You clever, cunning little thing
with your barbed-wire smile and
scissor-snap comments. You with your
soft hands and hard heart, with that
blue-before-storm within your eyes.
Today you cut him down with a
candy cane, shone your
teeth in a conman's smile and
sliced someone's secrets open with
the tip of your silver tongue.
You're so very
brilliant, and as cold as a
winter siege. (Are your feelings
crystal cut? Is your heart a
precious stone? You breathe ice
into others- but you've
never been alone).

when you catch yourself staring out the window

eyes tracking snowflakes. counting the seconds.

searching for meaning in seasonal change

looking for patterns spiraling in any direction but
                                                                ­                                down

seeing the sky’s just ******* hallmark card covers

when it’s half past one and you’re

wishing
wishing
wishing for

that snow

to bury

the campus. the people. the ******* assignments.

in something so cold it stings your fingers into feeling
enough to dig out of self-inflicted snow drifts

in something so bright and white that it
washes the grey stains from your eyes

when you let it go let it go let it go
and sit on the slushy side walk – only frozen
but without the ******* feel-good Disney songs
that happily work out ever after
in the happiest place on earth
when you don’t even care enough to finish the poem.

don’t.

I feel like I'm drowning but I have all the air in the world. the only thing pulling me closer to death is the ocean that flows from my veins and I can't seem to get up. memories of you are flashing back to me and it hurts to know you stopped caring. my eyelids are heavy and the only thing wrapped around me is this towel but all I want is his arms.

Her voice is strained.
Her skin is fair.
Her ******* lay on the countertop.
I **** her until my thoughts stop.

She rejects the notion of love for all,
as she leans against my kitchen wall,
with a cigarette and an unbuttoned blouse-
she wants to be homeless in my house.

She keeps me in her necklace's locket,
and I keep her in the wallet in my pocket.
Her toes kiss the linoleum,
she walks like she's made of helium.

She mumbles that I taste like mint chocolate chip,
as she rubs against my hip.
Her breath smells like Malboro Lights,
and I hope she decides to stay the night.

Milky Ways and Vanilla Cakes,
she likes the way my body shakes,
as we lay and eat our troubles away.
Hurried words slow the day.

She asks me about my stretch marks and scars,
and if I've ever been hit by a car.
And I say no, but I've been hit by love before,
and it feels like getting your hand caught in a door.

Hurried smiles and bathroom stalls,
she likes the way my family never calls.
The words escape between her plump lips,
as my hand travels between her hips.

We move until we forget
that the world is moving faster.

Let's waste time
spinning stitches in the
panic of our minds and
throwing light into the
ever-present dark *and
thinking everything we do
is somehow art.

i write all day like an adult,
i am learned and i use big words
and i know how to accurately craft
a metaphor about pain and harm.

but at the end of the day
i return to childlike phrases,
“it’s not fair,” and i feel more
of a release from that than
a composition notebook
filled from cover to cover
with a million different ways
of saying that i still,
despite everything,
am not happy.

i think we still exist
somewhere in the universe
behind the sun
where all of earth’s abandoned
soulmates go to rest
i think i can see us
when i look up at the sky
and squint directly into
the rays of light,
your brown eyes burning
into mine

i think we are together
in the time that trails behind
the present, dancing
in circles until the last stars
fizzle out

i think that our promises
seeped into the soil, like
february rain, our souls sown
together, tucked in
beneath the world

i think what we had is
somewhere just out of reach,
pulsing in the dim spaces
between heat lightning

and although, in this lifetime,
we became nothing but shadows,
monsters that linger on bedroom walls

we are there, we are alive,
and we are still in love.