See how she goes, so sudden, so sure.
See how she stepped close warily, in slow motion, scared to be burned,
Like it would never happen if only she never touched you.
You reach for her,
But oh,
Watch how she goes-
Like a lightning strike, like a high speed chase, like a roller coaster drop.
You'll all see her flee, sad souls like me.
Watch.
See how she goes.
But you don't see.
Cause she's already gone.

There is this separation, this... Duality. There is the girl I live inside, who loves you. Who...craves you, like air, like... A beating heart. She would walk through hell for you. She would gaze at you forever. But then sometimes... Sometimes I can rise above that for a moment, and see you as you are. As "only"- only a girl, only a person. Those moments confuse me, make me sad. I don't want them, but I do. If you'll be distant, if you'll leave me behind and...change, become ordinary, grow up and leave your passion behind for something more stable... Then maybe I need that distance, that rising up. That forgetting. But you are the sun and the stars, to me. You are half of my heart. And being away from that, being beyond it, it feels like mourning, like a funeral. That feeling unnerves me, as if it is a tide rising that I can't stop, as if someday you won't matter. That is part of why you matter so much. The closer I get to the day you decide to become ordinary, to the day when a stranger swallows the girl whose face I've traced with my fingers in awe, the more desperately I love you, the parts of you that shine, that are slowly being hidden because you've something more important to be doing. It's a complex fear, like a secret. Like a key you've buried in the garden and every time you walk by, the ground pulls at you, and nobody else even knows. It fogs up my mind, breath on the glass between me and you, and I stop making sense. But... I can SEE you. I can see you forgetting me. And I can't tell if it is my fear drenched mind throwing shadows by candlelight, or if I am losing the only person I ever gave my whole heart to. Not in a sudden, violent way, but in an insidious, eroding way. I want to beg you to tell me it will be okay. That I'm being silly. That you will try as I will try not to drift away. But by now, I'm not even sure I'd be able to believe you if you did.

I want to leave.
It is raining, and I can hear the lush hiss of it hitting the ground.
It stirs something in me.
Something which is always restless, but is seldom allowed to stretch and breathe.
I have loves here. I have ties.
But I can walk down these country roads in the waning light and raise skyscrapers beside me.
Countries.
Different lives.
The mind is a curious thing. It can conjure anything.
When I long to run away I am possessed by it, by loneliness and by an itching urge to travel.
When I see these places
I see you, too
What you must look like on a bridge in some foreign city, hair reaching over the water in the breeze, face lit by the sunrise.
Sometimes I see you in a crowd of people, a glimpse of your silhouette in the rain.
Even when I long to escape you, I escape TO you.
My heart paints your form upon the world I'm trying to lose myself in,
And I do, I do lose myself, but I can never lose you.
Never.
You remain.
When my illusions are shattered and I see only the country street and its golden streetlights again,
You
Remain,
A watercolor ghost etched into the mist.
You remain. You and your blue eyes. And I wish I wanted to be alone.

I had a dangerous thought a moment ago.
I have many.
But this one is the kind I would be ashamed to whisper in the dark.
It's this:
Every time I am suffering,
Every time I'm slipping,
I look at those tattoos on my hips,
And even if I hate every single thing about myself,
(Which I rarely do, but those moments do come)
I remember that I have something of you with me.
Something of you in my skin.
And I can't destroy something that beautiful.
I can't hate something that perfect.
I save myself from the worst of myself by remembering
That a part of me is yours,
Sacred,
And must be treated accordingly.
If that is not a terrifying way to love somebody,
I don't know what is.

Somebody's gotta be worth something
Besides you.
Somebody has to matter.
I think I am wishing this week was over
Just as much as I am dreading the end of it.
Because then at least
I will be released
From this thrall.
I will have no chance, for a long time,
And I will settle.
Something has to be more important
Than you.

Right?

Please don’t forget about me.

I have kept you in my mind

For quite a long time now.

Tried to convince myself you didn’t care,

Ended up just wanting you more.

So

Since I’ve exhausted my options

I’m just going to ask you

Simply

Unabashedly

With nothing left to fight with or against:

Please

Don’t forget about me.

I wonder why
I write love poems to strangers.
To concepts.
To moments.
I wonder why I feel so strongly for things
I can't possibly know.
I wonder if writing love poems to strangers
Hurts them
Or celebrates them.

Remember not, but deliver us from the punishment.
Deliver us from the sins of the mind,
Deliver us from the sins of the heart,
Deliver us.
Save us from ourselves,
And let us rest in peace.

Not god, but Void...

I love the scars on my hands,
They mean I reached for something.

"You are an artist. This is what great art comes from. Maybe you're meant to suffer to create something beyond beautiful for the world."
I don't want that!
I want to be happy.
I'd give up everything that makes me special
And talented
And beautiful
Just to be happy,
Because the only reason I need
Any of it
Is to survive how sad and angry I am.
I am an artist because I don't want to **** myself.
I could have been a lawyer
Or a scientist.
I could have been anything I wanted
But I can't
Because I have to spend every moment I can
Just surviving.
And of course I love it-
It's my life raft.
Nobody wants to drown.
But would I even like any of this
If it wasn't the only thing I could do to continue living?
I don't know.
I don't
Want this.
When I get up onstage and I sing and people say
"Wow, look at the emotion she can put into it."
When I act and people marvel that I'm so raw,
When I write a poem and everyone says,
"Oh, publish it, it's so lovely!"
When I paint a picture and people say,
"I wish I had the talent to make something that beautiful."
I don't have the heart to tell them
That they are watching me fight for my life
And envying it as if it's
A gift.
I'm an artist.
I'm a prisoner.
Art is NOT my calling.
It is my answer.
The only answer I can find.

You are the person who held me through the worst moments of my life.
You are the person who refuses to talk to me days after.
Such power
Such cowardice
And you wonder why I am afraid of you.

To those who are offended by me:
When we met one another, I told you exactly what I am.
I promise you I did.
It is not my fault
That you chose not to believe me.

You promised!
It might have been the loudest thing I ever said in that classroom.
It bounced off the walls.
You promised.
They said
Say your lines
And I tried
But it was chaos
And I wrote you a poem in screams
That will never be published
And in that moment I uncovered the truth-
That you will see stages.
You will see packed audiences and intimate theaters
You will see rehearsal spaces and ballet mirrors.
I will write you poems in screams and tears
And love scenes
Across my entire life.
You promised!
My lines became my voice
And I spoke to your ghost in the air before me.
Nobody could hear that my words had slipped
Into new ones
Because they were all slipping too,
Lost in their own grief,
And I had my time with you
To ask you why
In anger
To beg you not to go
In fear
To say
You promised
With anguish
And let it bounce off the walls.
You, lover,
You will see stages
You will move audiences.
You will fill my soul like you did today
And it will finally bring somebody other than me
To their knees.

There was a secret I never wanted you to know...
That nobody
Hates me and my love
More
Than me.

In the end, what's the harm in a dream that won't come true
If it keeps you warm at night?
The years will pass and you'll think
"maybe tomorrow"
Until suddenly there are no more tomorrows,
And you no longer have the breath or the mind
To realize that your dream never happened after all.

That's what my plan is, anyway.

Tonight is the same sort of hazy, misty night as the one almost a year ago,
When we walked through the construction sites and took pictures of the beams the streetlights sighed into the darkness.
I think I'd like to walk again tonight, through the rows of corn
Searching for a bit of moonlight-
Or perhaps your star overhead,
Peeking from behind the low, rolling charcoal clouds.
I spend my time with you.
It is my decision.
You do not have to spend your time with me,
But neither can you keep me from this choice: to walk with you,
Whether you are there to steal the night's velvety light and hold it beneath your skin,
Or not.

I could have seen you.
It will probably echo in my mind for weeks.
I could have seen you.
There was a time when there was nothing I wouldn't give up, just for the chance to see someone like you.
There was a time when I was a little more durable.
Now...
Now I know that it's probably best I'm far away,
And I don't have the chance to see you
But I also don't have the chance to see you look away from me.
But still.
It'll echo in my mind for weeks.
I could have seen you.
*Seen you.
Seen you.
You.

I wish I didn't fear you.
And I don't, when you're here.
Or maybe I do.
Maybe that is why I shiver when you touch me,
And melt when you look at me.
But when you're so far away...
It's different.
It's sharper.
No matter what you are saying to me,
Your words are like a knife's edge
Cold against my neck.
And what follows could be
The giddiness of having narrowly escaped death
Or the shocked, stomach lurching betrayal of receiving it
But there is nothing calm about speaking with you,
Not
Anymore.
I wish it were otherwise.
I wish I could say you comfort me from far away
Like you do when I am in your arms
But

Oh.
I will never stop being ashamed to think that girls are beautiful.
That... Hurts more than I can say.

If you've got a date with the devil
Dress to ****.

If ever there is a poem
I refuse to write out of consideration
For who might read it
And what they might think,
I have failed
And might as well stop there.
And so if my heart has the courage to feel
Anything
I honor it
By having the courage to say it.

It's just loss. Just grief. So ordinary.
It's just "gone forever".
What a word, gone is.
Gone.
I would venture to guess that any room you might speak that word into would ring hollow and empty as a cavern, no matter its size or appearance.
After all, you are, from me.
Just that:
Only gone.

I don't want to admit
That after feeling so scared all day
Just seeing you
Made me feel better.

We don't fear the dark.
We don't even fear what's in the dark.
We fear
What is in us
When it gets dark.
That is why I prefer to sleep in the sun
In the light,
The further away you get
The clearer your image becomes
When the day ends.
You
Are in me when it gets dark
And I don't
Sleep.

I now know two people
Who have died of selfishness
And it makes me sad.

I sit and wait
And think I probably should stand and sing instead.
For I am no good at waiting,
There now, it's been said.

Still, I hope and wonder
Bite my lip in remembrance, hum a little.
I am no good at wondering.
It makes my soul feel brittle.

I try to be cool
Say what will keep you coming back.
But I'm no good at cool
When I know just what I lack.

I try for apathy
Try to act like I don't care.
But I'm not good at that one either,
Thinking of your sultry stare.

I kissed you and I felt it
And now I don't know what to do.
I happen to be good at feeling
And I feel for you.

Here it all is, in your hands
Every word.
Proof
If you want it
On any sad day of your life
When you feel that nobody cares,
That nobody wants you,
Proof
That somebody does.
You can burn it
Or treasure it.
You can read it like a poetry assignment
Or you can feel it like a first kiss.
But let it be said now
That anything you see here that you find beautiful
Is your reflection
Staring back at you, clear as day,
From a page.

Maybe if I ran away
The waiting
Wouldn't be so hard.
Because I'd be the one chased or let go
And not the one
Always quietly trying.

I am preparing for another girl I love
To go missing inside her own eyes.
I'm getting tired of goodbyes.

I thought I saw you today
On the sidewalk.
And my heart
Gave a leap
Without my permission.
And then
I really started to get

Scared.

The most unsettling things have to be the little details.
Like the fact that whatever place I think of as home
Repels me for days when you are cruel to me.
I seek refuge in the oddest places.
Empty classrooms, friends' couches.
You'd be surprised how many places there are to live
Besides your home.
I find them.
On days when I am at my house, I spend those nights on the couch in my living room, never go upstairs to my comfortable bed.
When you are angry at me, it hits me right where I live.
Truly.
One thing I know the second your insults knock the air from my lungs-
Sometimes the ONLY thing I know by then-
Wherever I was planning to sleep that night
Is no longer an option.

Take what you need,
Love what you take
Of me, of me.
Steal what you want,
Leave what you don't
Of me, of me.
Praise what you love!
Hush
What you hate
Of me, of me.
No one will have the whole thing:
Take what you need
Of
Me.