I.

I’ve swallowed too many I love you’s
to be afraid of coughing up blood.
They cut you on secret.
Who knew it was drinking gasoline
and sawdust and every little inflammable thing
and then sitting down cross-legged
in the heart of a howitzer; soft.

II.

You are a soft explosion.
You are streaks of a rebel orange
in a sky that is supposed to be blue.
You are steel rods in the curve of my spine,
holding me straight.

III.

I love you’s are like death notes written in ash:
you’ll have to smoke your way to it.
Smoke cigarettes, journals, curtains,
and yourself to get that much ash in your lungs;
trying to blow smoke rings into your finger;
my ceiling knows more about my sadness than you do.

IV.

Saying an I love you once will have you
chanting “don’t leave me” on a rosary;
love will take your bones and leave you
lusting for somebody whose back
is the last thing you’ll see, and whose
skin you’ll think you left your keys in:
and now you’ve locked yourself out
of your own house, in a storm
whose sirens wail in your ears and remind
you, you’re hopeless and homeless.

V.

I love you’s leave no exit wounds,
no shell casings, and when the time comes
you’ll be telling them all how his bullet
ricochets in your ribs,
but emotion never made up for evidence
in the court of settlements for a broken heart.

VI.

Telling someone you love them is like cutting your jugular
and not expecting to bleed out.

VII.

I love you like the pages of a mad girl’s journal.

VIII.

The moon turns from an ally
to the haunting image of science and realisation:
you share the same sky, but no longer the same bed.
And astronomy keeps ******* you over
when you look up at the sky
and no longer understand constellations.

IX.

Love makes it more getting-back-at-you
than getting-back-together-with-you.

X.

Every time you taste blood,
you’ll know you kissed somebody
with teeth like needles
and they cut you everywhere; they
bit you, they bit you, they bit you
and you kept letting them.

You can't hold the short arm of the clock
and call it yesterday.

Why do you take beautiful things
and turn them into instruments
of sadness?

I am afraid,
in a way I haven't been before.

I am afraid
of the way people fall out of the sky,

I am afraid
of the way people disappear into the sea

without saying goodbye;
Suddenly the loss
feels like a snake

slithering from across the room;
venom in his blood
and names on his tongue.

I am afraid
of the way people find themselves
at the bottom of the barrel.

And I
am scraping
at the end of it.

If apologies were
paper lanterns
I could light for you,
the sky would never grow dark again.

I’ve never needed more words
than the ones I already have.

I am a lost library book.

I have become overdue, forgotten
and I once gave you a good time.

I hope you
never find
someone
like me

Because then
you will find
another person you
can call
Perfect.

I want to be
an unforgettable thought
in your beautiful mind.

More than love,
sometimes it is
the fear of being alone.
Because loneliness
creates a haunting echo
of our silence.

Isn't that why
we seek broken things,
and broken men?

So that we
fix instead of break
at least for once.

So that we
leave our signatures
in the loosely filled
cracks and scars.

So that they
cannot recall life
but after we set
their hearts beating again.

So that every time
they take their clothes off,
they can see us
sewed to their skin.

And be proud
to call it ours.

I didn't know
the 'I love you's you gave me
were borrowed.

Love is an art.

And I can barely
draw you a stick figure.

I want to tell you
everything.

Everything there is
to know about me.

About how I ran from
the highest hill down
to feel the air push
me behind.

Once I bent down
before God
and asked Him to give me
death over happiness.

I used to believe that
dust was nothing but
dead memories
fallen away from us.

I will tell you everything.
If only you asked.

Because I want to.

I want to give you
a piece of my mind.
I want you to get
inside the mind that controls
this melancholy body.

I want you to get
inside the chambers of my heart
and wrest dark secrets
from its broken symphonies.

Fix it.

You?
I will tell you anything.

Just tell them
your poetry
is now for
someone else.

Life is meant to
go on

because

nothing lasts forever.

Life is meant to have
ups and downs

because

flatlines mean death.

Your hands became a
raft in the river bend:
once rode with fury,
slowed down with their stories,
then crashed into your end.

*Wallows

I think I killed myself
the day I started expecting
good things
for myself.

If spring draws the earth
in golden streaks of life,
I long to hear
the songs of the bluejay.

I long to hear anything.

For all I hear when you open
your mouth
is a chime of chide
and the rustle of grit:

the grinding of your
restless heart
so full of
hate.