I’ve always wanted to be someone who wrote in all caps

I feel like I’m falling out of love
Very slowly and not so quietly.

When I was a kid I went to camp
And I would be charmed by the trees
and the breeze that flowed beneath them

When I was a drunk freshman
I remember the moment when a boy made me feel like a breeze
like something that couldn’t be caught
but that could charm someone into a walk home
And offering, always offering to sweep me off my feet.

Falling for you was like the hours I spent awake at camp
Listening to the whispers of morning while it was still quiet
And looking through sleepy eyes at the light sliding in.

Falling out of love with you
Is like drunkenly skinning my knee falling on the ice
and falling asleep in bloodstained jeans

It is inherently painful
But mostly embarrassing
In a sad kind of way.

I was better at cats cradle when I was seven
Than I have been at most things since.

I called you a drama queen and I'm sorry.
I called you a drama queen and I'm right.

God doesn't save you.
The Jimmy Johns guy saves you.
His name was Henry and I need to remember that.

I couldn't bang on the doors hard enough
I was too weak. I was too tangled.
I hope you're not mad.

Unblock and don't delete
Whatever you do don't delete
Don't burn a bridge you might need.

Then he held me and I was too weak to fight it.
Like when he hurt me and I didn't care.
Like when he ****** me but really just folded me
into more knot than girl.

I know I'm supposed to say woman.
I am not a woman.

I am a knot.

sometimes I drink too much coffee
and I find myself asking:
what if I become an enigma?

It's a funny thing to be in love
and do nothing about it
other than acknowledge
the stupidity of your own heart.

Sunday I couldn’t leave my bed
I was heartbroken, preemptively.

Yesterday I told you I loved you
And you said that’s okay.

"See, here's the thing,
I don't think I give a ****.

Anways, can you pass me the creamer?"

I remember sitting on the school bus
attempting to untangle my new cats cradle

I feel like I'm always making knots,
even when it comes to you.

It's like I want to tangle the memories,
so I have a physical reason not to sort through them.

I never really got the point of that game anyways.

In a few weeks it will be the
“One-year Anniversary of the Night of the Beginning of My First Love”
What a title right?

In a few weeks I bet I’ll still bring you up when I get drunk on boxed wine
Mumbling about high school summertime together on my back porch
Or of you breaking my heart at a ****** campus party.

But in a few weeks I’ll probably still love the part of you
That helped me fall back in love with some parts of me.
And that's alright.

I can’t keep crying
over the people I used
to be, and wishing

I could be dying
because of that feeling of
what was you and me.

I like my coffee
Breath, it reminds me of my
Mom, and I miss her.

how am I gonna find feelings and people and make memories
better than the ones I've had

what is and what was the point if not the people I loved
whose stories I don't need to be told because I've lived them
how will I move from reminiscing to explaining to a crowd

how do I keep them?
how do I stop this?

I discovered a country new to me today
and it makes me wonder what else i can find within myself
when I just spotted myanmar on the giant map
thats been hanging next to my bed for a year.

I have a sinking feeling
That our lips smashing together
Was closer to a car crash than romance.

It was beautiful in the moment,
As your heartbeat gave you away,
But the aftermath will be a mess without insurance.

For I don’t have the currency or wit
To pay for my emotional recklessness,
And I fall victim to my own mouth.

Isnt it strange to think
We are whale’s heaven,

Because this isn’t heaven.

My seventeen year old friend snorting 4 too many pills isn’t heaven,
His mom kicking him out for trying to leave forever isn’t heaven.

It seems strange for heaven to go against gravity,
And that we are up for something else’s down.

I think we have it all backwards and heaven is in the ocean,
Floating in a weightless paradise void of broken people

Because this isn’t heaven.

Home is that feeling that you get when your driving and you kind of sink into yourself, into the seat of the car and become part of the cushion and feel safe and it feels like yesterday and tomorrow all at once.

It’s that feeling that feels like you suddenly own a small piece of the universe, that feels like your front door in that its locked and its yours and that feels like your ****** car in that its yours and its falling apart.

It’s that feeling you get when you think so hard that you can feel every part of your body and it kind of aches of longing for you to remember how you are a vast vessel of emptiness, that you get when you cross your own fingers and remember how you are small and you are fragile.

It’s that feeling you get when you think so hard that your skin disappears and you flow into the air that touches the streets and fills the void in your lungs.

It’s that feeling you get when you forget to breath and forget that you exist until existing can stop because you cant remember the words to your favorite song or remember the way his smile can hug your soul and your brain says everything but inhale.

And it’s that feeling of when you realize you never knew what the streets you drove down actually look like because you are so focused on the roads and so focused on how to fill them but they’re yours and you’ll take care of them and you’ll come back to them and home is never being able to forget the feelings you bounced off of them and filled yourself with.

I would read an essay on How to Draw A Straight Line if someone wrote it, I would like to know how to freehand perfection, how draw a flawless connection.

2. I would buy a lifetime supply if there was a perfume that smelled like CDs after I eject them from the player in my car, like fundip sticks, faintly sweet, completely bizarre.

3. I’ll scour every article on the science of smiles if it meant yours might leave me less lost, so I could interpret the exact angle of your lips and not feel like I have become one of your sunken ships.

Personally I like global warming
Because maybe from the top of a water tower
Ohioans could see the Atlantic instead of rush hour.  

If the earth got too warm
Schools would have sun days
And I could read books I never get to from the shade.

And I really like the idea of palm trees in Columbus
Of tan lines, of tourists, of tropical drinks
And nights spent at Scioto beach.

I wouldn’t call it a disaster
Or claim the world is spinning out of control
There’s just gonna be more sunny days in O-hi-o.

I don't usually wear my seatbelt
because if I die driving,
I want to go enthusiastically, smiling.

I only want to die
if in a gore-ific scene of carelessness,
I want to exit with a bang, part of a mess.

And I don’t find this morbid
Because if I die cruising down 33,
I will die my mind at peace with the rest of me.

You might say you don’t miss me anymore,
But we both know that’s a lie.
And you might pretend you don know me anymore,
But I still made you cry.

when I walked in my stomach was screaming nerves,
my heart felt fluttery from my first of many iced black coffees.
I fixed my eyes fixed on the black hightops I stared at everyday during first period,
the peeling rubber toes pointing straight at me.

I looked up, meeting eyes with the spitting image of Kurt Cobain
who smirked at me curiously, then lifted a finger, and turned into the kitchen.
I busied myself untying my boots, even though they had zippers,
promising myself I wouldn’t loose my balance.

The high tops returned, followed by weathered leather moccasins,
who murmured through his teeth “hmmm, designing with materials girl” .
I grinned through my eyes, attempting not to make myself intimate with the floor so soon,
expertly faking breathy laugh to cover up how utterly freaked the unfamiliar title made me.

High tops grabbed my waist and twirled me into the kitchen,
offering a cigarette before disappearing through the screen door and leaving me
in a room filled with music that ran through my head like a brush
combing out the tangles from driving with my sunroof down.

I was surrounded by people with purple hair and overflowing hearts
who floated around the room singing and talking and dancing
while I wondered how I should fill the shoes of my new title
and what kind of shoes I should even be filling.

out of the corner of my eye, I saw high tops march back ;
he didn’t seem to float but parade, his ponytail not quite matching his muscle shirt arms.
He waltzed right up to moccasins and kissed him proper on the mouth
hands holding his jaw, eyes closed, and balanced on his toes.

Satisfied, he stormed back out through the screen
pulling a pack of blacks and a white lighter from his back pocket
(he would soon tell me he didn’t believe in luck,
even though it was in his pocket when he was arrested over a houseplant).

Moccasins just smiled, eyes rolling up into his brown hair
and with his hands out palms ceilingward in a silent offer, he locked his eyes on mine
Before I had a chance to overanalyze,
he decided for me.

Maintaing eye contact, we danced to the 22 year old boys screaming through the boom box
while I tried to integrate myself into the scene,
tried to float so effortlessly too,
like the cigarette smoke oozing in from the patio

he pulled me into a hug that resented gravity
effortlessly lifting all six feet of me off the ground,
pressing my cheek against the cutoff edge of his tie dye tank top,
my blonde hair tugging between his chest and mine

So with fuzzy lemonade on my lips
and bass players hands on my hips
I figured out I didn't need shoes
if i never touched the ground.

When you left, you took the keys to your car.
The white minivan with the peeling paint still sits in the driveway
that I sat and drank root beer on at your wedding,
pretending it was alcoholic.

I hope someday you can commit to more than a call to your husband,
asking him not for forgivness for leaving and for never signing a divorce but asking him for $100 so you can continue running away from the life you still wear on a finger.

And I selfishly hope that someday you come find me
I deserve an apology for you leaving that car
and making me avert my eyes every time I drive by the house you up and left
so your ghost can’t stare me straight in the ******* face.

One,
there’s an ambulence outside my front door
And two,
my parents are watching the evening news.

I am the queen of ill fitting jeans
of infected piercings,
of thinking that blue is green,
of uneven eyeliner wings.

I am the princess of pleases
of hellos slipped through voice cracks
of drunken apologies
of forgetting to text back.

I am the countess of chaos
of a thunderdome of possible tragedy
of making too many plans
of avoiding gravity.

I am the duke of drunk texts
of fizzy lemonade drinks,
of lingering regret,
of caring too much about what you think.

I am the queen of ill fitting jeans,
of ruling my life with a clumsy grace,
of being a storm without tea,
and I'll reign with a smile on my ******* face.

I used to regret
my actions, now I regret
the person I was.

I miss hearing you excitedly explain your dreams about Bill Murray saving your life
I miss hearing you explain why you never take Advil
I miss hearing your voice slur "what" and "hmm" together in a way only you could,

asking a question and simultaneously thinking about it too.

I miss telling you about why my mom takes the scissors out of my room.
I miss telling you "sorry i called last night" when i got drunk and you
weren't around,

(even though that never really stopped)

I miss my heart forgetting how to work every time we were together,
like morse code through my body pounding the scaredest possible "wow"

I miss you telling me "You're the worst" with a cocky smile.
I miss lying under the stars with you,
just looking while our friends made out beside us,
my neck uncomfortably on your arm because i was too shy to lie on your chest.

I miss sitting on your lap and worrying I would crush you,
and you reassuring me out of pride that I wouldn't,
that I couldn't.

I miss that day when we were drunk in you're best friends bed,
I was too scarred to kiss you so I just giggled,
and too drunk to remember how it eventually happened

I miss you making me feel small and beautiful and wanted.
I miss you making me feel big in a different way than my height ever could.