I'm not sure if you care much about me, I don't care much about me either, but ever since you came back after a year you've been flowing from the ink of my pen to my paper and I can't stop ******* writing about you.
I mostly sit in coffee shops thinking of how your left hand would spread across your cracked mug and how your right hand would grip my thigh, because you told me you always had to be touching me in one way or another to make up for the times you were too far to see the same stars as me. I see you carving our names into the wooden table and I'm tracing your lips with my cut up fingers and the only time you can tell me you love me is after a shot and a kiss or two. I never liked coffee until I tasted it tattooed on your lips and there I swallowed every apology for how much I drank and the way I ****** because both are so violent and both left us naked and crying until you held me so tight i thought my veins would burst, but I'd never tell you to stop.
Walking to the bus stop I confuse your eyes with street lights and maybe its because I'm slightly tipsy and in love with you. I hold your cut up hands, you told me your mom was trying to hurt you but you were as numb as you were when she slapped you, and you never cried. At the bus stop I kissed you so hard and your tears mixed with our saliva and I thought the four oceans had spilled from your beautiful eyes. On the bus I held you until you felt limp in my arms and I looked into your eyes and saw the street lights flicker and I made you get off at the next stop, even though we had 5 more to go. You had goosebumps covering your porcelain skin and you told me you had no idea who you were without your sadness in between sobs that shook my lungs and made me cry too.
Loving you is writing poetry so your eyes don't wander away from me even though I break pieces of myself to give to you so you'll stay, and that's not love but it's the only love I'll ever know.
Loving you is asking constantly if you've stopped loving me because self doubt swallows me whole and vomits apologies that tumble out of my mouth for the ways I try to **** myself I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
Loving you is echoing words I need to hear, hoping it'll quiet the voices in your head telling you to do terrible things to your body.
Loving you is listening to the 1975 and hearing your name in between each chord and god ****** I love you
Loving you is never knowing how you are but always knowing you're in your car, because you never like staying at home, and baby that's okay.
Loving you is never knowing the colours of your eyes because they always switch from brown to green and oh god I'm so scared for the day you won't be here.
Loving you is knowing that you have me tucked away in the back pocket of your skinny jeans but not knowing when you'll take me out and tell me you love me, because I do love you.
and I love you is big for me, it's an anxiety attack formed in words it's trying to speak with bruised lips from kissing you too hard it's breathing in water, but baby we're both drowning so we might as well hold hands and sink together.

i will stop writing poetry like a eulogy when you start making me feel alive

i.
i feel you in my bones sometimes,
on those nights when the silence screams almost as loud as your lingering words,
when the portrait of you is stitched onto my aching eyelids,
thrown together in a mass of lazy brushstrokes from a dark palette.

ii.
i light cigarettes,
but i don't smoke them.
i just watch them burn out.
fade.
crumble.
like we did, endless eons ago.

iii.
it's clear to me now that,
like the land and the sky,
you and i were simply never meant to meet,
never destined to touch.

iv.
sometimes,
i can bring myself not to feel so hollow,
if i think of the better days,
when your smile wasn't a façade
and your love for me was a looming oak
in this great big forest of daft, dying weeds.

v.
but it's not worth much, anyway,
because the truth
is that your smile shines
just about as bright as the stars in the big city,
and your love for me
snaps
like a silly little twig.

vi.
in all honesty,
we never were,
we just tried to be.

vii.
you know,
i walk endless roads trying to forget you.

viii.**
it doesn't work.

(a.m.)

do not fall in love with a romantic.
when he leaves you, every red rose you come across will remind you of the ones he surprised you with

do not fall in love with a romantic.
the song he would play for you on his guitar will echo in your ears for years; each time you hear it will feel like a small dagger in a fresh wound

do not fall in love with a romantic.
for two years, your heart will jump at every unexpected knock on your door, because you think that maybe it's him on another surprise visit.
eventually, you will guessing that these unexpected knocks are your new boyfriend, surprising you. your heart will jump, then fall. your new boyfriend doesn't make surprise visits

do not fall in love with a romantic.
you will find yourself naked in your boyfriend's bed crying about how you think he doesn't love you
because he doesn't love you like your old boyfriend did
you'll apologize, and he'll apologize, but he still won't love you like your old boyfriend did

do not fall in love with a romantic.
you'll embarrass yourself drunk texting him a year after you broke up

do not fall in love with a romantic.
i promise you that your boyfriend loves you even though he doesn't compare your lips to sugar and your eyes to oceans.
you are still his beautiful flower, even if he doesn't know how to spell hibiscus

do not fall in love with a romantic.
i promise you that your boyfriend loves you even though he doesn't surprise you with roses
i promise that your boyfriend loves you even though he doesn't write you letters
i promise that your boyfriend loves you even though he doesn't write you poetry
i promise that your boyfriend loves you

do not fall in love with a romantic,
you will never get over it

In my arms, you belong
but you are so far away.
Tell me: what would you do
if all I asked of you
was to stay.

When I say I miss you,
it's not just that I want to see you.
I spoke with you face to face tonight,
but I still miss you.

I miss you like 2am misses the sunlight,
like the warm beach misses snowflakes,
like a fish misses the hillside,
as a poet misses the words he couldn't find.

I want to write you down,
for each part of our lives to rhyme,
I want to be yours and you, mine,
but you're the poem trapped in my mind.

*~ Matthew Walker ~

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.  i like what it does,
i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new