There is a jar on my nightstand
Full of little scraps of paper.

When good things happen
I write them down and put them in that jar
Because I never want another year to end
Without there being proof that joy existed within it.
Anything happy, anything hopeful, anything lovely, I scribble down
And pile in that jar for safe keeping.

There is a jar on my nightstand
Full of little scraps of paper.
Today I wrote your name on one
And dropped it in.

I have a secret
That I dare not even whisper aloud.
It gnaws at me,
Makes me scared.
For years
My dream has been you.
For years and years, every single falling star
Has had your name attached.
Every wish I made
Was you.
Everything I wanted
Was you.
If somebody asked me
At any moment in time
What it was I wanted most in the entire world,
I would have instantaneously answered:
You.
And the thing that scares me so,
That I dare not say with my lips,
Is that
The other night
A star fell
And I wished
With my entire soul
To be with her.
And now,
Now if someone were to ask me
What I want more than anything in the world
More than breath
More than life
More than home
I am trying to avoid knowing
That my answer
Is no longer
You.

I think
You took all my patience.
I think
You used it all up
Thinking it
Would
Always be there.

Because now
There is
Not
One
Ounce
Left for you.

*...Oops.

Heart,

This
Is just a day.
And if you are stronger than it
If you remember that it will go by
You have a chance to keep your pride until tomorrow.
Say
Nothing.
Say nothing or tonight I will be at you,
"I told you so, I told you so,"
Until you wonder how you ever gave in
Knowing it would be so brutal.
Do not give in.
Do not.
You are better than that,
And if you act otherwise
You will feel so much worse
Than just forgotten.
Remember
She is not what you have to fear.
I am.

Mind.

There is something
Violent
About everyday life.
And no one talks about it.
Maybe they don't feel it too.
But sometimes I wonder if we weren't made
For higher stakes than this.
I wonder if everyone struggles with it like I do.
Something unspoken and ugly hides beneath everything
Pale and waiting.
At this point, it isn't even grief.
Just silence.
It gets into the cracks and crevices of all the mundane little moments of existence.
It is something
I have tried my whole life not to listen to.
It sounds
Like the opposite of the rain falling
Like the opposite of nature.
And it never stops.
It can't be banished
Only covered.
It has no time of day
No schedule to keep.
Sometimes all of a sudden, as I'm eating a meal in the quiet
This feeling will creep down my throat with it
And spread roots of emptiness inside my stomach.
It isn't loneliness.
Sometimes I call it that.
But it's​ worse, almost.
Loneliness has an object, a purpose. It fills a need.
This creates one.
It has no anchor and no reason
It only is
And always has been.
As a child I spent so much time alone
And sometimes I would speak into the silence
Just to be sure I still could.
I'd hear my voice, feel the vibrations of it.
I'd know I spoke.
But then a moment later, suddenly I was unsure.
Suddenly I couldn't tell if I'd said anything
Or only imagined speaking.
And maybe this shouldn't have woken the creeping fear in me that it did
But I would get to shouting before long
Tears streaming down my face
Unable to prove to myself that I existed.
I would run downstairs to my mother
And interrupt her at her work.
Full of chaos and terror
I'd cry on her shoulder
In relief
Finally reassured, by her bewildered look, that when I spoke it made a sound.
This feeling
Is that feeling.  
I think maybe I created it
And it has whirred around me since childhood
Latching onto all the small tasks of life and endowing them with fear.
It is a tiredness, a heaviness, a soul deep uncertainty grinding away at me beneath the noise of the world.

Tonight it is louder than everything else
And I'm writing
To ask it to stop.

Sadness is holy
Rage is holy
Joy
Is holy
And I wish they were allowed to exist fully
Day to day
In the people who feel them.

It's as simple as this:
Everyone I love is going to hurt me. And I choose you to be that close.
I want you
That close.

I think somewhere along the road to Hell and back, I decided that protecting myself was just not worth it anymore.
Not because I wasn't worth preserving, but because I realized that I would take a beating regardless.
I'd rather live taking every chance I can to be happy, and embracing those chances that work out with the passion of the dying, than
Pull my punches, hide my feelings, and end up with regrets.
Because, the secret you learn when you finally hit bottom,
When you get your choice to continue existing or give up?
We are all dying.
Quickly and slowly, we are all hourglasses glued to the table.
We have a set amount of time, slipping away second by second.
What we do with it makes us who we are.
Whether we realize that it is simply not worth having regrets determines whether on our deathbeds,
Five minutes from now or 90 years,
We smile in remembrance or cry in bitterness.
You can take that trip to Hell. We all can.
I do not believe I am special for having made it, and come back.
I think I have simply done it earlier.
Trying to keep myself from getting hurt? That's just a lost cause if I ever saw one.
And pointless in many many ways.
I am aiming to make my hurt mean something. To make it count.
To make it worth the joy I get from never ever ever holding back.
It's just not worth it to me to hide behind pride or fear.
I've been there, near the end, and I know how much it *****.
But there is always a choice.
And those who risk everything for love are strong enough to make it,
Even when life brings them to lose all of it and stand at the decision between continuing and ceasing.
The gift of pain like that is that we find that there is something to continue for.

When I look at all the poems I've written about you
I can never decide whether I want to burn them at your feet
Or whisper them to you like prayers from my knees.
I am always embers, in the end,
Whether I lay among the ruin of my love, weeping,
Or whether I AM the ruin, gloriously bound
And full of white hot light.

It's not over for you.
Life will find you something wonderful.
It can't be over for you.
You haven't begun yet.
That is no beginning, love,
To have happiness for but a breath,
And spend all the others gasping like you're drowning.
No,
It's not over for you. You can't die yet:
You haven't lived.

Whoever it is that you may love or wish for,
I give him my eyes.
May he look at you and see what I see,
And be unable to look elsewhere.
I give him my heart, and my gentle fingers.
I give him my words
Born of passion and of reverence
That he may sing them soft and low
And you
Hear the timbre you prefer.

When I was seven
I asked my aunt how she knew that there was a god.
She told me
To go wait in the car.

When I was twelve
I asked my teacher
Why so many cultures that never intersected
Thought their gods wanted human blood.
He told me
To go sit at my desk.

When I was fifteen
I asked my peers
If they thought heaven and hell
Were manmade.
They told me
To talk about something else.

Apparently
This is not a world for questions.

But
Last week I asked my friend
If maybe this is hell
And we are being punished
And we fear death because it is our release
And we are not meant to have that until we are broken.
I asked
If maybe instead
This is heaven
And this is the best we will get
And nothing is ever so simple as
Good
Or evil.

But
She told me to stop asking questions
That scared her.

That word you wrote on my hand
Next to the scar from the day my heart was last broken
Right after you said my hands were beautiful,
Right after you said,
"Your hands look the way I wish my hands looked."
And I said
"Take them."
And slid them across the table to yours,
That word,
Galaxies,
I wonder what it means to you.
I only know
What it means to me.
It means
The first time someone I loved
Truly made me feel loved.
Touched me with tenderness.
Tucked my hair behind my ear.
That word...
I have a confession to make.
I waited, I did,
I actually think I waited until
You backed away from me-
Just to be sure it wasn't your proximity, your continued kindness,
That made me want to do it-
But the day you said you couldn't handle being loved that much right now,
I walked to the center of town
And I told the tattoo artist I needed an exact copy.
It's on my ribs,
Just under my right breast:
Galaxies.
It reminds me
Of how I deserve to be touched-
Gently. Kindly. Tenderly.
I didn't let the ink fade from my hands
Until I knew I'd have a copy of it forever in your handwriting.
I am afraid you will come back
And sink me to the bed beneath you again
And press your skin against mine
And see the evidence that I meant everything I ever said to you.
And I'm even more afraid
You won't.
I don't know what I'll say to you
If it ever comes to that,
If you ever discover it.
I know you'll know instantly.
I know you'll be afraid.
But it doesn't just mean you, to me.
That word, that wound,
Means that even when I'm old and life has done its worst
(And with any luck, its best as well)
I will never, ever forget
The first time someone I loved
Treated me the way I deserve to be treated
(If only
For a moment.)

I'll hate you till the day I die, but I'll love you for longer.

You just do everything to my heart.
I can't help it.
Some nights I wake up in the middle of the night
And I realize I don't know if you'll stick around in my life
And it pounds and it won't stop
Even when I measure my breaths.
It likes to stall when you're around
Or even when I think about you too much,
Like an old car that's been left out in the rain and won't start fully.
It chugs along and turns over rough,
And it almost hurts sometimes.
My heart
Does whatever it wants to.
Sometimes I could swear it wants
Out of me
And it tries to pry open my ribs and go off somewhere to find...
You, I guess.
It doubles speed when you look at me,
And I read somewhere about a scientific theory
That every heart has a set number of beats
Before it wears out,
And I wonder if you really are killing me,
And I decide I'm okay with it.

To forget is not to heal.
You must stare in the face whatever unmade you, face it, live with it.
It must be your shadow,
Tap you on the shoulder throughout your day,
Tangle in your feet as you climb the stairs,
Curl up with you at night when you sleep.
You must learn to make a space for it.
You must touch it, force yourself to sidle closer,
Grit your teeth and refuse to cringe away.
You must make friends with pain.
It doesn't flee the way people say it does.

Maybe it does for some, but not for me.
Do I beg it to stay? Of course not.
But it does.
And it will.
And it is braver to try to look at it without flinching than it is to cower and pretend it doesn't exist
Even when it prowls in the corners of my vision.
Would you think to assume that everyone feels in the same way?
The way we experience emotion is perhaps the most unique thing about us,
For the degree of difference between people is staggering.
The universal things like suffering are made utterly individual by our reactions, our coping mechanisms, and how long they last.
Guess what? Some people hurt forever.
But that does not mean we have to suffer forever.
It only means that we need to take the long road, shake hands with agony, and learn to live with our crippling loves.
To look away,
To run with it nipping at my heels forever,
To hide in the dark and never face the truth
Would be no way to exist.
To forget is NOT to heal.
To forget is only weakness, and vulnerability.
Scars mean, "I survived."
Reminders of the wounds are shrines to time lost, to life changed, to things learned.
To forget would only mean to walk into the same massacre masked by a different face.
And people like me? We don't survive things twice.
It may take years, absurdly.
But I will do this right, and when it is done I will not be repeating my pain.
After all, there are so many ways in which I HAVEN'T hurt yet.
They really should have a turn,
For if life is sprinkled with suffering,
At least switch up the style.

We are all stories. That is why sometimes I stare at strangers when they don't realize. We carry stories on our skin, in our eyes. We tell them no matter how desperately we try not to. They emerge, no matter how we disguise them, and throw off light, and god, people are beautiful. Look at them someday. In the park or the cafe or on the subway. Look at someone's eyes. There's a soul in there. There are fears and desires and shames and obsessions in there. There's art in there. And you get to live in a sea of souls. Ever think of that? You have the dubious privilege to spend your whole life next to some of the most exquisite beings ever created. You get to look at them, to touch them, sometimes, to love them, even, and speak to them. You could change them. Like adding a brush stroke to the Sistene Chapel, you could be a tiny part of the vast, perfect, incredible work of art behind someone's eyes. You get to decide whether you deface these souls you live near, or add to them. You get to write a part of the story they carry.
Me, I want to tell stories. I want to tell stories for people who don't have the words, don't have the courage, don't have the means. I want to tell beautiful, complicated, messy, elaborate stories. I see these people and they're just... They're art. They deserve to BE art. They deserve to be set upon a stage and shown to the world so that their rawness can carve pathways, can start fires, can change souls by the thousands. I have no desire to be myself- I want to tell stories. Stories I see in strangers' eyes. They crave to be told. And I crave to tell them. It's true- myself, I am not vast. I am not loud. But I don't need to be. I need to tell stories. And whoever will listen to me will listen. And that's enough for me.

It is not your anger I fear.

Yours is hot like molten gold, deadly and quick,
The strike of a snake, a venom that sticks.
Its fiery acid eats its way through my veins,
But your anger is quick like the tide, like the rain.

It's your pain that I fear,

Frozen down to the core,
A mountain of glass to be thawed nevermore.
It's sharp and it's empty, it cuts to my heart
And as long as I wait, it is just at its start.

It's your black eyes that I fear,

Hollowed out and accusing.
Thin black ice over cold depths, brittle but unmoving.
If I don't step with care I'll be falling forever,
Your hate and your love tearing in equal measure.

It's your rawness I fear.

I've never seen it, you see.
It glares like the sun off the snow, blinding me.
You love me enough that you loathe me in spades
And in your eyes you're on your knees, bitter, digging my grave.

It's seeing it that scares me-

I thought your heart never showed,
In your eyes, in your voice, it's all killing me slow.
You're a mountain, a fortress, you don't show your hurt,
But all I see in your eyes is your form in the dirt

Clawing out of your coffin like I did back then.
I didn't know I could cause your serenity's end.
I didn't know you could cry over someone like me.
Didn't know I'd see it in your eyes, deep like the rolling sea.

I didn't know that you loved me if you'd throw me away.
I never know if you mean any words that you say.
Of love or of hate, are they true? Are they lies?
But I saw proof of both in your charcoal cold eyes.

Now your anger has eaten up all of its fuel,
But your pain is enduring, a deep dark silent pool.
And I'm drowning inside it, but somehow I know
I won't believe in your love, no matter which way this goes.

I have a desire to be free in ways that would destroy me, in ways that aren't accepted in this world. I have a need to be free in ways that don't even exist, from things that are such parts of my continued existence as a being that to get what I need would be to cease. I am a lover who has found nothing to take the love I have. I cannot stand to be near anyone, but I crave closeness in such a desperate, painful way that it controls me. I am a logical, orderly, sound, carefully crafted mind, trapped inside the chaos of a soul that I cannot be sure was ever made to withstand the kind of feelings it itself produces constantly. Without the handicap of my humanity, I would be free, disentangled from this web of useless little things I care about. The one that trusses up my legs and trips me and no matter how I try to find the pattern in it, reason has no power against this trap. Power has no power against this snare. I can solve anything, escape anything, survive anything, disassemble anything. But I can't solve myself. And I feel like a wasted opportunity, a consciousness that maybe COULD actually do something meaningful, tragically held back by the hitchhiker of a soul that has come along for the ride to slash the tires. I want to be free of impossible things. But I am an impossible thing, and every morning I wake up and the little part of me that knows things whispers, "You will never be free." What a way to start the day.

I know you're in pain.
I can feel it on all the edges of me.
I say nothing
But I wish I could.
I wish I could tell you-
Please, let the universe help you grieve.
Press your hands against the ground and feel the soil there.
This world loves you, from the roots up.
The sun reaches for your face- I've seen it.
It's been years, but I remember.
(You don't forget
What that looks like.)
Deep inside the earth, the stones sing songs about your soul
In a language that doesn't exist anymore-
You have been here
Before
And will be here
Forever.
You are of this place, it filled you with life,
And you fill it with meaning.
The grass learned to grow from your feet
As you learned to stand on it.
When the stars spun out of the blackness of space
They threw their light out in nets
Trying to find you.
This place
Needs you.
It cries with you. 
Go, listen, press your ear to the ground and hear it murmuring
That you will love again
As it has
Over and over
Each time you've gone dark and begun again from dust
And it had to wait, cold and uncertain
For you to be.
Waiting in pain, waiting for you to start again
And make it warmer.
Its ancient grief
Is for you
And to you.
Step out into the rain.
Lay your palms against the smooth stones in the rivers that come from the mountains
And feel the way the water calls to you.
Its path through rock and wood
Through ancient cities
Through war and decay
Through renewal and sunlit fields

Has led it to your fingertips.

It searched
For you.
Please remember that.
Please be certain
Even when you hurt like this-
You belong in this world
And it
Loves you back.
It always has,
It always will.
And although that may not be everything
It is something beautiful.

Can friends
Write each other poetry?
Can they be like this?
I am so scared
That you will think I lied to you
But I never have.
I told you who I am
And how I feel-
You just think
It’s not for you.
I worry you’ll think I only like your art
Because I love you.
I worry you’ll think our friendship
Isn’t real-
It is,
It’s the realest thing I’ve ever made from love.
Loving someone like this...
It’s like a puzzle.
I walk in knowing one thing: that I adore them.
And slowly, they show me why.
You’re showing me why.
I would love all of this in you
Even if I hadn’t accidentally loved you first.
I am discovering my own reasons
Because I always have them
And they are always
Good ones.
Just... when you realize,
Know that.
Know that I’m not betraying you.
I am using my feelings
To build something new
Something better
Something that’s good for us both
Instead of painful for just one of us.
Know that it’s taking
All of my courage.
Know that I consider it worth
Everything I have.
Know that it very well might
Cost me just that
And that
I don’t care.
Know that I worry
Because loving someone means you want them to be happy
And I want you to be happy.
I want to be your friend
Who writes you poems sometimes
And hangs on your every word.
I want to live up to this feeling.
That’s all.

Darling, when the sky is grey and hazy and the rain paints the world vivid,
You are on my mind,
Clung to my every thought like mist.
I will never fall out of love with you, as long as I live. I know it.
Yours is a love beyond the heart, beyond the soul.
It is a part of everything I am, uncontaminated, untaintable.
Pure as the rain, my love.
You are in my bones like the thunder.
A word from you can still transform me, and make a new girl stare at me from the mirror
Again and again,
Dark eyed and clean of the blood of my battles.
A moment of your attention can undo me, and free me of the sadness of my everyday life.
Yours is the only love I have ever known to be a freedom and not a prison.
And I may never touch you.
I may never give to you the way I wish I could.
But you are there, present distinctly every single time it rains,
And soft against my mind through all the dust and decay of every day.
You are the only constant in my life.

I'll pretend you are god,
                                           like
                                                     I
                                                          used
                                                                      to.
                                                                            He never answers me, either,
But I speak to him with love before I fall asleep
                                                                   Anyway.

                                     I figure he must need it, being so careless.

The only way I know that never fails to gain respect for my feelings.
Not a look, although it may be so full of love that you have to turn away and pretend you didn't see.
Not words, that come freely and unstoppable like the tide, but that wake fear of their meaning, embarrassment of their frankness.
Not a touch, even gentle and innocent, because anything so full of passion and tenderness calls up the need to run, to refuse, to hate.
No, the only thing that really speaks the truth, that doesn't break your boundaries but passes over them, through them, to the heart of who you are, where anyone can understand the emotion of anyone else, is music.
And so I sing. Every time, with all the passion I can possibly release into my song without destroying the vessel- for that is what I am, it seems, when I sing: a vessel, simply a container for all the emotion I've ever felt, and I can feel the cracks, at times, feel the pressure of everything that needs to be said pushing at the seams of me. And I say it there, and then, because song is one place where no passion is too much, no feeling too intense, no look too tender, no word too honest. That is why music is my home. Because I have no other home that will take me exactly as I am.

The second your bare skin
Touched mine
I knew I would be craving that feeling of perfect wholeness
For the rest of my life.

Hold it back and hold it in, don't pine, foolish girl.
You may be restraining it for a tragically long time, foolish girl.
Learn to keep your passions tight in line, foolish girl.
Learn to hide and bide your eternal time, foolish girl.

It was you who banished your love to the depths, foolish girl.
And it is you who'll pay your heavy leaden debts, foolish girl.
You may writhe in pain and fear until you scream, foolish girl,
But leave your words of love to your cold dreams, foolish girl.

I want to give you something.
So badly it hurts.
I wish I could tell you that the world is at your feet.
But you have to take the plunge.
You have to see it and seize it.
You have to be willing to be unsafe.
I wish I could give you my heart- not just because you already have it but because
You need its resilience, its unwavering hope, its blind courage.
Maybe with my heart in your hands you will have the strength to walk away from this gray, quiet life and spread your beautiful soul out upon the ground,
And grow.
And bloom.
And shatter this sky into colors with no names-
Colors I've seen swim in your eyes with the tears and the longing,
Colors I've felt slip from your fingertips and live in my skin when you touched it.
Oh, I want to give you my hope for you, and my faith that you will be
Incredible.

I was reticent to even call what I did poetry for a long time,
A really long time.
Because I thought poetry must require some more effort than just thoughts.
But then again, I thought my thoughts weren't normal if they contained sweeping metaphors
And I could never say anything deep without sounding like I should be spouting it on a stage.
So I tried the label,
"Poetry".
I'm still not entirely sure it fits snugly.
Some of the poetry I read is far more poetry
Than my poetry.
I've messed around with rhymes and rhythms-
As a "poet" you're apparently supposed to pay attention to those- but...
I have never been one for rules.
Whatever spills out is what I call poetry,
And that makes me feel a bit course, sometimes.
All the quatrains and the forms and the hidden meanings,
I'm supposed to do that, right?
But instead I say exactly what I mean to say,
In a straightforward effort to get the reader to simply feel
What I feel
Because why would I be wasting my time writing
If a feeling didn't compel me to do so?
Is that poetry?
Is that right?
Who knows.
But
I have yet to find a better word for what I do,
So I suppose
"Poetry"
Will have to do.

How could you
Say my name?
It was like
Getting stabbed.

How exactly do you tell someone
That they
Are only one facet
Of you?
(You shouldn't,
Is the answer)

Your message has been received, darling.
Your pain has been felt.
But you can retaliate all you want
And all it will prove
Is that you loved me.

The places I feel your name are so strange. Sometimes it makes my teeth ache. Sometimes there is a falling sensation in only my hands. Sometimes it's as if I'm being choked. Sometimes whole parts of me go numb, and fizzle with pinpricks for minutes afterwards. The concept of you always did hit me physically.

These poems
These are everything I'd love to whisper
Looking into your eyes
And see surprise flicker there,
Joy.
Watch you duck your head and smile,
Like you did yesterday when I told you
How beautiful you are.
I'd like to say those types of things all day
Just to see them hit you like soft rain,
To see you struggle not to grin that someone loves you
With such awe.