Regret for
slipping on cowboy boots
and sitting at your kitchen table

Regret for
allowing you to make me complete,
because it only gave you something whole to rip.

I sleep comfortably on
rock bottom
because it's a solid foundation
and I will build castles upon it
until I'm sleeping
...soaking wet in the clouds.

Holden Caulfield
2. That movie that I saw last weekend that I thought you would like
3. The mix tapes you made me. I still listen to them in my car
4. The way I dance and wondering if you would like it if you saw me.
5. The Kooks and how you hate them.
6. Hospice
7. Late nights sleeping alone and knowing you're awake, but oh so silent.
8. Wondering if you're thinking about me too
9. The poems you wrote me. Your handwriting is classy.
10. The picture of Hilary Duff on my desk reminding me to be good
11. My bed and how you used to be there.
12. My friends and how you used to be one of them
13. Uptown
14. My ticklish spots that no longer get touched
15. My cat... he misses you.
16. Speaking Spanish and how you used to correct it, and sometimes be impressed
17. Wearing bows in my hair. How you used to love them.
18. The clothes I bought at that thrift store yesterday. I wonder if you'd like them.
19. Mehermahermahermaherm
20. Listening to Bright Eyes.
21. Listening to the sound of loneliness.
22. Coffee and how you say "Americano" with a roll of the tongue.
23. The last bit in my tea and how it's "too sweet to swallow."
24. Sitting close on the couch. Your hand stroking mine. Sneaking a kiss on the cheek.
25. Missing busses and missing you.
26. How I used to cheer you up.
27. The stars and sheep and roses.
28. Seth Rogan
29. Meditating and how I can't do it with you constantly clogging up my brain.
30. Laughing
31. I never learned to salsa dance with you and your brutally honest hips.
32. Carrot Creme Brulee
33. Hand dance duets
34. The empty spaces between my fingers
35. Your grey corduroy pants are my favorite.
36. When you called me your coriño.
37. How you would have scoffed at me copying and pasting an "ñ".
38. Attempting to show you music you would like.
39. Failing at showing you music you like.
40. Sending you hearts.
41. Arching my back.
42. Eating ice cream and how I'm better when it's here.
43. How I'm better when you're here.
44. How Cory is better when Topanga is there.
45. Italian Night Clubs
46. You and Me and Everyone We Know
47. Tyronne Street
48. Ice Land
49. Getting lost.
50. Drunken parties and thrashing fists.
51. Second chances
52. Being half of something.
53. Wearing your cardigan
54. Long embraces and never wanting to move.
55. Doing my homework with you sitting next to me. Not letting you read over my shoulder
56. Teaching you about the body.
57. Your smile, and how you give a little chuckle every time I see it.
58. How we used to laugh about nothing.
59. Really bad cookies.
60. Butter face.
61. Jealousy
62. Hating modernized Shakespeare
63. Confessions
64. Embarrassed faces buried in pillows
65. Incredulous about me hating Elvis
66. Miles ******* Davis
67. Singing softly to the radio
68. Playing the piano. Singing for you when you're not around.
69. Wondering if you're reading this right now.
70. Hoping that you've gotten this far down the list.
71. Be the Pitta to my Vata
72. Kate Upton has saggy *****.
73. I just want to make spaghetti with you.
74. How you hate ellipsis
75. Wondering whether or not I spelled that correctly because I know you would judge.
77. Leaving tearful voice-mails
78. John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Rolling Stone cover
79. Looking at art, wishing I was Monet.
80. My sundress on the floor.
81. Not seeing that new movie in theaters (the one that won all those Oscars) because I only want to see it with you.
82. Getting angry when Kacie B. didn't get the rose on the Bachelor and knowing you're angry too because Courtney ***** as a person.
83. I'm an ugly crier.
84. Hitting bread pans
85. Your green plaid jacket
86. Vulgarity
87. Insecurity
88. "Back and forth. Forever."
89. How that one song reminds you of me and I still don't know why.
90. How you deserve the best
91. It makes me sad that I'm at number 91 and you're still nowhere to be found.
92. Going to ballet class with the anticipation of seeing you afterward.
93. You asking me how ballet was, whether you were interested or not.
94. whispers "Let me be your hero."
95. Never seeing your fur vest.
96. Holding hands when we shouldn't have.
97. Velvet leggings
98. The last wonder of the world.
99. I fear that I will forget what your face looks like.
100. Reaching one-hundred with so much more to say.

You're the Harold to my Maude,

Bad timing...

Except we've both died a few times
and now neither of us is living.

So I guess we're two Harolds
and we both wanted to be Maude.

Look at the stars
and try to tell me
That a sheep doesn't know
the taste of a rose.

I try to inhale your words
**** them through my nostrils
but there is no more breath in my lungs
And I can't swallow your words whole
so I chew them up into tiny pieces,
and although they slide down my throat alright,
I can still taste the bits that are stuck in my teeth
...the pieces that scream that you don't care about me.

I wish I were a rose
because you love those barbed thorns
Or perhaps I wish I were a carnation
so you could dye me whichever shade you please

But I'm just the frailest flower
that you've let dry out
and pressed in your catacomb
of beautiful things you've murdered.

I hope you find a docile rose
that understands your gangling roots

Sifting through poetic phrases
digging for pronouns.

I have conversations with you in my head,
my mouth is moving
          a silent film with a torn screen
I picture what you would say,
wrap your beautiful words in quotation marks.
          If they were real they'd be wrapped in a sunrise
I imagine that I am funnier and wittier than I actually am
so I can imagine the laughter coming from your mouth
          and even though this is a silent film
          your smile in my mind takes handfuls of weight from my heart
          ...and almost makes up for the locked doors that dominate what I see

But the torn screen warps your smile
and those locked doors mock me,
         pouring shovels full of weight back into my heart.

1 Heart:

Gently used,
Never opened
Slightly torn

Coffee for two
all alone,
with rivers
of problems on paper
of a middle school girl.

You Don't
Want to
Know
Anything
About Me.

Congrats,
You Don't
Know
Anything
About Me.

Waking up to an ellipsis
from a phantom
and wondering if it's
a dream or a nightmare.

Sing softly and sweetly,
     for a single soul may listen
           and whisper your reprise.

Playlist
Track 1: Intro
Track 2: Fingers Tapping Keys (Creating Words)
Track 3: One Way Conversations From the Driver's Seat
Track 4: Eye Contact
Track 5: Music From a Black Cab
Track 6: Poetry
Track 7: The Feeny Call
Track 8: Foreign Languages
Track 9: Secrets
Track 10: Heavy Breathing
Track 11: Rustling
Track 12: Tickled Laughter
Track 13: I Miss You Already
Track 14: Ambient Musicians
Track 15: Accusations
Track 16: Tears
Track 17: *******
Track 18: Hyperventilation
Track 19: I Miss You
Track 20: Biting Lip
Track 21: ******* (Reprise)
Track 22: Silence
Track 23: Static
Track 24: Wondering

DISC TWO:

The only person
in a crowded room
of friends.

Punch a pillow in one spot
          it explodes in another
Lay your head face down to dream
          pillows explode at the seems
Sleeping feathers on your tongue
         where spicy memories are still young
Itchy feathers mix in your lashes
         drowning in tracks of tear-burned rashes

The parade is down the street,
Nobody's tossing sweets at my feet,
because there's wet cement on my front step
and my legs are short.

All it is is shifting;

Shifting weight from one leg to the next,
          to avoid the tingles that haunt my right side.
Shifting objects in my arms
          to avoid them falling to the ground.
Shifting positions in the night
          to avoid memories of spoons and nightmares of phantoms
Shifting levers in my brain
          putting all of my sleeping weight into the level labeled "loneliness"
Shifting anxiously
         standing with my arms crossed, eyes dodging.

I sprinkle the ones I love
with flakes of pestilence
that season my skin.

Despite the absence of presence,
I still have knowledge of existence
which will continue to haunt
my dreams---
          Re-runs of memories,
                    moments of nostalgia.

There's an eye on the back of my neck
and in order to let it see,
I stretch my spine up to the sky;
my nose aiming at the bullseye straight ahead.

I'm scared of what's behind
and I don't want the hauntings to make my eye blind,
so I hang my head
and curve my spine into an arch,
so my my eye can see the sky instead.

I'll get a hunchback from my lonely march,
but my eye will never have to see my past.

I'll run my hands
through my wet and clean hair
to scrub away the blood
crusting under my fingernails.

The spaces between my thoughts
is where I crouch---
          holding my breath.
You screeched, "Ready or not, here I come!"
and I must have been ready
because I'm still hiding
in those tiny spaces between my thoughts.

You are the intelligence
behind the cellar door,
(the phrase in which
your life is written)

Arms wrapped around air
in an unusually perfect circle
one too loose to hold onto anything
one too perfect to have any substance
one too big to for anything to fit into

My muscles clench tightly
wrapped around my bones
and they shake with exhaustion
but remain in that perfect circle
waiting for something
that will fit
something to hold

Empty walls and conversations with myself
Analyzing memories of tea stains on my denim shirt.

Kiss with a moldy tongue
See the ground with a head hung
Grow with a soul still young
Dance to the song yesterday sung

They'll tell that you deserve better
and that they'll treat you right,
but this only makes it hurt more
when you find out they lied.

You always bring me close enough
to see the whites of my eyes
before you shoot me.

He called me his darling
with his mouth full of my heart,
I just hope he chews it up well
so it feels nice slithering down his throat,
into the pit of his stomach.

Everyone loves hearts,
but I'm prone to losing things
and to breaking things.
So you probably shouldn't give me yours

In the hours that you hate me,
I'll remember the day
When I was my spirit animal
...back when you would always stay

I won't come crawling back,
my knees are ***** enough as it is

My heart is a suggestion box
and you've filled it to the top.

I've never been a surgeon
So I didn't fix what was broken
So now the corpse of what I killed is in front of me,
and I guess it's time for me to begin
my first love autopsy

Tomorrow never comes
Everyday is always today.

Everything and nothing all at once
The floor supports this paper
The paper supports this pen
This pen supports my hand
My hand supports my thoughts

The floor supports everything
It catches us when we fall
We should love the floor without fear
Even though it's hard... it doesn't mean to be, I swear
We should understand that
the floor will always be there
If we fall through, there will be another ground

Even if it is far away
and if our breath is caught with the fall
we were still supported, just a little too late
The ground just wanted to be there
and it was.

We take it for granted
It doesn't mean to hurt us
It's always there.

The floor and I play the trust game.

I have sympathy for things that don't want it
and apathy for things that only want my sympathy

Yet I own no sympathy at all.

We had a sweetened creme brulee
but carrots got tossed in
and carrots don't rhyme with anything
It was good for a while
interesting and intriguing
But I can't finish this cup
of weird creme brulee
but the taste was worth
the seven bucks I paid

I regret putting down my sheild,
but I won't regret the happiness
that threw it to the ground.

Touch me softly
in order
-skin
-tissue
-bone
grab them all at once
and I'll get bruised

I don't wish to see
the world in black and white
but a dull sepia
would be nice

My cinematic eyes
only win oscars
when they're sad.

It's hard to hear affection
through a mouthful of lies
But I can dance to the rhythm
of the music of your demise

I used to perform rituals of loneliness
as I danced around a clock
Counting my steps until midnight
My footprints fit into minutes

But time stopped around mid-day
while the sun was at its peak
With your hand in my pocket
I'll give it no room for air
...I'll give it no room to breathe

First the shove
Then the punch
Then the blow from behind the knees
Kick me when I'm down
Stand on my chest
Stick a stake in it
through my heart and into the ground

but if you leave I'll be suffering a slow death at best.
I just hope you don't hear my dying engine sound.

Bittersweetness is
energy
without the
CRASH

This is my left hand.
It met Mr. Right.
He was your right hand.
They fit together just right.
But Mr. Right hand left
And now my left hand
doesn't know
how to be left alone
now that Mr. Right isn't home.