I got tired of filling my gas tank
Seeing fences around fields
Driving a decaying highway
I woke up to the sound of a lawnmower
I thought about the grass
How it never gets to grow
I got tired of filling my gas tank
Just to go no where with you
Listening to apathy echo
From minds I never could change
I thought about the yesterdays
How I never got to grow.

Fears don't need to be decisions
Sadness doesn't need to be a fact
Anger shouldn't be an action
Shame doesn't have to be a self image
These are just feelings
They are not definitions
Of your being

Oh, what a sweet community
That was built for me
In your captivity
You said God loved me
As much as his son
Thats why he left me to die.

I weigh 1/4 of a blue whales heart
I am as tall as Napolean Bonaparte
I am as old as Oprah's Book Club
When I do not like myself
I think of these things
And suddenly, I look very different.

I looked at you today
Something was different
Your sea blue eyes
Faded to worn denim
The hair I once fixed
Combing with my fingers
Looked wild, unkempt
In need of a brush
The one track mind
Charming boyish naivety
Sounded self centered
Exhaustingly unaware
I looked at you today
No longer enamoured
I hope that your mirror
Is less fickle than I

Sometimes I forget
My own handwriting
And my "A"s come out wrong
Not looking at all like me
So I have to look back
At poems from yesterday
And forge my own signature
If I manage to remember
Where I set my pen down

I fear that you're just like me.

You will forever,
Be my always

Bare feet sinking into snow
Prickling creeps up my ankles
Little knives embedding and climbing
Swallowing hungrily
Bitter blasts of cold air
Choking, tensing, tightening
Nerves peel back like wallpaper
And I felt it all,
I knew I was still alive

I want to feel alive
To see that old spark back in my eyes
But there is never quite enough
No matter how I try
My lips taste of poison
But my mind feels washed and clean
A brand new look
For a worn out fiend
I can laugh at the smallest things
But bleed from the smallest smile
Lost? Broken? I've known all along
I'm not in denial
My skin hides my secrets
The blood that runs white
When my mistress, she calls
I can't put up a fight
A lust like no other
An ever swelling greed
Like angry waves attack the sea
Wash over me
She knows what I need,
She knows what I need
I don't know where I'm going
Or what to hear, see and speak
But I'll be okay as reality fades
Cling to the hope that this isn't me
I laugh and force a smile
To distract from my bloodshot eyes
Soon I'll ask glass Angels
To put truth into these lies
To numb me while I cry
They fly into my lungs and promise to try
I need to be free
And wear their wings
Escape from the puppet master
Always pulling on my strings
But I remain a song
That's known but no one sings
I'm just a tortured, dark thing
An empty, dark thing.

After a death
It is the living that haunt their homes
All the lonely cries in the dark
And sleepless nights
Trying to feel the dead in anything
Other than memories
Recalling them endlessly anyways
Stories told like seances
As if somehow it will keep them here
A little longer
Eventually forgetting to eat
To breathe
Exist
Quiet whispers
Endless pacing
Silent visits
Rearranging the cutlery
1000 times in the night
To pass the time

After a death,
It is always the living
That become ghosts of themselves

The only requirement to be loved in this world
Is to exist.
When a baby is hungry,
Or crying,
Or needs love,
We give them all we can.
They exist.
That's all we ask.
So today, when my stomach growls,
Today, when my heart hurts,
Today, when I need to be held,
I will not look at the tally
On my never ending score card,
And see what I deserve,
Instead,
I will give myself all that I can.
Because I exist.

I haven't been kissed in the rain
No one will look after my garden
Sophia hasn't had her first day of school
I never finished that book
I have laundry to fold
I didn't tell my mom I love her today
Tomorrow might be better



Tomorrow will be better.

Collect your stardust,
Lay it beneath your feet,
Let me rise again,
Let me know love
Upon awakening,
Let me be loved,
Until I return to dust,
I will not be afraid,
To walk the Earth.

Am I still looking for him
When I search your face?

Fingertips brushing along a bent spine,
Grazing ribs and collarbone,
Not breaking, memorizing,
Show me again,
And again,
And again,
Love, how to love.
I didn't know I wasn't supposed to cry after,
I was just relieved it didn't hurt.

If I could choose a different life,
I'd have already been living it,
If I could love anyone else,
I'd have left town years ago.

Day 1 of not missing him
when I wake up
Day 132 of trying not to think of him
When you tell me you love me
Day 786 of wishing he had meant it
The way I wish you didn't

...and as you fall in love with yourself,
You might lose your love for him
Do not apologize,
You deserved your own love more than he did.

There are words
Tumbling round
This brain
Like heavy rocks
In a washing machine
Watch them now
Tumble out
They will pummel you
As they have me
You will see
What you made
Inside of me

You have been looking at a broken clock for years now
Always waiting for the right time to come

I speak
About hating
How I speak
I have feelings
About my extreme
Lack of feeling
I find myself
In all the ways
I've lost myself
Machines gain souls
Once they've realized
They are machines

Sisyphus finally at rest
Finds himself restless
It is better to desire
Than to have.

When you said you loved me
I saw the end credits roll
Write me a new script
Free me from the sequels,
Bring resolutions and a new story
Looking at me with that smile
I know it's the opening scene

Dripping honey
On my teeth
So I speak sweetly
You lap it up
Then shove
Salt down my throat
When you kiss
Me goodbye.

The feeling of crashing
Beneath an ocean you carved
Waves you created
Choosing not to swim
When you know how
When fighting to breathe
Feels more like giving up
Than drowning does

Am I trying to help you
Because your pain
Is too much for you to bear
Or because seeing you like this
Is too much for me to bear

When I'm sad I like to think about traffic,
The way it might feel if a car swerved,
And every one of my bones crushed all at once.
When I'm happy I think about traffic,
How terrifying it would be if a car swerved,
And I lost everyone and everything all at once.
I'm in love with you like I love oncoming traffic.

I do not love what you do,
I cannot fall where you fall.
This is the fate of us,
To be together apart

It breathes memories into my charcoaled lungs
The calluses on my palms
The ever lingering self doubt following my every step
Its heart beats in the herb garden on my balcony
Pulses through my broken alabaster skin
And quakes in the grooves of my cracked ribcage
It sleeps on the folded fitted sheets in my cabinet
Stirring restlessly at the smell of stale beer and fresh tobacco
It awakens with a jolt whenever it smells blood
Its stretching into my pinned back colony hair
Weaving its way through the secret stories
Into eardrums saying "you must **** yourself to get out"
This ghost of my family
Whispering commands into my ears
I am only now hearing it's voice
Because I always believed it was mine
This goodbye is not reconciliation with the voices
It is a resurrection of my own.

I wish I would have said thank you,
Instead of goodbye

It's in the moments
Before I fall asleep
When my body
Isn't real anymore
And my life
Never really happened
It's in those moments
I find you again
But you never stay

I can't ask you for the truth
In case you ask me for it too

And I never really knew
I had to want them back
I thought I could be owned
Just by being wanted

The moon and the star
Laid back in the sky
Discussing their grievances
"I am just a lifeless rock"
Said the moon
"At least you never have to die"
Said the star
"Yes, but you are at least shiny and dead."

I paint daisy chains
On sharp edges
Roses in my hollows
Starvation in full bloom
Is lovelier than death
So I'll throw bouquets
On my own casket
And dig shallow graves
In my tummy
Bury yesterdays love
Resurrect today's doubt
At least skeletons
Are not afraid to die

Putting on my outside face,
Is harder than you'd think,
I start with a smile I don't mean,
A laugh for jokes that aren't funny,
I place words in my mouth like:
"That's great" "I get it" "Oh, wow"
I place attention into my eyes,
Agreement along my lips,
I remember to swallow my pride,
And to bite my tongue,
The hardest part, though,
Is removing myself first,
The parts I worked the hardest for,
Are the ones that don't belong,
Yet I'll suffocate beneath my skin,
Just to make you more comfortable.

Is it relapse if it's not a drug?
Is it a drug if I have to hide it?

If we fall in love with the people that remind us of our families
I should be in love with dead boys and distant hearts
But I am only in love with myself and everything I could be

I lost everything with the secrets kept,
Now all I have are the secrets keeping me.

You think of me when you're drunk
In the midnight hours, in the dark
I wonder if you wonder about me
In the daylight hours too
When you see sunflowers
Like the one etched on my thigh
The thigh your hand gripped tightly
Whenever you were near me
I wonder if the memories hurt you
The way they have been hurting me
We were better than what we became
After we stopped kissing in the morning
When we decided to be friends
That aren't friendly at all
Stop calling me when you're drunk enough
To acknowledge that I still exist
Because it makes me remember you
And I can't drink you away

I responded to rage
By placing a hand
Inside your thigh
As if my body
Could absorb
Anger and calm you
My entire life
I have used this vessel
As the Ativan
For alcoholic men
What will I do
When it is no longer
Desirable?

The unknowing of you
Will take a lifetime
Sea salt and sage
Music in the mornings
Softness of skin
Roughness of hands
Coffee cold and sweet
Like loving you
Like losing you

The only thing I need
Right in this moment
Is someone's eyes on me
Saying I'm fine
This weather scares me
The storm and I
Are about to break

You never liked the taste of coffee,
Until you tasted it in my mouth,
Who do you drink it with now?

You, with hands like Ambien
Talking me down off the ledges
I was born and raised on
Slowing down the heart
That's beating for you now
Out of my chest
Into your hands
Safer than it was with me
I didn't need to be medicated
Just loved,
Just loved.

I'm addicted to happiness,
I wish it was my own,
I didn't leave,
When he asked me not to,
I only stayed,
Because I didn't want to.

******* tilt his head
And inspect pupils too large
And breaths to shallow
******* scoop *****
And rot out of his mouth
While he lays there immobile
******* dial 911
While he spews hatred
For you, his rescuer
His family, his only friend
******* turn a key
Locking a door for the last time
Leaving you behind.

Today I learned that I am worth at least $2.
I am worth not just a thought, but an action.
I am worth the walk to place it in my hands.
I have never felt more valuable then I do now.
Sipping a coffee I didn't know that I needed.

You are small
But you will grow
The grass will not always
Look like a forest to you
You will forget to relish the feeling
Of dirt between your toes
Your alarm will go off one morning
And you will make your way to work
And you will crush grass beneath your feet
Absent mindedly
Instead of eyeing it with wonder
And wondering what magic
Placed it there for you to play in
You will mow your lawn, and I'm sure
That you will ***** about it too
You are small, but you will grow
And the grass and I will miss you