I smell like abuse,
and you lit a match just to watch me burn.

and you should tell her whose heart you still have
tucked away in the back pocket of your jeans.
and she deserves to know who sold it to you
in the first place for morning kisses
and cold feet in the bed,
because she plants her lips like daisies onto yours at night
and wears knee socks beneath the duvet.
and it's 3 A.M. and you're thinking about taking a drive
and she is fast asleep,
so you take your jeans and your cigarettes
and step on the gas, alone in your Camaro.
and it's still 3 A.M. when you pull into my driveway
and i'm awake, too.
and i say nothing when you unlock the door
and puff clouds through my kitchen.
but i should've known you couldn't remember
if it was my heart
or the nicotine
that you were addicted to,
and yet i padded to where you were,
pulled out your mug from the cabinet
and i thought about how much you traded
when it came to her.

you told me you liked blondes,
so i bleached my hair.

you said you preferred coffee to tea,
so i made espresso every morning.

and you told me you loved me,
but then you found a girl with dark hair,
who actually liked coffee
and didn't love you back.

so you boxed up my heart,
and mailed it to me with no return address,
because you told me i had changed.

and i went back to brunette,
and drank my chamomile with two sugars,
and never opened that box again.

i remember when the trickling sound of rain frightened me; pattering against the windowpane in the dead of night like creaky fingers belonging to my fears.
first, they were the dark, and roller coasters with skittish tracks from old-timey days, and monsters under the bed with long arms waiting to wrap me into them.
those changed, quite how most everything does, into those of melancholy love, and unrequited love, and the constant worry of fairytale endings rattling in my mind until it turned into gunk and spewed out my ears, doing anything i can to get it out, out, out.
my dear, i await the days where there is nothing to be afraid of, though they may not come soon.
we are impatient beings not designed for the way the world works on its own; outside of who we are.
and yes, my fears remain, but no longer am i afraid of the rain.

sleepless nights taunt me in the pitch darkness that mirrors shut eyelids and butterflied lashes,
the same ones we wish upon,
and wish away.
the hours tick on by and i cannot drift;
my mind accompanied by other things than dreams,
and you,
yes, you, too, my sweet.
imagining anything,
everything,
i suppose is unhealthy for a lonely girl like me,
though i wasn't always this way.
when i found you after journeying through the beyond,
the nights were easy,
and i'd never wake in the midst of sweat and fear,
for you were safe.
a lifeboat for saving you kept rowing back to me,
and i'd come close to slipping under the water,
but i always felt your hand,
at the last moment your hand clasping mine.
and when i would open my eyes and throat above the surface
i no longer saw that dark of the night,
i saw you,
in your light you were everything.

snow babies wait amongst the white of december,
cradling their iced-over hearts between cold glass panes;
two dozen of us with eyes glued on the outside,
just counting snowflakes and how many shivers run down our spines.
cold bones shatter the way we wait beneath icicles to drop from the roof,
and we know it's roulette,
but we take our chances and bets on the weather,
odds and ends of inches of snow.
to pass the time after angels dressed in white,
and searing cast iron tattoos,
we wait.
you all prefer the other seasons;
not the quiet that comes with ours,
but you too,
will wait to see;
will watch white fall from the sky
because our storm is just beginning.

bubblegum girls do not love lemonhead boys,
yet puckering lips sound oh so sweet,
and sugar does not mix with sour in my
candy land world
but how I wish your tongue to graze mine
against cavity teeth and silver finishing,
and all you want is to chew me up and spit me out,
the way all lemonhead boys do,
but bubblegum girls crave those
stupid, sour boys
and wonder why they spit them out, too.