I refuse to write a poem about you. I fear the day my emotions get the best of me, leave me with searing fingertips and sword like pen stabbing holes in your perfection. I never want to cut through your life and dissect your soul. I never want to write about the way you smile and that one face you make - no. I don't want to recreate your hands with words that bring me comfort because I can never replace the feeling of them. I can't write about the way I look at you, or the way my heart pounds for you, or the music that reminds me of you. I don't want to admit how I pine for you, admire you, sit in my car, drive by you how just a glimpse of you makes me high on you. I can't write about how you're the exception to my confidence how you scare me in the most thrilling kind of way. I never want to admit conversations that run through my head, the drunken memories that come to mind when I need a distraction or they demand to be remembered. I cannot write about you and all your beautiful parts I can't talk about pain in an unreturned heart - I refuse to write a poem about you. My words would never live up to your truth and I'd rather have you than a poem that would never do you justice.

I can smell it.
Like the musty wind before the devastating hurricane, I can smell it.
I can smell the sadness and the tears from late night musings.
I knew the entire thing is doomed from the beginning.
But like a fool who's used to believing, I held on.
It was too slippery.
I lost my grip.

i am overcome with grief and guilt every time i wash my hands
because i do not know how much of you is left in the fine lines of my palms

I do not believe I could ever love anyone enough to make them my home. My home will always be red dirt and oak trees under the best sunsets in the entire sky with potato patches and country dirt roads, fumbling through sticky tourists on steamy days and letting the salt water feed my skin on the beach I spent all my summers at. My home will always be raspberry cordial and late nights in lovers lane with Canada days in crowded parks and childhood pictures with cannons, my home will always be drunken sidewalks and midnight Chinese, dancing in my drive way and smoking on my back porch. I could never make home in a person enough to follow them away from the place I love...

For the "you"
not the one you wear to work
but the one that looks lovely
at first morning sight

For the "you"
not the one you cover so immensely
with scarves and jackets
but the one that dances in their underwear
on a lazy Saturday

For the "you"
not the one that wears the glasses
of work ethics
but the one whose fire
is wild enough, it makes wildfires dim in jealousy

For the "you"
not the one that ferments in silence
but the one that screams sultry verbatim
now and then that surprises
all those around

For the "you"
not the one that nestles in sobriety
from 9 to 5
but the one that ******* to the first taste of alcohol

For the "you"
not the one that's under construction
under the umbrella of perfection
but the one
that flaunts those flaws
on that runway
so seductively
it makes
perfection
curl in
envy