the marble stairs leading up the leaning tower of pisa
are worn down like lips beginning to frown.
this is result of 500 years of walking.

i know a lot of people who shrink into themselves,
arms crossed and shoulders hunched,
as if they are apologizing for taking up so much space.
this is the result of 15 years of walking all over somebody.

this is erosion.
this is the result of thinking that
if you wear someone down then they’ll fit better,
that you’ll find something different underneath what you’ve chipped away.
this is the result of thinking that you can change someone
or that they can change you.

and i know the dangers of thinking
you can find yourself inside of someone else.
it’s easy to lose yourself in other people.
and i had this terrible habit of being who ever you wanted me to be.

you only liked me quiet.
you only liked me when i was easy to hold.
you make me feel how the lovers in the movies do.
you make me feel the way it's silent in the theatre while the credits roll through.
you make me feel miles away even when i’m next to you.

and one day, i caught myself nodding along to opinions
i didn’t even agree with just on autopilot
and i was thinking to myself, my god, is this who you think i am?

i hate the way my name stains your mouth.
i hate the way you make me want to talk softer and softer
until i’m not even saying anything.
i hate the way you make me feel like i have to pretend.

i spent so long trying to be someone you could love
and i am so ******* tired of loving people who make me
feel ashamed of myself.

i am a ten page poem with no stanzas.
and if you don’t get me, then good,
i am not meant to be quantified and understood.
everything i am is right here on my sleeve
and i will not reinvent myself for someone who flinched
at how loud my impatient heartbeat
sounded in a quiet room.
i’ve spent too long thinking that people didn’t love me
because i didn’t make it easy enough,
didn’t sand myself down to fit into the edges of their lives.
i’ve spent too long feeling like i was intimidating, too difficult.
i have spent too long trying to make
myself smaller and smaller until i started to
disappear.

i don’t know how i ever gave you the power to make or break me
but i’m taking it back.
because i don’t want to give away myself,
i don’t want to be just a reflection of somebody else.
and i’ll admit, i do not want to be as complicated as i am.
i do not want to turn my wool black.
i do not want be fractured into boxes.
but i am bigger than your shadow and i am better than these bones.
maybe i am difficult and maybe i don’t care.  

because, baby, when you make me in your image
don’t you dare flinch away from
the reflection.

.       **You're A Gift From God              
                  At His Moment
                           Of Joy

the first time i went to a real concert
i thought my heart was so full it was going
explode all over the speakers.
it was a ******* patronus moment,
you know the kind of **** that’s gonna drive away
all my demons like thieves in the night on buses out of town
when i think about them now.
and you know how hard it is to find somewhere
where the people don't make fun of you
for singing the wrong words?
because listening to the same music is sort of like
instant camaraderie, all of us singing off-key
to the same beat,
even the jaded twenty somethings
who complain about how all the music theses days
just has less words and more synth.
we’re all hearts without ribcages tonight,
and i didn’t care what they said because
i swear i didn’t even feel the broken bottles
under my shoes when i was walking home after that show,
i was so far on cloud nine.
it was like the best kind of high
only i was sober as **** and i didn't need to
take anything i was offered
because it felt like i already had it all.
and i knew what to do with my pain now:
take it and dress it up in it’s friday night best,
make it into something everyone will know the words to
and suddenly it’s a lot harder to hurt you
when it’s not still rattling around in your chest
like parasites disguised as butterflies.
and maybe i’m not punk rock
enough to rock a mohawk,
because to be honest the only band
i’ve ever been in is the marching band,
but i still got **** to say even if it doesn’t have a chorus
and my pen’s bleeding ink all over my kitchen sink,
because i’m not afraid of myself anymore
and i’m not afraid of being alone anymore.
and i never had a punk rock john
or any type of pete wentz guru in my life
patching up my knuckles,
just the music
and it was enough.
so i think i’d rather watch people cough up
their hearts onstage
and come home smelling like *** i didn’t smoke,
X’s still on my hands,
than cough up mine in the bathroom,
in my bedroom, all alone like i used to.
just because i’m not afraid of being alone anymore
doesn’t mean i really want to be
and kids like me we want immortality so bad,
why else would we write?
why else would we go to concerts,
spend all our money on experiences?
so maybe that’s why
i’m spending all my money on concerts tickets
because i know we either grow up to be rockstars
or parents sending our kids to their shows.
there isn't much in between.
and i want to scream myself hoarse
before i run out of breath.
because tonight we’re all just kids at a concert,
pressed in on all sides and dancing even though
no one has enough room.
we’re all just singing about the same things tonight.
because life is a lot like crowd-diving,
it’s scary and i’m not sure i’m cool enough for it
and you can’t be sure anybody’s going to catch you.
because when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
getting the hell out of their veins at one time or another.
when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
disappearing at one time of another.
and i think inside we’re all kind of still fifteen sometimes,
whether we’re twenty-one or forty-five.
no matter who you are, sometimes you wake up
and you’d give anything to be somebody else.
and sometimes we’re all kids about to get trampled in the mosh pit,
but you know the rules:
when you fall down
somebody’s gonna pick you back up
if you don’t get back on your feet yourself,
i promise.

my mother is a journalist
and my father is out of work
she’s spinning stories
and he’s just staring out the window
you are recording my mistakes
and i am selling yours onstage.
so i’ll give myself to strangers,
and flinch away when you touch me
it’s always too much and not enough.
i’ll plaster my heart all over the world,
and refuse to read you anything.
i write too much and i don’t speak enough,
my entire bibliography a tour de force of silence
and the things i wish i’d said.
you could cut out my tongue and
not notice the difference.
sewn shut lips with a poem slipping out,
i'm too scared to read it out aloud.
but i’ve been learning that being scared
just means that you give a ****.
words have always been easy,
saying them is so much harder.
and i’m not looking for anybody to color me in
but i’ll keep writing you poems until you feel something.
i love like somebody’s always
looking over my shoulder
and i know, i know
that’s no way to live.
how should i expect to bare my soul
if i’m still scared of it,
don’t i know that half-truths will
never compare to it?
cause and effect, expose and protect
i’ve got a notebooks full of ****
i wish i was brave enough to say to you.
but i'm tongued tied;
half of me is still in my head,
and the other half is stuck in my heart
and i’m trying not fall apart,
i’m trying to keep my ******* head
separated from my ******* heart.
i’m trying, i am, but i think there will always
be part of me that sees you
and memorizes everything new like a line in a poem.
it’s a song without a chorus
it’s an anthem without a single verse
we are actors with no lines to rehearse
we are missing everything we were supposed to find.
but if i tried to tell you this
i’d just stutter my way through
and all the sentiment would get lost in the  
“um, but, uh, like, i, er”
on its way to you,
my nervous system’s got anxiety
and i want to be seen but not scrutinized.
i am in the room full of my mistakes
and they are telling me ghost stories about you.
i’m stuck so deep inside my own head
i can’t find my way out,
i’m just hiding out in the ruins of my own life.
my mouth’s not good at small talk
when gravity’s holding me down,
these words are loaded but the gun is empty.
and i remember the way
you used to talk about your dreams
like you’d forgotten them, tongue heavy
with nostalgia as you told me
about all these bright-eyed ideas
that you now called delusions of grandeur
with a shake of your head and a grim set in your mouth.
and i remember how you looked at me;
i don’t want to be just another thing you regret.
and i’m tired of being less afraid
to shed my skin onstage than in front of you,
i’m tired of choking all the things i’ve never said.
a penny for your thoughts and
a dollar for your heart
ask me what i’m thinking,
i swear i won’t flinch.