No greater feeling
than breathing in oxygen
and loving the taste
of it's sweetness on your teeth

I used to think I was afraid of being touched.

Now I realize,
I've always just been afraid of the coldness
made by hands leaving my skin

It's not so much the light at the end of the tunnel,
but the assurance that there's always light in the morning
after you wake up from a horrible nightmare,
You're just dreaming,
I'm just dreaming of these screeching banshees
Birds will chirp in the morning
A phoenix with healing tears will perch on my bedside
Ready to cry on my heart when I awake.

Your cigarette stained lies
envelope me
until I'm puffing them out and letting them into the air
into a cloud of smoke
and the world hates you
because of me
but it hates me too
and I wish you the best of ******* luck
except I'm a drunk liar
and a drunken hypocrite
you don't give a ****
and I might not do better
but that's still better than you
I feel bad
for the feathers that stay tucked in your pillowcase
that you sleep on every night
that you suffocate
with your cigarette stained lies
that you burn people with
I will walk on maybe
but with cigarette burns on my arms
I'll wear your lies on my sleeve
and show off your cherry pepper voice to the world
you're invited to my party
and to my showcase
just sit in the back row where I can't see you
and leave before the finale
and never mention it again
You should probably tell her that you miss me
and not burn her with cigarette stained lies
oh who am I kidding?
You're a ******* chain smoker
and she's *******
If I wasn't such a bitter human being
I'd feel sorry for her

Chao.

The day finally came
when the sky is light at midnight
I wish you would hold me like you used to
because you're the only one that knows how to hold me right
but you found someone else that you want to hold
because it's light at midnight
and my everything's gone
and I'm just some **** that you used to know
that you don't know is still alive
that you don't think about with your tongue in her mouth

Not a doubt in my mind
that I can't go on

love: to have a strong liking for, take great pleasure in

I love you and I love french toast too,

Maybe I don't love anything at all.

Staying up late
and knowing you're somewhere close
Dodging looks out windows
causing my neck to writhe
and my high hopes to plummet
when there's no one at my door.

The creases in your forehead
make up the lines of my face
and it's the most disappointing
self-portrait I've ever made.

The bus comes at the same time everyday.

I woke up late. I can never hear monotonous alarming noises.

I missed the bus.

I'll have to take a different one.

It won't get me to the same stop.

I'll have to transfer onto another bus.

And walk a few blocks.

I guess I'll get there in the end.

I just missed my express bus that got me there perfectly.

I still miss that express bus.

I'll never get there perfectly.

Even if

nightmares, cats, leaders, ***, beauty, hugs, feelings, melodies, technology, communication, life, abandonment, longings, mornings, electronics, kingdoms, followers, humiliation, darlings, hyperventilation, depression, Alonedom, ghosts, trundles, Hell, gravity, tickling, hearts, unicorns, twins, education, lost ones, ink, medications, pavements, thoughts, souls, suicide, walls, hatred, alcohol, oceans, soles, music, misspellings, transportation, buses, guts, Heaven, time, attractions, *****, hands, blindness, organs, dreams, bodies, distances, understanding, currency, energy, love, spaghetti, contentment, happiness, tears, fire, people, oxygen, tongues, children, peace, death, papas, zombies, homicide, blood, kisses, drugs, families, caffeine, mamas, space, parchments, baked goods, economy.

didn't exist,
I would still wish you would

But you don't anymore

so nothing matters.

I want peacefulness
I want contentment
I want to wake up in the morning after the sweetest of dreams and live the day as a fantasy
I want to go to bed after a fantasy and dream the sweetest of realities
I want to not wonder and not have to think so hard to remember those fantasies that were so real
I want you to wonder and think hard all day long to remember me as a fantasy
I want you to search for me in every woman you meet
I want you to dream about me, think about me, try hard to remember me
I want you to care about me
I want to not care about you
I want you to to be constantly troubled by the fact that you can't remember what my voice sounds like anymore
I want you to be thankful that you at least have those voicemails on your machine as evidence
I want you to listen to them everyday and feel guilty that you do
I want you to feel guilty about a lot of things
I want to live in the same neighborhood as you and
I want you to wonder if I'm home every time you walk past my house
I want you to feel my cheek on your shoulder even when it's not there
I want you to not be able to listen to your favorite music anymore because of me
I want you to be nostalgic all the time
I want you to hate yourself for destroying me
I want you to not be able to sleep or eat or breathe because of me
I want nothing from you and everything from you all at once
I want to forgive you
I want to forget you
I want to go back
I want you back
I want to not hate myself for missing you
I want you
I want you
I want us
I want us to go back

Come back.

My dreams are so good
they're nightmares.

Things need to disorganize
they need to run around with their arms creating a tornado above their heads
they need to scrabble
to shuffle
to dishevel
to destroy
to complicate and confuse
to break up other things
to create a topsy-turvy world
in order to leave space
for things to reorganize.

In the end
it all comes down to the fact
that I still listen to your music
despite how it makes me feel.

The clouds cry because people seem much happier without them.
They are lonely

I cry because people seem much happier without me too.
I am lonely.

This is why I hang out with the rain
and catch teardrops with my tongue

****.

Standing tall
in a corner
that doesn't exist
at all

(So why should I bother brandishing my arms around
to get your attention?)

The rain taps it's fingernails
on my window
to remind me that living things
are still growing

The monotonous sky tells my story
as rain rolls down my cheeks
in a silent car ride
(my screaming thoughts escaped out the window
with a dying wheezing sound)

Shivers have never been more comforting
on my already cold skin,
as the wind tangled my hair with
a pushing of a heavy glass door

The barista was far too happy,
I'm sure his paycheck doesn't allow him
to embrace his loneliness
and I ordered a coffee on the rocks
in a storm by the sea
with my arms crossed and knuckles clenched
against my sweater,
because the cold feels so familiar

as I wait for you to show up at this coffee shop,
I already know that you won't

I miss the heat
that wasn't humid
and the cold
that was
a cool breeze

Come be my cloud
that keeps me comfortable
like you were before

I'm so uncomfortable

Always pressing flowers
Attempting to beautify the dead

Stockholm Syndrome
I'm in love with my captor
and words would just leave this
expression incomplete
as incomplete as I have always been
as incomplete as I always will be

Thank you, my love
for capturing me
and holding me hostage
and holding my hand

I understand.

It's not that these me and you shoes are too large to fill,
they're just two different sizes
and much too awkward
for anyone else's feet to fit into.

Shower me with presents of your presence
Heal me, if only for a second.
Feel me, if only for a stroke.

As the rain dives onto my window,
it puts its mouth up against the glass
and screams the unnerving truth;

I am long passed being somebody's rose
I've been picked and left to be pressed in a book
I don't have roots to keep me stable in the ground as the wind blows
I've been dried out and left to die.
Forgotten.

I know I'm breathing
because when I tuck my chin
I can see my chest swelling

I know I'm alive
because if I weren't then
I wouldn't feel anything at all
I wouldn't remember anything

I wish I couldn't remember
I wish I couldn't feel anything at all
I wish I weren't alive
I wish I couldn't see my chest swelling
I wish I couldn't tuck my chin
I wish I wasn't breathing.

But I am breathing and tucking and swelling and living and feeling and remembering
everything all at once.

all the time.

And there is simply no worse feeling
than missing someone that doesn't miss you back

And there is simply no worse feeling
than gathering hopes from cherry trees and putting them in your basket to bring home with you
then gathering hopes from your basket and laying them into neat rows, smallest to biggest,
then looking at them and realizing they're not cherries at all, they're not even fruit, they're rocks.

No worse feeling...
than having all of these hopes,
hoping
that you wish you couldn't breathe, tuck, swell, live, feel, remember

Just like me.

But you'll keep breathing like me
and tucking your chin like me
and swelling your chest at the thought of another girl that's so unlike me
and living like me
and feeling what you used to feel about me for that other girl that's so unlike me

Unlike me.

I wish I was unlike me.

I wish you still liked me.

I wish we happened during rush hour
so I could I appreciate everything
on the side of the highway that
I didn't notice
when we were going seventy miles per hour

Writing on the backs
of parking tickets and paychecks

Writing on the back of you.

Drawing pictures with my fingers.

Hi.

(It's been so long and I miss you so ******* much)

I figured I'd call you to cheer you up but you're not answering your phone

(I called because my will power ***** and I know you've been hurting. I'm crushed that you didn't answer because I just want to hear the sound of your voice so I won't forget what it sounds like. I miss that cherry pepper melody of compliments and lies.)

And mines almost dead

(Losing hope of finally hearing that song, so spicy and sweet)

and we're still four hours outside Minneapolis, so...

(Here comes four more hours of thinking about you and brooding about the past that I'll have to endure. Four hours of wondering what we would have talked about if you had answered.)

I don't know if you're sleeping or if

(I really hope you didn't see my name on your caller ID and endure the torturous ringing of that vintage telephone ring tone and feel the vibrations and hums of my call in your hands all the way up until now when I'm recording this message, because deep down I have false hope that you miss me as much I miss you. God, I ******* miss you.)

...

(Static/bad reception)

dead.

(Like I wish I was)

Talk to you soon maybe

(Maybe I will feel this brave tomorrow, or maybe I'll just regret leaving this message and never talk to you again. I haven't decided yet.)

Have a good day at school

(I wish you still told me every detail about your day. I wish I was still sitting next to you and holding your hand and not able to keep my hands off your *** as you told me about your classes.)

tomorrow*

(Tomorrow never seems to go as planned.)

The universe mocks with
Emmylous and Junes
but there are things far greater
than what rises with the moon

Your vision
determines the placement of your skull

So turn your head
and look the other way

I'll look that way too.
I've never seen anything as beautiful
as the back of your head
as you focus on walking forward
far away

The only thing you liked about me was my face

You make me remember why I hate being called beautiful

Always an ex
Never a lover.

I'm always
                    half
joking and
                    half
hoping.

I can't even remember
the best things he said
anymore

I won't say you broke my heart because I never had one to begin with
but you ripped me apart,
limb by limb

Actually,
I would prefer that tearing and snapping
to what what was real

All I have left are
could have beens
and
what ifs
I wish I was still a zombie

I wrote you something
Well, maybe I wrote it for myself
but it's about you and me on the best day of my life
and about you and me on the worst day of my life
It's far too personal to show anybody but you,
so for now I'll just keep it to myself
because you don't want to see it
but I'll hope that you'll see this
and let me know if you want to read it
because I'm sorry
and I miss you
despite everything

because I'm a *****.

I guess I wish you the best,
I just hope you have to suffer a little to find it,
and I hope the best reminds you of me a little.

I painted myself metallic
until I was shining
and shredded myself into fine tinsel
to be your silver lining

And you gave me your cloud to hold
and to mold
I just wish you had told me
you longed for it to be outlined in gold

The difference between the sprout and the bean is a golden ring*
"It's a racket."
I really was being a snob

I never lied
I wish you weren't ashamed of me

I wish I wasn't ashamed at myself
for not hating you as much as I know I do
and for breaking my streak

I wish you didn't lie to me
Whether you lied about how much you cared
Whether you lied to yourself when you let slip that you missed me
Whether you lied to me when you let slip that you missed me
Whether you lied to me about her to make me feel bad.

I never lied.
I wish you didn't pretend I did.

"I show her that I love her.
I hug her.
I kiss her.
I tell her that I love her."

I've never loved anybody
I've never hated anybody
but now...
I might feel both at the same time
and I don't know how to handle that

"He has done nothing except make you feel like ******* ****. You are done with that *******. Done."

Now I remember.

But I also remember other things.

I hate remembering

Do you remember me?

Your eyes are an inky oil painting,
when they leak
I miss that sinking feeling

Water balloon organs make up my shape
Swelling with emotional fluids
forever amplifying, squishing together
My emotions are no longer separate

My maudlin heart rests its head
on the shoulder of my claustrophobic lungs
They breathe heavily in the intimacy
of such a dangerous seduction
They're panting like a canine in heat
it's such a perilous defeat

All of these water balloons
Swelling with emotional fluids
Lose their shape when stabbed
by your dagger fingers
by your dagger teeth
by your dagger tongue
by your dagger words
They're so filled with holes
and my fluids flow freely
mixing together in a scarlett sea
a potion of swelling emotion
You and your daggers
are attracted to deformation
which is why you think my swaying back
that keeps me from standing upright
is so ****
At least my suffering is ****
Not that I have anyone to be **** for anymore

You never think they'll hurt you
until you have no heart

I wish I didn't hate you.
I wish I stopped thinking about you
I wish I could stop listening to your favorite song
and hear your opinions and light voice
roughly waving over the rhythm and strum of a simple guitar

But I can't,
So I think about you
thinking about someone else
in the way you used to think about me

And suddenly my heart is missing.