You will find nothing here.

I am a balloon in the slippery hand of
a child standing idle on the boardwalk
and in seconds or years I will be released
into the grey sky

And for a while I will fly there
Hell, I may even die there

But for now I'm lying in the darkness
letting the summer ants crawl on my skin
and in the s p a c e s between sad songs
i ask them their opinions

and they tell me
You will find nothing here.

When you live your life like I do you will find yourself assigning meaning to mundane things like broken shopping cart wheels and lonely cigarette butts in tired playgrounds.

You will dream of girls who sit in ***** hotel rooms letting the smell of smoke settle into their nest of messy brown hair and chemicals and guilt.

You will become envious of Dorothy and empathetic for the Tin Man.

You may begin to dabble in the dark arts of poetry but will never quite grasp the art of conversation.

You will live in fantasies of romances with girls who live in fantasies filled with music, and you will die in them.

You will demand happiness for all the broken girls at the expense of your own

Don't live your life like I do.

A girl with dark hair and true eyes.
A girl wrapped gracefully in self-confidence
and unconventional beauty.
A girl with a heart so heavy it takes two to hold,
and with a hole in her soul she tries to fill
with poetry and sad music.
A girl who will sit on the floor
at odd hours and listen to old records
and not say a word.

Seeking:
A girl who knows how to love
but just barely.
A girl who is too **** sad to care
because I can't care either.
A girl who knows I can't love
and will learn not to love me.
A girl who will lie next to me
and lie to my face.

Seeking:
A girl.
A warm body and a soft pair of lips.

Forget everything you thought you knew about love
because I'm here to tell you that love is poison.
It's in all of us.
Killing us.
Making us depressed
and discontent.
But the anti-venom
is the poison of someone else.
Someone who will let you cut them open
and see all the filth inside them
and you will drink their poison.
it will be bitter
and sweet.
It will be strong at times,
and sour at others
but you will drink it.
All of it.
and they will drink yours.

When the earth is quiet

And the children stop laughing

I swear I can hear God breathing.

And it seems to me that He

Is struggling for breath

The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that love is inescapable.

Love will find you. Find you naked, shaking in your darkest caverns clinging to heartbreak and faded polaroids with trembling hands. Find you locked up in towers fortified with fear. Find you upside-down. Find you alone once again walking the streets at one in the morning praying for street lights to fade behind you. Find you standing before tombstones or ice cream trucks or a preacher man. Find you hiding from your mother or God or both. Love will find you.

Love will take you. Take you to the place you parked your car that night and noticed for the first time the way their skin in the moonlight had the unspoken power to shatter your own. Take you through the annals and ventricles of your heart and peel away at the scars like super-glued band-aids. Take you to the hills and home again. Love will take you.

Love will bind you. Bind you to your family like the pages in the cookbook your mother used to prepare your favorite meal. Bind you to the girl who makes you shake when she's cold or the boy with eyes warm and clear blue like hot springs. Bind you to yourself. Love will bind you.

Love will break you. Break you down to jigsaw puzzle pieces your grandparents attempt on Friday nights, hands shaking with arthritis, and leave you incomplete. Break you away from your callused convictions and shove a blunt fist into your softest spots and leave you covered in scratches. Break you the way earthquakes break buildings or alcohol breaks families and bones; unforgivably, irreparably. Love will break you.

Love, desperate and strong, simple and tenacious, fiery and fierce.
Love will find you, take you, bind you, and break you.

And you will not escape.