it was
all too easy,
forgetting your name,
tasting the starlight tucked
behind someone else's
wisdom teeth,
our soju-laced smiles
crashing at 90mph
and the memory of you
caught  
in the headlights and wreckage,
our 2am laughter
echoing in your bones
from 5654 miles away,
my hands knowing
the age-old roads
that led to brand new places,
and the faded map of you
folded and kept hastily
in my back pocket.

*(I was far too proud
to ask for directions
to come home)

My lungs are sighing up a storm,
lips lightning-lined and
lonely

a constant reminder
that even with all this thunder
in my chest

I was never strong enough
to hold on to you.

I had always loved dancing
on skyscrapers -

all the world a doll's house
at my feet
and so close to thy sky,
I could taste the sun.

but fierce winds make fools
of us all, my love,
and static
only makes everything
cling -

and now I am standing
in the middle of a field

not yet burnt and broken,
but waiting

for you to strike.

even the bravest bones
cannot weather every hurricane alone -

and my tired heart is still trying
to beat in places
where the world is hushed.

I am waiting
for the quiet.

sometimes I think it was easier
when there were spaces in between
you and I

if only because
    friction
can burn even the best of us,
and

hours upon hours
of our bodies pressed
against each other
means that every move you make
    shakes me to my core.

*it will not take us aeons
to cross our oceans.

watch me write your name
in scars,
in stars,

watch me write your smile
in broken hearts -
broken parts of me :

watch me bleed you out
in stories and supernovas
and even if I can't ink
all the pieces of you into my poems -

darling,
watch me try.

write a poem about me,
all inked hypotheticals
and pretty words dressed up in rationality -

give it to her
and tell her she's beautiful,
that she writes like a dream,
and leave just enough spaces
in between your favorite metaphors
to string them up with a maybe,
a silhouette of me,
just enough space to wonder
if she's only bright in my shadow -

because darling, I want to know
what it feels like
on the other side
of sadness.

I fell in love with the way
you spelled my name.

you said it like it could be
    beautiful
one day, and
you smiled like it was so easy
for you to leave me
    breathless.

it was.


I fell in love with the way
you said "perfect"
whenever i got a question right.

you let your eyes light up
as you grinned with pride and
you let me
    linger
in the heartbeats that defined us
like we were worth
    the promise of
    forever.

we were.


I fell in love with the way
you kissed me first.

you held me close and
you didn't wait for the planets
to grant us
    conventional romance,
and you fell into me like it was
    first nature
to have me breathe you in.

it was.


I fell in love with the way
you used to brush your limbs against mine
all-too-subtly.

you let the
    electricity
race through my skin and
you teased me on purpose,
until I could almost believe
we were something
that would last longer
    than a
    love song.

we were.


I fell in love with the way
you laughed out loud.

you smiled butterflies into me, and
you sounded like anything
that could make you
    laugh
was lovely enough
to make the stars
    dance.

it was.


I fell in love with the way
you got so excited
about all your favorite things.

you pulled me close and
    tangled
yourself up in me, and
you wouldn't let me shake loose
your whimsies, and I wondered if
we were a
    supernova
    just waiting to happen.

we were.


I fell in love with the way
you fell in love with me.

We were never written in stone.

We were written in letters of fire -
we burned bright and brilliant and we burned painful, and so painfully long.
I like to think we both loved hurting each other more than we could bear,
that it was only our bruises that made us beautiful,
and I know you remember me in blood and in belligerence.
We shot maelstroms through quiet skies,
and we let our lightning consume us.

We crumbled, anyway.

I never wanted to grow up.

I clung on to my nap times and my cotton candy and my scraped knees,
thinking my whole world could be made of stories that had crayon-drawn
the line between right and wrong, between good and evil.
But I found that there were worlds that waltzed upon that line,
and there were people who could wound me so much deeper than blood.

I am not a child anymore.

I did not cry for you.

I have never cried for anyone who has left me because
I have always believed that I am so much stronger than the hollow silence.
But you once said I was beautiful, and you once said I was brave.
You will never see me in a toga or a white dress or a maternity tee,
but I hold fast to the days when you were mine to love and to look up to,
and I will always remember you in hot chocolate and french braids.

I'm so sorry.

I want you
    to curl up on me,
nestle yourself snugly
between my arms and
move around until you find
the perfect places
for all your angles and creases,
your folds and ridges -

to let your eyes seek
the starbursts of the Dreaming,
to breathe in surrender and
breathe out all your demons -

to rest your shoulders
from the weight of the world
    and smoothen
the dents the sky has made upon your back
as your hands
remember how it feels
not to be climbing up cliffs
that placed themselves between
what you want and what you have -

I want you to slow down,
so maybe sleep
    can remind your smile
    how lovely it feels to be
         upon you.

There is this story
going 'round, that says
humans used to have two heads,
    four hands,
    four legs,
and we were separated
because we were too powerful together.

    I don't think so.

I think (or used to)
that we are most powerful
    when we are alone -
when there is nobody
to break down our walls,
when we are fortresses
barricaded with steadfast
bravery in the face of loneliness,
when we do not know
    how to need.

But maybe I only think so
because I am afraid of what
    needing someone
    means -

it means I cannot be
invincible
without you,
it means I cannot breathe
if your heart is not softly nestled
against mine,
it means I must cross out
the words I wrote for only me,
a b a n d o n
the paths I had paved
that made room for only one -
because now there was you,
and that means
b e l i e v i n g .

I believe in you,
and I believe in me,
and I believe you and I
are the stardust that happens
when dreams collide,
         and
I believe we are not simply
misfits, alternating
lines of poetry,
we are not just
the spaces in between fingers,
we are not only
heartbeats
falling into place.

I do not like to believe
that we were halves that each other
made whole -
I want to believe we were
more than jigsaw pieces that
found all the right places to fit -
I want to believe
that you and I were made alone,
but we discovered
that together means
intertwined veins,
means rib cages rising and falling as one,
means laughing at bad jokes
and knowing when
to be quiet -
that together means
sunflowers blooming in my soul,
and turning always to face you -
that together means
you and I
are the story we
have been waiting for so long to write.

I keep the pocket watch you gave me,
and it's still ticking,
ticking.

It's there beneath the pictures
with ripped edges and thumbprints on the gloss,
where I'm smiling straight into the flash
and you, you're just looking at me,
like you didn't know someone could be so happy
in a cramped booth that smelled like
asphalt and felt like 50's music.

It's there next to the pressed flowers
with missing petals and broken stems,
the ones you gave me the day before Valentine's,
because you wanted them to bloom but
they bloomed a day late, and you
waited for them til midnight because you refused
to believe that teenage romance
doesn't have to be punctual.

It's there in the old shoebox
with the missing cover and faded paint on the sides,
that I kept all the postcards in,
from all the times you went away and said
you missed me,
and I couldn't write back because
I remembered you said that my words are my heart
and I was scared
to write poems about forever.

I will leave us a mistake unmade.

You were my first taste of dawns met with playful banter,
and I was your first shot at being left in the cold.
I broke your heart for all the wrong reasons, darling,
and I can never tell you the truth of why I put the light in your eyes
and left you gutted, raw.
You will always be an asymptote I will slip dangerously close to,
but the heartstrings binding us weave no tapestry of a future in romance.

I cannot love you.

I am a creature of violence.

My fists are tired of fighting the deluge of rationalities and
my eyes have stared daggers too sharp for me to feel the scars.
But the blood flows ever on, and it rages and it burns and it screams.
I cannot let my anger paint my life in red and in wrath,
and I cannot let my wrongs be the reason I feel I am right.
So I promise, I will not let the fire burn through me anymore.

I had to lay down my arms one day.

There is no blood between us.

We were not fire and we were not fireworks.
We were not whirlwinds or hurricanes,
we were not storms or lightning or free falling through thunder.
You were a lesson I needed to learn, and I was a dream you needed to leave behind.
Well, I have lived our lies long enough and you have learned to swallow my stark realities
and neither of us really wanted to hold on to prayers of pretend.

And this means goodbye.

I never stood tall at five foot two
but I was proud and I was pretty enough
that I didn't think I'd have to try.

One day I fell
bruised and bleeding words
metaphors and metonymys and
"i love you too"s.

I was never one for running, but I
I could glide on the back of starbursts
and I sailed on the north winds
like they were all I had for a home.

I was never one for running, but I
I realized how much I needed to move
how freedom meant I had to leave
the footprints I'd embedded beside my sandcastles
meant I had to run into the water
and swim through storms.

My legs were broken one day
and my wings were ripped apart;
I could no longer hold sunsets in my eyes -
they leaked far too often and too much.

I decided you deserved somebody
who could dance
like mermaids in the old world
so I stood and I smiled and I
I let the skies be my music -
but I'm still healing,
so forgive me my baby steps -
I am walking to you.

I'd always wanted to go to Paris.
Pah-ree, some people say.

You smelled like dust and honey,
like you'd been shot down and shelved
one winter afternoon and forgotten,
but we all knew you'd stay
golden, waiting
and waiting for the next summer
to come along

- and you said you'd never
leave me up there
like a book unloved.

You sounded like a sleepy cello,
like the sky when it's tired from
painting, painting
fire and gold behind clouds and
tall iron towers, and I
could hear jazz music and
bluejays twittering
to the thump bump of our
unsynchronized pulses

- you laughed when I laughed
and asked what time
I wanted to fall in love with you.

You were the promise of
talking quietly in little back-alley cafes
on the wrong side of the river,
wearing black berets like we knew
what we were doing, you sipping ***** and me
drinking hot chocolate
because I thought coffee meant
I'd meet the dawn without dreaming

- but you told me my eyes
were bright enough to dream
while open. *

Some people say they
believe in love at first sight and I,
well, I,
I suppose I fell in love
when I saw Paris in your smile.

I don't think I'll ever tire
of writing out my heartbeats
in letters and poems to you.

but sometimes the days demand of us
that we must pack up our things
and surrender to sleep.

and so I leave you with this -
a quiet reminder
that you cannot always see the stars,
but they are your soul.

so close your eyes,
breathe, listen
to the supernova
thumping in your chest.

dream.

sometimes it feels as if
I have too many milk teeth,
too many parts of me that belong
to a time when I climbed trees to touch the sky
and I swam in sunflowers
and fireflies -
to a time I have long since
painted in sepia tones,
long since pushed
to the back of my mind
with hands so tired
of being filled with splinters
- too many seeds
and not enough light.

there are too many parts of me
that I have placed underneath pillows,
that I have kept behind closed lashes,
that I have slept upon, waiting
for the morning to arrive and them
to be g o n e ,
replaced with coins that I could place
underneath the tongues of the dreams
that I could not ferry to my
frail realities.
but in the morning, they return -
one by one into my mouth,
daring me to speak them,
daring me to sing,
daring me to find someone who will listen.
         listen.

it feels as if
I have too many stories,
too many secrets,
too many sins and not enough space
for the words to fly out of my mouth
and into the world -
I have too many milk teeth
that I cannot remove.

and sometimes I think maybe that's why
I don't understand
    permanence.
I don't understand
    change.
I don't understand
    growing up,
    growing out,
    growing apart -
I don't know what it means
to stare at the sun
while your feet are moving forward,
only forward, never back.
because I have spent all my life
climbing on the shoulders
of mountaintops and moonstones,
and standing tall
was never an option.

sometimes climbing is tough
when my mouth gets too heavy
with overgrown memories
and I can almost feel myself cry out
"save me," can hear myself whisper
    "listen."
but pride and false bravery sew me shut
and I'm left to watch my bones
taken over by page-pressed petals
and old phosphorescence -
and it's in moments like these
that I stop climbing and think
maybe it's time for me to grow now,
on my own:
hands and legs
and lungs and heart,
spine and ribs and
collarbones, cranium,
and with baby teeth bared I am
blooming fire and gold and
facing the sun -

    smiling.

You are not the only one
with tired eyes, with shaking hands and
ribs creaky from carrying
too many sighs.

You are not the only one
who feels like a failure -
in the eyes of so many, and the
coldest gaze comes from
the mirror.

You are not the only one
lonely and misunderstood,
wracked with hopelessness and
headaches, heartbroken.

But you are the only one
with courage enough
to crumble mountains who refuse to move,
with passion brilliant enough
to build cities in between words,
with hands strong enough
to hold me
gently.

You are the only one
who is fierce enough
to fight the demons within you,
enough to convince whole worlds
to live underneath your ink,
enough to stand tall and say
you are more than what
numbers will tell you.

You are not alone.
I am here with you.
Always.

humans were made to run barefoot.

we were made to climb mountains, fighting gravity
and to fly across stony deserts and dangerous forests.

we were not made for these,
these bastardizations of heels and soles and
    skin.

humans were made to run barefoot,
because
we were always meant to leave traces of ourselves
on everything we touched, every inch
of the world that we would walk.

we were always meant to take with us
the scars left by the walls we would climb,
the bruises left by the falls we would take,
the hard skin and the instant familiarity left
    by the paths we would forge
    alone.

so worry not.
you were never meant to feel the skin of this earth
through designer heels and combat boots.

you were only ever meant to feel the weight of yourself,
a breathing, bleeding, human
charged with electric emotions and spinning
out of control
    upon the ground,
meant to break yourself on the roads you paved
and the dreams you wrought in stone.

but tread carefully.

sometimes you will step on glass,
and sometimes you will step on hearts.
and so always, you will walk in blood.

make your footprints matter.

odd things, humans.

we like to say it'll be okay
in the end,
if only to fool ourselves that it can't be over
until we're brilliant again;

we like to say
we've only got to be brave, believe
we can drown old scars
in cheap beer,
talking up the next new distraction
until we're breathless, believe
we're dancing through our darkest hours,
and dawn will come in a moment,
holding hands with a graceless hangover --

and you call up your favorite ex-girlfriend
for a day to spend *******
     each other senseless
and talking about World War II
battles lost due to
     failure in communication.

she's okay with your sloppy metaphors
as long as you stop
for cheeseburgers on the way home.

my heart has four chambers -
one of them is probably a radio station.

love songs don't come as easily
as anthem rock and afternoon blues,
but transatlantic static never stopped my poetry.

humans aren't quite made for long drives, we like
pit stops and motels clean as they come,
and switching in between stations
but once in a while we like to make road trips
to that place where the crickets can sing.

and in these moments I remember
that screaming at satellites
only brings me back to echoes -

you are
the white noise in my life,
quiet and constant,
filling in my empty spaces.