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.

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.

The other day I woke up to the smell of your absence clinging to my skin. I took 8 showers that day and I am still not quite sure if it's possible to feel a phantom limb where there wasn't one in the first place.

2. The way that squirrels cross the street makes a lot of sense all of a sudden. I'm sure no one told you that you have a way of making their skin crawl in the most desperate way. I still can't eat on your side of the bed without choking on the residue your dreams left.

3. I read the obituaries like I used to read the creases your smile left, they're not meant for me.

4. Stars manage to keep their deaths a secret for years I wish I were as committed to forgiveness as they were. I stuck my hands in scalding water today and left them there until they begged for redemption, it sounded a lot like your name.

5. It took me two years to find out your middle name, that is not a metaphor. I used to think that the slower I said it the sweeter it would taste. I stick my fingers down my throat hoping to find the words you left there I'm so sorry for being too weak to say them back then I'm so sorry they couldn't make you stay. I drew highway maps on the palms of my hands that led me right back into my own arms, how is that for irony.

6. Television.

7. Lips that don't bruise when they touch my own, I want a love like a car crash. I want painful, and desperate, and no good for me, I want to not want this.

8. I've blown out so many candles I'm suprised I haven't put all the stars out yet. If the universe were capitalist shooting stars would be marketing to my demographic. I would be the poster child for wishes that will never come true.  

9. Novels that end exactly as you hoped they would

10. Nearly 160,000 people died in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. 69% of the city was left in ruin. The radiation caused by the explosion was said to effect those living in Hiroshima for the next 30 years. From what I know, hospital walls are lined with cynicism and pain and I can't think of anything worse than oblivion than near oblivion.

I like to think that I have five fingers specifically to fit in between yours
The palms of our hands are highway maps to all the places that we'll ever kiss each other.
I like to think that your hands were made for mine bc you have five fingers too and you fit as well into me as I do into you I think that god made your hands for mine and I don't even think about god.
But I do think about how well your hands sit in mine resting so comfortably you'd think my hands were the perfect place for dreaming and I dream about your hands and all the times that I'll get to hold them I don't want to let go.
I remember when all we held of each other were our hands and things felt so much lighter then, trust me,
Your hands are the easiest weight to bear.
I only ever want your hands to occupy the empty spaces of mine bc there are ghosts that visit occasionally and I never want them to stay
Please be my fingertips
Dance on my palms, god made my hands for you, I promise.
I was not meant to pray with these hands bc they are less than holy but so are yours.
I've never held stars in my hand but I'm sure if I did, it would feel a lot like you do. I keep love in these hands.
I keep you in my hands but only bc you fit so well.

I feel like I am cracking and there is no glue that can hold me together.
Together we fought the most amazing battles I wish they would put us in the history books.
I thought that we were gods amongst the stars we started storms cascading rivers flow so overflowing with our own words we made dictionaries jealous.
We fell in love because neither of us knew how to swim I think we were the most beautiful memorials ever given for the living it didn't get more monumental than us.
I used to wonder how many pages they'd dedicate to us how many lesson plans would be written around us I wondered how many times we'd be diagnosed I hoped we were contagious we would've been the most beautiful disease anyone could ever catch.
I find myself catching my breath now every time I see the bridge we built I have yet to burn that one and I'm afraid when I do it won't catch fire, but fire is the only thing that will erase us now.
My eyes get so heavy at night now I hope I can keep them open a minute longer because my monsters don't hide underneath my bed.
My head holds nightmares that haven't been made into nursery rhymes yet.
This has turned into the hardest part, no lullaby can calm me down enough to sleep because you aren't sleeping next to me anymore
I swear this is a tragedy far greater than anything they dare put in the papers
Why weren't we in the papers
Where was our eulogy
Who will remember
What we were,
When will this stop hurting.
I hope that this stops hurting soon.
I know now that there will be no idols erected in our name no bindings brushed with our title no one will be turning pages of us in anticipation our plot will never thicken.
We have become the turning point in a war on words. A war on ideas, we are just an idea now and we aren't fighting for the thought of us any longer we'll fade like the end of a sentence that was never meant to be spoken I can no longer imagine the martyrs we would have become, because we aren't we anymore.
You and I-
I can't stand these new pronouns please come back I like the way "we" sounds on my tongue make this "me" into an "us" it can't hurt to go down in history I heard that the fall is not as bad as it seems, please fall with me again.
There were hundreds of articles of clothing written in the bedroom we shared.
Sometimes I read them over and over again knowing that they will never be published please let me have this story I want us to be more than just another undocumented event
People deserve to have our history repeat itself.