She measures self worth in numbers -
Numbers like the seven he gave her last night,
Scribbled on a coffee shop napkin.
She's like a butterfly, you see;
Wondrous on the outside
But blank within
Fluid, without shape or body or mind -
No spine.
She is whatever words are thrown her way.
She is numbers,
A simple code, a formula,
To which the answer will always be
"I'll see you at eight," or
"Call me," or sometimes just "Yes."
Easy.
She's shapeless conformity,
And when she wakes up someplace new,
She counts the numbers down:
Five, Four, Three, Two -
One time she had her own edges,
But that's neither here nor there, really.
Yesterday, she was seven digits,
But today, for now,
She's zero.

I try so hard to be a poet.

I'm writing you from the back of a coffee shop napkin because it's the only place I know you might see it.
I'm smoking cigarettes just so I remember to breathe,
And filling in the blanks between them
With meaningless words
That sound like they might give me a reason
Like "romantic" and "addiction"
And sometimes
Just your name
Over and over and over
Until I'm brushing ink off my fingers and onto my new jeans.

The earth is grasping at my fingertips.
It's 2AM and I don't know how I sleep at night.
(I don't)

Some nights I lie awake and think
About how there's a universe inside of you.
I'm shooting for the moon
But I'm coming out much closer to the sun than I expected.

I lie awake and picture,
In my head,
All the ways that this can go wrong
    Will go wrong
          Have gone wrong
I thought we were getting better
But it's more like
We're getting older every second.
We're just pennies in pockets of good luck addicts
We were born to make a change
But instead I'm watching re-runs of lifetime at 3 in the morning.
(Nothing ever changes)

Every night I tell myself
That tomorrow
I'm going to try a little harder
To try.
Every morning I tell myself
That tomorrow
Would be a better day to start.
(I live by the golden plated rule.)
I'm running out of room on the back of bookshop receipts,
And the woman behind the desk is telling me
That I'm running out of time
Until they close for the night.
What I hear
Is that I'm running out of time
To live forever.

When I was eight years old,
I told my mother
That I would never smoke a cigarette
And I've always thought it was funny
How we learn to break promises at an early age.
(You are not the exception.)
Now I measure daylight in smoke breaks
And starlight
In how many times I can be a contradiction to a former me.
(Eight and counting)

I try so hard to be a poet,
But the truth is
I can't make any promises.

You write 'Love' on her wrists
And watch it fade and blur through the tiny cracks in her skin
Until it's washed away in the bathroom sink
And all that's left is a featherlight kiss of ink on porcelain fingers.
She's rather like a sparrow, you see -
Your love is lost beneath her thrill of flight,
And the only way to keep her grounded
Is to tie her to this ring and cage her.
You don't have the heart to hear her sing for freedom,
And not the mind to set her free,
So you spread your lies like birdseed
To keep her interest that much longer.
But before you hope for too long,
Know that birds can only eat so much
Before they fly to their winter homes,
And come summer's end,
She may be feathers on your pillow.

Let this be my legacy -
The only things worth remembering
Are worn out shoes and blistered feet
As we stand among the stars;
The silhouette of history
Made by your shoulder
Pressed against me
And the way we loved so carelessly
As we held hands in the dark -
Don't look down,
Pick your feet up off the ground,
Forget about the little things
And fade into the galaxy
Don't look back-
The memories we had
Of sleepless nights and playground swings
Will fade into our waking dreams,
We'll never return;
We're coming home.

She is a picture
Full of details you can't see;
Just out of focus.