Every second rings dully in my ears,
and somehow the passing minutes still feel so loud.
Sometimes I think I’m tired,
because my eyelids feel like they weigh more than the dissipating stash of pills I keep in the back of my underwear drawer,
and it requires a real conscious effort to keep them open;
but the only thing I can really feel is this horrible restlessness
leaving claw marks that vandalize the inside of my ribcage.
This thing in my chest - I can’t tune it out. It’s so much louder than everything else. I haven’t been able to hear my heartbeat in so long I
fear I may not have one anymore.
Maybe if you spent half as much time
listening as you do grabbing,
you would’ve noticed that my cold,
clammy, hands still haven’t stopped shaking.
I drowned in the lake that day, you know;
that second Wednesday in June,
and I waited for you to jump in and pull my body out of the water like you said you would
but the water is calm,
and I’m still waiting,
and maybe that’s why all these people talking to me
sound so far away
—distant;
like how things sound when you’re underwater and
the world above just keeps going without you.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
I have wept at the edge of the earth.
I have stared death in the face and turned away
when he offered me his fractured hand.
I dance at the top of the mountain,
wishing I could grab up the sunlight washing over my
battlefield face, and pour it in a bottle
to keep hidden away in the back of my closet.
I often stifle my better judgement and lay
control of myself at the feet of a captain who only means me harm; I jump ship into the hurricane waters
Which toss me and tumble me
and churn me around without letting me up for air.
You take your lungs for granted until there’s water inside of them. You take the light for granted until it’s dark
and cold
and you can’t tell which way leads back to the shore.
But I make it back every time.
My eyes adjust to the dark,
and I remember that I know how to swim.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
The morning light streams through the basement window and
kisses my cheek so softly I can hardly feel it. With one hand I trace my fingers over the shattered bits of
outer space floating around in my blue-green veins,
and use the other to cover the bruises
and scrapes on the tops of my knees.
I don’t play the piano but I will spend the whole day trying
if it will make you smile.
And you can keep all your skeletons in my closet;
You’ll still look the same to me darling.
Here, take my last two dollars,
only one of us can get a ticket for this bus ride home
and I want it to be you.
I’m used to sleeping in alleys,
and you’ve never been without a pillow to lay your head on. Every time I will want it to be you.

Past all the white noise and thunder claps echoing
around in my mind, there’s a calm,
for I know that after my heart gives out,
whether it’s tomorrow, or when I’m old and shaky and gray;
whether it’s in a burning overturned car, or in a quiet unfamiliar hospital bed, even though it didn’t feel like it at times,

I know this all really was for something.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself
because after all the shipwrecks, salt stains, empty water bottles littering the carpet,
after all of it,
I still make it back to the shore
every time.

I’ll bet you never knew one place could be so deafening
and still so achingly silent at the same time.
Well now you do.
You don’t need to try and tell me about that feeling;
about how none of it makes sense,
about how
even though all your insides have evaporated into nothingness,
your body feels so painfully heavy that you fear
at any moment you may suddenly just sink through the floor.


I know how it makes your heart feel;
Standing in an unfamiliar place and
looking down at your cracked and calloused hands,
only to realize that it’s not actually unfamiliar at all.
The black of the night and the absence of street lights
tried their best to let you keep your ignorance,
your bliss, if you could call it that,
but they should know better. You can’t save anyone.


I know how the hair on the back of your neck stands up
and the frigid wind washes over you
and sinks it’s teeth straight into your bones.
I know how your lips start to tremble and
your knees quake like somebody
took the bone out and put jelly back in instead.
How your breath catches in your throat and you
look around the void with your frantic eyes, looking for anything to grab on to.


How the same frantic eyes turn dark and damp
once you realize that they’re all just past versions of you.
Pale and blue and faded,
Crying for something,
begging,
pleading.
Their mouths are moving,
and your mouth is moving but
no matter how hard you squeeze your eyes shut and scream,
no sound will come out.

Darling I must say that I’m

            quite surprised to see you here.

     Not that it’s unlike you to show up unannounced,
and track mud throughout my living room,
     even though I just had the carpet redone.
But how can I yell at you while
                  you’re sitting here
          coughing up bits and pieces of        broken piano keys and tainted silver?

I would ask how they got inside you in the first place,

but I won’t

because I don’t think I would very much like the answer.

But you’re here, on my couch,

making a mess of things just like I taught you how,

and the kettle hasn’t begun to scream yet,
         so let’s talk.
That is what you came here to do isn’t it?

Well maybe I don’t want to talk.
        Did you ever even consider that?
Maybe I don’t want to think about January anymore.
                After all these years,
      after all these frost bitten cheeks and lost sunglasses and nails bitten down to the quick,
maybe I want to get out of this car.


                                   I don’t,
but I can’t very well tell you that now can I?
No, I can’t.

Don’t worry about the bruises on the wall or the shadow in the corner.
      You’re not.
You’re not even looking.

How are you?
Fine.
Nice weather we’ve been having.

     Yeah maybe,
except the air is always so cold that there’s ice in my lungs and it
        never stops being Tuesday.
Don’t just look at me, say something. Or if you won’t, then at least  build a fire.
           No, I’ll do it.
Go lay down,
there’s a space in my bed next to Nostalgia that’s
      probably still warm.
            Just throw the book on the floor.
I can put it away if it means you’ll stay awhile.

Turn the heat down, turn the lights off
                  this is all just temporary.
      We don’t have to talk about the car crash or the window or what’s buried in that yard.
      Focus only on my skin now.
We can think about that night in the pool later,
         when you’ve gone home again and turned up the music so loud          that you can’t hear the gunshots.

I have to say that I’m quite
               disappointed,
      and slightly offended by your
lack of attention to detail.
Don’t you remember
     when you were eight years old,
             all filled with soda pop and sidewalk chalk,

and you won that fish at the state fair for something silly
          like knocking over three milk bottles stacked on each other with
    four tries and a baseball.

Who the hell needs four tries for that?

But you won the fish and made it a home
           in a small glass bowl set on top            
                               of your nightstand.

Four days later while you were at school your mom discovered it floating belly up,
          flushed it down the toilet and rushed out of the house
      coming back twenty minutes later     with a fish similar enough to keep you from noticing
          that anything had changed at all.


Oh well,
     I’ll keep that in it’s wooden box at the back of my closet,
Let you keep your ignorance.
Let you keep your bliss.
    And I will sit quietly in the backseat
                   of your car while you drive,
and watch all the different girls
   get in and out of the passenger seat.

But I will never buckle my seatbelt,
     and always keep the door unlocked

just to see if it will scare you enough to turn around.

My insides have evolved into a dry and barren desert.
At one point.
long ago,
they felt like a square of sidewalk during a particularly heavy rain;
being beaten down on by the drops of water
and the feet of people running to get inside.
Wet and palpable.
But now I'm just filled with miles and miles of this harshly arid sand
and a dry, scorching air that often feels like it's suffocating me.
It's a terribly hopeless place to be.
An absence of all feeling except an uncomfortable dissatisfaction with life
and nothing to grab hold of.

She was everything. She was just this presence - this force that felt so much larger than anything else you’d ever experience in this dreary life. She was her own species; too magnificent to be meek, mortal humans like the rest of us. She hadn’t been made for this earth, and it must’ve been by some cosmic mishap that anybody ever even got the chance to encounter her. There was both an unyielding passion and an aching discontentment for life coursing through her. She would look you straight in the face with this sort of empathy that wrapped some feeling of importance and worth around you so softly that it paralyzed you. She had a deep and unwavering fascination with people. She wanted to know them. She wanted to know what touched them in ways that made their chests feel tighter because their hearts swelled up with bliss. She wanted to know what made them collapse onto the bathroom floor and sob so hard that it stopped their breathing. She wanted to what made them feel. And perhaps this was because she had been born with an awful, aching loneliness that hung in her chest. She rarely ever let anyone close enough to touch her, but even when she did, it was as if there was this sort of magnetic field lining her insides that wouldn’t allow anything to reach through. There had been a terrible war raging inside her for as long as she could remember. And she was often in pain. At times, she was gripped with such an intense and piercing sadness that each beat of her heart felt like a knife being twisted further and further into her stomach. The kind of agony that blocks out everything else. And during these times, she wanted to die. Other times, she was subjected to an absence of any feeling at all. Her mother often walked in on her sitting cross-legged on her floor, staring at the small chip in the blue paint on her bedroom wall. No matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t even able to remember what caring about anything felt like. She was overtaken by an emptiness that was incapable of being filled. She was a contradiction of a girl; the softest ray of light marbled with veins of dangerously black abyss. She was not designed for survival, but she sure as hell was designed for something. She lived brighter, harder. She knew that the demons swimming around inside her made it so that loneliness would be all she ever ended up at. No one else would ever experience the state of life she resided in; and while she felt comfort in knowing that nobody else had to feel the way she did, that sort of isolation is a slow and inescapable type of suffocation. And so she lived. She was a shooting star, moving so fast that all anybody else could do was stand in awe and watch. Watch till she burned up. Watch till her breath ran out. And then, one day, there was nothing. Our star had burned out, and the world felt so hopelessly dark. People still went about their lives; going to work, going to school, going to the grocery store and forgetting to buy milk; and people remembered her and people forgot her, and some days I just have a hard time with it all. She was everything, you know? And I guess I just wish you could save people.

It's heavy tonight and every movement feels like a paper cut.
I thought I might be getting a cold but I just keep coughing up broken piano keys. It’d be no use going to the doctor, he’d probably just ask me something sharp like when the last time i felt loved was, or if i still pulled the heads off daisies like i started doing after you left. Jesus I wish you had left. You’re gone but you’re ******* everywhere. Does it get hard to breathe for you too? I’ve realized that missing you comes in two different forms. One is wild. Frantic. The kind that makes me gasp for air and rock back and forth hugging my knees. My mothers seen it enough now that it no longer concerns her. It’s desperate. It’s hysterical. It’s us. But the other is quiet. The other is breathing so steadily that you can hear the absolute silence in my ribcage. God that kind of quiet aches. It just aches and all you can feel is the absence of everything. Of anything. Of you. Of us. There’s never a clean break is there? You can never lose someone and not have jagged edges cutting into your sides every time you try to look at the moon or an old t-shirt or your favorite mug with a chip in the handle. I don’t know why I keep shouting at the sky like there’s a God up there, or like he’d be listening to me even if there was. I guess all I’ve learned from all of this is that sometimes love is just sitting at a bus stop but waving by every one that stops. And it tastes a lot like drinking cough syrup when you’re not even sick.

And that’s us.

The clock keeps ticking and im still bleeding but the paramedics stopped operating right after I started asking for you because they knew I was a goner. These broken teeth taste like piano keys and jesus, why is it so cold in here? Hell isn't real and the punishment for our sins are these tattered lullabies and the photos hidden in the backs of drawers your mother doesn't look in. I met god once and all I remember is feeling the wind whistling through the exit wounds on my back as he tried to muster up the courage to ask if he could *** a cigarette. Nobody will tell me where you are and these fluorescent hospital lights won't cut me a break. I keep burning my mouth on this coffee because I guess I've run out of patience for everything except you. Even though I hope you question it sometimes, I hope you always wear your seatbelt. My nails are bitten and somebody forgot to tell me that the only two options when letting go are to drop it so it shatters, or release it so gently that it aches forever. I'm kicking and screaming but no one will look at me and it might be the painkillers but the only thing I love anymore are the bruises on my legs and jesus christ somebody change this ******* song.

It's been six months but I'm still waiting for the paint to dry. I'm getting better but the exit wounds on my back still start to ache some nights. And some mornings. And some afternoons when all I have to do is glance at my hands. I keep trying to bring flowers to your grave but I can't find it anywhere. How did we get this far from honesty? Why are my lips always chapped? When is God going to fix this? I'm sorry I haven't written much lately but I guess eventually you run out of things to say when you're talking to someone who isn't even there anymore. Nobody will look me in the eyes and everything is just wrong. The phone won't stop ringing and every time I answer I just hear a younger version of myself laughing and calling to my mother to watch me go down the slide. And I keep having this dream about a car crash and I always wake up after someone in the waiting room glances at me and whispers, "does she always cry like that?" It's late and I haven't stopped driving and the lights are all blurring but I hope it's never cold wherever you are and I hope you're never tired and you never burn your tongue and I hope that at least it used to be hard for you too.

You can tell a lot about a person by the scars they have on their hands. But it's hard feeling the crash turn back into the wave and you can't stop wishing you would've listened when your mother warned you about playing with sharp things. They didn't feel sharp at the time, But I guess they never do. and I'm still trying to decide if you can love a person too much, and if that's something ill ever understand. It's almost Halloween. Do you remember halloween last year? Do you remember how we were falling in love? I'm starting to forget things. I haven't been able to smell you on this blanket in weeks. And I keep seeking even though you're not hiding but my voice is getting tired and eventually you run out of things to say when you're talking to someone who isn't there anymore. All I really know is that it rains a lot and it's kind of sad that sometimes life really is just glimpses of pictures you took off your walls in the trash and love's footprints leading out the door.

I don't know where you are tonight
but the air in my room tonight just feels a little bit heavy
and I'm a little but drunk
and I can't stop listening to the last voicemail you left me
and thinking about how cliche it is that it's you telling me you loved me
and how you always knew I loved cliche things
but my blanket still doesn't feel heavy enough
and the window I left open for you is letting cold air in
and I can't stop wasting my 11:11 wishes on trying to  feel you fall out of love with me like the life draining from a car crash victim instead of the desperation of the lover having to watch from behind the caution tape
Does that make sense?
I haven't been making much sense at all lately
I hope you think of me when you're drunk
I think you at least owe me that
I loved you
I really ******* loved you
I still ******* LOVE YOU
WHERE ARE YOU
I miss you.
All these people are worried about me
I'm fragile I guess I
have to be worried about
They keep telling me that
time heals all wounds
But it still hurts to breathe whenever I smell Indian chai tea
with too much milk
And not quite enough sugar
And I can still see the
scar on my left knee from
Where you scratched me
I got so mad when you did that
I'm sorry I got mad
I'm sorry
I'm just so sorry.

I guess open roads remind me of you because every time I merge onto a freeway or interstate the blood starts leaking through the bandages on my exit wounds again. And as the days continue to go by, the only thing I realize is how much I do not know. I don't know how to tell my mother to stop looking for anything other than a damp forrest floor in my eyes. I don't know how to stop screaming at the wind every time it whispers your name and I do not know how to release my grip on the back of the car you are trying to drive away from me. I don't know how to make my heart beat for something other than the flow of air in your lungs. I don't know how to try and look at the ocean and not see your eyes and I most certainly do not know how to think of you as anything other than a shooting star that I was too captivated by to even make a wish. I do not know how to make you think of my head on your chest when you smell earl grey tea in the late hours of the afternoon and I don't know how to fade the burn marks your leaving left. But I do know that my mother cries a lot now, and I'm hoping this road rash scars in a way that won't look like you walking away from me.

We are ultimately alone in this world. We are born alone, and we will die alone. And while this is a sad truth, it is still a truth. But sometimes, by fate or by chance, life throws someone at us who maybe, in some way, just makes us forget our impending alone-ness. And the greatest sin to be committed in this lifetime would not be the way you take The Lord's name in vain the first moment you realize you love her, but it is letting one of these people slip out of your grasp because while we may ultimately be alone, loneliness is a god ****** awful thing to feel.

I don't know why I keep writing you letters as if you will ever read them or really understand what they mean. I'm just struggling with the fact that it's two months later and I still know the pattern in your eyes so well I could make a blind man feel like he knew them too. It was supposed to get easier, but all that I feel lessening is my faith in destiny because God never would've let me hold your hand if if wasn't forever he's not that cruel. But my hand is empty and yours is probably in somebody else's. And I seem to be the only one who understands how that is an injustice to the world. I'm starting to wonder if this is some joke I haven't been let in on because it makes no sense why the heavens are not in an uproar watching you forget what my smile looks like.  And I never seem to be able to think of how to end these letters but maybe that's because there is no end, at least for me. It's never going to be over and I'm going to have to live my life with skinned elbows and a broken compass just praying that someday you'll come home.

Feel the melodies in the way laughter sounds both in the soft light of morning and the seamless night with only the moon and stars illuminating the path in front of you, and appreciate their differences. Take every opportunity to see the humanity in the people around you because I promise it is a beautiful and inspiring thing. Let the passion through your eyes when you're talking about the things you love with everything you are because that light might just be the beacon somebody else needs to remember how to live again. Accept that you can not accept everything and fight for what is worth fighting for, you'll know what it is when the time comes. Not everybody is going to love you the way you deserve to be loved but be greatful for the ones who do and make sure you are always generous with forgiveness because people are people. Feel hurt as deeply as you need to but make sure you do the same for happiness. Words are powerful so Know what needs to be said, and also know when you should be silent. If it's ever dark and you can't find your way home, dig up that old letter you wrote to yourself when you were 5 and I promise you'll know exactly how to go on. Feel every emotion as deeply as you can because nothing shallow is ever worth your time and you only have so much of that, so spend it being an energy that will never be known as anything other than honest.

This is a letter to the girl you finally settle down with.

Dear You,

You probably don't know me, and you probably never will. You don't know me. But you do know him. I also knew him. He was my first love, and I like to think I was his too. Nobody will ever be good enough for him, not you, not me. He is the best kind of guy. He will make you fall in love with him but you won't even be scared because you know he's going to be there to catch you before you ever hit the ground. Make sure you take every chance you get to look in his eyes,  because it never gets old seeing the entire universe in them. He will give you himself entirely, and will be patient with you even if you're too scared to do the same. I swear to you there won't be a moment you aren't laughing as long as you're near him. And if it ever gets too dark or cold, he is always warmer than any blanket and his smile will always light the way home. And if you see smoke when he kisses you, don't worry, it's just from the fireworks you'll feel in your chest. He will wipe your tears before they fall off your cheeks and he will tell you "everything will be ok" in a way that you have to believe it. Sometimes he gets mad, just let him listen to his music and tell him dumb jokes until he smiles. He loves banana peppers on his sandwiches so make sure you ask for extra. If you're sick he will give you a big t shirt to wear and make you toast and watch and movie with you while you fall asleep on his chest.He wants to take care of you so let him carry your bag and make you things to eat, he'll appreciate it, and he makes the best tea. And if you ever go to a haunted house like we did on our first date, he'll be brave and walk in front with you even though he's terrified but would never say so. He'll hold your hand even if it's sweaty.

And you might already know all of these things, but I know them too, and I will never forget a single one of them. He will always be the best love I've ever had, and losing him is the hardest thing I will ever deal with in my life, but he wasn't ready, and I wasn't enough. I wasn't the one for him I guess. So be glad that you are.

Sincerely,
Love Bug

My grandmother always used to tell me that July was the best month for a wedding. It was the only month you could count on to not have rain. And she was right, as long as I can remember, not once have I seen rain in July.
It did rain however, that last Wednesday in May you still looked at me like I had stardust in my hair and the amazon river in my eyes. And it also rained, that Thursday in June, when I wrote you the last of many letters I never sent you. And now I'm 2,000 miles from you realizing that even when I was still in the same zipcode, we were galaxies apart. I was stuck on a planet with a very stable climate of a constant downpour, and I don't know where you were, but I do know that it was nowhere near me.

And today marks 30 days I've been dead in the water, calling your name and hoping that wind really never does die. I still don't know much but it has to mean something that it's July and it hasn't stopped raining.

I can say with an honest conscience that a year ago I never would've thought my reality would be what it has become. I could not have predicted that I would be sitting here now, in the home of an old family friend, if you could even use that term since they don't know me at all, No one does, eating blueberries 2 at a time maybe trying to fill an aching hole in my body that I can't even see. I also never would've been able to tell you how a single person can so entirely become your environment and how If said person disappears, you're left standing in the middle of a Forrest you don't recognize with nothing but scrapes on your knees and a broken compass. And no matter how hard you fall to the ground or how desperately you yell their name, the fact that you are 10 minutes late and stuck in an old dream will never make them feel bad looking at the bullet shells on the ground in front of them from the rounds they fired into your chest. Because no matter how much you love someone it will not make them miss you. But maybe that's a lesson I'll never learn.

I started having to sleep with a nightlight on again. It just gets too dark at night now that I don't get to see your face anymore. The artificial brightness that is absolutely nothing in comparison to you makes it a little harder to fall asleep but maybe that's the point because the nightmares that play when I do fall under are getting unbearable. I spent $14 on a dream catcher that does nothing to protect me from having to see your god ****** eyes every time I shut mine. And I guess the light makes it better when I wake up from another dream where it almost feels like we are dancing around your kitchen together again, but you of all people should know that I only like to cry in the dark.

Reaching.
Reaching out my hand
Feeling the cool worn fabric
Of the bed sheets accross from me,
Where I would steal every star in space just to have your body laying there
So that instead of finding
The crushing emptiness that already
Hangs in my ribcage,
Tightening it's chilling grip as gently as such a malevolent force can,
Instead of my finger tips encountering this as I stretch my arm out in the middle of another night I can't stop dreaming of your eyes the last time I ever saw them, I could maybe touch a trace of your existence again. I could feel the crippling weight in my chest be lifted as my grasping fingers grab hold of some piece of you. Any piece of you; your painstakingly bright smile, the light in your heart breakingly blue eyes that I still swear could power the New York skyline as long as you wanted it to, maybe the slow steady beat of your heart that I can still sometimes hear in our favorite song.
Then maybe I could breathe again.

I used to dread the
numbness that would envelop me
Any time the wind told it to.
Every cell of me suddenly
Unable to recognize
A purpose I so desperately needed to
Grab hold of
Reaching with every ounce of energy
Present in my body,
Clasping so tightly that the bones in my hands broke in so many places that the doctor cried
Willing myself to obtain any sort of traction on the sensation of
A will to live that loved to slip
Through my fingers as if I was trying to hold on to the air vibrations that I recognized as your laugh.

And I suppose that it's true that you just always want what you can't have,
Because now I'm crumpled up
Naked and demolished  
Having the wind knocked out of me again and again
As the unimaginable pain of
A black hole, that now occupies the space of the heart I carefully cut out and trusted you with was, continues to try and pump blood through dry and brittle veins, but just doesn't know how. And I'm very aware that it is a biological certainty that a lack of circulation results in death.

And if I still had anything of worth, I'd trade it in a second for the numbness that was taken for granted. The remedy that would right now save all my internal organs from seizing up due to the completely paralyzing hurt that is now the genetic makeup of every blood cell in my body, scratching up the interior walls of my veins because of the disagreement between the razor sharp spikes that have grown on every molecule of blood that I wish I would let myself drain, every one laced with extremely concentrated shots of inescapable doses of loneliness to be diffused into the deepest parts of your being covering each one, and the exhausted and fragile state of the paths being subjected to the anguish of scar tissue never being able to heal.

If only words could bring the dead back to life.

If only that mother could tell her baby girl she was so sorry that she only now understood that you didn't have to have a reason to feel hopelessly broken and that she was sorry that she never believed that not knowing how to fix those broken pieces, because you didn't know why they were broken, could ever be listed as a cause of death. And if only that woman weeping, laying naked clutching a picture of a smiling girl preserved in her youth forever, could say something that would give her one more chance to get to see her baby light up the room with the sunbeams that always shone out through the spidering cracks in the black glass shell of a perpetual hurt that covered her so completely that the space around her became listed as the only place on earth where no trace of heat or oxygen ever existed.
If only words could bring the dead back to life.

And if only this poem was actually about my mother and I. If only this poem wasn't really about how my chest cavity feels like it's filled with water because I'm afraid I will never find the words to bring you back to me.

I don't want to hate daisies.
I love daisies.
I love daisies so much they might even be my favorite flower.
And I don't want to hate daisies.

But I have to hate daisies.
I have to hate daisies because I was stupid enough
To let myself fall in love.
And I was stupid enough
To let myself fall in love,
Before I looked where I would land.
And before I could even shut my eyes
I was laying naked on the ground
With a spinal fracture and
Bullet holes in my chest.

And I didn't  know how to continue living,
feeling the breeze that would've given you tiny goosebumps, and made you fold your arms across you chest, whistle through your exit wounds.
Hearing it whisper your name every time I blink my eyes.

So I went and I broke my last promise to you.
And I didn't do it to hurt you.
And I didn't do it because I had a choice.
I did it because I can't get the image of the layers of all the shades of blue in your eyes out of my brain.
And how do you expect me to continue living knowing I'll never feel
The heat radiating off the trees burning in the forrest fire that was the way you kissed me.

And I'll never tell this to you,
But before I ripped out every sane thought in my head that always put the cap back on the pill bottle,
I prayed that if there really is a God up there,
That he would stay with me,
And keep just a gasp of air in my lungs
So that I'd wake up
And maybe
Hopefully
You would be there holding my hand,
And I'd be able to see you smile at me one last time.

But God is just too good at his job I guess,
Because I swallowed those dumb things an hour ago;
50 minutes ago;
Contemplating the probability of the existence of heaven and hell
As I waited for the final words of the book to dissolve into my bloodstream
And to finally, print the all-to-predictable
Ending of the story in relaxed letters of black ink.

I will not be sorry that I don't want to live in a world where I have to fall asleep in the cold air that has seemed to replace the way lullabies played in my chest feeling your arms wrapped around me.

But God is too good at his job. Because the blackness I needed never came over me. And instead of feeling my broken heart slow to shallow beats, and my breaths become as slow as the seconds did in every moment we ever had between me telling you I loved you and waiting for you to say it back,
I only felt nothing.

And I frowned at myself for being relieved at first.
Because in the morning when I lose the temporary escape from every cell in my body screaming for your touch that sleep will bring me, I know I will wish more than anything that my lungs had been idle for hours and that my body was as icy and stiff physically, as my every move will feel, having to function without feeling the air vibrations caused by your laugh.

When I first started writing this half an hour ago, my intent was to express the unexpected paralysis
And comfort
That was flowing too quietly under my skin
And how, while it was only temporary,
I felt almost okay.
I could barely feel the dull ache hanging in my ribcage,
And I felt like maybe I would even genuinely smile again someday.

And I'd always loved gambling
But I'm pushing my luck too far,
And things are starting
to come into focus again.

And I'm racking my brain
Desperately trying to come up with
Something I could do to
That would convince the universe to give me back the privilege of feeling my body temperature increase by a number of degrees that I never bothered it measure due to the electricity that sparked in every atom making up all the bones in my skeletal structure in the high that I got every single time I looked at you.

But the only thing I am able to understand right now,
Is that I'm never going to be able to live a day in my life that I don't wish I had spent with you.
And that I hate daisies
Because they remind me too much of you.

It's 12:06 AM
And I lost you today.

I actually lost you quite a while ago
I guess,
And was just grasping at something
That had disintegrated.

But I really lost you today.

And I can't breathe
Because my veins are currently being flooded with
An infinity of moments
In which I fell in love with you,
Taking up all the room in my blood,
So no oxygen is getting anywhere
At all.

And it's a weird feeling
Not being able to decide if your rapid breathing is being caused by
Your heart completely giving out,
Or your lungs trying to catch up to your running away from every trace of his presence.
Feeling like you were just possessed by
Every demon that ever crept into your bones,
And feeling a relief.

I'm terrified.
Im so terrified of having to
Snip apart the seams that sewed us together.
Every ******* second spent with you being a stitch in the warmest blanket I ever slept in.
And I hate the cold.

And if anyone out there knows, could you please tell me how to not think of him whenever I see the moon.

I'd always thought
That when you finally left me
I'd use that pain to write poems
The best ones Id ever written
Because the most passionate pieces of us
Are hurt.
Pain is the emotion we feel the deepest.
And I thought I'd be able to use it
In a way that cleansed me of you
But now that you're gone,
I see I was wrong.
I can't even lift up a pen.
In fact
I think I want to burn every ****
Paper I have scribbled words accross
Trying to describe you to people
Who would never understand.
Now that you're gone
I hate poetry.
I hate metaphors
I hate similes
I HATE THEM BECAUSE YOU YOURSELF ARE THE GREATEST POEM EVER WRITTEN.
And you're gone.

5:16 PM

Not everything meaningful
Has to be written
In the middle of the night you know.

Just like not every time he breathes
A flower must bloom.

And you try so hard to convince yourself of this,
That you carve it into your own skin,
Deeper and deeper and deeper until
The words are physically engrained
In black letters on your ribcage

Which all sounds sort of scary.
Especially to people who always
Double knot their shoelaces.

At 5:16 in the afternoon
On a Sunday, when there are at least
7 other things your mother would
Rather have you doing,
It is ok to admit that even though you
Said your biggest fear was spiders,
You are scared beyond compare;

Not of loving him,
Because loving him is the only thing you've ever done, that
hasn't made you feel like you're
desperately forcing puzzle pieces together
that do not fit,

But of your souls assimilating,
painting the most beautiful
piece of art that heaven ever saw,
And one day, watching him wake up,
feeling the light disappear from your smile as you reach for the love you used to see in his eyes,
And being stripped of every **** thing you thought you knew, as you realize it's no longer there.

And neither is he.

And it's almost sad
That the messy
Scribbled handwriting
On the back of a crumpled old napkin
That tries so hard to convey you
Through only the most diverse
Array of adjectives
Will never be able to make a reader
Really see the storm in you eyes
Or taste the apple flavored Chapstick
Covering the lips that you use to
Do things like both kiss me,
And tear me to pieces.

It's indescribably lonely
Being the only person
In an infinite amount of space
That will ever understand the unparalleled purity of the little phenomenons that are you,

But at the same time,
If anyone else were ever able to experience
These things as well,
I'd never breathe again.

They say the sun is the only star in our solar system.

They've obviously never met you.

All I ever was
Before you looked at me
Was the point of a staple
That wriggled it's way out of
The carpet on your bedroom floor
And kept finding my way into
Your skin
Just because I loved to hear you say,
"Ow what did I just step on?"
But then one day you found me,
And my hands were shaking as you
Pulled me out of your foot
And tossed me
Into the trashcan by your desk
Like I was nothing.
How could you.

If there's one thing I've learned,
It's that love is real
And it does exist.
And you have no idea
What it is like
Until you're over your head in it.
And there's never really a specific moment
In which you fall in love with someone.
After a while, you just realize that
The way they squeal a little
When they laugh to hard,
Or how they always get  way too many banana peppers on their snadwich,
Or how they jump out from behind a corner and scare you
And laugh hysterically because you screamed,
Even though they knew you would.
Or how their heartbeat sounds when they're holding you in your arms,
Are things that you can't imagine ever living without.

And if you ever went to Subway with another person,
And they didn't ask for extra banana peppers,
It just wouldn't feel right.

And I love you.

I was really sad
for a really long time
And sometimes
I'm still sad
I guess
But what I have learned
Is that no matter what happens
There is always hope.
And that's what kept me here
Was the hope that one day
Flowers would look less gray
And I'd laugh a little more
And everything would turn out ok.

broken bones and split lips
are the only things in the world that will ever come close to knowing
how my heart does as the light sets from it
like the most haunting sunset you’ve ever seen,
and you hate it, because it breaks your heart,
but you can’t seem to tear your eyes away.



IT’S 11:39 PM
AND IM TIRED OF LIVING
AND YOU’RE THE OnLY THING
STOPPING ME FROM SWALLOWING THIS BOTTLE OF PILLS
AND

I think maybe they make animal skin drums
from the hides of mental patients
because they don’t really need their skin anyway.

and maybe you’re a fan of sad songs,
because that’s exactly what you are.
maybe they make you cry because you can taste
the hauntingly naked notes in the tears that pool in your eyes from
the surface tension (quiz you failed) and eventually sometimes lose their grip
and slide down you face, caught by the corners of your mouth.
maybe they’re the only thing you listen to
because they


maybe I can only write fragments of poems because I only know fragments of these feelings

i'll sit here alone
and try to decide which is heavier;
my eyelids or my heart.
and while I ponder this decision
even though tears fall from my hollow eyes
stinging my face like acid as they roll
and even though my hands are wrapped
around my stomach so tightly,
they may actually sink through my skin
far enough to touch my spine
and even though these sobs that I'm heaving
as if the light in your smile depended on my lack of oxygen,
are gripping me so tightly, i almost forget what it's like to be able to
breathe.
I will use every last ounce of life in me
to shine a flashlight through my eyes,
so they look a little lighter,
and stitch up the corners of my mouth,
into something that will make you think I'm not dying
and every cell in my body will ******* when you fall for it.

it's 10:32 pm
and im tired
and im sad
and those are the only things
that i know for sure.

the static breaking
the space in which silence travels
but not loud enough for my
ears to hear
over the memory of the childlike
innocence in the laugh you graced
the world with moments ago,
as soon as the atoms of you
leave the company of mine,
ever fiber in my body
that was just on fire with the electricity
produced by your touch lingering on my skin
slows down to a feeling of still numbness
with as much heat as a steady candle flame
instilling within me a feeling of longing
each cell in me, gripped,
crippled, by this aching unwholeness
but in a way that is backed by almost a
lining of hope,
hope in looking forward to knowing that when I see you next
the fire that's gone now,
will be back stronger than ever.
Does that make sense?

The melody of lovers eyes
Is the purest
And perhaps most haunting
Song that will ever grace the ears
Of any living creature.
You can hear the notes held in the stare,
Sharing space with tangible
Electricity
The soft glow of a candle flame
And the words "I love you" being whispered
So quietly that  not even the wind could
Hear them.

we are the dampened muddy leaves
Littering Forrest floors in that
Time that's not quite yet winter
But not quite still fall

We are the pebbles at the bottom
Of an ancient river
Being eaten away at with each
Passing current

We are the spidering cracks
in the ice coating the ground
Inviting some unfortunate stranger
To come lose traction on our surface

We are the veins inside the
Flower stem
Begging for recognition past the
Garish petals who get all the notice

We are nothing
And we are everything

cry in the meadow to
let the lighting bugs
catch your tears
selfless as they are,
knowing the salty manifestations
of those demons climbing up your throat
will put their lights out,
just like it did to you.

tainted lungs make for harder breathing
teary eyes make for harder seeing
broken hearts make for harder healing
empty chests make for harder being
lights burn out
people shout
dreams die
and people cry
darkness is contagious
you can not get away from this
and so you sit here and rhyme these words
but dead you'll be before they're ever heard.

Because life is dangerous.

why are you sad?
Should I blame you?
I want to.
I wish so badly that I could point my finger
and truly believe myself when I
curse you for hurting me this way.
Should I blame God?
Why did you let this happen to me?
What the hell are you doing up there?
Why are you sad?
Should I blame destiny?
It was always supposed to end up like this.
HELP ME!
WHY AREN'T YOU HELPING ME?
And the reality that I am to blame for this,
reaches out it's icy cold hands and wraps them around my neck,
choking every last bit of air from my lungs.
WHY ARE YOU SAD?*
I can never escape my own mind.
I'm trapped here forever.
Suffocating.
slowly,

s u f f o c a t i n g

Sit with me on the ridge, to watch the sun come up,
and for a single moment,
gaze at the moon
in a fleeting instant before they are once again forced apart.
And even after they are separated,
you can feel the rays of warmth from her that beat down on the back of your neck.
They rays that whisper old love songs and feelings of wholeness.
And for a minute,
they almost sound as beautiful as the words "
I love you" did
when they escaped your lips

I live in a house with a girl called Lyssa.
She screams a lot,
cries too.

I tell her to smile, to laugh.
I tell her that good things can happen.
I tell her that I wish she would feel better.

This only makes her cry more.
And scream a little louder.

Our house is small, and only one of us can be in it at a time.
I live there mostly when it’s sunny
and I plant flowers.

I live there until a rain cloud arrives, and Lyssa comes to take my place.
Sometimes even, I have to leave sooner.
She has tendencies of showing up unexpectedly.
And killing the flowers I planted.

I’ve told her to leave,
that I can’t live with her anymore because her rain falls too often.

But she always comes back,
and I’m just afraid one day,
she won’t leave.