--

1. Learning how to swim has never been easier

2. It's like riding a bike for the first time without the training wheels

3. You make me feel like trees in the spring

4. You are my favorite book. Not just pretty in pictures, but captivating with your words

5. It's like the feeling you get waking up on Saturday mornings. warmth

6. Your name is my favorite name to write in the sand

7. I fall like crimson leaves before it's time

8. You make me feel like a child all over again

This past summer I burned for a writer.
Our first date, by a lake.
We sat on this old, worn out picnic table.
I should have known it wasn't going to work out.
We talked.
Hand in hand, crossing running water,
Dark.
The road was rocky and unstable and it  was the same way out.
I should have known it would turn out this  way.
She wrote all over me.
Touching,
Leaving fingerprints mistaken as ink stains.
She was writer and pen and keyboard and  backspace.
I was paper
and just paper.
She took me home
Lips to lips,
up in flames I went
She did that to me.
3rd degree burns shouldn't have felt that right.
I should have known,
I should have known
This was all too good
I was too good.

She asks, "Do you have tsunamis where you live?"

- Yes.

"What's it like?"

- You couldn't imagine
- You don't know an ocean that washes up bodies
- The monster under your bed
- The one mommy and daddy can't save you from
- The Red Sea
- Salty lungs
- Last breaths
- A new scar
- An old story
- New beginnings
- It's here
...
- You're right in front of her

Do you remember

fireflies in your stomach?
sun on our skins?
your drum solo in my chest?

Your car crash eyes

Do you remember the crash?

It was an accident
we were never supposed to happen

I find myself in the palm of your hands and my only thought was you were never invited.

I was just another ******* country you visited without a passport

I was Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941,
Showers of debris and dust,
You left me in the wreckage
destroyed
damaged

alone

But you came back and picked me up from the shambles only this time I did not feel whole

Pieces of me must have been left scattered beneath all the cement and rubble after the bomb,
your bomb

But I'm still here
picking up my own pieces

I never needed you in the first place

A voice -
sweet blades that cut deep
creates wounds you want to keep

Sure of her words
she does not stutter
she does not stutter
I repeat
she does not stutter

She whispers sweet nothings into your ear

Buildings,
Ships,
Spines

All
fall in her direction

You fall in her direction

It's heart break all over

again

The kind you want, but don't need
The kind you love, but don't want

It's child's-play
The swings ****
And we go back and forth, but we
only go farther

She wants me to jump off
I want me to jump off

I do

And did it hurt

again

But we love going on the swings
because we never learn
because I never learn

I mean it can't hurt like the first time, right?

What if we jump off at the same time?

Simultaneous.
Together.

We took a drive around town to places we've never been and all signs read:

SLOW
BUMP
STEEP HILL

STOP
CAUTION-- FLAMMABLE
NO TRESPASSING
TOXIC HAZARD
PRIVATE PROPERTY
DO NOT ENTER
RESERVED
DEAD END

WHEN
FLOODED
TURN AROUND
DON'T DROWN

She made a painting out of me
Not to say that I was a new canvas, but that I could still be used
Like I'm her favorite time to waste her days
Reckless with her brushes
She took black and spread it across covering all the white
It's never just black and white with her, just grays and blues
Mostly blues
The crystal clear tear blues
The deep water I can't swim in blues
The bruise blues
I mean it's just a painting, right?

Her masterpiece

Poor little rich boy.
25 hours a day.
He's happy when he's sad.
He could do it in his sleep.
She said too much, but not enough.
It's a reminder,
he won't remember.
They can start at the end

Living dead

--

1. You're the sweater I would wear in the middle of July

2. I see you in every reflection in the deepest of puddles

3. I sketch you onto any canvas just to feel whole again

4. You are my mother's favorite flowers

5. You kiss my ex's name out of my mouth

6. My fondest memory of you was the way your hands felt the first time they were mine

7. I found a perfect bench for us

8. Nothing was ever the same

ive been dreaming good dreams lately
and
they
have
been
about
you

Do you lose sleep over me? Like I do over you?
Maybe my expectations were too high.

I hope this passes.