I started smoking cigarettes again

Something about having another thing burning between my fingers

Besides your hands

Makes me dismiss the feeling that lingers 
when I think of you

Since I can’t have your taste in my mouth

Menthol will have to do

I am addicted 

Isn't this sounding familar?
You **** me inside starting with my lungs

Like the small nicotine sticks do with every inhale

I would much rather your slender fingers in my hand

But for $10 a pack they last around a lot longer than you do 

No matter how much you rot me from the inside out

A piece of me will always be yours

Always

for Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to ****

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux ****
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
***** girl,
Thumb stump.

i. There are moments when I think that I write until the words run into the ground. I reuse metaphors and recycle imagery until the English language is used up and nothing but compost. But god, it is like yours can speak life into being. They are a breath of fresh air in the cave where I’ve been hiding, and for the first time in a while, I remember what light tastes like.

ii. Every night I have tried desperately to feel something, anything, squinting at the ceiling to try to force a single tear out and pretend that I remember what emotion is. But you remind me what the ocean feels like on my cheeks.
And it is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.

iii. Sometimes, the only reason I still believe in God is because someone had to have sent you here to save me.

iv. It’s been a really long time since I’ve believed a compliment. And it’s only because you have worked your way into my life well enough to know my imperfections and then continue to see beyond them.

v. I can see my future more clearly with you than with anyone else.

vi. I get into trouble because it seems I romanticize everyone who comes into my life, constantly thinking of them as a better person than they might be.
Except you. You are literally as amazing as I think you are. (And just as you are the only one who can compliment me, trust me when I say I know what I’m talking about when it comes to you).

vii. I swear, if my life ever flashed before my eyes, I would see only high school swim meets, camera-******* photo shoots, squirrel watching, Prom, late night conversations in the glow of the moon, and a brief glimpse of a girl struggling to read my clearly too-fancy name tag.

viii. I realized while writing this, that for the first time, I am actively trying not to be self-deprecating. I guess if someone like you can love me, I want to work a little harder to try as well.
You are right; we bring out the best in each other. For a while, I thought that I could only build others up by tearing myself down. But with you, I feel like we can take over the world (which we will). I hope I have loved enough to make you feel the same way

ix. Thank you. For all that phrase is worth and then a hundred times more. It cannot even come close to conveying what I feel right now, but then again, I was the one who was never comfortable with emotions to begin with.

x. I love you.

I realized it was not your job to keep me afloat, so I stopped looking for places in conversation where you said something shallow and I tried to add depth. I stopped saving the text messages you sent past 3 AM because those words were not formed with love for me to cling on to, no, they were baited lines waiting for me to bite. Hook, line, and sinker I surfaced gasping for breathe in unfamiliar air. Writhing around in my discomfort, hoping you would throw me back into the water rather than watch me struggle. They never tell you how many fish in the sea are actually sharks waiting to sink their teeth.

And if the piano breaks it's because each time you kiss me it feels like I've taken a bullet to the brain.
Today, I looked into your eyes and saw nothing but forever.
I think that maybe, if you took my hand, we could fight infinity.

I've never believed in God, but ****, I think you're my religious awakening; THIS is a baptismal revival.
I think I was dead until the day we met- you give me life.
Whispers: "safe, safe, safe."
She strikes a key to play me out of tune.

What does she look like in the dark?
What do you wear when you're alone? (I wear the black pendulum)
Seastar, starfish, lover, oh how I'm suffocating on my anguish.
Convince me to forgive him, and then I will try and forgive myself for all that he has broken.
For the ***** nights, the rancid sheets, ten years of filth- it would take an eternity to scrub out my stains- ugly.
Whispers: "****, ****, ****."
Screams: "daddy please, daddy no, daddy no, stop it!"
It's hushed up by the sounds of the broken piano- the unforgiving black sacrament.

Steel and skin, forgiveness and pain.
You can only hide for so long; sleepmonger, deathmonger, counting sheep. When will these childhood nightmares end?! Oh.

So, 1, 2, 3, 4, who's that looming at my door?
5, 6, 7, 8, he calls it love, she calls it ****.
9, 10, 11, 12, he put her though ten years of hell.
13, 14, 15, 16, who could love her scars- so distinct?
17, 18, 19, 20, fall for me; so sick of running.

(a.m.) 05/05/14

I want to be your today.
I want to be your tomorrow.
I want to be your everyday, every which way.
I want to be your twenty-fifth birthday, spent alone with a bottle of bourbon.
I want to be the breath between your words.
The long flight back home.
The first holiday spent abroad.
I want to be the steaming cloud of breath, on a cold January, three years from the next.
I want to be the sheets at night; the flipside of your pillow.
The favorite restaurant.
The hole in your pocket.
The knot in your shoelace.
The freckle on your nose.
I want to know the story of your first broken bone
(If there was one).
I want to know the religious awakening.
I want to know the cherished childhood memory.
The playground bullies.
The third grade science project gone terribly wrong.
Tell me about how he broke your heart.
Tell me about how she broke your heart.
Tell me how to make it better.
Give me the insoluble remedy; give me the chance.
I want to be your unanswered question.
I want to be the first thing when you wake.
I want to be the last thing when you rest.
I want to know your deepest secret.
Tell me about how it molded who you are today.
Give me the light- give me you.

You exist between the books on my shelves.
You exist in each stroke of my pen.
You exist where my punctuation doesnt
(See, you were right there).
You exist in the unsung melody.
The bruise on my hip.
That trigonometry homework left unfinished.
Those lyrics not remembered.
I think of you in the morning.
In the morning with disheveled hair, and bleary eyes.
I think of you with the click of a pen, the turning of the page.
With the brakes of the city bus.
With the bell after fifth period.
With those fading scars on my side.
You are my first encounter with the salty waves of the coast.
You are my first encounter of a well-rehearsed routine.
You are the roots of my hair.
You are the cherished memory.
You are the only one.
You are beautiful.
You are genuine.
You are brave.
You are you.
And, you make me me.

(a.m) 04/21/14

This is not a poem, this is a life.
I have fallen in love, and I know you've fallen in love (at least I hope you've fallen in love). But, our love was antithetic, it was electric, it was eccentric, it was modern. It was like moonbeams, it was like the pavement after rain. Our love was timeless, but most importantly, it was faceless. It was without impression, it was without imperfection.
I just wanted to remind you, that this is not a poem, this is a life.
I met you, and you met me, but it wasn't face to face. We never walked down the hallways of our high schools and brushed the backs of our hands together. Never would I be able to compare the glint in your eyes to the way the sun shined in our favorite spot last Wednesday at 4:32p.m. We never sat on your back porch, or leaned precariously over my balcony, and nervously leaned into one another. Never will you understand the trembling of my knees when I first heard your voice (this is all becoming very poetic), and never will I know the unabashed heat of your skin; or the cold of your dangerous glare. I'll never meet your mother, and you'll never meet my father (but that's okay, because we wouldn't want that anyways), they are our secrets locked away in a box underneath our separate and never merging beds. I crave nothing more than a love that cracks open my ribs and sends a  hurricane barreling through my heart. Few have tried, yet none (only you) have succeeded. The failed have only summoned a cold winter within these bones, but you struck up a blistering summer and an incomprehensible spring, where my eyes viewed nothing but random march showers.
Sorry, I forgot that you were not a poem, and this is our life.
Only upon assessing the damage your vessel created with your departure did I realize that this is not a poem, this is a life.

(a.m.) 03/12/14