I want to twirl you around the stars.
Show you the beautiful comets.
Hide you from the sun, for he will get jealous of how bright you shine.
Kiss you on an asteroid.
While we slowly make our way to the moon.
Where we can be together forever.

I ran my hands across my ribcage
Like there were strings between my bones.
That if my fingers plucked the right ones
The music would flow up to my throat
So that with every exhale, a chorus would
Escape from the peaks of my lips.
And that just maybe the song that played
Would make its way to another heart
Still willing to listen to the rain.

we are not poetry
our tears don't have words
fit to describe them
to their exact measure of pain
our eyes are not the oceans
you compare them to
because you've run out of hues
our smiles aren't phrases
you heard in your past
nor is our laughter
equivalent to your favourite song
don't hide us between lines
and this fine black ink
let us grow and live
please let us be
for we are people,
and not poetry.

First light brings with it
an empty town to play in.
You, wild-eyed and messy haired
Mixed up words and inside jokes
Walk three steps ahead of me, and explain
How you've pulled the pockets from your jeans because you hate the thought of carrying anything with you.
Splintered grass between your fingertips
Makes me feel young again.
I run between trees with you
and we pull down branches to see
How far they bounce back.
It is hours before I realize I've dropped the act.

I don't desire to touch you
But when you laugh I feel the warmth
healing the black and blue bruises inside me.
Touch the afternoon sunlight
ravel it round your fingertips
and drag it down to your cheek.
You are entirely made of stars.

I think I need to
move, not
on, or
away from

anything

not fast, or
deliberately for

something

not past, or
beside

someone

I need to
move

because
I haven't in so long.

sadness invites you to
taste him and you
swallow him whole
instead

"this is what happens
when you get greedy,"
he says as he leaves you
in the dust

there is an aching in
your chest long after he
is gone and you realize
just what he meant after
his lips ghosted yours

you will always remember
how he touched you;
you are not sure that you
ever want to forget

The part I hate the most about this feeling
is that it doesn't look pretty in paint
nor does it sound lovely in lyrics
it doesn't rectify the emptiness
when I pour myself into other people's cup
I fill them up to forget what I am full of
things I do not love
colors that do not transfer well onto paper
words that don't make sense
nothing about this comes together
in ways that can expand and commence
this feeling is not a pattern
this suffering is not art
you can't trace a deadly storm that you did not acknowledge
from the start