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.

Come sit with me
in the velvet textured
yellow flower petals
and whisper the words
that the stars never speak.

the vast blackness of the night sky
holds me tightly
and gazes at the colors surrounding your heart
in a way that makes even me jealous.

and if my face appears
in your dreams tonight my love,
would you recognize it?

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.

A story learned from ages young
So slyly disguised a future hung

The tale of an egg held up so tall
One day fell down off of his wall

Broken were the pieces that once made a whole
And no efforts to repair could fix his soul

But was the story really about an egg?
Or was it a warning of what came ahead

For the sing song voiced girl
With a gleam in her eye and hair in a curl

Who too crashed down from up so high
Pieces too shattered to put back in tie.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The thing about darkness
Is that it is both temporary
And eternal

There are bouts of time
That light shines through
Piercing through it
Giving you the illusion that it is
In fact
Temporary

But the darkness is always there
Sometimes it is diminished
But it's always there.

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.

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.

your crystal eyes are
the home I never had,
reflecting back to me
fragments of the sun
that I grab hold of and
inhale into the back parts of my lungs
   like
spring flowers
I shoot into my veins
that are otherwise filled
with ice and faded memories
of a girl who used to laugh
and look at the stars

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.

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.

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

It's almost funny
How much time I can spend
Trying and trying
To string words together
In a way that resembles the way
I feel
When I'm with you.

And call it poetic,
But I've never been able to
Make the words
Fit together
So that they do justice
To how you make me feel.

And you do just that, my love.
You make me feel.

And I hate you for it.

Along you came.
How the hell was I supposed to push you away?

I'm just a little bit broken.
And a few pieces of me,
Might be missing.
And I'm so sorry
That I only have parts of a soul
Filled with turmoil
To share with you.

Because you deserve so much more than that.

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.

there once lived a poet
who had a knack for
the rain
and self destructive behavior
and somehow
turning everyone and everything
in to verses made of whispering words
gave her some sanity
or maybe it took what little sanity she had
away
she could never tell

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.

Pain is the wind.
It whispers all the things
you can't bear to hear.
You have no control over it.
It is free to pick up
and die down as it chooses.
Try to catch me it whispers
fleeting with a grin because it knows
you are subordinate to it's commands.
Try to escape me it breathes.
You are alone.
Nobody can see me
I am the only one here for you.
You should be greatful for me.
Look what I've done for you.
I gave you a home.
I'm the only thing you know.
And you know it's right.

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.

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