I don't know a lot about how to love someone, but I do know this:

1. I know that every single cloud in the sky will begin to take the shape of his hands. I can't explain it, but it will seem like the universe is made up of little pieces of who he is and the stars will stop granting wishes because they know that yours have already come true.

2. I know that there are an infinite number of ways to fall apart, and only one way to put yourself back together. He's not it. There are ship wrecks at the bottom of the ocean that haven't moved in decades, so when your voice shakes, know that you are still in one piece.  

3. I know that there are books missing from the Bible, yet it's still the most touched piece of literature in the world. Even when he is gone, there will be someone else who wants to touch you, I promise.

4. It's okay to be afraid of oblivion. There is no better way to say I love you than to admit that one day, nothing will exist and you're afraid he won't be around for you to love. It's okay to be afraid of oblivion because when all we are is dust there will still be hope that it's not the end. There was an oblivion before us, and if there is an oblivion after, whose to say that it's not just another beginning.

5. I know that I don't know much about the world yet, but I do know that when trees fall apart, something else grows in their place. I know that even though it may seem like pain is inevitable, there is a way to make something beautiful out of it.

6. I know that he will start fires in all the places you never wanted to get rid of. Second-hand smoke will become your only language. It will hurt, but after a while, you'll miss him even when he's around and at that point all you will be is a house fire.

7. I don't know how to love you, but I do know that when I figure it out, I may lose my ability to walk. When I figure out how to love you, 4 am will never seem as far away as your arms. I might never hear anything else but the sound of your voice when you're tired, and I will be so happy. I hope that when I learn how to love you, you'll learn how to love me too. I hope that you lose your ability to walk. I hope that we stay still together because I don't mind being a ship wreck, as long as I'm a ship wreck with you. I don't know a lot about how to love someone but I do know this: *i'll find out.

i'm trying
not to think
about how
your hands
feel like
the beginning
&
the end
of every
major battle

Antietam pales
in comparison
to the
destruction your
voice brought;
you still
haven't apologized
for the
burn marks
you left
on my
efforts to
always be
all of
your favorite
battle scars

mental hospitals
are just
the halfway
point between
my avidity
&
your cynicism

your war
studded voice
sounds like
abandoned rooms
&
wrong notes
but somehow
I always
hear peace
treaties in
the way
you breathe
'im sorry'

your hands
feel like
they are
covered in
gunpowder and
im afraid
the spark
i feel
when you
hold my
own will
somehow blow
this all
out of
proportion. i
am unsure
if you
are worth
the destruction.
i am
unsure if
i want
to be
another casualty.

send help
in the
form of
bullet wounds

cut every
part of
me off
that has
felt the
discomfort that
your hands
leave; there
will be
a trial
for your
war crimes
and i
hope that
you experience
the wwii
you breathed
into the
spaces between
my collar
bones; this
is Nuremburg
and i
am the
entire Jewish
population. we
*survived you.

Wishful thinking is a term made up specifically to describe the feeling I got when I first saw you.

Nuclear fallout tries so hard to mimic the way your hands feel on everyone that isn't me.

Concentration camps hold all the parts of me that weren't made in your image.

I forced myself to go a day without holding anything that felt like your hands & so I went a day without burning my palms or cutting my fingertips.

Your apologies felt a lot like the ground felt in Hiroshima, I'm sure you meant to feign sincerity well enough for me to surrender to your destruction.

A pistol bullet travels anywhere from 800-900 mph, and I'm sure someone could find a way to make that poetic.

I could compare your love to a labyrinth, but I'd rather pretend that you were as enigmatic as the backs of my hands.

The smell of burning rubber reminds me of all the times your skin touched my bed sheets.

Your concern is as tangible as my nightmares; I hope you take that in a way that hurts you the most.

**** me so hard that I forget how it feels to be forgotten.

I hope I'm the girl your mother warned you about.

I'm a compilation of all my mistakes and I just hope that I burn your palms when you hold me but I also hope that you never let go; I'm the embodiment of every dilemma that's ever been vocalized.

Maybe one day you'll hear my name and lose your ability to walk.

Your name sounds a lot like the first few minutes of D-Day, and the last few seconds of Pearl Harbor, but that might just be me.

Congregations held in the palms of every hand you've never held.

Your trust issues look a lot like my anxiety.

*I still can't eat on your side of the bed without choking on the residue your dreams left.

We met for coffee; well,
I had coffee and she had tea.
Her pics didn't do her justice --
Chin prim
Lips cursive
Skin that swam under mine,
Making the porcelain creamer cup blush.

She claimed
she had a quarter million members
That followed her.
it's good money she reasoned,
But not gloating;
More matter-of-factly.
Off the cuff,
I asked for her stage name.
She explained that she blocked NY
For work and family reasons,
Assuming I had asked so to
Watch her perform later
(Which isn't altogether untrue).

She measured every utterance,
Teleprompters behind eyelids
Feeding her perfectly crafted lines.

I use the Golden Ratio when I webcam
She said, as she sipped her tea.
I consider it an art -- or
At least that is what I tell myself.
I asked her to elaborate.
She said she was somewhat conflicted
About whether or not it was immoral.
But she was so even
With her response,
Almost as if it were compelled
By a formality
That was now checked off her list.

Her body language taciturn
Asleep, idle, screen-saved
Waiting waiting

Curve and line
Coffined for now to slake desires anon -
Her numbers in slumber, confined
Waiting to be crunched,
Flatlines Animated by pitchblack revelry
With one click

Turning them.

She said she liked to watch others
ya know, To see how they move.
She would even watch it at work,
Open in one of her browser tabs.
She took notes.

Lines triangulated
Liminal spaces given, hidden.

Digital lipstick smears
Tattooing amygdalas firing --
Allow them to slip in
Only to slip out of them
With an X.

We talked for an hour
And then left the café.
She asked me over.
I said not tonight --
The words coming out
As if willed by something
Outside of myself.

She walked off into the dark
And I kicked myself for saying no.

Her curves beholden to math --
Gyration of hip and waist,
Arms tendrils configuring, cavorting,
Slave to an inner-whorl
twirled and twirling --
One single objective truth, now
A convergence of secreting plurality
Into beauty and beauty and

That night I ****** off thinking of her
And came so hard
I pulled something in my back.

In between sleep and waking life
I transcended
Something.. I felt

Turned.

Bat on window sill
Still as the unflinching
Lidless abyss --
Then a quarter turn of its head --
Its beady eye catching streetlight --
Careening it off into a nonplussed
Night of nights.

You were my counter melody written in a completely different key, but I think it's possible to make music out of notes that don't go together. We rubbed each other in all the wrong ways, but you will always be the only thing that could pull on my heart strings.

**** me in the backseat of your car like everything else that slips your mind or has no place in your bedroom. I am a figment of your misshapen imagination, and I have no complaints about being the one thing you aren't gentle with.

Send prayers in the form of taxi cabs; I hope you have no clue where you want them to go.

Childlike honesty doesn't get more candid. A little girl once told me I looked like a broken mirror, I hoped she didn't know about the one on my bathroom floor contrasted against the brightness of the contents of my wrists.

I hope when they finally find all the Wonders of the world, you're all of them. The missing books of the Bible are the diary pages you wrote in seventh grade about a girl who isn't me.

I hope when they cut me open they find mislabeled poetry, and whatever else I have written onto my rib cage.

I miss you like a burn victim misses the feeling of their own skin.

I am to you as a bible is to verses, and I hope that makes less sense than I meant it to.

My lungs are an empty room that echoes things that I haven't said yet.

My body is a temple but I'm not sure which god we worship. I'd rather be forsaken by the veins in my own arms than by hands that have never been held. I can't tell you how many sermons I've dedicated to you but somehow the pews are always filled with the sound of your voice. I swear you are my hallelujah.

I am studying horticulture so I can compare the way tulips bloom to the way your chest rises and falls in the mornings. I want to be in every single chamber of your heart.

I'm convinced that they invented lighthouses so when you went searching for the place where the sunset meets the ocean, you can find your way back to me.

If anything I say is untrue, then just pretend I swallowed dreams that were made of everything you've ever said to me.