I got butterflies hearing it
You got drunk and told me in a smokey bar
Earnestly, clumsily, but in the dearest way
You don't remember
You weren't quite ready
It wasn't how you wanted to do it

So we pretend you haven't told me yet.

I've wanted to tell you in so many smokey bars
On street corners when we're walking
In bed in the early morning
In the shower, suds covered, soaked and laughing
In my kitchen, dancing and spinning me around
On grocery trips and in speeding cars.

You haven't told me yet
But I'm bursting to tell you again

She was waiting for her order, waist adjacent to the counter. A young man supplied her beverage with his numbers scrawled on the side. She didn't seem too eager to call him later, however. To my surprise, I gently waved her over, almost immediately regretful of my impulse. To this day,I haven't produced a more rewarding decision. As hours past, every nearing moment promised of a tangible future involving this woman. My heart raced at the idea. Her hair beautifully curled towards the ends that seemed to perfectly frame her prominent cheekbones made
sharper by the contrast of her well dressed lips. Her ivory skin translated the sunlight coming from behind me, and I could almost swear, it seemed some of the light was trapped in her eyes, trying to find its way around her dark orbs. Months down the road, we're no longer an uncertain happenstance; every look at her was love at first sight. She was the love of my eye, and she knew it. You see, Emily was a curious person with particular habits and tendencies. At times, the distance between us reached near tangibility, then days would pass by and all would be well again. I kept a journal of her; I study everyone but she was the first person to provide some difficulty. Reading her was like trying to decipher Latin while knowing Spanish; I always had a feeling I knew her, but just not quite. I'm still wrting about her, bruising my memory, and she's still speaking sunlight to unsuspecting suitors. Emily was the type to get what she wants. The problem is that she grew bored with her toys. Eventually, I learned that there were no exceptions.

my pianos a deaf mute
doesn't care when I smash the keys
I tell it anyways, listen here, you miracle, you conversation piece, I'm going to play you without plugging you in because 1) who makes electronic pianos and 2) I can hear the sounds in my head, just like old times old times old times
I map out a Beatles song I hate because I really just want you to hold my hand
I never take my foot off the soft pedal because it should always be gentle and I should always be gentle to you and God knows you're the only one listening so listen here and listen close
i know im not really alone because we are attached by the red string of fate or friendship or car crash and I know this because you're the only one I can say these things to without getting myself committed
if you want me I'll be in the bar buying you drinks you'll never be thirsty enough to let touch your tongue and what is all of this shaking for
who first felt this feeling and said **** I'm in love or **** I Might be dying because my chest kind of feels like the monkey bars after rain we all fall off of because we're too ******* stubborn to wait a while
what is it about instant gratification that has everyone around me filling up their gas tanks because "it's not gonna get this low again for a long time" and how I wish I could say the same for myself or
how I wish I could say the same for you
I don't know if this poem is a piano or if this poem is you or if this poem is drunk and wanting to call someone who will pick up or listen or want to
But
I once said to someone "I think I really need to talk about this" and I shouldn't have been surprised when I was handed a hotline but maybe you have always been answering the phone "tell me where it hurts, and then tell me again"

A battered heart never beats in tune
A broken vase is never perfectly glued

You break a beer bottle on the ground because
you're mad that the girl won't sleep with you
and you sweep the glass under the rug...
but that doesn't mean it never happened

One day you'll be older and you'll be smarter
and you'll have less of an ego and be more of a martyr
and you'll learn that no means no
and broken means don't try to fix

If you take a leap and love a broken thing
love it for being broken
because the shattered just has more pieces to offer
more pieces to cherish
and more pieces to look at and say hey
"You're not perfect, but you're lovely anyway"

they're saying "all you do is drink and cry", "I think you're bad for everyone" and you're not saying anything and I'm saying I love you,
I ******* love you
And maybe I needed something to bring me back to reality maybe these bathtubs are always a little too deep for me but I fit so perfectly in small spaces because I learned when I was 14 that i was never gonna grow into a butterfly
but my aunt still calls me hers and I'd still flutter my eyelashes on yours while the earth turned to ash because I like things ending so softly
and you are a ******* miracle if I've ever seen one I want to sleep with you so badly, on a trampoline in the summer and I want to watch you do bad things and smile so sweetly at you and you'll know that I don't give a **** what you do as long as you're still loving me while you're doing it because baby we've got this one life and I've been loving you as long as I have known what love is and I know it's in the way you whisper and I know it's in the way you say you're my world and if the world stopped turning tomorrow we'd be the only things still moving with excitement you make me so nervous and calm and nervous and calm and deep breath you make me nervous I bet you'll make me nervous when we're older and I'm making you pancakes and I feel your eyes on me and I burn my fingers but you always kiss them better baby
you're an alleyway and the kitten that sleeps there
you're the rain on the windowpane and the water breaking the levee
I'm drowning in everything I have ever said to you so if I say one last thing one last thing,
while you're not saying anything,
I love you,
I ******* love you

we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread

I am at it again
The adrenaline rush, the sweat, the euphoric yet sadistic approach to grant my inner desires
My body continuously shivered in the dark
As if there was some chemical reaction that was happening to my very core
I was out of control
Everything went out of hand but I felt  most alive during the last 20 something minutes of that night
I was too high to remember everything
I was too high to care that it was 5am and I was still far from home
But my body remembered
My body will never forget how everything else felt right
Every stroke, every scratch, and that electrifying feeling breaking every principle I had in my system since day one
It finally made sense to me now
Everything is perfectly clear to me now

I haven’t been myself lately
You know that it is my yearly thing, well ever since you’ve been gone
I went back to places that reminded me of you
Like our old house, where I used to visit you every Christmas day and Father’s day
I went to your grave a week after my last visit
I just felt the need to “be with you"
I wanted to find comfort, to feel loved
I went back to my old workplace
I wanted to remember how I made coffee for strangers while you were dying
5 years and still no justice
Seemed like I have given up but I didn’t
I just grew up dad, and learned how forgiveness goes
But I will never forget
I will never forget how soon you left
I will never forget the bullet marks in your chest
I will never forget you daddy
Someday daddy, we’ll find you that justice that you deserve

do you ever get in one of those moods where you just want to punch holes in the walls to match the sizes of the ones in your chest and you want to scream until your vocal chords burn as intensely as your longing to be anywhere but here and your eyes will not stop allowing your emotions to flow from your tear ducts and you are so broken and you cannot seem to fix yourself no matter how hard you try yet you have to just shove the tightness in your throat away and pretend like you are okay and I just don’t know how to do this anymore