He whispers scintillate
A ray of light
Look up and see that no one shines the same
He asks if I know that out there in the ether
There is a million people
And then there is me
Globule vivific and
Population statistics
A million and one he says
He speaks to me
Lately there’s been a ghost under his covers
Wrapped up in pale sheets under the twilight glow
I watch from his window
Towering a million miles high
I beg to reach out to shake his frame loose
The ghost in your bed belongs to my body
The friction of skin against cotton sheets
Cant you see my spark

I will protest for us until the end of time
With scraped knees and dirt under my nails
Sipping the wines of all the gods in history
Taking every desirable drug under the sun to be your equal
I will sing the songs of soothing deep sea sirens
Reading your palms with promising lips
and native tongue
I will understand even when you don’t
I will do it all for you


R.M

The hike taught me that not all mountains you climb will be emotional ones,
some will just be mountains.
And others,
they will  scrape your fragile knee caps to your melancholy bones as if they've forgotten how to serve you,
you will hug the earth and ask for forgiveness.
You will beg for them back but in the grand scheme of existence the trees continue to stand during your inner storm

Life goes on.

The truth is you can climb to the peak a 100 times and the view won't change, after awhile it will be equal to the ground.
As you near the heavens,
eventually not all rock faces with resemble his.
That's when it's okay to let go,
I'm falling down the hill but the mountain continues to stand still.
I don't create a land slide

I was a ***** slushie flannel senior the first time I saw him,
an undid a button of morning regrets.
He was a nicotine stained midnight kiss I don't really remember,
A salt water perception of perfection labeled in a sly smile and small print,
he left bruises of lust on my wind pipes and I left my ear ring in the back seat of his Mazda.
He became my taxi driver,
my room full of people,
my absent fathers approval.
I took on my role of his unable to vote baby with librarian eyes.
And then one night he suggested an experiment to see if no other girl loves like the way my eyes beg him to stay.
He smiled down at me as if I should feel like I was in his gratitude,
he told me I should thank him for paper shredding me so I could learn to tape myself back together piece by piece,
so I could decipher my ripped description and learn to write again.
"Let me give you the most detailed inspiration, let me break you", he whispered, "so we can be equal".
Darling Slam the door on our hazy summer nights and remember me in disgust,
"Trust me", he said you need someone to look after you and only the smartest man can put a puzzle like your eyes together and only an artist will like the picture of your battle scares when you pick up the white flag.
I was naive that he thrived off a fight.
He claimed that the most intoxicating evening with me would be to be with me whether I liked it or not,
problem is I loved it.
He said he'd find ecstasy when I needed him less so he could crave me more,
and after way to many blue moon beer funnels mixed with the salt water of his absence he got what he wanted.
He took me to the doctor he used to claim to be yet I never once told him it was the frequency of his presents of not being present at all that made me bleed so deeply.
God I'm bandaging his self inflicted wounds for my own scabs wish list,
and now My fingers shake on how much I need his hands on my waist,
or how I'd do anything for those bruises out of love.
See all that's been on my mind is our ice cream melting pushed against the car first sober kiss and how he said he'd wanted to snap for me until I was oozing tears of joy cause all that he lectured about was learning to use a pen for myself again.
I prayed for inspiration,
I prayed for him to be my metaphorical daydream.
See this boy smiled religiously,
obviously aware that I didn't know a thing about happily ever after, he wanted to listen. Gripping my bible white sheets with his palms whispering,
Tell me when, where and I'll be there.
I believed him.
So for you my bipolar baby It's here, it's now and were finally equal.

For the longest time I was unsure on how to pronounce words
When you weren't the person listening
It’s just we’ve been playing tag longer than the sun has been chasing the moon
Searching the universe for her partner to sooth her to sleep
I’ve been sitting under the grapefruit trees carving our initials into chipped wood
Waiting for your return
Thinking maybe this time
you’ll choose me to swallow up
Instead of composting me
Knowing I’ll bloom for you all over again
I’ve been flopped on my back underneath you
exposing my soft feminine underbelly
For far too long
Pet me and tell me I’m a good girl
Like a dog basking in the sun
Waiting on the porch for you to come home
Howling to the moon
All the lights have gone out
Yet I stayed put for all that time
Regurgitating grapefruit  
I embodied that unconditional kind of love
But I don’t love you anymore

I feel no shame
In dancing ****
So all can see
The way you carved in poetry
To my brittle bones
As my skins too
Thin
Your metaphors
They leaked right in

r.m

Born again
I have been born a hundred times but like the inches between my thighs it is never quite enough
I was born this morning I woke up mourning my flawed skin but when I use cover up it is not jut the blemishes I'm hiding.
Born again into highschool and by the second hour it is your sweet sixteen,
And you're  jealous fifty girls bodies you've seen.
Born again and by the end of the day, you've graduated from seven minuets in heaven
by now you're more comfortable with showing photos of your naked body than your naked face.  
Born into the whispers of *** deprived teenage males who's idea of a good tale is talking about the circumference of a women's chest
and if she's a size zero,
Well I have zero tolerance for unrealistic standards.
Speaking of unrealistic since when was it real for a women only to feel worthy to a man when's she's altered her body.
I grew up in a society with make up adds on tv full of women who have inches between their knees and my peers beg please,
Please,
Please can I look like that as if photoshop could be found In our makeup bags.
Born again into a mans world where some women are still underpaid due to the gender they did not choose to be.
Where third world girls cannot go to school because they obviously cannot handle the task of picking up a tool as difficult as a pencil?
They die again.
We die again
and again without the enlightenment of knowing that we were born with
hairy legs,
crooked teeth,
oily skin
and braless.
We were born worthy and real,
we die to feel acceptance and love and somewhere in between we give up loving ourselves
and we accept that as were born to believe that that's the only way to live.
Many believe that suffrage ended yet we still suffer,
but it's our choice to endure the pain.
Be born again but this time be born in the rain unafraid of your make up running down your face.
Wash it off.
Be born again.

Im screaming so silently,
My soul is combusting
and I can see my pale skin coat
slowly perishing in the reflection of other people's irises.
And I've built a personal hospital,
Brick by brick of everything that has made me
Shake.
I sit on my hands to avoid my critics.
I can't remain still so I take cover
drowning in older men's neutral sheets
As if it would make it pure,
But I'm in love with heartache,
For I wouldn't feel anything otherwise.
I'm incapable of being content.
See options in my town are so,
so,
Small
And I have entire world inside of me.
I'm global ******* and
They're buying their
Parents houses.
But I parent my parents therefore becoming my own
Home.
My father has no say as he's never said anything,
At all.
My mother is an adolescent who has become a world class actor.
And she's running too.
Except my siblings and I are her small town,
And one day I'll release her,
So she won't have to say anything either,
and I won't have to act anymore.
I'm escaping myself, my roof has collapsed.
I'm terminal on my own will.

I have little bones and an over sized heart
there is no cast for cracked ribs
and everything I've been keeping inside me is spilling through my fractures
I am laying on the hard wood floor
bleeding out into a mountain of clothes that no longer smell like his cologne
my problem is that I know exactly what he smells like
he said he hates himself for being selfish
he said he hates himself for his guilt
and I know he hates me for loving him
but there is nothing I wouldn't give,
no god I wouldn't pray to,
no quest I wouldn't endure in order to fix his brain
That is why I left

When we sleep
I imagine that we go to the same place
I picture you
Your tattoos and red wine stained cheeks
You smell like ice cream and you taste like it too
Everything that you love
Looks like me
It’s so real sometimes that when I reach out for you
I can feel you reaching back
In my dreams you say everything that I want to hear
And you mean it

I’ve decided to quit smoking
So I stop searching for fire from strangers
When I’m craving the taste of your lips


R.M

My daydream lover has become a nightmare I'm unable to wake up from.
I gave him a 100 sleepless nights only to receive 101 wakeless morning.
I'm unstable in my body where he's unstable in his mind,
"Talk to me" he whispered,
"tell me your immaculate details"-so I can carve each thing you dread into your headboard,
I know he meant.
He drove so fast, tinted reality,
I thought I'd finally won the race against time. It seemed to be dark for hours because I never had to lift my head off the pillow, it grew with lip stick stains and the sweet perfume of my confessions.
He swore he'd make life so ******* comfortable,
He swore me he loved me but I wasn't in his cards,
he told me his parents would adore that I am passive, they're aggressive
but no matter how many times I tried paint myself the queen of hearts the suits were already delt,
and Gambling isn't my forte.
Broken hearted casino, deprived intimacy addictions.
An emptiness so moving he's hung me on the wall for all too see.
I'm black frame ******* vulnerable.
I'm art and he's honourable.
Throwing up affection,
Lustful infections.

I think about you only when I’m alone
Distraction is great when you’re inlove with someone who is incapable of compassion
I have the taste of your skin memorized on the tip of my tongue
Every time I annunciate I feel your hand wrapped around my throat then your lips whispering in my ear

hush

I always stopped talking when you told me too but that’s exactly what you hated about me
I’m sorry that the hem on my sleeve has unraveled and my heart is on the floor but we cannot all be broken the same way
The truth is I only need you when I haven’t seen you in months
I only cry for you when I think about you unbuttoning my jeans
The swift movement down my thighs taking a white sock off with them at the same time
I know the fragile curves of my body are imprinted in your unconscious and when you touch other girls your hands smell like my perfume.
We only want each other when we can’t have each other and that’s why I’ll spend the rest of my life with other men.

My body has a natural pull to answer your beckoning
We are two children mirroring each other in public school gym class
You have always been A
I have always been B
She will always be C

You always told me you’d die young
You wore it as a gold medal for fast living
After we broke up I started having these vivid nightmares
Screaming night terrors of me running through a hospital
The cautious eyes of your grieving companions
Standing in the back of a funeral home was the first time that I met your sister
They say in a life or death situation
That the entirety of your existence flashes right before your eyes
But when it happened to me
It was just you there
The night I decided to not speak to you anymore
I dreamt of every good moment we’d ever had together
From two kids kissing in the back of your first car
To two adults making love on the balcony of your first condo
I need you to know I’ve laid us to rest
And eventually I’ll be at peace with that

The Matriarch of my family stands 73 years tall
One hip replacement
One lung and a long history of putting others before herself
She holds me as she cries
She whispers that she is so sorry for creating a history of women who put more love into men
Than they do themselves
I tell her
Not me Nana
I tell her that she is the most resilient woman on the planet
That selling her wedding rings and escaping material custody
Forced across the country with two small children is the bravest thing she has ever done
I reassure her that poverty is better than abuse
That one day I’ll take care of us all
I’ll stretch myself so big and hold all the women who live within lingering shadows
Scared to flee when it feels the entire universe is screaming stay into your face
Banging against the wall with angry fists
I tell her
Not you Nana
You don’t need saving

I have been finding so much beauty in falling out of love with you
And the more I find this budding strength beneath my soft layers
The more I am thankful for your sins
Grateful for your hate you hand me
I accept your challenges with open arms
I’m afraid to love you forever
But I’d be glad to do it

My mum said that when you’re around
I stop taking care of myself
because I’m too busy taking care of you
Before you left last night you put one last cigarette between my lips
covering the wind
you put your hand against my cheek
to light a small fire between us
I thanked you
as if you hadn’t killed me enough already
My mum was right

Loving you was like handing a picked flower to a swarm of bees
Small gestures with premeditated endings
Good intentions were not enough

I forgive myself for weakened willpower
Loving the wrong person has always come easy
But old habits are hard to break
Especially when you’re constantly trying to fix them

Men have a big hands
And even when they don't,
They are told they should.
To build houses for their wives,
So they can close the linen drawer on their petite feminine palms and use their big eyes to watch from the kitchen window.
Look, but don't touch.
A rule that applies to women,
But not so often to men.

We stayed up late again
Picking fruit from tall trees
The year was 2015
Taste testing togethers sweeter memories
Pretending I was not laying beside a body of another sleeping man
You say this is the longest we've been apart
And you are so hungry for more
You promise you have not seen her for over a month as if I don't understand the ripening process
The growth of loneliness
Leaving bruises from craving someone who isn't there when you need them
Fruit flies offering temporary intimacy
You asked if I remembered drinking orange juice together at 4am
I told you that every time I pull back the peel to sink my teeth into the skin of the pith
I taste your cracked lips
I **** on the seeds and spit them out
Forgetting the bad parts

Recently my friend expressed concern about my yearning for you
She told me that I was the first woman she’d ever met to not take a mans ****
She said really
You’ve never let any other man wrong you
You crush them between your soft palms and wipe away the residue
I wanted to tell her that one night two years ago
Curled up on the steps of my back porch
Under the humming lamp light
I was yelling at you over the phone
And you laughed
You told me that you found it beautiful when I stood up for myself
Little did you know that as your flattery soothed my ultimatums
I was letting hundreds of mosquitoes **** my veins dry
Blood dripping from my itchy skin
I did not swat them away

Lately I have been unapologetically killing every spider that I can find
I do this because I know that you love it when it rains
I thought I was never really one to believe in wives tales
But you spent the last four years whispering tales
That one day you were going to make me your wife
And I believed every ******* word
So I keep killing these spiders
Hoping that when it rains you sit outside and you listen when it tells you that you made mistake
Prying that when it drips on your shoulders and rolls down the back of your arms
that the universe will return and tell me all about it

Mother says that when two crows mate for life
They are blinded by love
There is no temptation
They can recall it all and despite them all looking the same
Once two crows fall in love  
They are completely different
Swollen with full tummies
And shaken feathers cleansed by their partners mouth
Bringing each other small gifts of silver

Once I drove past two crows on the side of a busy highway
One lay lifeless in a shallow grave of gravel
The other
Pacing back and forth away from cars
But immediately returning to tempt fate
To **** two birds with one careless driver
Yet even in death they did not part
At least not fast enough to prove my mother wrong

I wear the sweater you slipped over my head after *** but now I wear it because it looks good on me with a pair of leggings.
It doesn’t smell like you, it smells like me.
If someone compliments it, I tell them how comfortable it is and that I got it from the men’s section at Old Navy.

I’ll never get over the feeling of our bodies clashing together
After months apart
Pretending you don’t crave me presented on fine china
Holding me up against the kitchen cupboards
Investigating my feminine floral blue print in the glowing yellow light of the fridge
Deciding if I’ll look better on laid on the dining table
or shattered against your bed

Winter is curling it’s toes in anticipation
And I’m covering my eyes
These days I have been hiding at home
I have shut all the curtains
Offering a sneaky gaze at the sunsets before returning to my place on the floor
There is an emptiness in growth that is indescribable
There is a sadness in leaving things behind
I am right in the middle of success and being 20 years old stumbling home from the bar
And as I watch all the plants die outside
Through the window I can see what looks like me
Just older
Continuing down this path in the winters darkness
This season is painful and I’m supposed to grateful  
But aging feels a lot like waiting for the snow to fall and burry me too

I am a breath of morning air
In the east side I watch the sunrise over the city
Warm glows wrap their arms around cold dark towers standing too far apart to hold hands
We were once two kids doing the same
Dancing in the dark
Kissing until dawn  
Leaving in the morning
We parted like towers casting shadows over each other
Last night I saw the sun set and beneath the orange umbrella I felt you twitch
You are the flickering yellow glow of street lights
The pain of an 8pm curfew in the dead of summer
The hollow call home of your absent mother
When you wake up and you think of me
I hope you know it’s not the same
It never will be  
I won’t hurt for you now - Not tonight
I’m staying in
Now you make me lock my doors up tight

There's a sense of hope that hides away in me
Like an abused dog
I’ve made a close friend with the past
Validation only feels like a gold star when you’re the one to peel it off
And stick it on my shirt
I guess i just want you to know that i've done all the work
And still like it

She sits across from you
And you need me to know
She came home with you last night and looks nothing like me
You promptly compliment her perfume
In a way that says I had the sweet smell of lust on the tip of my nose once before
And it did not smell like this
This is better
New
So I hope this time for you
It’s true  
That in the august morning air your first thought isn’t a new way to twist the knife
The wound through my chest has not long been healed
There is cool steal fragments lodged inside me that you crafted with your own two hands
Ten years holding our undying burden of truth
It’s written on my face
There is nothing bittersweet here
May she be strong enough to hold it all and fast enough to chase
I pray this is the ******* end for everybody’s sake

The way his fingers trace my hips
like nails on a chalkboard
and his wrists cuff my throat
like a collar with a return address,
the same things I fell and scraped my knees for 1095 days ago.
My palms have gravel and the sweet smell of your bedsheets engraved in them.
Everything he tells me is honest and pure when I’m not listening closely enough to distinguish the truth,
Yet I would take his lies over silence every minute of the day.
Im not a stupid woman I tell him, I am just stupid for you.
Tell me you love me one more time,
I’ll finally believe you when you tell me that you’ve changed,
Darling I’ll even plug my ears in anticipation.
Your shadow loves playing hide and seek in the most toxic parts of my body,
I carry your weight with me every single day.
Ive let go of the most tremendous parts of myself to be able to lift the attributes you crave.
I’ve been running to catch up to your speed
for so ******* long
but  
Every time I believe I’ve caught up to you, you’re taking two steps
backwards
Please slow down
my coordination is off
and I am falling so inlove with the way your teeth crack as you spoon feed me *******.
Ive hit your rock bottom all over again.

When you read my book and you find your name between the cracks
Of all my words and promises
Please do not think you’re in the acknowledgments
Know that none of my tears were yours to dry
They washed my skin and healed my wounds
That every time I’ve spilled my guts to strangers
They've all promised that there is a world of where you exist
But you’re not at the centre
And they were right  
I watched you walk away but this time I didn’t cry
Because after all the years I’ve spent invested in a love that is one sided  
I finally found myself in the reflection of your glass walls
I put my clothes back on and I left
It took me five years to see right through you
And you didn’t do a **** thing to get me here

Lately I have felt the tides turning
This isn’t love but what it feels like to fall out of it
I opened my eyes underwater and for the first time in years I could see
There is an ocean of other people
And a man thirty minutes north of Miami
2391.1 km from me
Who feels the tides turning too

I opened my mouth with confidence
For years preaching that we are the only permanent homes we have
When disasters strike
When the ground shakes
When all four walls fall down
We are left naked in our own skin
Soft tissue to protect us from catastrophe
I've been learning that I am a liar
Have you ever been broken to the core
I watched you close the door and the frame fell
I am not that same girl
Not anymore
I hear the same birds but they no longer cry in the wind
They’re singing
I jump up and down barefoot in the mud
But now the ground breaks under my feet
Now I am the disease
The natural disaster
I will burn down every house
And rebuild them with my own hands if I choose
The grass will always be greener on my side
There is no key and no temple
No permanent home
I am not a safe place to reside when you feel alone

Where did all the love I gave go
When you’re young it’s effortless
So easy to give away
And by the time it’s too late
You’re searching your whole body to muster up anything to hand over
Anything to be enough
To fill you up
If all the love my heart gave is still out there
With no place to go
Pray it knows
It’s welcome back

I have this painting in the back of my closet that I started for you many moons ago
The more I look at the half painted mountains the more they all remind me of me at 22
Resting
Im in my home with the man I love
He’s singing in the other room
We have Christmas decorations up and I’m petting our cat
A year ago today I remember wondering what it would be like to be loved by someone that I loved back
I made up days that I liked better
Crowded rooms with spilt drinks    
On the worst nights I danced so hard that my feet bled
For a long time I thought my hopeless dedication and imagination unraveled me to the core
They never saw the rope I was holding onto
It’s been steadily dragging me behind it
Wrapped around my wrists
Elbows burned to the bone
Day by day since I was just 17
It’s been so long
But I’m here now

She asked me how laying on that table felt
And I told her like a body in a morgue
Like I belonged to a crime scene
When I got up to leave
My soul stayed behind
She’s been stuck there for years
Naked and sterile
A lost ghost and her bones that used to belong to me stands shaking
Like an abandoned home at the end of the street
Broken down and empty
No one looks inside
No one checks on the memories that still reside there

The thing no one tells you about grief is that time doesn’t always heal your wounds
I am no longer 17
And I no longer go weak at the knees for you
I don’t need your praise or touch
But
I still skip your favourite songs on my playlists
Like I’m committing sweet revenge for myself at 20
Hopeless and dedicated
Like if the 4 minutes and 30 seconds of Heartbeat play one less time in your lifetime
You’ll know
And you’ll feel me at 24
Hoping it hurt you bad

I’ve got no fear of letting them down
We’re already all sitting cross legged on the ground
And they’re holding me by my ankles
In the distance I see all my dead relatives
And old friends
The ghosts of people who held me by wrists
And I see them reaching out
But I’m not close enough to pull up

When I let go of his hands and released him
I let go of someone who no longer served me
And freed him of someone who had not served him in years
I know that time will whisper hard truths to him Things I could not have yelled any louder
And there will be no ugliness
Just peace
The universe gives gifts that are often disguised as harsh endings and scary beginnings
But when I opened myself up to be alone  
I found in the midst of chaos
A hand that I’ve never wanted to hold more

The delicate bumblebees have been searching for their leader
The ants have been digging holes with no destinations
Sweet man not a single flower has sprung in your absence
And I have no answers to give the birds when they come knocking at my bedroom window
Little tears frozen to their faces
Last week I wailed with the drooping daisies about your death
Guilt consumed us whole
We’ve been trying to take comfort with beetles and the frogs
I kissed the ground with hot breaths and gave the weeds mittens
The truth is even the ducks flew south for the summer
The desperate sun has been setting so quickly
Trying to sleep off her emptiness
The freezing rain causes all of the grass on mothers nature’s back to stand straight up
As she begs Hades to hand you back

The final moments we shared
Together but alone
In all of our vulnerability
There was traces of lies
The weakest you are is the strongest I am
To call me beautiful
With a curled tongue
And clenched teeth
Even when you’re gentle
Your hands have cracks
Lie to me with pursed lips
Kiss down my spine
Until my back curves like the country roads
On the way to your fathers

There’s a man who lives in the next town over
He has unmistakable olive skin and light brown hair
He has these piercing blue eyes and a smile that takes up his entire face but my mum will tell you that he and I
Look nothing alike
The women in his family have full hips
And big lips and
My mother will tell you that
Them and I
Will never be anything alike
There’s songs on the radio that play in the car
And sometimes I swear to god he’s listening at the same time
And we’re speaking for the first time since I was a child
He hands me a beer and tells me that he loves the sound of this mans voice
And I tell him that I don’t even remember what his sounds like