners of my subconscious.

You never loved me like I did you,
and even my romanticized version of you never
saw me the way I
still feel the ghost of you.

I can still feel the crisp fall air from your balcony
and recall the albums and conversations that
complete the track list
of my unrequited love story.

Sometimes it was real,
sometimes it's real,
sometimes it's a dream,
sometimes it's a memory.

And this is the essence of you and me;
it's more questions than answers,
smoke and mirrors and
smoking to make things clearer.

I've never been the same
since you,
but I also don't know how I can ever
get over someone I never really had.

You were mine in microcosms
that were macro extraterrestrial galactic;

was it real?
were we real or
was it all [science] fiction?

It’s 5:04 AM, as I lie awake going on hour number two.
I dreamt of you,
As I often do.

I always awake with a jolt,
The tangibility of your simulated self
Jarring,
My senses overstimulated as if we had touched for real.

When I ponder on you, on memories of us
In my conscious mind,
I have a difficult time stringing together
The details of you,
Years apart having left your image
Grainy and unfocused, although effervescent.

Yet when my eyes close,
You make your way clear into focus,
Every detail of your physical and spiritual form so vivid
As if I’m really experiencing you,
As if you’re dreaming of me too,
And we’ve actually escaped to another reality
Where nothing has changed or faded.

Is this where we now reside?
The current version of us is no longer compatible with the software of reality,
Our data kept in the cloud
Where dreams are stored.

It isn’t real in the realness of reality,
But it’s so vivid, more lucid than a lucid dream,
That I can’t shake the feeling that I’m experiencing the real you
In the only form I’m now able to download.

The scorpion
knows
not truly
of the
consequences
following
the
sweet, poisonous,
painful
venom
he
exerts
without a sound
into
his
prey;

venomous,
dangerous,
penetrating
the naivety
of his
victims
without even a
moment's
notice,
it's
done;

slithering
away
before
he can assess
the damage,
the
carcass of
the unfortunate
accidentally
infected,
left to rot

alone.

I'm on a strict diet of
red wine and smoke
as I train for a marathon
of loneliness, self-discovery, and
moving on.

Letting you go was crushing,
and I still fight the
urge at least once a day
to unblock your number
just so I can say hello.

Nearly everything takes me back to you,
whether it's a sunset I know you'd cherish
or a poem I know you'd
want to analyze with me.
You live in the tree's green leaves
and in the smiles of strangers.
I feel you next to me as I
toss and turn in my bed,
and I smell you in the candles
that are supposed to soothe me.

It seems cruel that you can't be around,
and my heart often
threatens my head for *******
a good thing up.
But the good I had with you
was bad for me,
and I know I need to let myself
be broken so that I can
one day be full again.

I'm on a strict diet of
red wine and smoke
as I replace the love I have for you
with love I'm finding of and
for myself.

Sometimes I worry
that I will always be
alone.

Oh, hey,
aren't I
cliche?
24-years-young
and talking
like an old maid.

But you know what,
**** whoever
decided that just
because you're young,
loneliness isn't a concern,
and just because you
have time ahead of you
doesn't mean
living without love isn't
painful.

Every man,
if you can even call them that,
that peaks my interest
finds a reason to say,
it's not you, it's me,
but at this point,
as I watch everyone around me
settle down and
find someone,
I can't help but wonder if
it's not them, it's me.

I try to think about
what I look like on paper.
I am the first to
admit my flaws.
I'm not the skinniest,
I'm not the funniest,
I'm not the coolest,
I talk too much,
I involve myself too often
and too deeply
in others,
I am overly sensitive,
I have never been popular,
and I'm sure
I could name at least
50 other things someone would
find less-than-favorable.
But then I try to remember that
I am ambitious,
I am bright,
I am kind,
I am empathetic,
I am family-oriented;
I have a lot of hobbies,
I can always hold a conversation,
and I've been told
I'm pretty
at least on an
occasion or two.

I'm not all good,
but I'm not all bad.
And I think, as
cheesy as it sounds,
that everyone is entitled to
love.
So I can't help but wonder
what I'm putting into the
universe,
what I'm lacking,
what more I need to do
before someone can love me;
****, even just staying
interested for more than
a couple weeks,
even that would suffice.

This isn't some self-deprecating,
some depressing
ode of a sad single girl.
It's just a series of words
to question
why
and where
and how
and when
I will find love,
why I'm
still lacking,
who I'm waiting for.

What
explanation
is there for
this loneliness,
for these years I've spent
love-less,
for even the years prior
where the "love" I felt
was so wrong
and destructive?

Is it me?

Or

*Is it them?

I once saw a man sitting at
the bar of one of my favorite dives,
and he looked so handsome in his
profile,
his lips gingerly kissing a bottle
of craft beer,
his suit fitted just right
against his sculpted
frame.

He stared intently through his
trendy glasses
at the glow of his
laptop screen,
and I imagined he was
reading something involving
important business,
or maybe a book about a
new age philosophy as he
pondered the meaning of life.

He seemed so comfortable
and familiar in his
solitude,
like he traveled often and
had grown to love himself
immensely;
he valued his alone
time.

I imagined he went to some
ivy league school,
like Brown or Cornell,
where he studied business and
made his parents proud.
He still likes to learn and finds
the world to be a
blissfully curious place.

I was enthralled with
the picture I had drawn in
my head as I
gazed at his strong jaw
and white smile,
and I couldn't help but whisper
to my friend how
infatuated I was with the
view from
my seat in our wooden booth,
when my friend chuckled
nervously,
his brows downturned as he
erased all I had
drawn and replaced the
picture with
he's homeless.

I guess you could call me
a people addict;
I live for the exchanges,
momentary or prolonged,
the satisfaction of smiles substituted for
verbalized salutations;
the how-you-do's and hello's,
the pleasantries of chit chat,
talk of my oh my, I am not ready for this snow
and how was your holiday?;
catching a supposed-to-be-sneaked glance from that tasty
stranger,
allowing your eyes to meet for longer than
you meant to;
a compliment that drips off the lips so sweet,
its nectar invading the taste buds for hours
on end;
individualized or multiplied,
I relish in the conjugated haze,
in the gazes and the giggles,
in the potential formulation of inside jokes,
in a have a good day to a grin I will never see again,
the whirlwind of vowels and consonants,
of coincidences and sarcasm,
of the impressions we may leave of which
we will never be aware;
I crave the mundane,
I get high off the monotony,
I am swallowed by the simplicity;
Yeah,
I guess you could call me a
people addict,
and I'm cool with that.

When the poetry flows through you,
it waits for no perfect moment,
there is no convenience mustered
to await your finding
paper and a pen.

When the words come,
you just know,
you feel the syllables rising from
the tips of your toes,
exploding out of your fingers,
propelling you into an
unsuspected state of
delirium as your mouth
silently forms the shapes
you spit onto your notebook,
brave hands twisting and
turning purple letters
round themselves,
brain melting and oozing
out into similes and metaphors,
pictures popping from
stories told and
secrets disclosed until
in one final swoop
the moment passes,
your work is done and
the pride and fear and
vulnerability and anxiety
you just birthed
stares back at you,
its ambiguous smirk
leaving you breathless.

I stare blankly at the
bathroom wall
where the tiled portion
meets the faded blue paint
as it soaks in...
I liked it

The years of unrequited love,
the chase for affection,
the tortured artist
twisted up in twisted tortured
feelings

I spent year writing
dark poems,
letting the liquid manifest as a physical representation
of the tears shed
and bleeding heart.
Did I like it?

My existence was
wandering streets alone,
getting lost in melancholy songs,
wondering if love equated pain.

Then I found
what I told my notebook
I'd been searching for all along.
Someone loves me,
someone gives me love,
and I spent so much time searching for it,
enjoying the hunt and
getting gratification out
of my own self-deprecation
that I'm lost even though I'm found.

Do I like it?
Did I like that?
Do I like this?

I can't seem to decipher
affection and how it's supposed to
make me feel
versus how it does.
Did I like looking for it more than having it?

Am I so ****** up that
I love not receiving love more than receiving it?

I don't want to run; I want to stay;
I always used to run
to
     and away.

And two days later,
the taste and smell of your skin;
senses still aroused.

Oh, how there is never enough
time for a person to
be alone.

Life's greatest treasure
is loneliness;
finding peace in the silence,
sanctity in the solitude.

My raybans still covered
my swollen  eyes as I stepped
inside the Rite Aid,
in my pathetic attempt to
hide from the neighborhood how much
I had been crying.
Tears of anger and
some of despair and
others of sheer exhaustion
had coated my cheeks
and worn the edges of my eyelids
raw and reddened my
corneas.
I had stumbled out of my apartment
in an effort to rid my body of
feelings, assuming the brisk spring breeze
could somehow sweep up everything
I felt and whisk it away as
quick as it had come.
I squeaked past a couple
******* clad women with
sunken eyes that bore holes
into the glass of the cooler
as they stared longingly at the
rather large variety of
malt liquors, the selection of soft drinks
lesser than the collection of
40s I passed on my way to the
back of the store.
I distracted myself imagining
the taste of the various soda pops,
a wild cherry Pepsi dissolving into my
daydream tongue right before it
turned to Big Red Cream Soda.
Diet Sunkist in hand,
I stared at the ingredients on the orange soda bottle and reread the same words
over and over as he interjected himself again and again.
I made my way to the counter,
feeling ever grateful for my sunglasses
as more tears welled,
and I cleared my throat before mumbling a way-too-weak-for-an-outgoing-girl hello.
Before I knew it my distraction faded
from view, and I turned left down Oak
as his face peeked out in my
rear view mirror in the majesty of
the sunset.
I shook off a feeling of admiration and
reminded myself that even after all this time
he still manages to disappoint me as
he always has.
I murmured something about how,
"He ain't ****" like I'm some bad
***** that doesn't give a **** about a dude.
But then I remembered how deeply I had loved
a man who never loved me back and
never failed to prove it.
My stomach began to drop,
leaving me feeling as empty as the
messages he had sent me in his pathetic
attempts to convince me of ******* masked as
the rhetoric he knew I wanted to hear,
just enough to keep me around for his
(admittedly) selfish reasons.
I loved him and hated him all at once
as I realized 4 months ago when
I told myself (and him) that I was moving on,
it was only my head that had,
my heart still staggering, like a
drunk stumbling off a belly full
of cheap whiskey,
And as I later drowned my sorrows in
TV dramas and artificial sweeteners,
I vowed to get that last piece back and really let go...
I'll start tomorrow
when I sober up.

To the one who has my heart,

I love you.
I love you as deeply as the deepest trench,
As vastly as the expanse of the universe,
As greatly as the highest mountain.
I love you so much
I have been consumed by it,
I have been swallowed by its tidal waves,
I have been dried up by its arid air,
I have been devoured by its rabid hunger.

I love you.

But I'm realizing,
I love me more,
And me loves me back;
I breathe life into myself,
I inflate and empower and embolden me;
I am neither consumed nor weakened;
I am on top of my own mountain tops,
Cooled down by my own streams,
Tackling the corners of the universe.

Sincerely,
Yours truly,
I will always love you,
But I choose me.

Loving you is the smell of the rain
Fresh. Life sustaining.
Sweet droplets dripping on petals
Blooming in spring.

Loving you is breath catching in my chest
Overwhelmed and afraid
Because it’s so good I fret
The concept of ever having to spend
A day of this life without you in it.

Loving you is the depth of
The sea
So vast that even its
Contemplation is greater than is
Humanly conceivable,
The feeling of warm salt water on
Tanned skin,
Sounds of
Crashing waves,
loving you is a perfect summer day.

Loving you is a rocket to outer space
Lost in the cosmos
I’m living amongst the constellations
Draped against
The Milky Way;
Loving you,
Being loved by you,
Looms larger than this world.

Loving you is the most
Beautiful terrifying expansive
Life-altering mind-blowing unimaginable
Gift
That I never would’ve dreamed of finding
Let alone deserving.

Loving you is absolute magic;
Because you are absolutely magical.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I
went for an impromptu drive,
keeping my foot on the gas and snaking
among the one-ways and the
downtown traffic as I
made my way to the river.
I put the heat on
ever so slightly just so
I'd be warm enough to roll
the windows down and feel that
fresh spring air on my face.
I wore my retro hat backwards,
and my Raybans covered my eyes,
my cool demeanor and slouchy posture
in sync with the steady rhythm of the
90s hip hop booming through my
speakers.
I watched the sun as it made love to
the river's chop, and
I snuck a glance at the stolen kisses
the green grass shared with the
tall trees on the shoreline.
Beautiful yellow and purple buds
splattered the bushes like
Impressionism,
thick dabs of color that all blended
into a beautifully disorganized
vision of the season of
rebirth.
I sprouted wings and flew outside
my body as I inhaled
pollens and flower nectar,
as my skin reddened under the
bright sunlight,
my self got lost in the time and space
continuum that swallowed me
like ground swallowed up the last
traces of snow, replacing my ground
with the warmth and
rebirth that spring always brings
after a long winter.

Tap tap tap*
goes her hand as she
rattles her box of cigs,
packing 'em in before
she hungrily rips off the
cellophane.
Her eyes lustfully stare
at the untouched pack
as she contemplates how it will
taste to put one in her mouth.
Although the Surgeon General
has adequately warned her otherwise,
she slides her fingers around
her chosen poison,
eagerly putting it to her lips.
The lighter clicks, and flames
quickly lap up the tobacco and its
chemical casing.
She inhales, and the raggedy breath
reverberates in her chest,
a sick pleasentness seeping into her veins.
Nothing has ever
felt better, as blood rushes
to her head and her muscles relax.
She lights up one after another
until the pack is gone,
and the cycle begins again;
an inner debate where her head
tells her to leave the addiction behind,
but her heart and body, starting to feel
lonely and withdrawn, insist on another
pack to dull the creeping emptiness.
So back to the corner store she goes,
as he waits behind the counter,
ready to give her another taste of feigned and
unhealthy comfort,
for it's better than being alone,
sober,
and without him.

Too complex,
too intricate
for such a simple world.
His mind sees it all in a different manner.
Put on 3D-glasses,
take a step inside the rabbit hole,
you still wouldn't find your way,
not exactly.

Life feels
so
simple
as my
hand
hangs
lackadaisically
out my window,

wind rushing through
my    slightly    parted
digits,

inhaling the taste
of
spring,
pollen and sunshine;

just dreamin'.

Transformation.
To be transformed.
Seed to flower.
Child to adult.
Caterpillar to butterfly.

A wave can turn to a hurricane,
a flame to a wildfire,
a stormcloud to a tornado.
It looms,
it darkens the sky,
it frightens.

But does not the shore dry,
the forest fizzle out?
The sun sneaks out behind a seemingly never-ending stream
of darkness and devastation.

So, too, do we transform.

A boy became a man,
but not before
he was absorbed
by darkness.
Only thereafter
could he seek out the sun.

Peace comes after war,
recovery after illness,
healing after injury...

This transformation,
it is greater,
more magnanimous
because, too,
that process,
that search,
journey,
his darkness...
it stretched on for what he presumed was his
                                                                                eternity.

He was scared.
He was alone.
And then,
he triumphed;
he needed no one.

And then,
out flew a newly
transformed
him.
Out to the world,
new world,
brighter world,
out he came...

a butterfly.

There are these
        moments
where my eyes are closed,
my walls are decomposed,
any safeguards,
logic,
defenses,
they get swept away
as my subconscious becomes
my temporary conscious.

You often appear in my dreams.

No telling what you're doing,
where you're going,
what the context is,
who else is around...
no, you're just there
in the corners of my
uncooperative mind.

I always hear your voice
so clearly,
and I imagine somehow
that even your dream voice,
your dream lips,
your dream skin,
it all still makes my
conscious real-world body
get goosebumps...
that's the kind of effect
you've always
   had on
            me.

God,
and then I fall in love
all over again in my
dreams,
but in this realm you
don't disappoint me,
leaving me hurt,
forcing me
to
            walk
                                      away­.

Nope,
see,
my dreams
are perfect,
so much so that
I often get mad
when I wake up,
because that's
when I remember that
you're no longer around;
that I don't get to taste your tongue,
feel the softness of your caramel skin,
the fullness of your perfect lips;
that you aren't mine
and never really were;
that you never let me
love you;
that our love story never even began.

There are these moments
when my eyes are closed and
I am yours.

I sat hard-pressed against
the plastic seat on the Metro,
green line to Branch Ave,
feeling the heat
of all the dozens of bodies that surrounded me,
5:30 PM and everyone
making headway for home after a
long, hot work day.
The swampy humidity
clung to my arms like sticky tack.
I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my
blazer
and listened to some 90s
R & B on my iPod as I
c
o
u
n
t
e
d
d
o
w
n
the exits till I could
free               myself      from
the suffocating crowd.
It was no day that was even remotely extraordinary,
no life-changing series of events,
no incredible people I had met;
nope, just commuting back to the SE quadrant of
town as I had
every day that summer.
I looked up and took
a snapshot with my mind;
I remember exactly
how that sliver of time
felt to me,
how it looked,
smelledsoundedtasted
as I realized my days in D.C. had begun to feel
like the norm,
that I had grown accustomed to the
claustrophobic train cabins,
the repetitive street names,
and
10% sales tax.
So suddenly there was this
catastrophic
timeturning
momentous magnanimous monumental magic
of the most mundanely minuscule moment,
as ordinary crawled up my veins
and absorbed me in it.
Somehow
squeezed.in.between
the rush-hour,
the annoyance, impatience, and near-suffocation
felt like
home.

It's the first of the year,
and the only resolution
I can think of
is that I wanna
fall in love.

Not the kind
that's unrequited,
the sort of love that's uninvited.

Not the kind
that hurts
that leaves you
so mangled and broken
you never wanna
love again.

Not the kind
that makes you mean,
the kind without trust
that makes you green
with envy.

Not the kind
that is forbidden,
that you gotta hide.

The kinda love
I wanna find
is the kind
that consumes me,
that fuels me,
that moves me.

The up-all-night
bearing our souls,
the non-stop laughter,
beautiful disaster,
I show you all my flaws,
you love me with no makeup on,
that's our song,
you leave me words on post-its,
we hold hands just because,
and all my poetry is
happy.

In 2015 I wanna
find someone who touches my soul,
who lets me touch his back,
who unfolds into my arms
and lets me share my fears.
I want love
that's real,
that's deep,
that's too good to be true.

In 2015
I wanna fall in love,
I wanna find my
y-o-u.

My life constitutes of
a dichotic shift as I
drift
between
a state of self-assuredness
and self loathing.

When I am assured
I am sure
that my eyes are a
golden brown,
my smile whitened and straightened
with perfectly painted lips.
My eyelashes curl upward
as I give you my most intriguing smirk,
inducing you into giving me
those copies for free
and saying "Ay girl"
as I cross the street.
My jeans hug my hourglass figure
like a girl from a video,
and the compliments find themselves
going my way.
My brain swells with
knowledge and an almost-eery insight
as I predict your admiration
and find myself compensating as to
not appear
ostentatious.
I hold myself with the highest regard and
refuse to let a man
make me feel inferior,
to judge me by my exterior because
I am superior to that
treatment.
My wit is quick and
you can bet I'll put a
Slick Rick in his
place if he is even fit to
keep up with my pace.

But then again
I look at him and see
him frowning at my
symmetrical, but overly round
face,
thinking that there might
be other ladies in this place
with a smaller frame,
with a flat stomach and
a tame sense of style,
not a fedora or Timberland boots or a beanie,
not someone who cackles when
she laughs
and talks even more loudly and
obnoxiously than she chuckles.
I'm not smooth enough to
keep your attention as
my obsession with Harry Potter accidentally
gets disclosed,
as I feel my skin-diseased cheeks
bleeding through their concealer and bronzer mask.
A law school degree sounds boring and
braggy as I grasp
at straws, at my only backup source of comfort,
as I attempt to woo you with my brain because
you clearly aren't into a size ten.
You glance out of the sides
of your eyes as you buy me a drink,
or you tell me you aren't
ready for a relationship
even though we've been
sleeping together for a year;
"it's just not you, it's me"
is what I finagle
as a girl named Hailey
posts a picture of you with
your arm around her size two
waist and top-heavey Double D's.
I let down all of my walls and
you forget my birthday,
and I stay devastated over you long
enough for you to
forget my name.

I'm two-in-one;
I'm confidently lacking in confidence and
disapprovingly disapprove of
anyone's opinion of me
but my
own.

Sometimes it's okay
to swallow, choke on the numb;
another drink, please.

Puffy white clouds
whisping by,
thousands
and
thousands
of
feet
above my hometown,
I gaze
out the
rectangular
viewing screen
hungrily,
choking back tears,
revisiting the
farewells;
on the beacon of
adventure,
riding the aircraft
away from
what was,
only to return
anew,
fully in bloom.