Step back,
yet,
be present;

too many
do
only one at a time;

the trick, though,
is to do both at once
and, to do both
continuously.

I have been trying to think of ways to say 'I love you' on paper
without writing outside the lines.
There is much more to the way the blinds paint sunlight on your body
than beat up notebooks and chewed up pencils.
I make a lot of mistakes,
the kind that rubber only smears but doesn't erase.
I didn't mean to crumple your delicate skin like paper.
I know that paper comes from trees,
yet all the poems that make me think of you do nothing
to help me breathe, and your touch only proves
that my breath is easier to take away than you'd like to believe.
Forgive me for being comprised almost entirely of errors and mistakes and strikethroughs with red pens,
While you are so clean and refined.
I think of you in cursive.
Take my trembling wrists in your strong fingers
and guide me with a steady and patient hand.
Teach me to love you in bold print and I will underline it three times,
and again,
and again,
and again.
In my head, you are a million brainstorms thrown into waste buckets,
and if for some strange reason Helvetica is the only way to make you almost understand my thoughts,
then I am typing furiously and waiting for you to see them all.
All I ever wanted was to fill the doubles spaces between your fingers with my own,
even though sometimes you wish you could
backspace the words you didn't mean to say to me
while I pretend I don't remember them.
I have been trying to think of ways to say 'I love you' on paper
without writing outside the lines.
Then I ripped up the paper, scribbled it on a napkin,
and wiped the blood off my face with it instead.

There are gargoyles where your eyes should be. I know that even if there is water flowing from those grotesque trenches, you promised me that you would keep the demons from inside of you, when you were the demon the whole time.
  I have lain at your feet like a bear pelt rug and felt your toes curl into me while you read your favorite book. I have seen all of your dark ways and I have felt every cigarette you put on me in the form of your mouth. You linger in the back of my throat like a violent coughing spell, and I think I loved the burning sensation, and there is no doubt in my mind that when you slam the door I wish it was my body you were shoving into the doorjam.
  If you turn off the lights and you find that you can still see me vividly, you should remember that I know every crease in your feet and every corner of your mouth. I don't easily forget the people I have dropped to my knees for. You are every piece of paper I have ripped into shreds on your honor and strewn across the room like our clothes. Now my heart doesn't feel so good in your hands, does it?

Treat me like your favorite sweater. Give me a use and make me stick to it. I know you only want me during certain periods of time, but maybe the rare last minute occasion will come and you'll use me. Put holes in me and pull my threads. I'll go with everything, blend in, keep you warm, make you feel safe. Spill hot coffee on me and throw me in the hamper. Toss me under the bed, but frantically look for me when the occasion comes and you need me because there isn't anybody else. Bury your face into me and breathe. Eventually I'll become too tainted for outside use. I'll sit in your room for days, weeks, months. Then spring will roll around. Throw me in a bag and toss me away. I've accomplished my purpose. You don't need me around anymore.

I want you to come. I don't mean this in some sort of lustful way (although I feel some sort of passion) , but I mean in want you to come as in here. Here. You were here at some point in time, but your body was here and your mind was floating off into the ignite regions of space, regions I could only dream about, almost the way I dreamt about the day you'd stop looking through me as though I were some sort of ghost. Funny how you treat me like a ghost, but I feel so human when I think about my feelings for you and everything in respects to you. Over 70% of your body is water, but the rain doesn't feel as good as your hands falling onto my skin. Your hands tug on my shirt the same way you tug on my mind when my shirt is unbothered, but there is more to love than tugging, darling. And there is more to tugging then just my teeth on your bottom lip. There is more to anything if you dig deep enough, so I try to remember to dig deeper scratches into your back and hope that I might find my way to your heart. It's hard though, because I haven't even felt your ribcage yet.

Your eyes are the color of chocolate bars. I want to see if your lids really peel like candy wrappers, but you won't let me touch you. So I fidget with my hands and think that perhaps the smell of peppermint on your breath runs all the way down your throat and into the pit of your stomach. And if I reach the pit of your stomach, I'd probably find butterflies, but they're all dead. Your body is poisonous, after all. I'm very well aware of this fact. But if clenching my stomach in crippling pain is going to keep you flowing through my bloodstream like cheap ******, then I will drink you in twice as fast. You are a better way to die than anything I can think of off the top of my head. Undress, slowly, and in the fraction of a blind moment when you can't see me as you're taking off your shirt, imagine that I am already dead. And, when my dress pools around my feet like rainwater, take satisfaction in knowing my autopsy report will place my cause of death as your silhouette in this poorly lit room. Send me to the grave covered in love bites and lay me on the bed like you're trying to lay me inside a coffin. Bury me under your weight, our bodies resting in anything but peace.