1.I want to kiss you until you lose your mind.
2. I think about days when you don’t love me anymore and I can already taste blood in my mouth and my heart is already prepared to take flight.
3. I am exactly who I think I am when you place your callused hands on my body and you see me as exactly who I wish to be.
4. You feel. And when you feel it takes up all of you. But it doesn’t destroy you.
5. You always have to be touching me, like you’re holding down a balloon. And I certainly don’t mind, for I’ve always longed to have someone keep me grounded.
6. I have been consistently warned not to make homes out of humans, but without you I would be homesick.
7. I stare at you and I have this unmanageable fear I will one day fall out of love with you. But I know that if there comes a day when I love you less, I’ll fight it till the very end.

Back when no one spoke of love
because it was too hard to explain,
daddy use to tell stories at the dinner table
using salt and pepper shakers,
and mommy would listen
but I would not,
because children
did not listen to salt and pepper shaker stories.
Maybe if I had listened just a little bit harder
mommy and daddy would still love each other.
But I never listened
and daddy never stayed.

A few years later
daddy still told stories around the dinner table
using forks and knives and empty plates
to people who never cared and never listened
and mommy wasn’t around.
But I still was
and I was the only one to listen.

His stories weren’t of love,
or life
or anything anyone would remember tomorrow
or the next day,
but if I learned anything from those
salt and pepper shaker stories
and the fork and knive tales,
it was
never fall in love

and I never did.

He would touch my shoulder
and I would cringe away,
he would declare pretty words
and I would remain emotionless.
Because there are some actions in life
that you can not take back,
no matter what you
give,
say,
or do.

There are spaces inside of us
filled with grudges
you can not get rid of,
and there are parts of us
that once they have been scratched,
they can not be polished back to perfection.

Some of us,
have missing pieces
and I’m afraid
my dear,
that I’m missing my will
to forgive.

I will love you until the moon collapses,
because there are some people you just
click with
and I heard time snap when I fell in love with you.
You are the piece to my unfinished puzzle,
which I’ve been trying to put together for years
but have had neither the will or the ability.

I’ll love you until we run out of stars,
until the sun meets the moon again,
until the tide stays away from the shore.

There are few things of which I am certain in this world,
but I am certain of you.

I. My father taught me that
there’s always something better around the corner
if you just never stop looking
when he committed infidelity.

II. My mother taught me to take what makes me angry
and knock out its teeth
when she shoved my father off our front steps
and then had her fingerprints taken.

III. My grandmother taught me that someday
you will be able to forget the bad things that have happened
when Alzheimer’s rotted her mind
and we all became someone else to her.

IV. My grandfather taught me that
love does not get up and walk away
when the going gets tough,
when he picked my grandmother up off the floor
when she fell for the hundredth time.

V. My brother taught me
that forgetting is bliss
when he lived his life to the fullest,
without his past tied to his feet.

VI. If I teach people anything,
I want it to be
that you can get back up
and dust yourself off
no matter how badly you had been shoved onto that floor.

Come back and lull me to sleep
with all the excuses why you had to leave me,
and I’ll dream of the will
to let you back in.

I tell myself I am strong,
that I won’t go back,
but I know that if you turned around
I would drop everything to be with you again.
I tell myself I would never let you back in,
but you never really left.

You live in my words and my veins,
and no amount of writing
or blood spilt
could get rid of you.

You left at 11:23 at night
and by 12:02,
it was as if you had never been there.
I stripped the bed of its sheets
and left them to be washed,
I scrubbed the dishes you had used
and stacked them when they were dry.
I hid your hat that you had left
but I slipped on your shirt
and tried my hardest
not to inhale you.
I washed my body of your fingerprints
and my hair of your scent,
because if you couldn’t actually be here
I didn’t want to remember that you had been.

I hear planes taking off every half hour
and it reminds me of the way your heart beats when you kiss me.
I write poems in my head when your lips touch mine and silently write them down when you’re not looking,
because I would never want you to know
you’re my biggest muse,
I would never want you to know
you’re all I can think about.

I looked right at you and I knew you'd break my heart.
All brown eyed and troublesome smirk,
you had heartbreaker written all over you.
But I dove in head first,
like some sort of death wish.
You were a bad boy with bad intentions
and such a charming smile,
and I had every desire to let you poke holes in my battered up heart.

Some days I wake up and I can go
twenty minutes,
maybe an hour,
before I remember you.
But each morning while I
brush my teeth or
hide my face behind make-up,
it'll hit me like a
magnitude 5 earthquake,
that you're gone and I
no longer have my heart.

I have a chemical imbalance in my brain.
I know you can’t understand
why I sleep too many hours in a day,
or that sometimes I can’t find the will to get up in the morning,
but I need you to try.

Because once upon a time
before I had you,
I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.
I saw darkness and guilt
and when the sun didn’t come out,
neither did I.
I took things I shouldn’t have to my wrists,
and wore long sleeves in the summer.
I spent my days in my room
and I pushed every person I loved away,

I know you can’t picture me that way,
but I need you to
for just one second.
Picture a girl with dead eyes,
and a quiet voice.
Picture someone who when the going got tough,
she wanted to be dead.
Picture someone writing notes to the ones she loved,
telling them goodbye.
Picture someone swallowing too many pills
and not caring if she woke up or not.
Picture that person
because that use to be me.

I know you want me to stop taking my tiny yellow pills at night,
because you have never seen
that side of me.
But I live in fear everyday that I will fall back into that dark pitt.
So I take my pills
every night at nine,
and pull myself together
every morning.
I know you can’t understand
because you didn’t see the girl I was,
and I hope you never do.

I thought of all the ways
I was going to tell you
I never wanted to see you again,
but I never got the chance.
You packed your bags and skipped town
long before I got to give you any speech,
entailing that it wasn’t you, it was me.

But it was you.
It was the way you constricted me like a boa,
and held me on a pedestal.
There were a million a two reasons why you drove me insane,
and a few more reasons
why you made everything in my life worse.

But if
I was the one that wanted to leave you,
then why did it injure me so bad
when you abandoned me first?

Come back and lull me to sleep
with all the excuses why you had to leave me,
and I’ll dream of the will
to let you back in.

I tell myself I am strong,
that I won’t go back,
but I know that if you turned around
I would drop everything to be with you again.
I tell myself I would never let you back in,
but you never really left.

You live in my words and my veins,
and no amount of writing
or blood spilt
could get rid of you.

My heart is still in the same shape it was after you crushed it for the first time.
2. Was it really that naive of me to think that you would come back?
3. You’ve done it before you can do it again.
4. Please.
5. You live inside all the people that know you.
6. That very first week you sketched warning signs across my chest and all I did was wash it off in the shower.
7. We were molten lava and tsunami winds -we would have never made it out alive.
8. I was the one who pulled you out of your wreckage of self destruction. I just wanted you to return the favour.
9. Your name and your face still send bees -not butterflies- coursing through my stomach.
10. I fell in love with the pain you caused me, not you.

I have tattoos scattered on my body
but I told you on our second date that I had commitment issues.
I guess what I meant to tell you
was that you should not come any closer,
because my heart is on fire.
I’m afraid you will blow up if you kiss me too hard
because the last boy told me I was a
tick-tick-ticking
time bomb.
But you are a man and not so easily scared
so I’ll tell you about the darkness
that made the others cringe and flee.

I will stare you down and find your flaws;
use them against you until I find a reason to leave
or until you beat me to it.
I will crash my ship onto your shore
and blame you for the wreckage.
I will set up camp inside your chest cavity
and let the smoke from my campfire fill your lungs.
I will sketch words into your skin,
I will write things about you,
that you couldn’t possibly believe.
I have demons following me like shadows
and I let them accompany me gratefully.

My heart is on fire
from all the things I have seen,
all the things I have done,
and all the things that have been done to me.
My heart is on fire
and I can simply not resist
lighting you up, too.

As I stood there in the ocean
it was as if the current were moving me,
and if I held real still
and closed my eyes,
it was if I could feel the earth moving beneath my feet.
Eyes shut tight,
I could understand why people did such things
as jumping from an airplane, or leaping through fire, or battling tigers
or fall in love.
I could understand why people smiled and laugh and danced
and lived.
The waves crashed up against me
strong enough to take me away,
and I realized there will always be forces that are stronger than you and I.
But as you came to stand beside me
and you, too closed your eyes,
I knew I could jump from an airplane, leap through fire, battle tigers, fall in love, smile, laugh, dance,
live.
There will always be forces greater than you and I,
but you held my hand and kept me upright as the waves bashed against us,
and that's all that matters.

You knew it was coming
long before I did.
You morphed into a snake and you wrapped your body around mine
as I slept next you at night,
and when that didn’t work
you threw grenades at me.
Your army was weak
but your line of defence was worse.

It was a complete 180,
you kicked me out and closed up shop,
hung up closed signs and shut the blinds.
You knew it was coming
and you knew you couldn’t make me stay.

You were wicked and deceitful,
you said words like
I don’t want you anymore
and
just end it already.
By the time the war was over
I couldn’t tell who had won.

By the time we were over
I couldn’t tell if I had left you,
or you had left me.

When I crawl in through the back door
at three o'clock in the morning,
the scent of you still lingers
and hangs off my clothes.
When I turn on the shower and
scrub at my skin,
I can still feel your finger tips
dancing their way down my thighs,
up my arm,
across my spine.
When I lay my head of my pillow
at approximately 3:37,
the world is still spinning
and alcohol is pumping through my blood
but all I can see is the outline of your face in the dark,
despite you being miles away.

It can take
2 hours,
5 hours,
a good nights sleep,
maybe even more,
to get alcohol out of your system.
But it's going to take
much more than time,
to remove you from mine.

He touched her like
he had never felt anything like her before.
From collarbones to hipbones,
to the birthmark on her hip to the curve of her neck
He kissed her like he’d never been kissed.

She trembled like it was her first time
and maybe it was, she couldn’t remember.
All she knew was the tips of his hair and the bottom of his feet and everything in between.
Her heart was beating out of her chest and into his,
and if he could he would capture it and keep it forever.
She kissed him like she had never been kissed.

But time was short and they had been here before,
Knowing you can try and try again but not get it right.
And maybe all those other lovers before were wrong
But this felt so right,
Because it felt like they had never been kissed.

I want you in my bones
like a bad winter chill.
You’re in every breath I take,
I swallow you whole each time.
You’re in every inanimate object in this
godforsaken room.
I’d wash the walls and the floor
and everything in-between
just to be rid of your ghost,
if only it would work.
You’re in every person I talk to,
and even the ones I don’t.
I’d climb mountains
and swim lakes,
just to follow you home;
but instead I’m locked in this tower,
waiting for you to come back.
Even though I love you
I hate the way I miss you.

I’ve been fighting battles since the age of eight
(but haven’t we all?)
We’ve been fighting ever since we discovered
that the world has demons with very good disguises.
We’ve been brought down by people who think they
deserve the world;
we’ve been chopped down
until the our roots couldn’t collect water anymore.
We’ve got scars and bruises
that cover our bodies like tattoos,
and they’ll never go away.

It gave us the power to shut our ears when we heard words we didn’t like
and talk back when we and the people we loved needed defending.
We’ve had the world declare war on us
time after time
but god, did we learn to fight back
and we will always fight back.

I was once burned
by a flame so intense,
that I lost my ability
to feel.

Your skin burns red hot
when it touches mine,
but you are a flame
that I would let caress me
any day.

If you stop for too long
you give your past a chance to catch up with you
and it will try eating you alive.
I’ve been moving for so long
that when I stop it hits me like
a tsunami of regret.
It tries to swallow me whole
and take me under.
But the thing about dreadful pasts,
and bitter memories
is that they make you stronger,
better,
faster.
And sometimes
you
can
outrun
them.

If I were to tell you I was giving up on you,
all you would have done
is laugh.
You knew you had me
wrapped around your finger
and that you were
permanently sown through my veins.

So when I tried to let you go,
when I finally did give up,
it was if I was handing over
the air in my lungs,
the blood in my veins,
the light of my life.
And you still laughed
because while my life was ending,
you kept on living.

I tried to find answers in razor blades
but all they gave me were secrets and shame.
I tried to find peace between pages and words
but everything lead me back to you
and everything I wrote
was you.
I tried to find courage to call you in 7% drinks but all they lead to was me hanging up the phone.

Instead I found you
in dreams where I couldn’t touch you,
in dreams where you weren’t yourself.
It’s been four years
and I’m still finding you
in blinding memories
while I lie beside the one I love;
and I’m afraid I will keep searching for you
because even when I was with you
I never really had you.

Your veins were like vines
your bones were the roots,
and like the trees
I needed you as a source of survival.

I was a river
flooding up, up and over
looking for a place to drain.

Your body was a landscape
in which I would discover
had much more beauty
than any continent.

Inside me lies a hurricane
growing fast and strong.
It’s on its path of self-destruction
and I fear
it will take
you down
with me.

“You always hurt the ones you love”
as if that makes it okay to
say the words you know they hate,
leave for two hours in the heat of an argument,
yell and scream and fight and argue,
or push them into the coffee table.

You do not hurt the ones you love,
it's as simple as that.
You do not leave when they need you most,
you do not write, type, speak,
words, phrases, sayings, sentences that will break them.

You do not break the ones you love
and if you do
and you happen to feel no remorse because
“you always hurt the ones you love”
well then you never loved them to begin with.

Tell me all the thoughts you think
right before you go to bed,
the ones that keep you up
the ones you can’t keep out.
I’ll steal them
-pluck them right from your skull,
and set them right along side mine.
We all have demons,
so show me yours.

Whisper them to me, don’t keep them inside
-I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
We’ve all got demons
that makes it hard to sleep it night,
that make it hard to eat and breath and think.
But baby, I think we’ve got it made,
I think mine play well with yours.

I can see right through you.
You hide behind walls with thick bricks,
behind a sheet of mean,
underneath a blanket of humour.
You are as thin as the shear light that shines through the clouds
(you are transparent, I see right through you).

You have memories that have
punched holes through your bones
and made you break,
but you built yourself back up using rusty nails and tape.
You have stories that you've never told
but I've pieced together enough to know,
some of your secrets are never coming out
(but I would listen if you wanted me to hear).

I can see right through you like a worn out sheet.
I don't care that you're transparent,
I'll cover you up.
I'll patch up the pieces after I've cracked them open
(we all need to be cracked open).

I'm sorry I wasn't there
I'm sorry I wasn't there
I'm sorry I could never be there
(I'll always be there)

Our love still exists
on the park by the river,
and our love still exists
in the back of your pickup truck.

It’s sad to know
that you can love someone
with your whole heart,
and be wrong for them.
That you can love someone
so deeply and
have it not work out.

I love you 
doesn’t work
when you’re a little too late.
I love you doesn’t work,
when you’ve walked away.

Yes, our love still exists
on your old worn out couch.
Our love still exists
somewhere, out there
but not here.

Mommy use to warn me
about boys who would pull my hair,
and tell me I was pretty,
and pick me up in their fathers truck,
and break my heart.
But she did not mention all the other ways a little girl could have her heart broken.

Like when her daddy packs his bags and doesn't come back home,
or when her mother picks up the bottle instead of her from dance class.
She failed to tell me that there were men out there that
would hit you until you saw black
and then tell you they couldn't live without you.
And that your best friend will figure out everything about you, and then use it against you.
The reality is, many little girls have their hearts broken
long before they have a chance to have a man tell them they love them.

“I trust you on this,” he says
but he doesn’t know that I’m haunted
by the idea
of stepping into another mans arms.

I watched my father leave a trail of love letters
throughout our two story house addressed to a secret lover.
I read them word for word
and admired his love
but hated that it was for another woman.
They say infidelity runs in the family,
like a deep rooted disease
and I’m afraid I am next.

I was the accomplice to the boy I loved
while he fooled another.
He stole midnight kisses from me
but returned every morning for her.
He stole innocence from me,
and happiness from her.
I was a chess piece to a boy
who was playing a very good game.

I am not my father’s daughter
I am not his past mistakes,
but I hold my own wrong doings
and they lead me to unfaith.

I would slit my throat
and hang myself to dry
before I followed my father’s footsteps,
but before you say you trust me
just know what lies in my veins.

June of that year
lead to warm summer nights,
and a thousand stars to connect,
but more importantly
it lead to him.
He was the summer rolled up
into tan skin and a white smile,
he was everything I thought I wanted
but worse.
Summer turned to fall
and fall turned to winter,
and with the seasons
we changed.
We fell out of a love
that I never thought
I would have again.

June of this year,
I blossomed from a shell of self destruction
and I stumbled upon you.
You were everything I never knew I needed,
rolled into
a beautiful disguise.
You were a love I never thought I would have,
a person I never thought I would need,
a feeling I never knew I could feel.
You were a love I would
go through hell for
a thousand times over.

My mouth tasted like sweet decomposition
while yours tasted of bitter revenge.
I hold grudges the way lovers hold hands,
and I will be in the backseat of your truck
for three years or more
reliving what I saw that autumn night.
I hate to hold you responsible
for something you didn’t know
you were breaking,
but it was your hands that I saw disappearing into the night
and it was my heart on the line.

You and those five drinks that were
8% alcohol
set my feelings on fire.
And now whenever
I think of that night
flames burst from the darkest parts of my mind.
I always knew you’d be the one to light me up,
but I never thought you’d be the one
to burn me down.

I use to be so empty,
I was drained like a sewer
and I was led to believe
that I would always be this way.
But the beautiful thing is,
I didn’t need anyone to fill me back up,
I did that myself.

I use to be so sad that
it was a battle in the morning
just to get up,
but I did it.
I did it -no one else.

I sprouted up
like a tree growing in the shade.
I was a snake,
shedding its skin
on a cold winters day.

Here’s the secret they don’t want you to know:
you can do it on your own.
You don’t need to be propped up
and led along,
because when you think
you’ve done just about all that
you can do,
you’ll realize
you can do so much more.

I want to write about
the one I love,
not the one who left me
high and dry.
You blew cancer into my lungs,
but he pulled the trigger
and I kissed him every day to try and soften the blow.
Now every time my lips touch yours,
I taste blood in my mouth
like a sick reminder of where
my lips used to be placed.

I want to touch you
every day for the rest of my life,
but my hands have been scorched
and burned
from placing them on somebody else.
But the way you touch me
makes me feel as if
all my sins have been erased.

I soon found that
it felt wrong to whisper
I love you
into the midnight air,
because I was so unsure as to who I was talking to
and I wanted you to be the only one
I ever said it to.

He made fun of the fact that I needed my water to be
ice, ice cold in order to drink it.
But he didn’t understand
that I had feelings inside of me
that burned me up from the inside out.

That’s why when he held me at night
and ran his fingers up and down my spin,
he would say I was his own personal sauna.
That didn’t stop him though
from pulling the covers over our bodies
to hide us from the world,
and it didn’t stop him
from tangling his limbs with mine.

I breathe fire and I love you’s into your mouth when we kiss,
because my mouth fumbles when I try to say it out loud.
These unsaid words are just fuel to the fire that burns inside of me
and I’m afraid I will perish to its heat
before I can ever say these words
out loud.

Each time you wrap your
long arms around me,
it's as if you are trying to let me
borrow your skin.
So I let myself burrow myself inside you
and hide for about
four hours,
if I'm fortune.
And when I awake I find the need
to bend over and
spew out everything that happened last night
as if I can not handle who I am trying to be.
But I know each time
you wrap your arms around me
you are fine with letting me
be me.

I’ve read stories about
people who believed
love was a disease,
and I believe them, my dear.
I’m weak in the knees,
the heart,
the soul.
I’m sick to my stomach when you’re not here,
I’m high with a fever when you are.
I can’t focus,
I can’t sleep,
and when I dream,
it’s of you.

You’re a cancer
that I’ll never remove.
You’re a cough
that’ll never disappear,
you’re a sickness
I’ll put up with for the rest of my life.
Your love is a disease, my dear
and I hope they never find the cure.

Winter is brewing inside of me,
even on a hot summers day.
A snow storm festers inside of my heart,
You can't get in
and you can't get out.

It’s not fair to you or I
that I lay here letting my words fester inside of me
while you lay on the other side of the bed,
tired and waiting.
It’s not fair to you
that someone else made me close off my heart
to them, the world, and you.

Winter is brewing inside of me
even when I have you to keep me warm.
Spring is starting in my heart,
and I can’t let it out.

You had never been loved properly
and that made you cruel.
You cut people open,
ripped them to shreds,
just trying to find something
to make you feel whole,
to make you feel happy.

You threw yourself into people
so that you didn’t have to deal with yourself,
so that you didn’t have to be alone.
But you took people by the heart
and crushed them
because no one taught you
how to love another human being,

but worse yet
no one taught you how to be loved.

These last three years have been a prime example
of why not to fall in love,
because it takes too many months to piece your heart back together
after it has been beaten to death by a boy
with pretty brown eyes and charming words.

But if I could promise myself anything,
it would be that the next time I let another touch my lips
they will have to jump high fences and run marathons
before they earn that right.
The next time I let someone hold my hand
I want a five page essay on their theories of love
and a detailed description on how not to break a heart.
When another boy whispers sweet things into my open ears,
I will hook him up to a lie detector
and wait to see his lies.

Because the next time I trip and fall into love,
it'll be forever.
The next time I feel like dragging a blade across my wrists,
I'll kiss your lips instead.
When I feel like putting a rope around my neck
and hanging myself out to dry,
I'll pick up the phone and let you whisper sweet words into my ear.
The next time I have a bottle of pills staring me down after midnight,
I'll grad your hand and let you take me away.
When I feel lost or let down or like I've reached the end of my already short rope,
I'll turn to you.

I want to share my cold feet with you in the confinement of our bed.
I want you to be there when the thunder booms and the lightning strikes,
because we all know I need someone to hold me tight.
I want you there in the morning as I'm getting ready, to tell me I'm beautiful as I stare myself down in the mirror,
scrutinizing every detail I hate.

I want to make you your coffee,
I want to know just the way you like it,
even though I can't stand the taste.
I want to share all my secrets that come out at four a.m.,
I want to hold when you're vulnerable as you whisper “make me better, make me better”.

I want to hold you up when you're down,
and be strong enough for two,
I want to
make you better,
make you better.

There are people who have sadness
deep inside their bones,
swimming through their veins,
coursing through their lungs.

Addicted like a dead-beat to alcohol,
like a ***** to crack,
addicted to waking up each morning
and feeling the stab of the knife being driven into their chest
because they deserve it;
addicted to the sadness.

Despite their lips cracking into a pathetic smile
there is sadness in their irises, on their pupils,
screaming to be noticed
but not pointed out.

There are people who have sadness
written in their notebooks,
on the inside of their wrists,
their thighs,
their eyes,
and they are completely content
letting it live there.

On mornings when I wake up
panicked with a troubled heart,
it’s because my dreams can not forget
the ever pressing past.
On mornings when I wake up
bitter and regretful
it’s because the past was reoccurring
while I was in a slumber.

There are days when I have to wake up
and have forgive you all over again,
because I was forced to remember
what I try so hard to forget in the daylight.

Your words and your actions
and the feelings built up inside my chest
come back alive inside my imagination
and I’m afraid that one day
I will grow tired of
dismissing what you
have done to me.

People die all the time
I know I do.

When I heard his voice for the very last time,
when I broke that promise not once but twice,
when I forgave someone I never should have,
when I gave it all up for someone who was never
ever
coming back.

People die all the time.
The people we love
become ghosts inside of us,
and I have tried to **** them
I have the scars to show it,
but we keep them alive like this.

I tried to **** him off,
I did,
but instead
I killed myself.