I've never met a marine
   who could sentinel
           my heart
like he does his country

I miss you,
for all the wrong reasons.

Well, it seems to me
that you are always on my mind
so, I cross my heart and hope to die.
But I found,  my dear,
my heart is held in your hands,
screaming.
So you only, my dear,
can break me.

I tried to
stop you
from driving tonight
--you were too drunk
to walk straight--
but you still asked
for your keys:
"No,"
"Dont **** with me
right now."
--So, I left,
and got a call
thirty minutes later
saying
that you wouldn't
get in the car
unless I came back,
and just like every
other time:
I couldn't say no.

You are constantly
showing up
in my dreams,
and when you looked at me,
in your car,
at 3:30AM,
-- with my remnants of whiskey
soaked tears--
I've never felt so
beautiful,
but when I saw
you, like that,
kissing her,
not even your
drunken state
could excuse
your dishonesty.
You may not remember
what happened,
but I always
will:
at 11:32pm
in the bar
on Wednesday,
you broke my heart,
and never even
knew that you
had made it whole
to begin with.

One blacked out kiss
is the equivalent
to my broken heart;
and you were everything
I had always wanted,
but never knew
you were the reason
for my tears in
the bathroom
that night:
I fell for you,
but you did not
let me down easy
--for I can turn you
into lines
of well-versed ink,
but I cannot
make you love me

I'm not sure I know
how to
tell you
that I feel the safest
when you wrap your arms
around
me like a scarf,
-- when I am able
to make your ribs into
a Fireman's coat:
much like the one
you remove after a long day's work.
You used
to make me feel fireproof,
but now I have found that
even those whose job
is meant to keep
alive a heart,
--beating--
can also **** it,
and you will never know
the entire extent
of how you killed mine.

I feel like if he really wanted you, like REALLY wanted you, like he says that he does, then he would just have you. He would get over all this **** about not wanting to be in a relationship right now or not wanting to settle down. He would get over all of that and make an exception because he wants you. He would not say "Don't wait for me;" he would say, "I don't want to have to wait for you, I want you, all of you, and I want to be with you now".... So, the fact that he is not saying that proves to me that he does not deserve you.  
      You deserve a guy that would set down everything and want only YOU. A guy that would push all the ******* out the door and just tell you how much he wants to be with you. If he does not have the ***** to do that, does not do that, or says "I don't want to be selfish, don't wait for me," he does not deserve you. Be friends with him -- love him in that way -- but do not let him ******* you around or hurt you any more than he has.
      You can do better when it comes to a relationship than being with him. No one, especially me wants to see you get hurt anymore by him. And by the looks of it, he does not want to hurt you anymore either, and that is what he is trying to do here: create a situation where he cannot hurt you anymore.
      I know it will be hard love, but you need to let him go in the relationship aspect of your life, and have him as a friend because you two work that way, and if, down the road, he matures more, sees what he lost, and fights for you with everything he has, then he will deserve you, but at this point, right now, he does not, and you deserve much better.
      Trust me when I say that I know for a fact that he cares about you. If he did not he would just be a complete *** about the situation. I have been there.
      If you are asking me, he is handling this very well in that aspect. And him saying "I don't want to be selfish, don't wait for me" instead of saying, "I don't want to be with you. Get over it," shows that he cares for you and definitely did the whole time.
      The problem is that he is not mature enough to see that you, lovely girl, are worth every ounce of fight in him. One day, be it you, or another girl, he will realize that that is what he needs to do -- fight -- and regardless of if when he realizes it and you are the girl, or you are not the girl, you WILL be the girl that he thinks of in that YOU are the girl that will have taught him that is what he has to do.
       So, trust me when I say he cares about you so much because, even down the road, you will always be the girl that taught him that he needs to fight.

I once knew a girl who
taught me
that "warrior" is spelled
with a silent "T,"
and that caring is an instinct,
not a burden:
    Time told her that she
     was beautiful,
but she did not
believe it,
for she was broken, and
her body was weary;
she cared about Time,
and, in return,
       He whispered in her ear
       that her heart
       was the highest form
       of beautiful
--but still,
sea salt poured from her corneas
for she did not know
just how much Time
she had left;
so,
out of dust and the salt from her eyes
      Time crafted
       a shield
   to protect her aorta
   and take captive
   her nightmares
  --to catch her dreams--
  for the day that
  Time, Himself,
  would run out.

This affection,
I was
so timely
offered,

is
the exact point that
broke me;

tore me up,
spit me out,

ruined the chance
the shooting stars
and lunar orbit
had written for us;

the Andromeda
tells me
of how
I gave it my all,
and
got
not anything;

this subsequent
feeling of
hate
and love,

is slowly
ablating
to
nothing.

The sixteenth of June
was the day
Venus was pushed
into Mars,
and I am the girl in
the story
symbolized by daisies
forcibly taken from
someone else's yard;
He was not gentile
and did not spare the
raw innocence,
-- I didn't ask for
It.
and it was not because
my coverings were
too short
The sixteenth of June
was the day
the galaxies
began to keep watch over me
and formed the words
out of constellations
that told me
I was not ruined.
--but I still sat
in the corner
and cried,
when I saw him standing there
with
a fistful of broken daisies.

If I listen very closely
I can still hear
those whispers
inside my head.
When I close my eyes,
I can sometimes still see
his face
--so crisp,
  so clear.
I still dream about him
sometimes:
I still wake up
late at night and think about him,
what he said,
what he did,
and since I finally
have
the courage,
for my words not to crack,
to answer your question,
No.
It did not ******* feel good,
and
Yes.
I am still haunted by you
forcibly
taking
my
innocence
--the gift
I was saving
for the man that is now
madly in love with me.
I finally have
the courage, to admit:
I did not know you
not at all,
but you had
your way with
me,
WITHOUT
MY
CONSENT.
You stole my innocence
but you
cannot
take
my
integrity.

It kills me sometimes
-- sometimes how you say my name:
the harsh undertones
in your eyes,
-- sometimes how you speak with me:
shouting,
undermining,
belittling.
Sometimes how you love me
-- so passionately,
so truly,
undoubtably:
sometimes how you love me;
it kills me sometimes.

I knew a man
that specialized in the phases of the moon
-- knew that, in a ventimous amount,
wolves grow with the
lunar waxing;
he fell in love with the beauty of it all,
found that
all this time
had passed
to turn him as well
into the version
venti himself.

The constellations
keep secret messages
for me,
stolen away in their red giants;
they’ve told me that
my heart-beats
dwell deep inside your
palmar lines,
where they await
the day when they get read,
but, until then,
are kept
alongside
the Venus, Ring, and Intuition
where our hands meet
at
dawn.

I once knew a boy who built a ladder to the moon
-- drafted rays,
atmosphere,
stars,
into the rungs he climbed;
he fell in love with her beauty:
the way she lit the night,
the way she orbited him,
and became everything he ever cared about.
So he made it his mission
to capture the moon
for the girl that became it for him.

There is this place
that dwells inside the center
of a sphere:
it sells wolves, confined to
threads and linens
captured, but free;
it contains rarities and b-sides,
full of dreams
and their captives.
It is Indigenous and
full of folk tales
from old times
to be deciphered and listened to
by those who have, all this time,
been searching for themselves.

My capillaries believe that the frost is coming for them
-- my spine aching for the warmth
it has come accustomed to,
rather than the boreal brittleness underneath
that the cutlass attached to my feet
glided around in spheres.
It reminded me of the
moon’s orbit,
the shape of the planets
the ellipses of the galaxies
-- suddenly swirling,
breaking and reforming
the stars within them,
which I then noticed to be
the warmth of your
carpals and metacarpals
between mine,
filling up all the Thenar Space.

The moon tells me stories about you, darling
– sends me lines in the form of constellations and planets,
while I see visions of you in my sleep,
and can feel the warmth of your capillaries
around my bones
making alive again my pulse
and wakening my corneas,
and all I want when my pupils begin to see
those rods and cones
are yours
looking right back at me
taking me in small doses;
while I’ll take you all at once.

I want to kiss you
with quantitated breath
so that none of the vocabulary,
dictionary definitions,
mathematic formulas,
and scientific inquiries
you memorized
will any longer
find place in your mind.

I spend days
               months
               weeks
at a time
conjuring up adventures
for us to go on,
ways for us to travel
to every city in the world,
just so I can be seen
in all of them
with my hand
in yours.

I look up in the sky
at night
and follow the galaxies,
but tonight
I found
that the star
I continually followed North
was you.

Under the Auroras,
beneath the nebulas,
behind the stars
-- you can find me next to you,
-- gazing --
falling asleep in your arms.

I do not need
cars,
planes,
trains,
or buses;

I need neither
passports,
tickets,
maps,
nor directions

to tell me that
I would run around the world
with only
a cup of coffee
and you.

You
wrapped
a constellation
around my finger;

in harmony,
told me
that
you loved me.

Now,
we wear
our wedding rings
molded out of
comets,
meteorites,
and asteroids

-- fragile enough
to accommodate
our fingers
but,
strong enough

to
ablated, choose

to
         fall
                  down
                                to
                                       Earth.

I may know
the exact rate of a light-year,
how the stars form galaxies,
and the physics of the universe.

I may understand
the artful ways of a supernova,
the beautiful end to the life of a star,
or the science behind planetary movement,

but not,
              -- the alignment the physics
              the chemistry
              the eclipses
              the Hubble
              Andromeda
              and Triangulum –

not any of it
can match
the feeling of your hand
in mine.

I once knew a Dandelion:
she knew strange stories
and wore large sweaters
—too big for her frame,
that overcame her bones,
and hid her petals from the world.
I often found her hunched over the bowl
full of smoke and mirrors,
for her skin told her lies about herself—
never admitted her bones were falling apart,
or that she was flushing away her veins,
weakening her heart
until all her seeds and wishes and pappus were gone.

Broken,
she tied her veins in knots;
her heart, she tore
until it gasped with every beat;
she lined her corneas
with her fingers; she wrote
until they were too afraid,
too dry,
to leak anymore.
She used her wrists like a diary,
writing away all the pain
—or so she thought—
for her limbs were haunted
by a girl of the past
—a ghost
whom her pupils still cannot separate
the rods and cones
to discern as herself.

There was a distinct fondness
I acquired
when I was surrounded with the old,
the crumpled,
antiqued,
coffee-stained photographs;
the way you smiled
every time I picked up the camera
—each frame telling a tale:
the tale of the curvature of your lips,
the forest in your eyes,
the way they helped you look at me
like you do,
the way your mouth formed syllables of my name,
each letter of those words,
the freckles, like constellations,
I connected
at night
in the chaos of the bed sheets.
Each frame told a tale
—initiated a saga—
told me how fond I had become
of how you created passion in me
every time my finger
activated the shutter.

I built you a home in my heart
like a bird nests in a tree,
you nestled your way in:
nesting, building, capturing.

I built you a home in my heart
like the flowers make waves in meadows,
fighting every element:
growing, blooming, capturing.

I built you a home in my heart
like the stars gather into constellations,
painting galaxies in the darkness:
drafting, mapping, capturing.

I built you a home in my heart,
just like the one you made for me in yours:
warm and inviting;
just like you captured my heart.

For in the cloth held by rivets in his pants,
he held captured luminosity
—because she feared eclipses—
so he could draft constellations
in that darkness.

The hours spent,
the petals picked,
the eggs counted,
the stars mapped—
all this time imagining
—thinking, capturing
the octave of letters,
in attempt to
illuminate this feeling
that no letters
ever can.

The hours spent,
the petals picked,
the eggs counted,
the stars mapped—
all this time imagining
—thinking, capturing
the octave of letters,
in attempt to
illuminate this feeling
that no letters
ever can.

The action will never be habitual
though the words are implanted in my heart
like the prints on a fossil.
They are there to remind you
—remind us—
of the best thing that has happened—
to you,
to me:
it is each other.

It starts with a kiss.
No, sooner than this.
Maybe with the breath on your neck,
or the smile that takes you back;
back to the day you met:
the day it truly began—
the day you fell upon
--fell here.
But, always here
with your arms like vines
growing around my collarbones,
making a home within the nest of my heart—
becoming a tree;
sitting in a tree—the tree that connected us all along. So, maybe,
maybe it was the kiss:
the kiss that made me remember all of this.

Fall away suddenly
--gasp no more;
sigh no more—
there is no need.
Into roughened hands fall indefinitely,
and dwell there infinitely,
for no other love
will match one as such.

I am trying to grasp it:
the semi-enchanting awe of it—
of this concept,
of this idea of feeling so inspired and helpless; the smudgeness of it all—
this bourgeois ideal they chase for;
the same bits we chase for:
the hidden parts of you,
the hidden parts of me,
the secret bits of us both.

I wish no more than to sit here
--just sit here awhile,
watch the weather change,
drink two cups of espresso;
just sit here for a bit
--look out from above the roof,
onto other rooftops,
and treetops,
and one-room flats;
just sit here awhile with you,
and, simply, exist.

Maybe it was the way we laughed,
or the way your smile lit the room:
the way it lit my heart.

Maybe it was the way you talked,
or the way you whispered in my ear:
the way it flushed my cheeks.

Maybe it was the way you walked,
or the way I longed to sit and drink espresso:
the way it warmed my body.

Or maybe it was the way you lived:
the way you felt so close.
The way you smiled.
The way you brightened –
your very essence:
the way you made me fall for you.

He spoke,
her heart was guarded;
and he whispered,
and she smiled.
And he spoke,
and she cried
– but not tears of sorrow, tears of iridescence and eumoiria: for he spoke an aubade.
And he breathed.
And they lived.
And they fell.
And they loved.