Morning tears trickle down my cheek             as sunlight filters through
My breath catches in my throat
as nightmares bring memories of you

A single second where I'm vastly unsure
whether or not you've been hurt
A moment where my mind is flying
On edge, over worried, alert

I grasp my cell phone in my hand
your number dialed beneath my finger
And I come to realize it was only a dream
as the panic and terror linger

Sighing deeply, inhaling bricks
This nightmare grows more and more untrue
But these dreams also shed a frightening light on
Just how much I care for you

Driving home at 2AM, listening to the whispers of advice from the highway
The smell of the plants rejoicing in the evening's rain lingering in the air, droplets racing on the windshield and under the tires
Serenity, wind, loneliness and comfort blow through the windows, swirling around the interior bringing relief from the summer days
The promise of pink champagne dances across my lips, as a cold bottle is there to welcome me home
Silence fills my ears, wind filtering my thoughts until only one lingers-
You

There's a dusty book on an old chestnut bookshelf,
'Love' scrawled across the spine in golden letters.

Everyone has read it's secrets and taken them to heart.
Everyone has tasted it's nectar and gotten drunk on its words.

Everyone has prayed to its truths.
Everyone has promised to abide.

Verse I: She will love him.
Verse II: He will love her.

She-him, he-her.
These pronouns are tattooed in my eye lids.

These pronouns course through my veins.
These pronouns are stuck in my throat.

I'm choking on a normality I've been force fed,
my insides burning with society's expectations.

As I prayed every night for the man of my dreams.
As I confessed ever boy I had ever kissed.

As I looked at him and felt nothing.
As I looked at her and felt everything.

My fingers skimmed the pages of society's bible,
the pages slicing apart my fingers and leaving blood in the margins.

When my friends placed the rosary around their hands,
and I placed my hands in hers.

When I looked into the words being taken so blindly,
and my body created antibodies for every lie I had contracted.

And I stared into the verses, washing them away with angry tears.
And I threw the book into the fire, watching as the flames made their final edits.

And I looked into her eyes, and I tasted her lips.
And I let everything about her become everything I know.

I ignored the teachings I had once treasured and wrote a book for myself.
I learned to be unfaithful, and put my faith in her.

He sprinkles salt in my wounds, gently, as every word digs deeper and deeper
He deprives my life of flavor, saving it like ammo for the next fresh water war
He buries me in a pile of crystals
Shining, sparkling, dazzling, until they dehydrate every ounce of ambrosial hope
He throws salt over his shoulder for 'good luck', leaving anything and everything behind him burning, withering
Like binging and purging, the ocean rolling in and out, he's suffocating me under what he claimed was sugar
Like the mastermind behind water-boarding, he jerks me left and right, pure and tainted, innocent and soiled
He promises that this time it's Confectioner's
He promises the water he's leading me to is fresh
But every time it's salt
And I'm the definition of insane, constantly falling for the same look in his eyes, the same half smile
And every grain is one hundred lies,
And every grain brings another ten-year war
Sodium chloride might as well be cyanide
Simple table salt bottles may as well be containers of gunpowder
We're fighting through the desert, sand turned into his favorite compound
We're losing, bleeding, lacerated, with only his promises as bandages
I'm betrayed by my own body, as I wipe my tears and realize their chemical makeup
I'm trying to explain why I panic if my dish is too salty, why I panic if I'm near the ocean
I'm rebuilding my pallet, substitution after substitution
I'm learning to use other spices
I'm remembering the taste of a simpler world.
I'm washing over my scars with water I filtered myself.

Are these dreams self inflicted?
Am I addicted to exhaustion?
Are these dreams coincidences?
Am I doomed on the instances that the universe hand picks?

These dreams are a manifestation of my worries, my fears
My tears are a 3D dictionary- a physical translation of horrors every sundown

These dreams drive me to ******* insanity
While vanity and shallow diseases plague those around me

Screaming, crying, shaking
They're breaking down my walls, painting bags under my eyes and a scowl on my face

I'm desperate for alleviation
In a nation so obsessed with pills, somewhere there's a capsule in a haystack

Like an unsolvable math question
A lesson ungraspable, darkness clouds my mind and feeds on my light

The darkness behind my eyes swirling with unfamiliarity
A rarity that I wake up not undead

I'm screaming for help in a sound-proof room
A bloom of skulls instead of flowers

My sheets are painted blood red
My bed never a place of solace

I'm forever drowning in a sea of unrest
Forces doing their best to keep me under

I'm spluttering, hyperventilating
My thoughts always contemplating whether to pull all nighters for the rest of my nights

I'm eating myself alive and no one seems to mind
As this kind of infliction is only in my head.

Biting your lip
Laughing too soon
Tracing your figure
by the light of the moon

Flashing a smile
Looking away
Falling in love
with yourself every day

If happiness was currency
And you sewed up the stitches  
What would bring you
immeasurable riches  

If confidence was a concerto
And you poured everything into the keys
It never will matter
who you can and cannot please

Spreading your wings
Learning how to fly
There's nothing that can stop you
from touching the sky

Their love is a night of ecstasy in an underground speak easy
Forbidden liquor gracing their lips, turning their blood to the drink of Aphrodite
Dancing, floating, flying in the age of jazz, the age of freedom
Saxophones and metronomes setting tempo to a timeless love affair

Their love is a black and white film projected onto a satin screen
Hundreds of judgmental eyes staring catatonic at a passion they cannot comprehend
Played on repeat, a classic
90 minutes turns to an eternity

Their love is a soldier returning from a distant land,
embracing the feeling of home
Dodging fatal bullets, beating every odd
The very second their lips meet again captured in a famous photograph

Their love is a movement, marching through Washington
Desegregation of the streets, unity at heart
Standing up when staying down is simpler,
Staying one when splitting is easier

Their love is a song that will sit a the top of the charts
When music was the newest form of sustenance
A melody that will not be soon forgotten,
Preserved in the old record hanging on the wall

Their love is falling
Their love is crashing
Their love is burning
Their love is dying

Their love has taken a hit and cannot possibly withstand another
But surely enough, another comes
An understanding is lost,
Terror breaks out

Gasping for breath, for light, for any means
Their love is a world in turmoil, a city in rubles, a date never forgotten
They were not meant to crash
They could not possibly have fallen

Their love is barely breathing, a monitor a-rhythmically beeping
Their love is crumbling with the world's sense of safety,
An event that scarred too deeply

Their love is now erstwhile
As everyone picks up the pieces
Their love ran its course
But fell through the cracks of time

It's all fine and dandy until someone says three words
i love you
are you okay?
i miss you
It's all fine and dandy until someone says four words
you are my everything
it's okay to cry
come back to me
stop talking to me
It's all fine and dandy until someone says five words
i love you too much
please stay with me forever
what went wrong with us?
i don't recognize you anymore
i can't ******* do this


It's all fine and dandy until the words that leave your lips tear holes in my stomach
Until the syllables that were once flowers become a bouquet of riffles
Until the letters in each word are strategized military formations
And each necessary breath is a cease fire
Until I'm a captive to your speech, ******* by your comments,
Your voice slicing up my wrists like old rope
Until your smirk is the queue for the canons,
Your tongue an airborne dagger
Your lips a false surrender as your teeth hide behind with drawn weapons
Your body language leaving me to bleed out as you standby for further instruction
Everything is fine and dandy
Until you open your ******* mouth.

For the first time in too long I did not have nightmares.
I did not wake up crying, shaking, or screaming, and it was amazing. A weight was lifted off my shoulders, and for the first time I felt like I had slept. Like, actually slept. I didn't have to steady my breathing, I didn't have to wipe my tears, and for the first time, I felt happy as I woke up.
This made me rack my brain about anything and everything that had been different- what position I slept in, the temperature of the room, how dark the room was. But the only real difference was that I wasn't alone.
For the first time in a long time, I had someone there, almost like she was warding off the demons for me, like she was protecting me. I actually slept. I actually did not **** awake in mid-scream. My eyes fluttered open and I breathed in, breathed in relief, confusion, but mostly gratitude.
What does this mean? Was it really having another person there that made this phenomenon, and it is a ******* phenomenon, happen? Was it purely by chance? Does this mean that I could be cured by simply having someone to share a bed with? And if so, should I become dependent on it?
All of these questions are blazing through my head, and I could nearly cry. I could cry for how much of a relief it was. I rested, you guys. Rested. It blows my mind that people rest every single night; I'm high on rest.
Honestly, I would give anything to sleep well, to sleep like I did last night. I wish I could test the theory, but of course I cannot. As I lie here in bed, growing more and more tired, the memory of waking up with not a trouble in the world is making me grin like an idiot.
What was different? What was different? I need to feel this way again, I just need to. I already miss her like ******* crazy.
To anything that's out there: please let me rest tonight, I'm in love with the feeling. Please let this time not be the last.

Who fills your thoughts when
it's midnight and you've had a
full glass of rosé?

I have saved "darling" for you.

Prove them all so ******* wrong.

Take me on a trip
to wonderland through the taste
of your unkissed lips

My heart's too drunk to drive.

Fall in love with yourself today.