Do you ever feel
Like the words are stuck,
So much you want to say?
But you allowed someone
To break the connection
Between your soul and fingers?
Do you ever feel
So pushed and pulled
By other's emotions
You forget which ones
Are truly your own?
Are you so compelled
To give and give to others
You whither in the drought
That's left behind?
Boundaries, boundaries are
So hard for me to find.
They're invisible laser beams
Protecting a fine jewel.
I can't see them.
I clumsily make my way through.
I allow others to determine my path.
Where is the strength
I felt two years ago?
Will it ever return?
Until then, I swing from here to there,
Tripping, slipping along the way.
Searching for the strength I knew
Before my world was turned upside-down.

I guess I'm learning how the seasons change
Leaves fall like lingerie
From the marble shoulders

Twenty two times cursed
But I feel the same
Needle has me feelin'
Right as rain
Don't need no ******' body

But I still got her picture in my pocket
Slap full matchbox made me wanna burn it
Snapped and pinned tight upright
Until I saw the morning light
Said goodbye now I'm feeling there's hope
Shaking winter from my shaggy coat

I was born ten thousand years late
And I'm just a tick off of happy
I know a place downtown
And a girl named Chelsea
One night we sat at a booth
After her shift
Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes
I bet we could be happy she had said
Move out to the country and finally be wed
But she has her ****
I have mine
I love you
You love me?
Well, that's just fine

she talked about the hospital
with a wish waiting on her cheek
glowy face and nervous fingers twisted.
"felt like nothing"
what does that make me?
no, we're all everything
and i know because i felt it
as we sat in the ****** light
and read horoscopes aloud

I know about reciting love verses when you are supposed to be
writing your grocery list – fruits and vegetables
become a metaphor for why I hold my hand to your face
and I realize you told me not to fall in love with you, so I fell in
love with how we exist together instead.

Like salt in the ocean,
wires from a wall, I know I breathe for you a little too much –
matching the exhales to yours. I have a language that
only accepts the two of us, sounds lovely only because you live.

My mind does not sleep through the night, the questions
have their before and after. This is the
after. I ask again if he was ever really here at all,
this is June
this is very nearly July
and I am colder now than I was last December on his
breath, that I could see wiggling
wanting to escape into me as a pillow would into a case.

My mind is full of his absence,
I think it grows every morning I wake up without
a moat of our bodies cut into my bed. We were only just
children playing house
without the need for plastic appliances and plates,
made linen from hair lockets, leave

seed marks on his skin. I ask again if it still remains
touched like an early ripened strawberry.
That was December,
was supposed to be, but I cannot trust a memory of my
head resting against the fabric of anyone’s jeans
because then it may be true
that he really loved me after all, and maybe he does still.

God made girls full of sap
so we chew on our hair when we get nervous
and blood falls
from us like butterflies from cocoons.

Here I am just for you
Telling you in Times New Roman
**** the placebo affect
Remember when I was actually alive
Before I started cursing in front of you
I know your secret little bird
You won't say it aloud
But it runs down your arms and telegraphs over and over
From your fingertips
It won't slip from your tounge
You won't allow that
But your eyes smile 300% lone signal lights
I braved the cold and learned to listen to the wind
And I found a great maw in the earth
So dark and deep I could not see the bottom
I stood before it listening to the snowfall
Until
I fell inside and was made warm forever