it took me a long time to realize that the
deep
dark
feeling of homesickness would not fade
with a simple location,
or even a pair of warm arms
to pull me closer at night
or evena fulfillment
of a dream close to my heart
because the home i'm looking for
is not so easily achieved.
it is not a place
or a person,
but an ideology;
the feeling of
wanderlust
homesickness
hope for a new future
in all us humans on earth is that of
peace.
subconsciously or not, we are all searching
for the day that
we may live together without
prejudice
intolerance
hatred
belligerence
conflict.
we are searching for a breath of fresh air.

I sat next to a boy with the prettiest hands on the bus; I
was too scared to look him in the eye. They reminded me of
yours, thin and pale and with veins laced through them of
the palest lilac. I sat across from a woman on the train
today and her eyes were the most captivating thing I'd ever
seen, a sparkling amber that caught gold in the light. But
it wasn't until I followed her off onto the platform and saw
the stretch marks, like bolts of lightning, like cravasses in
a cliffside, the same stretch marks that you hate so much on
your own skin, the ones i trace with the tips of my fingers
as we attempt to inhale each other, between her shirt hem
and pants' waistline, that I realized just how much she
looked like you. I see you everywhere, and in everyone.
One shade of your eyes glinting in a passing subject sends me
into crippling nostalgia for the wet sparkling I saw when you
told me how beautiful I was for the last time. I never took
that chance to tell you just how beautiful your hands, your
eyes, your flaws are. I can't believe I never took the chance
to let you know just how beautiful I find you, because I
have a fear I never will.

MY MIND IS RESTLESS I'VE USED UP EVERY OUTLET (my pens are running out of ink my notebooks are filled up my friends are all asleep and either way they refuse to listen) IT'S GETTING BAD AGAIN CAN YOU HEAR ME THROUGH THIS PRISON I'M TRAPPED INSIDE A BOX NO ONE BUT ME CAN SEE THERE IS NO SUNLIGHT I CANNOT SEE BUT THEY CANNOT PERCEIVE SO WHO IS THE ONE MORE BLIND I'M DRAWING BLOOD WHEN I WAS ASSIGNED ROSE BLOSSOMS I'M SURE THEY CAN BOTH BE TREATED THE SAME I SUPPOSE THEY'RE BOTH THE SIGN OF NEW LIFE (my mind is gone how can that make sense i cannot see they cannot perceive) I AM LOST IN A MAZE ONLY I CAN SEE ALL THEY PERCEIVE IS A MADWOMAN/YOUNG LADY/JUST A CHILD ROAMING EVERYWHERE TRYING TO FIND ESCAPE (escape from what i cannot believe i need rescue and yet and yet) AND YET I DO NOT NEED RESCUE BECAUSE I CAN PERCEIVE WHEN THEY CANNOT I AM RUNNING OUT OF BLOODINKNOTEBOOKPAPERFRIENDSTIME DO NOT TOUCH TOXIC IF INGESTED CONTACT YOUR LOCAL POISON CONTROL BECAUSE I WILL INFILTRATE YOUR BLOODSTREAM AND GOD KNOWS WHAT I'LL GET UP TO IN THERE YOU ARE JUST A LABYRINTH I'LL FIND MY WAY OUT EVENTUALLY HOW DID THIS BECOME A LOVEDEATHTRAGEDY POEM OR IS IT COMEDY I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF DEATHLOVETRAGEDY AND YET I AM SUCH SHOULD I LAUGH AT MYSELF OR DOES THAT MAKE ME MAD OR SIMPLY MADDER (or simply a comedy) EITHER WAY THEY'RE LOCKING ME UP AND THROWING AWAY THE KEY (god save us all the key to life is) WHICH IS SEEMINGLY A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION GO HOME FOLKS NONE OF THIS IS REAL (or is it) SHUT UP (or is it) SHUT IT (OR IS IT WHICH IS REAL) and which isn't (WHO KNOWS ALL I KNOW IS I MUST LEAVE) I HAVE A LABYRINTH TO DECODE

let's go fishing
with each others
cans of worms,
trading off,
like a game,
explaining each
as they attract a bite;
let's see who wins first,
you challenged,
and i agreed.
my first catch:
my family's constant
biting at my heels,
insisting for the
"perfect"
version of myself
as I explain to them
"as soon as I reach Utopia,
it is no longer Utopia."
yours:
the demon eating away
at your lungs and
esophagus
shaped like burning tobacco
in a cylindrical prison;
you cough up burnt bills,
bank accounts, family pictures
(your future ones) in pain.
mine:
a gnawing in my stomach,
constant and demanding,
and addiction to be craved
by shaking fingers
scratching backs of throats,
tinged fiery,
tinged fatally;
black spots in peripheral.
yours:
tiny teeth up and down
your arms and legs
eyes to the brain
head to the sky
thoughts to the blank spots
of the universe
your addiction that curses mine
and maintains better.
mine:
eyes dull
mind dull
hands dull
feet dull
mouth dull
life dull
i've stared at you blankly for months
and all you can do is stare blankly back
yours:/mine:
a monster is tearing you up inside
the dullness is fighting
but so is the fire
we mingle
we dance
we tumble into the fishing pond
and drown?

we could not breathe above
yet we cannot breath below

Feel the hush of my movements
and the scream of my stillness,
I cannot remain motionless
or I will drive myself insane
I would rather drive myself
off the edge of the cliffs
down the street from my house
where the sun reflects off
their orange-red craters
before shining like crystals
in the crevasses of the water
I would rather drown than
spend one more day
watching the walls peel paint
I would rather the steering wheel
crush my lungs under my rib cage
than let my feet rest in these shoes
without lifting off this pavement
in a sprint that hurts my lungs
more than metal and pressure
I would rather crack my head open
and let my gray matter heat in the sun
than let my mind turn to mush
thinking of the same things
over and over again in this dull -
possibly fantastic -
life.
Because I could be doing things
that can make a person think
I could be doing things
that can change a perspective
I could be influencing a whole culture
but I'm stuck between four walls
that are going to crush me
before I can even crush myself;
I can already feel my throat filling
with salty water and sand,
I can already feel my lungs deflating
and screaming under the weight of gravity,
I can already feel my brain cooking
void of any thoughts that may have existed before.
I would rather orchestrate my own demise
than watch my stationary position
do it for me.

Leaning how to breathe
while still three thousand leagues under
the sea is a skill
I've learned is useful when you
need the air to say "I'm fine."

you used to make me feel like i was in flight;
above the clouds, with the breeze in my hair,
and no one around so i could actually be myself for once
nowadays, when i see you,
it make me feel like i’ve fallen down a flight of stairs;
all tangled up inside
and broken in all the wrong places

sometimes, i wish i could forget you
but then i remember i’ve avoided a lot of train wrecks
because of our atom bomb

we were the first of mine, you know,
the first to make me commit as big a mistake
as the ******* manhattan project

you ******* me up more than you can imagine
i lay waste for months, with no sign of human life,
or, life of my own, at least

i threw myself into the care of plants and cats
and writing love songs with terrible lyrics
telling tales of people who weren’t us;
of people who never fought.
of people would never leave the stove on
because something more exciting
was going on in life outside

i used to feel like i was always close to you,
to the world, to a bigger idea,
but now, when i think of you, i feel like
the bigger things are ominously closing in on me
closer, closer, too close, crushingly,
and you were always so physical

we used to sit
under the stars
at midnight
looking for the invisible connections
in the infinite tangle of points of light
you would draw little planets
and comets
and stars
on the back of my hands
and tell me the universe
was in my grasp

you always told me about
how your father
was an astronomer
and how he painted out the night sky
for you
on your bedroom ceiling
before vanishing into the world
without leaving a forwarding address

you’ve slept on the couch in the living room
ever since

that was eleven years ago
and the only way you can remember him
without your heart and mind
going into supernova
is through the stars
and even if your mother screams at you
to give up on him,
that the little illuminators
of the darkest part of natural life
have been dead
since before you were even a product
considered by any of the factors
on the whole earth
you still go to them
because they are the closest thing
you have to a mentor anymore

but they started to eat at you
and your state of mind
you lost borders
and crossed boundaries
some nights,
my face was darker
than the bits of sky
around the objects
i know
you loved more than me

you were never meant to lose so much
not with starry wonder eyes like yours
and a heart as big and warm and selfless as our Sun

it took a toll on all of us
when your mother chose to leave
instead of kicking you out like she said she would
she knew
no matter how you refused to sleep under your father’s handiwork
you couldn’t dare leave
the last thing
you were sure he touched

i think you touched everyone
with a bit of fire that day

anger and grief should never mix
they create combustion
much like that of hydrogen and helium
when set to a spark
i came away shedding skin
and sung
and smoking

i don’t know where you went after that day
you broke your promise with your father,
the one you never voiced aloud,
the one you never told him,
the one where you swore
you would never leave

but your house lies empty
and the constellations in your bedroom forgotten
by all except me

i still lie under the stars
-- this time in the center of the road
and this time past midnight --
and draw links between the constellations
which shine less and less bright
every night since your following
your icon into the dark

i still draw patterns
of moons and planets and asteroids
-- this time on my palms --
because i miss having the universe
in my hands

but when i look up
into the points of dead light
all i can feel anymore
is its vastness
and its oblivion
and its menacing gaze back into me

and it reminds me unfailingly of you

You don't think I understand.

That was the last thing you said to me before I found out you had taken the easy route, the one where the only ticket available to purchase is a stomach full of sleeping pills.

I tried so ******* hard to understand after that, because that was the only note you thought to leave me. Whether on purpose or by accident, I took it more to heart than your absence, anyway.

You never really left. You hid behind my ear and over my shoulder so for a long time, before I got used to seeing your reflection behind me in the bathroom mirror like in a cheesy horror flick, I was constantly dizzy because of all the whirling around. A mixture of fear and excitement, tasting something like stomach bile and the lemons that were on your breath no matter what the time of day, would prepare me to meet you, or rather the lack of you. If the acidic solution wasn't used up on a kiss to your cold and rotting lips, it burned a hole at the base of my stomach that grew into a volcanic crater.

Maybe that was why I erupted so many times that autumn, my mouth burning and smoking before blowing bits of my top into the atmosphere. I lost so much of me in those natural disaster moments. I lost my mind with my temper and raved too often to be trusted. I was called a lunatic because I saw you outside of the photos and family videos your mother showed me after your disappearance.

She was the only one who didn't avoid me; quite the opposite. She clung to me because I was the last physical link to you, no matter how dishonest that connection was. I was as lonely as she.

Slowly, though, slowly, I forgot to look for you in the shadows and behind ocean waves, and I forgot what you looked like breathing deeply in and out with your limbs sprawled out and occupying my entire bed, and I forgot how you licked your lips before pressing them to mine, every time. I couldn't find you anymore except for in the memories haunting the flowers you gave me on our first dinner date, the one I asked you to, pressed between the pages of the one book we agreed would be our favorite, or in the quickly-fading scent you left in all the sweaters your mother dumped on me the moment she moved to Thailand after her messy divorce.

But I can't say I don't want to lose you; I don't have anything left of yours to lose. I lost you long before your accidental suicide note. I lost you when the plants littering your apartment, the ones I gifted you, started wilting because you lost interest in other things' lives trying desperately to find purpose in your own. I lost you when you traded your guitar in for an attempt to find sanity and when you broke every one of your CD's, your most prized possessions, one night in a fit of rage against unfairness and bad luck and life in the universe.

Most of all, though, I lost you completely when you ripped up the Polaroid exposures you had taken of me one night when we finally believed that love was real, and that we were in it. When I asked you why, you only suggested I leave.

That was the night you told me I didn't understand, and I'm only just started to realize that you were right, and that I will never understand. I will never understand your cryptic, poetic responses. They're romantic as heck sometimes, but other times, all I want is a straight answer. I hate the way you would save pictures of me sneezing, or talking, or doing something ugly and dumb. You may have told me I was beautiful doing those things, but lying does not make me love you more. I was far too gone for that. I hated your slow and rolling hips, your lazy grace, all the things that a romance novel might describe as **** and utterly perfect, but when we were in a hurry, they were so inconvenient.

I could feel bad about saying these behind your back, but when I say I cannot wait to forget you completely, it is only a little bit a lie. I've found it so much easier to write about someone you love, whether the unrequited type or the type  so romantic your heart swells to a grapefruit size after he says yes and is so ******* romantic it stays that size for a year after, after they've died, only the feeling isn't euphoria anymore but that of suffocating as the heart presses against the throat and slowly drowns you.

These words stem from the extra heart parts I had to cut out to survive, and while I am left stoic-faced and cold, I can finally fly.

I have not been honest with you and I think that it is about time that I am. Ever since I first saw you, across the park with both of our heads bent over some sort of controversial art, I have always thought you more mind than matter but contrary to my indecisive head you always put me before my words.

If you were still here listening to what I have to say I guarantee you would compliment more the effort I may or may not have put into my hair this morning than the effortlessness of the trash spewing from my lips.

I should have seen the danger of this after your constant affection of my ears and chest and toes - you adored every bit of my that you could see - but I was too caught up in you being caught up in my eyes that I could not see that you didn't like them for the shine but for the shade.

I think I finally started to understand when you painted pictures of me doing normal things - cooking, writing, smiling - but nothing natural, like sleeping - which I often and always mused about in prose about you, my dear - or just thinking. They must have been much too mundane.

Your sketches of clothes and trees and urban sprawl were impressive but lacked depth. It was as if you were unable to see past the surface like every lake you stood and stared at was covered in a silvery film you were unable to pierce, even in the most shallow places.

We were too unalike - I trained myself to see each person as a character with a blank slate for hair color and texture and the size of hands and feet, but you saw only freckles where they shouldn't have been and fingernails too long or too shorts and although you found it all beautiful, it took more than aesthetics to find a tell tale heart.

You lost mine beneath the lake waters.

She once told me
she was terribly afraid of
the 889 blades of grass
in the park down her street,
of the 889 worn books
in her local library
of the 889 gum-covered steps
to her bus stops
of the 889 looks
she must make over her shoulder
of the 1 778 pairs of greedy eyes
stealing looks away from me.

I missed her when she sent me pictures
because I couldn't bear to look
at empty frames of empty eyes
(red dows no match red
unless it is the scarlet of blood on broken glass
after a year and two months of tranparency)
and also because the things that slipped into my phone
could only remind me of moments that could never be
and dreams
that would never come true.

I don't know what to say to her
without breaking her
(like the broken glass)
(the image still hasn't left my head)
but she inspires me toward metaphors
and the adromeda galaxy
isn't so far away anymore.

How can I stay by her side
when she triggers me to want to fall
but how can I ignore her call
when she is the only person I feel safe with
to coincide

I am afraid to tell her
(or myself)
how I feel
because in a cliche
I don't know how I feel myeslf
but dear, together, we are formidable
and apart --
I don't know about you,
but I catch myself on the dry spells --
we are fort minable

this song has been stuck in my hear
since it reminded me of you
and this could be another metaphor for something heartfelt
and not altogether original

But I want us to be
the figures in the painting
you said you saw us in
I want to be
that feminist duet
(even if I can't sing and you voice is that of the devil's)
I want to be
the cats in the picture
with the intertwined tails
or the flowers tangled up
on a vine
(I was going to send you that on
but I thought against it
because you were too beautiful to be compared
to a simple petrichor-scented bougainvillea)

So I will be
the 889 poetry books
you dog-ear and highlight
and secretly slightly plagiarize
and I will be
the 889 plants growing
in your backyard,
sparkling for you like replacement diamonds
after the rain
(and better yet I will be the forest
of 889 trees
looming not frighteningly but protectively
over you)
and I will be
the 889 strides
of golden brick road
to follow to your favorite coffee shop every day
and I will be
the 889 innocent peaks
at a delicate pinkie finger or a nose
(because a delicate rose such as you
cannot be seen all at once and truly appreciated)
and I will even be
the 1 778 pairs of eyes
stealing my own looks,
and hopefully you will not be afraid anymore.

I will split myself
into
6 228 parts
to make you feel comfortable
and if this is not a love poem
then it is an apology
and gratitude
and anger/resentment/not really/how could I resent you/you are everything

what I'm trying to say is,
we could go so many different ways,
and what's one more expression of love to you
after all you've been through.

I once had a garden tall and green
which I kept alive effortlessly
but one day I got carried away
with the beauty and the water.

I was reminded of you,
your stature, your hands,
your bright and shining eyes,
in the height and the gripping leaves
and the jaded sunlit color.

I poured what I thought was
life-giving sustenance
but was really disguised poison.
(Your) Leaves shriveled,
drowning in the solution
they thought they trusted and loved.

Funny how too much life
can wither your roots forever.

I swear to you, officer,
I tell the truth.
I was the witness
to a most terrible crime.

You see,
there are people out there,
in the world
(you must have seen them before, sir)
who tend to despise themselves
simply for being who they are.

There isn't actually anything wrong with them
not anything you would see on X-ray scans
or a medical sheet
with little x's through boxes
and unreadable scribbles of tangible symptoms.

but their tears are tangible all the same.

The crime, sir,
is the fact that
sadly, no one sees
that figurative demons
can be as real as any disease.

WHERE IS THE IRONY IN A BROKEN HEART MY DEAR AND WHERE IS THE ANALOGY HIDDEN BEHIND THE MOMENT YOUR ARMS BROKE BECAUSE YOU HELD ME TOO TIGHT AND WHY IN THE HELL DID YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAID I WOULD LEAVE (just pack up my bags and go, how could i do such a thing) BECAUSE YOU KNOW I NEVER COULD NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRIED I FEEL I WOULD LOSE MY CORNEAS IF I DIED BECAUSE I HAVE EYES ONLY FOR YOU AND IF I LOST SIGHT OF US FOR ONLY A MOMENT THEY WOULD DETACH IN A SICK FORM OF PUNISHMENT SPEAKING OF INCARCERATION DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD GIVE US NEIGHBORING CELLS AND MAYBE EVEN ADJACENT NOOSES ON THE GALLOWS BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW WE ARE GUILTY OF FEAR OF THE FUTURE THE HIGHEST CRIME OF ALL EVERYONE IS GUILTY BUT NO ONE WANTS TO ACCUSE ANOTHER BECAUSE LAWSUITS COST TOO MUCH WHEN YOU'RE ALREADY CONDEMNED I GUESS WE'RE BOTH FATED TO BE SENTENCED THEN TO CONTINUE THIS AFFAIR MEANS WALKING ARM IN ARM TOWARD CERTAIN DOOM BUT IF YOU'RE BY MY SIDE I KNOW I'LL MAKE IT TO THE END WITH A SMILE SPLITTING MY FACE (like broken ice on a late March lake when it is just getting warm enough to step onto a thin patch and plunge into cessation's grasp prematurely and lost my grasp on your hand) BUT LOVE IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR A DEATH WISH OR A WARRANT FOR YOUR ARREST NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT MAY SEEM SO BECAUSE I CAN SEE YOUR DEMISE COMES FROM A LACK OF AFFECTION OF ATTENTION AND I CAN SEE IT DOES NOT COME FORM ME DRAGGING YOU UNDER BUT FROM ME LETTING GO YOU FLOATED INTO THE ETHEREAL (the luminescent the clouds) AND DISAPPEARED BY YOUR OWN HAND AND IT IS FOR THIS I ONLY HALF-RELUCTANTLY STAY

fill a water gun with ink
and shoot me in the eyes
so i can see the poetry
in all of modern life,
and then shoot me
in the back of the throat
so i can only speak in seeming lies;
for the final act,
shoot me in the temple,
where all my thoughts coalesce
and feed them the material
they ought to possess

You used to tell me I reminded you of a star,
that I shone the brightest in the darkness
and lit up the night for you

I tried to shine brighter
to show you the way through the night

but you did find your way
to a warm embrace of someone
more than a star

I realized, too late,
that you craved something other
than a cold light millions of lifetimes removed

I guess all you saw in me
was a glow from the past,
anyway.

I can see the way you stare at him, Virgo,
the way your eyelashes become batwing shadows
across your flushing cheeks
when he smiles back at you

I can tell how you feel about him, Virgo,
the feeling that sets the cold stars
embellishing the velvet in your eyes
into infernos.

I can only imagine the pain you felt, Virgo,
when he packed you along like a decoration
then left you on the curb like
a Christmas tree in the New Year.

I can understand why you did it, Virgo,
when you stared down the white throat
of the pill bottle at the dim and empty
bottom of its bowels.

I can't blame you for it, dear Virgo,
anymore than I can blame myself.

I forgot how often you used to slip into the champagne room behind the visible spots in my irises. You would ask me to dance, and I would laugh because I had always been afraid of stepping on other people's toes. You taught me that a little pain is sometimes better than no feeling at all, and I took that to heart.

My chest has never ached more, ever since you planted that seed in the garden I had been saving for the past three thousand seventy seven days for someone I believed would come to me in the form of a prince in a gleaming pumpkin chariot. It was that afternoon eight years ago that I decided I would wait, whether it be in a tower covered in thorny vines or asleep and guarded by a dragon the size of Mars, for someone to save me from the fantasy created in my own mind. All that time relying on fairy tale love stories vanished in a moment of betrayal like an antique grandfather clock tumbling down flight after flight of stairs.

The sound was like that of a mistreated music box, like the one you gave me as a gift for our last day together, or at least one that was happy. I thought it childish then, but I suppose it was fitting from the way I regarded you unconditionally. I should have grown up faster, but you helped me through it quite effectively. I just wish you hadn't absconded from the scene with a stolen innocence you didn't deserve to have. I like to think you keep all of them, the naïvités, the wonders, the trusts you stole from girls, in glass jars lining the windowsills in your bedroom.

You never allowed me even a peek inside, after all. I always wondered what you kept in there. Sometimes I feared there was another girl, bound and gagged and rolled beneath the bed like a doll made of flesh and hair and bone that you could only take out and play with on certain occasions. Other times, I believed you were the tamer of great beasts, and housed illegal Bengal tigers and pronghorn deer in specially fabricated cages among your dresser and nightstand.

You did have a way with your words; I would know. Your voice wasn't quite poison, but tasted like peppermint schnapps on my lips and whiskey on my throat. I was afraid to taste when you first led me away from the bustle and noise of public life, but I soon became alcoholic and revered the high I was lifted into upon your smiles and the sight of your jawline silhouetted against the light of the rising sun filtered through thin white curtains on a cloudy day.

Coming down from it was a sudden and excruciating crash I haven't yet recovered from. I was left in a pile of ripped clothes and broken bones and organs that had burst with the pressure of the altitude I had just tumbled so unceremoniously from. Everything is a mess, both figuratively and literally.

I cannot take any time to clean any belongings. I dig through the growing pile of laundry in the middle of the floor sometimes, searching for any hint or whiff of you. The smell of mint and liquor, a nicotine stain from your chain of cigarettes, a rip in the hem if a shirt you liked a little too much: I would hold that bit of fabric, so irrelevant before your being entered it, with less than a memory and worship it until the smell faded, or the stain rubbed off, or the rip widened with my worrying and resembled less a bit of the scar on the edge of your thumb from when you cut yourself cooking dinner for the birthday and more like a rift in my lungs that leaves me wheezing at the slightest thought of you. An ache in my rib cage that won't go away gave away that little injury. I lost my breath in the folds of fabric a lot after you left. I'm afraid of washing any piece of clothing I wore in your presence for fear if washing any of you away.

I can't blame that compulsion on your lacking in my life, though, for I practiced this long before you even noticed me. A brush in passing, a shared glance in a crowded room, would force me to stuff that outfit out of sight in the back of my closet. I was still so afraid of your toxic smile, I would only allow myself even a quick peek at the clothes in the dead of night, when even my conscience was slumbering. Fear of insanity and of your reputation kept me safe for long enough, but I was already gone when you took initiative and approached me two hundred and sixteen days ago with a hidden offer of escape tucked behind your ear. You were exactly what I was looking for.

But now I realize I am not grateful for you saving me from myself. Although it was what I desired for longer than I have been logical, I've realized since that I have to save myself.

No longer do I keep ***** clothes on the floor. I need things to wear in my life, and I can no longer use that as an excuse to stay home mooning over a lack of even blurry pictures of you. I am no longer a lingering drunk, so I no longer stumble embarrassingly down the street as my old friends stare on sadly. I am independent and I always have been.

The only thing I can really thank you for is bringing me to realize that fact. I cannot even thank you for the adventures you took me on because you abandoned me in a trip to the atoll of islands you claimed had been your home in a past life. I had to fashion a raft out of bamboo and palm leaves and vines and reeds to escape, and on the journey home, I found a piece of myself I should have discovered long ago.

I'm starting to see that you hid it from me to keep me loyal. I can't say I hate you for that.

You drew people so close to you, and that was what I loved. You could tear away something as if it was in your way and begin to know them deeply, not like the others. Perhaps that was why we all loved you so.

But when I tried to get even a but closer, to be as special to you as you are to me, you held those other people so close that I wasn't able to move them either way, to worm myself in.

And I know you can't control charm; I know it's simply got to be used and you can go through life attaching people to you that you don't want. (Oh, God, how I wish I had that attribute as well.)

I don't blame you in the slightest. I only blame you for kissing me on that warm night in May. I suppose it was the golden flute if champagne that did us in.

I was drowning before I knew it, whether in salt water or wine i still cannot decipher, and you strung my awe-stricken corpse over underwater graveyards while you sat above sea level on your luxurious yacht, playing with your new choice. I like to think you still retain those emotions behind your looks of love to other starvelings like me, though.

I want to warn them against your deadly elixir, but I've found you stole my voice as well as my state of mind. I wander in the barren plains you left me as a kindness, searching without reward for my belongings. I fear I will never recover them.

She was the girl he watched
all through the winter
with her hair sprinkled with powdered sugar
beneath the red and green
of the holiday.

She was the girl who noticed him
finally, when the sun melted the snow
into running rivulets in the grass parks and forests
along the edges of flower beds
and picnic blankets.

She was the girl who lured him in
with lips parted like a flower blossom
and hair like the April showers that pounded
the roof above their heads
as they cuddled til 3 am.

She was the girl who threw him out
when summer boys became an abundance
and he tumbled into the gutters with the dried weeds
and lay there all through the summer
wondering where he went wrong.

I could tell from her silence
that she wasn't fit for speaking to many people.

I could tell by the way she shakes
that she hasn't gotten much to eat recently.

I could tell by her sleeves slipping back
that she wasn't always shattered there.

I could tell from the ink on her hands
that she was always in a world she tended to invent.

I could tell from the way she rubbed her eyes
that she was forgetful of the black rimmed there,

and I could tell by the black
that she wanted nothing more than to be beautiful.

I could tell from the fault lines across her forehead when she wrote
that it was what she loved most of all.

I could tell by the cover of almost torn from her notebook
that she took it with her wherever she went.

I could tell she searched for love
but I could tell she was afraid of finding it.

Everyone always speaks of tragic love with such reverence. Something about two people so infatuated with each other that they drag each other under the surface of breathable air where others float freely intrigues readers and watchers and listeners so intensely, and has always done so. Perhaps it is the notion that they are faring even minutely more skillfully in the ocean than those they study. Humans, as a rile, tend to enjoy coming out on top far more than remaining at the foot of the heap. But, ******, I don't want to crawl my way to the peak if it means I won't have to fight and scrabble for breath sometimes. I want to cling to someone so tightly, I begin to lose breath even before my mouth and nose permeate the water. I want to live a tragic love, even as they warn me against it, because despite all the struggle and the pain in the deepest reaches of my lungs and the bruises on my throat and limbs and torso from flailing limbs, I will drown anyway without someone's neck to tuck my nose into.

It seems so hard nowadays to persuade me that I am anything more than a young and dark girl who tends to write down too many terrifying thoughts. I have no other substance or rhyme or reason for any other purpose. I can't put the jumble/tangle/mess of ideas in my head into sequence that another can understand. Even those who tend to think the way I do cannot make the pictures as words into any sort of cloud shape. They used to, and we spoke in languages the natural populace struggled to decode. We his behind palms held to our mouths as we laughed at their furrowed brows and puzzled expression. We controlled them and their thought processes. Now it seems that I have faded too far into our lands in between the stars; even the other people think my jabber too complex to translate. It is futile to rip the pen from my hand, either. I will ***** my fingers with the various hairpins around my bedroom/jail cell. cavern and write in my own blood. It must have the color and consistency of ancient violet ink by now (the type Victorian kings and queens wrote in, mind you) considering all the vats I drink to give me inspiration. If that doesn't function the way I wish, then I will carve the screaming in my frontal lobe in relics and hieroglyphics and runes across the furniture and bookcases and walls in an act of rebellion against your repression of my mind. It grows and grows and the forest in my skull cannot/should not/will not cease until someone/anyone/probably you finally toss me into the "done" pile of the people you discovered, understood, and conquered.

She woke suddenly in the dusky black of just-after-midnight from a nightmare that vanished into a puff of dust mores through her ears. Her breath, nonetheless, still came in short bursts as she attempted to regain what oxygen she has lost in the uncountable seconds before her consciousness had become alert. She groped for the source of warmth beside her and was relieved to find him just where she'd left him before falling into the deep sleep she'd just found her way out of. He was a light sleeper and stirred as her fingertips, cool to the touch despite her feverish response to the dream, danced across the slight ridges of his abdominal muscles. He squirmed under her piano-playing on his ribs, turning away in sleepy annoyance. He was used to being awoken like this, but he didn't enjoy it. He put up with it, though; he loved the mysterious creature beneath the thin sheets beside him too much to do anything but. Through even all the years of memories, both good and bad and mediocre, certain things still set him away from the darker path; the curve of her breast out from her ribs then back in a perfect circle toward the muscle beneath her bicep as she lifted her arms to pull a shirt effortlessly over her head, for example, was his favorite. He loved the way each part of her, perhaps apart considered ugly or disgusting, was together a masterpiece of sinew and muscle and skin and hair and blood and bone. She wrapped her arm around his waist then, sending a shiver of pleasure through him, though not strong enough to pull either of them out of their drowsiness. Her other hand, fingernails sliding smoothly across his skin, burrowed between his side and the cool, slightly grimy sheet to entwine with its pair's fingers. She pulled herself to fold over the curve of his back, then sighed and sank deeper into his presence. Her legs, only slightly rough from neglecting to shave the day before, slid between his,, like the supple vines that grow around the thick trunks of trees in the rain forests of South America. She turned her head so he felt the silhouette of her full cheek, her uneven lips (the lower lip seemed in the right light imbalanced and too thin for the upper), her squat nose, her long eyelashes that looked like the entrails of recently abandoned spiderwebs in the morning light (she always complained of them being too thin and ringed her eyes with black, which she always forgot was there and rubbed into a cloud of ash), the edge of her hairline press into his back. One of her toes twitched to catch his in the abyss and tangle of sheets around his feet and they kept it there, two toes entwined as the rest of them. They remained this way for the rest of the night, until the first light leaked and then streamed through the gauzy curtains over the window and he had to rise for work and untangle himself from her hold to kiss her awake and goodbye on the nose before leaving for the day.

I slowly came into consciousness the next morning with something soft and foreign pressing to my shoulder blade. It took me a long moment to realize that it was, indeed, his lips that were what i was feeling and it was, indeed, his arms around my waist and it was, indeed, his legs entwined with mine halfway below slightly grubby sheets just in view without turning my head. I didn't want to wake him and ruin the moment that was probably not even real outside of my imagination. I'd realized by now that it tended more often than not to make up dreams and fantasies like this to make me happy, even if only for a moment.

But even trying my hardest, everything had to end sometime. He began to stir after what felt like only moments after I, myself, had first opened my eyes. I first felt him shift around me, then his lips spread tight over his mouth in what I thought was a smile. "Good morning," he murmured against my skin, his voice deep and low and sending little vibrations across my spin. He pressed his lips harder to my shoulder, then buried his face into the space between my back and his chest. He tightened his grip around my middle and wrapped the looser of the two legs once more around them. Maybe this could last forever, I wished more than thought.

If you were to ever
want to return to me
I think that I would
rip apart the atmosphere
(tear it so shreds)
to close the distance between us
that has been growing exponentially
since you left

Cover the moor in fog so I cannot see if I am walking off the cliff by the sea I stood by so many sunsets in a row into the rocks below; I do not want to be responsible for my own death, but it does not mean I would not welcome it with open arms and a calm smile.

Do not remember us as
the two pieces of a puzzle
for the fact that they
eventually fell apart in the rain
but rather as the only other half
we ever truly loved;

We were indeed two passing clouds
who happened to coalesce
in the most beautiful sunset

Do not write
of how I said
I would never leave;
Write about the good things,
like how we helped each other
discover parts of ourselves
we didn't know existed

You pulled an old newspaper over my head
when the downpour became torrential;
I regret my choice to leave you,
with your raw kindness and quirky protection,
for his modern umbrella and shiny raincoat

Lying beneath trees in the heat of the day cannot possibly be compared to any other pastime: to watch the light toy with the leaves, shining bright and brighter in the ever-changing gaps in the leaves turned dark by the shadow. The interplay between the light and the leaves in ever-ongoing banter and they hate to quit their game when the sun moves too far beneath the horizon for the light to reach above the boughs and must return to its source. The wind plays a part in the sport as well, when it rustles the leaves and causes a sparkle in the variance of illumination. Tortoiseshell patterns scatter along your  limbs and features and tumble off the cliffs of your sides into the grass you recline on. The filter of light casts playful interlocking patterns of light and dark impossible to decode without the proper encryption, forever lasting while the world speeds past their lazy game.

take me away
to the fields and moors
where the fog never parts
from the ground
(like i will never part from you)
and the dew licks at my bare ankles
in the most endearing way

take me away
to the city skyline
where the movement of bodies
pushes us even closer
(how i would like to remain forever)
and the lights never dim
so we will never have to sleep

take me away
to the oceans shore
where the waves caress the shore
like you my face
(keep doing this please i need this)
and the gulls cry to the clouds
and nest in the grasses on the dunes

take me away
from the world we both know
of gray and dull matter
to a place of fairytales and adventure
(i love you dearly so)
dont forget to lock the door
when you leave

you wrote me
78 letters in the months of
october and november;
i didnt realize just how
powerful
your hand could become
when it was faced with
unimaginable distance
and a lack of
touches like strawberries and bananas

you wrote me
a single letter
in the month of december;
i didnt realize just how
lost
you could become
when you were faced with
a cold right side
of a queen sized bed
and a mind
that said you werent enough
without me by your side

you wrote me
a single note
in the month of april;
i didnt realize just how
impactful
i could become
when i was faced with
the decision to either
write you back
or toss the letters,
the latter of which i did without consideration

you wrote me
no letters
after those months;
i didnt realize just how
enjoyable
those letters could become
until after you
took up your wrists
and slit them end to end
so you could no longer be tempted
to write to a girl who seemed to no longer care for you

She hides behind the blond dye in her hair
and the often-smearing black rings around her eyes
the greatest struggle in her life as of late
is in the groggy mornings, having to rise
out of bed to face the day and the people
she would really rather avoid

She is black and white
a pendulum
stuck swinging from one side
of the spectrum to the other
There is no gray
in her life, and so,
to compensate,
her mind short circuited
and sent fireworks to the sky
She tends to writing songs with names
that explain their purpose just outright
as if she knows she needs to help the world to understand
what’s going on inside her head, and to write
the names of bands she thinks are rather nice
along the edges of her wrists and hands

She drinks quite a lot of tea
for a girl of her size
and obsesses over bands and boys
she knows may never know her name
she spends most of her time
learning and writing songs on her guitar
and jotting down lovely ideas
for fantasies and wild adventures

She isn’t the type of girl
you think you would expect
but the things she does
surprise you,
and that’s all you really need
As unique a girl that she is
adds great moments to any day,
so search for them,
and cherish them,
because a girl like this
does not come as often as you’d like

we are selcouth flower petals on plants that never considered their pots would be moved from their infinitesimal places on the windowsill
when the leaves brushed, a strange ebullience of euphoria erupted in misshapen fireworks displays
the radiance was blinding, but provided a pain that oddly pleasurable
vines amalgamate and coalesce still, twining together and combining with strangled whispers
amatory acts and emotions permeate the petrichor of distance, and the indefatigable thoughts continue strongly

sometimes, i plan out
who i would write letters to
if i were to commit
but then i realize that yours
would contain far too many
memories
stories
apologies
adjectives
metaphors
polysyllable­s
and would take the rest of my natural life
to finish

here is my heart,
sorry if its sticky,
ive just tried to
glue it back together
for you

here is my mind,
sorry if its a bit messy,
i just got done
clearing out the dust
from the voices there

here is my hand,
sorry if its twisted,
ive just got out of
the cast it was in
from falling for you

you're digging my grave
with a ***** made of
rose petals and poems

i cant see the deep hole yet
because i've closed my eyes
so you can show me the way
to the land of happy you once
whispered to me about in the
light of a bonfire on the sand

i don't think
i'll be able
spot the decay
until i'm neck
deep in dirt

hopefully the cage around my heart
finally (lets) me go free tonight
my feet are ready to (run)
and sprint and fly
(away) from all the things
that have me stapled to rhe ground,
i am not put (together) like i should be anymore

You've taken everything from me;
what else do you need?
All you do is take and take,
and all I do is give.
What else do I have that you need?
My dwindling pride?
My humanity?
My youth?
Because all of that is gone now
because of you.
You ask for more than I have ever had,
and give nothing in return.
I have nothing more to give,
because you've taken it all away.
The last thing that I can give is my life,
and I will gladly give it
because I am better off without it.
Take the last bit of me,
but before you do,
I ask of you only one thing.
Give.
Give something to someone
and ask nothing in return.
Give, sir.
I dare you.

When girls talk about how they are ugly,
I wonder if they understand how it is to be uglier.
When they talk about loving it when boys
call them pretty or play with their hair
I agree because it is what I do,
but I wonder what it is really like.
Experiences they have
because of their looks and their modesty
are something I want to know of.
But I don't.

at first, our love  was spring,
new and tender and green,
we traded cherry blossoms
and took picnics in the sunlight

we became summer then,
of fire and heat and red,
frantically collecting passion
and free time in our raw throats

autumn came next, with
cooling air and dying leaves and orange
we could feel our love slowly fading
as the days grew shorter and chilly

then, with a shock, winter arrived,
as frost and salt and black and white
the snowstorms we created raged,
and lost us in separate planes

A haiku for me:
My heart may be broken; more
like shattered. I’m stuck