Last night I ran out of patience
If only I could perform an exorcism
On the demon living on 50th St
I'm not possessed, he's just possessive

I am always outgrowing my shells
The new ones never fit quite right
I just want to feel like I belong here
Like something was made just for me
I am tired of being too much of myself
One day my shell will grow with me
The world will say to me,
"You, Hermit, are just enough,
You, Hermit, have a home here."

I say hello and smile
At the same man every day
Never more words shared
Than can be said while walking by
I like him more than everyone else
I don't know what he thinks
Or what he feels
Or what keeps him up at night
Or the wounds that lie beneath his smile
And that is just perfect for me
He can't be ruined
And he cannot ruin me
I have never known a good love
I have never loved very well
So I consider these hello's
To be the most lovely words
Ever spoken
Such a small happiness
In dreaming a small dream

He has two voices
One is for lying
It sounds almost
Like love
Feels warm and wet
It's for raising
Skin and making
Shivers
It's for winning
Arguments
Changing minds
Bending morals
Unbuttoning shirts
Two is for defying
It sounds like
Seams ripping
Feels like sand paper
It's for saying yes
So loud that
No's are drowned out
It's for cornering
When convincing
Doesn't work
It's for winning
Wars
Closing mouths
Pinning down
For keeping secrets
Kept.

Today I knew,
My forever was safe,
If anyone can hold it,
It's you.

"I'll give you a ******
For every feeling you talk about"

You are everything I hate in the world,
But your smile feels like home.

It is important to remember
Something can be both terrible
And remarkably precious
I can tell you that my father
Has held me with all of the gentleness
And care one would use
To catch a snowflake in the air
He has looked at me with awe,
Love pouring out of him in a way
That overwhelmed the both of us
I can tell you that when my father
Raises his voice, I am still afraid
I do not know which is more relevant
I only know that both are true

Cigarettes stuffed
In the worn out pocket
Of a jacket
That doesn't belong to me
A walk in the rain
Early in the morning
With a dollar store lighter
That doesn't belong to me
Soaking my socks
Inhaling smoke
I have a heartache
That shouldn't belong to me

You brought peace
To a Battle fought for generations
Civil love feels like giving up
To a heart beating
In rhythm with war drums

To obsess is in my nature,
To crave with my whole self,
Anything that takes away
From my whole self

I don't have to earn
The happiness I feel
Because I exist
It is my right
To feel
Whatever I want
Yet I find myself
Measuring my days
Calculating my
Daily allowance
Of laughter
And booking in
The appropriate hours
To doubt myself

I asked you this morning if we could see my mom
I woke up alone and not at home, I miss her, you know
We drove to a graveyard, when did she go?
I swear we were in her kitchen yesterday
Us and the kids and the smell of warm bread
How could you have traveled so far through time?
Did you forget about me and leave me behind?
I reach out for anything familiar, it's just you here
Older and newer, who did this to us?
They stole my skin and changed your face,
All they've left of us is our eyes, I see you still in the blue
Are you as afraid of me as I am of you?
Just because I do not know where I am
Doesn't mean that I am not your man
Where are the kids dear? Where is the dog?
Please, can I see my mom?

The crow said to his lover
"Do not be afraid,
The farmer only has one stone"

It impossible to tell the difference now,
Whether this ache was from your absence,
Or from your presence.

I'm so afraid
That I hurt you.
I'm more afraid
That I didn't.

You matter,
If not to me,
Then to someone,
And if not to anyone at all,
I hope at least to yourself.
You may not know this,
But you're laugh is like music
And it plays in people's heads
Long after you leave the room.
Your eyes are what inspire love poems,
Poems that don't ever do them justice,
Someone is thinking about those eyes right now.
If your sadness is going unnoticed,
That doesn't make it any less valid,
I hope you find a warm shoulder to cry on soon.
Your pain is not a sign of weakness,
And I'm sorry if you feel ashamed of it,
You are lovable, not "despite of" but "because of"
Your body is beautiful because it is yours,
It is holding you together right now,
It is lovable, you are loving, so love it.
You are as magical as Christmas mornings,
As miraculous as the universe you live in,
As awe-inspiring as sunsets over oceans.
You exist.
And I love that about you.

It's not as if
It was the end of the world
Or like I didnt pull through
And survive that moment
It's just that
My entire world changed
And the parts of me that I loved
Didn't make it out alive

We looked into the darkness
You said it was bright
I trusted you
And thought myself blind
We stood out in the cold
You complained of the heat
I trusted you
And I removed my jacket
We were submerged in water
You said it was land
I trusted you
And I stopped swimming
Trust is not truth.

I am pulling weeds from the garden and I want to scream "there is nothing wrong with you there is nothing wrong with you there is nothing wrong you"
I am replacing you with something beautiful and hard to maintain because I value appearances more than growth
There is nothing wrong with dandelions i swear, please do not develop a complex, I just cannot love you unless someone else does
My father spent years weeding me and trust me it gets easier
it hurts less if you learn to hate yourself the same way
There is nothing wrong with you I just have to do this he is coming over later and he might remember he doesn't love me if he sees you here
There is nothing wrong with you but I will **** you still
Like my father
Commended for everything I grow in the wake of what I ****
There is nothing wrong with you I scream but I will throw you away and you will wonder what is wrong with you anyway
He told me I have room to grow before hugging me goodbye
There is nothing wrong with you he said
I just don't want you here

I gave you the list of reasons
Of why not to love me
You heard them all and said
"But those are why I do"

I don't know how to apologize for the bruises that are gone but I still remember, for the grooves you didn't make but fit into so well, and no of course you're not like him, but god knows he was nothing like himself either when we met, my body feels at home wrapped around your legs, but I still have to cover my throat when you lift your arms, I do not recognize love unless it is curled up inside of violence and if you don't hurt me I will so I feel like I still deserve you, you don't know it yet but even when I'm with you I will be with him, he will stand behind you until you both look the same and then I will leave you both behind but only he will follow, and I will be missing you but tasting another in the back of the throat, nothing, oh nothing, will take the taste of him away, and it's not that I can't love you, but that I can't love the part of me that loved him, and so you will never have a home inside of me, I burnt that shelter long ago.

Why do I say these things,
Only what you want to hear
Truth is more precious
Than feelings.
I know what happened that night,
So do you.

I'd rather cut the cord
Than hang myself with it.

It's okay not to fall in love,
Some of us must climb.

When I feel my ugliest
Aware of the softening
Straining and aching
Lines deepening
Changes from
Carrying little lives
I remember the skin horse
How beautifully real
I have become
As the little lives
Have loved me older
More alive

I saw the first
While I was full
I emptied myself
To fill him up
I saw the second
While I was empty
I emptied him
To fill myself up

I'm cancelling our plans again,
I listened to your playlist,
It was the first time this year,
I felt anything at all,
Happiness,
And then,


Guilt.

It's 3 am,
For a while now,
I've woken up listening for you,
Funny how I used to complain,
About your drunken wake up calls.
All I could say at your funeral,
Was that I fell in love with you,
At 3 am.

"Good morning!"s slowly died out
As did my good mornings

There will be others,
Maybe that's just a part of love,
Choosing not to fall again,
But instead to stay.

Soft and supple
Sinking in
Velvet flesh
Feels more pelt
Than man
Sweet breath in
Sour breath out
Cough clanging
Against bone
Brown eyes
Begging
Milky eyes
To meet them
You're lost
Subtly fading
Behind failing
Flesh
Come back
To me
Brittle creature
Run home
Again

Life is the burden of memory,
Forgetting is a gift of peace.

You called me
Just to say
"I'm happy"
What you meant
To say was
"I'm happy
Without you"
So I said
"I'm happy too"
But what I meant
To say was
"I still love you."

Scour the mountain peaks
Find somewhere no one knows
Scatter me in caves
Older than any bones
Long before the age of teeth
Where nothing ever grows
No jaws to gnash away my form
No men to seek a final blow
Leave me to dissolve there
The dead are safest all alone

Death is such a simple thing
To have made living so complex
To grow around an absence
Is to change your shape completely.

Skin reflecting light,
Pools of sunlight,
On your temples,
Art meets movement,
Your speech
Pours out of your hands,
I listen with my eyes,
I know you best,
When you talk to my body
With yours
I see myself best,
In those sea blue eyes,
Greener in the morning,
A storm at night.

I am a fixer,
Every man I've ever loved,
I spent all my time,
Teaching them not to hurt me,
When they stopped,
I stopped loving them.

You were always loving me "despite"
I needed you to love me "because"

I am married to memories of you
Living my life feels like cheating
On the life I had with you still in it

It's okay to want the things you shouldn't
As long as you love the things you should
I tell myself to ease this guilt
When all that remains is nostalgia
And a warm bed

And so this is what it is
To want something so badly
I wish it never existed
To want something so badly
It is all that exists