i want to tell a story about the colors in the trees.

i want to tell you about the quaking in my hands.

i want you to know where the rain falls,
how the crashing voices
sound like waves in the night time,
tugged tides tied to the moon
like a leash to a dog.

i want to give you something to regret.

i want you to recall how i, in all of my
innocence and passion
fell over you
(in concentrated lust
but also romance)
on that day in late may,
how you held
my bare body against yours
how in that moment
i remembered nothing but skin and skin
and
skin, nothing
but firsts,
but blessings
but

i want you to wonder how the holy swallow their love.
(i have confirmed, they do it like one would pomegranate seeds- with their eyes shut, but you wouldn't know)

i want you to believe you lost a good thing.
there's love grown in my belly the way
i was told watermelon patches would when
i was young and didn't
know any better.

i want to say that i didn't know you would destroy me.
that the rips under my skin were a shock
the ice-pick to my heart was unexpected.

i want to say something
but all that comes out is
i'm sorry
not knowing what i'm sorry for.

i am young. i am in the habit of saying things i think i mean because
i have no one to tell me right from wrong. i am in the habit
of giving everything i have to every one i pass because i have
no one to tell me what is enough and what is too much. it is
all just enough, i give every piece of me to every stranger with
warm hands and it is all just enough, i fall into myself in an
endless spiral of every stranger with a gentle first touch and it
is all just enough. part of how to stop being young is learning
to choose your words carefully, learning what i mean and what
i want to speak into meaning are very different things. part
of how to stop being so young is to learn that i should not have
to empty myself into a gentle touch or a warm hand because
there is no place for me to go besides inside of myself. no one has
the capacity to contain me, no one has the ability to hold all of
what i involve in their cupped hands. i fall through the cracks
in their fingers and onto the floor like sand, how to stop being
young is learning that i am concrete, i cannot push myself into
anyone and expect them to carry me on their shoulders. how to
stop being young is learning that i don't need anyone to fill me
up, to fix me, to calm my brain, to keep me kind or save me.
but i am young. i am in the habit of wanting what i can't have,
i am in the habit of wanting to love so hard it kills me, and that
being said i miss you so much it hurts my skin.

i’d written line after line
about the look in your eyes
the way i felt like i could die
but what’s the point now
in all those wasted words?
when all that’s left hurts.

this emptiness still smells of you.

It may take only a few seconds
to hurt someone that you love
but it may take a lot of years
to heal this pain.

isnt it sweet?
how much the human heart is able to bare,
the lines between support and manipulations that
past-lovers have drawn for you,
isnt it sweet? how much you will
carry for the people who arent quite yet
past-lovers, how you will draw boundaries
and cross lines just to touch, just to feel, just to
create some sort of tangible memory for when you
sit with only their names left in your mouth, isnt the
line between sweet and naive based on experience?
isnt it naive? how far you will go to love people into
boxes, how you will let yourself fall apart and
you will watch them spit you out onto the floor and still
you have so much faith in every single rushed kiss and
almost-memory that one of these people you let touch you
with the lights off, one of these people you will drink
into your poetry will be more than just a past-lover?