Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.

How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood—
Then it will be—good night.

To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.

you hurt like ache
and adderall
and arnica

you hurt like bruises
and battle scars
and broken bones

you hurt like cuts
and *******
and countryside

you hurt like death
and destruction
and die-hard

you hurt like electricity
and emergency rooms
and edit-undo

you hurt like *******'s
and fire
and fallen trees

you hurt like garbage cans
and gonorrhea
and gang ****

you hurt like hell
and holes in the road
and heartache

you hurt like israel
and illness
and ignition fumes

you hurt like jaundice
and jugular veins
and jack in the box

you hurt like karma
and kissing
and kerosine lamps

you hurt like lightning
and love
and literary terms

you hurt like mother
and mary
and moses

you hurt like nakedness
and nosebleeds
and nervous breakdowns

you hurt like oil spills
and old yeller
and oral quizzes

you hurt like parkinson's
and parties
and panic

you hurt like queens
and questions
and quantum physics

you hurt like rogaine
and roses
and rope burn

you hurt like solar power
and stomach aches
and ***

you hurt like teeth cleanings
and tar
and tobacco

you hurt like ulcers
and underwear
and unrequited love

you hurt like viruses
and venus fly traps
and vapor rub

you hurt like warning signs
and weight gain
and war

you hurt like x-rays
and x marks the spot
and xoxo

you hurt like your mom
and your dad
and you

you hurt like zig zags
and zero
and zip ties

*(a.m.c.)

I apologize in advance for the ash swirling in the wind, but this morning i woke up and clutched your name with such reckless devotion that it turned to dust. Every syllable fell to the floor. I tried to reconcile my wounds but the infections are swelling like the tide. I wish this melancholy would come like the waves so my body could stop feeling so dehydrated. I never wanted that girl to break your heart, only to hand it back to me. She stood on ground previously reserved for my feet. I don't hate her, but i can't be her friend. I loved your hands that were so thin but trained to destroy life. Particularly mine every time they brushed by my body without stopping to linger. You thought of every stop sign as a yield so that explains why you were always in a rush but never why you were constantly late. I've always waited for you. You know I hate being late but i don't mind walking in and being the cause of turned heads with you. You've smoothed out my complexion because i don't experience anxiety with you so my worry lines have disappeared. The only breaking out I've done is coming out of my shell because you taught me to live life with the sunshine in my face rather than fluorescent light bulbs. The artificial suns never seem to be turned on in my room because i only wanted you with the lights off. Not because I'm afraid of my body but because I don't need light to memorize your every shape and contour. Like a blind man learning Braille, i wanted to spend hours memorizing you so i could read you properly. When you came back your body was a different shape, rougher, more defined. And when i asked to sharpen up my memory of you, you turned away and i think thats why i had trouble reading your letters because your Braille required something new to continue. But i dont come with upgrades or new technology every time you come back, i am the same as before. Like Windows 4 i am starting to run slower than the last time you saw me and a few things have become unrecognizable even to myself so when you asked me what's new my brain started yelling ERROR 404 and i broke down.  No doctor, no repairman, not even you knew how to put me back together again and i felt like Humpty Dumpty and you were the king who sent all of the horses and all of the men. But what i would give to be your queen. Sit beside you in a throne and have portraits painted of you and i until there were halls and ballrooms filled of us. I wanted to carve pictures into all of the vertebrae in my back but i realized you took my spine with you when you left. You unfortunately left my heart untouched which made it ache more because you have never hurt me. Although I wanted you to **** me so i had a reason to hate you but i cant help but resent you every time you say my name with no love at all. You've always protected me, but safety is your only concern especially because i am not beautiful enough to cause a rupture in your make up, not even a quicker pace of your heart beats were produced when you saw me. I wanted to anatomically break you down and rewire your nerves so the next time i held your hand your only response would be to hold on so tight that only the jaws of life could tear us apart. But the jaws of life dont seem as terrifying as your hands leaving on their own. But now they're thousands of miles away and my heart was left in tact but it's slowly tearing itself to pieces without you here.

I love you
but you are not medicine.

I was a part of my own Secret Ops, seeking out shelter from affection. I do not need to be held but you are compromising my position. Every time you kiss my neck my heart goes off to the point where I can be detected on a sonar transmission and the last thing I need is for others to find me. I notice the small details of love when I'm around you, the way you rub circles into my thumb when you hold my hand as if you were winding up my heart beats like a child's toy so it can keep beating even after you're gone, how you run your fingers through my hair like it was sand on a beautiful beach and you just want to watch it slip between them, or how you smile after you kiss me like the whole world melted around you and the only thing left standing was me. But I did not ask for this, I was undercover when you tried to capture me. You rescued me once but I thanked you for that, I didn't know that you were still expecting gratitude. Do not be mistaken, I do not mind being the choice of lust because I will dive into those endeavors with you if give me the map, but I do not want this to be confused with the roads of love. I fear that this may end with twisted perspectives, and I never want to break your heart. I've found comfort in your presence for nearly a decade now and for that comfort to turn into discord would be a tragedy. I don't want to fall into anything with you other than your sheets, if you take my hand and plant kisses on me like flower seeds, maybe I'll start to grow on you but for now I enjoy my gardens in the ground so I can walk away without tearing out the roots.

I felt time slow down, but it was a gradual shift. Like the ceiling fan that was previously on high suddenly being turned off but the blades continue to spin from sheer momentum. From the moment the alcohol hit my system, I thought about you. I lose sleep waiting for you to talk to me, but I've found a graveyard in this home. The only beings still awake with me are the ones you could see the through, people or ghosts. I would sleep better on your floor than I ever could in my bed. Treat me like your dog and I will gladly beg for your crumbs. This is hungry work and I should have worshiped you sooner. You've got molds of your hand prints on the sidewalk out front of your house and I think that's why you are so similar to the concrete. You preserve precious memories in the form of tangible keepsakes while staying completely solid. But I know that if I were to be concrete, I would crack myself apart just to let the smallest flowers grow because I have kept too many things buried when they needed to be said. I am the Queen of the Bitten Tongue, I have permanent divots on my taste buds, the words crowd around my teeth like plaque and I think that's why I started carrying floss with me every where I go so I could pick out the words that threaten to stain them. I'm glad my braces fixed the gap or else you would know a lot more than you should because the letters would drip out like a leaky faucet; word by word until they filled up the sink and have no choice but to over flow because these words will never go down smooth. They have thorns covering their every edge so when you hear them, they rip your eardrums to pieces. Leaving no part of you unaltered. I never wanted to hurt you so that's why I'm so quiet. Sometimes after speaking, I find it hard to stop my mouth from bleeding but it usually gets swallowed just like my pride. I would kiss your scars for the rest of time even if they were still open but you're so good at being closed off from me. I'm tired of taking your detours, having to turn around because the bridge to your heart is down due to construction but I never ordered any materials for this project. So who is the one working on your heart? My concrete queen, I would kiss your feet like the pavement you provide, take endless road trips down your winding roads but I'm afraid of the *** holes that I get stuck in constantly. You have no idea how unproductive it is to fall in and out of you as often as I do. I'm addicted to the pain of falling into you, but I wouldn't mind crashing into your sheets as long as I can have the throne next to you.

A wise man once told me,
"Son, a million dollars is worth
a million dollars. "
That was the last time I saw him.
It has been six years and
I still can seem to find enough money,
to make him proud.

Once I saw lightning strike a field.
It was magnificent.
I could have sworn the Earth stopped.
It didn't.
Life never stops.

Do you want to know a secret?
The wise man was a fool and
life does end.
Shocking revelations from the fool's student.

When does the student,
become the teacher?
When the fool becomes intelligent
the world will know peace
or
burn.

A wise man once told me,
"Son,
live your hours day by day."

I still hold on to the knowledge and
live my life day by hour.

People often use the term "home is where the heart is" as reference that home is a literal place. That you can touch it, feel it, live in it and it's physically there. But I just can't seem to wrap my mind around that. Because my heart belongs to a home that isn't there in a physical sense. My home is the way you say my name and draw circles on my lower back. My home is built and structured in between your arms and in the crook of your neck. I've never felt more at home then when we are skin to skin and I want to pull you even closer. No my home is not a building, my home is you and that's where my heart will always be.

It's not that I don't love you. It's the time I read my mom's old journals and every other paragraph included my fathers name. It's that he cheated on every girlfriend he had with my mom. It's that my mom didn't care she was a second choice or a one night stand. It's that my mother never talked to anyone about him after he got married to one of the many girlfriends. It's that she took twenty sleeping pills on the night of what would've been their anniversary. It's that he doesn't even know she's dead.

It's not that I don't love you. It's the couple I overheard in the bread aisle arguing over wheat or white. It's that I heard the woman say a lot of "she" and "****" and I saw her crumble to the ground. It's that he just shook his head and said he was sorry over and over again.

It's not that I don't love you. It's that my best friend is in love with a boy on the other side of the country. It's the morning she took a shower and cried over him. It's that he wasn't even awake to do anything about it. It's that he's always three hours behind and thousands too many miles away. It's that I mean both physically and mentally sometimes.

It's not that I don't love you. It's my geometry teacher, who brought up her husband when she taught me tangents. It's that she also brought up her husband when she taught me the circle unit
too. It's that she gets quiet and smiles after she talks about him. It's that he's been passed away for seven years now and she still has so much to say. It's that she still wears her wedding ring. It's that when she taught me special right triangles, I wondered what her laugh might sound like if he were still here.

What I'm trying to say is; It's not that I don't love you. It's that I do.