any ground 18 stood on crumbled as all once-great nations do.
the flame of hope that had kept the lights on
turned and burned down the wooden roofs,
while the archers left arrowheads in flesh.
lakes of insurmountable grief covered the ruins of who she once was.
in moments of cruelty, she could feel the bottom of the waters,
could feel the glory of the old self.
the wickedness was that she did not possess the strength to lift it up again, could not resurface glimmering gems.
left without sight and taste, doomed to the brush of fingertips.

*** it's one step forward, and three steps back
don't even have enough energy to light a candle
but i would like to watch a couple things burn

the turning of a key in the lock.
twinkle and movement of metal on metal.
it's been four days now
and i feel like the ugly butterfly
in the garden that no one wants to hold
or chase after.
i'm wrapped in a chrysalis,
transformation taking place everywhere i look.
so let's hope i come out brighter and more beautiful
than ever.

but are you not in all things?
the glory of morning and the peaceful rest of night.
our love is no light affair.
it is the heavy press of storms
and found in the eastern and western rains.
is not each word but a picture frame of my love?
to display it as clearly as a blue sky and an untouched lake.
are you not with me in every moment?
a constant presence
through every sunset and sunrise.
through every hot month of summer and cold of winter.
you are the heavens,
you are the earth.
and happiness is of you, a brilliant
radiant light of all the good in the world.

what if after all this time
i still want to slow dance in the dark?
with trembling fingers and pinching high heels.
to feel light behind my eyelids,
knowing it doesn't come from the outside,
but from within.
purple, rolling storm clouds.
stars on hardwood floors.
so let's dance in a moonlit room, darling.

And just like that,
the sun sets on the last golden, cresting wave of summer.
Standing on your porch and clinging to you,
not wanting to let go of these memories.
Tapioca and folklore,
drive-ins and sing-alongs,
green dresses and sail boats on a lake.
The heavy gates slowly shutting,
and now, we move onward.
Towards applications and last years while
clinging to our gray film childhoods,
and your pleas to "stay here".
May our love be passed on.

I can no longer relate to the vengeful breakup songs on the radio.
But I can’t relate to the ones about love.
So what am I related to?
In the movies, when two people go spinning apart,
they always come back together in a crescendo
and a last kiss,
before the screen goes black.
But we didn’t get that.
I didn’t run in a baby blue dress to your door
at the same time that you opened it
and immediately everything was better.
We just continued to break,
and break,
and break.
Now we are ash and dust,
remnants of a lost love scattered to the wind.
We do not get a sparkling, happy ending.
Instead, you won’t accept the blame
and I’m trying my best to move on.
I guess it just wasn’t us.
You were not the answer to my question
and I did not belong in your melody.
I know there will never be a day that I can fit into your song.
I can live with that,
but can you?

I think back to our first moments together.
Sneaking eyes under flower crowns and balloons.
Looking across crowds of people for you subconsciously,
noticing you noticing me noticing you.
To look back on that time tinges everything with a vintage haze,
like viewing the history before something monumental.
Each person holding their breath and each step bringing us closer
to everything.
I want to go back to the first time I asked myself "what if it's us?";
the first time I truly saw you for everything that you could grow to mean to me.

lately i find myself wanting to
close my hands around something that doesn’t exist
and it’s just as frustrating as it sounds.
i’m forever chasing castles on clouds
but settling for shingle roofs.

I remember when I felt the Great Shift before I even knew what it was.
Driving home in my glitter dress and your red bow-tie.
I played songs that reminded me of you, reaching out.
But when I turned to sing the lyrics to you,
you were a million miles away,
in another universe,
orbiting a different sun.
I tried to patch it up, putting my arm through yours like
a needle and thread through cloth.
We ripped apart in every pothole we hit on the road.
Still to this day, I wonder,
where did you go?

in my dreams,
i saw a sunset so beautiful,
i had to open all the curtains.

now i'm trying to look for someone who makes me feel like
i don't deserve them.
like it took the power of all the celestial objects
for you to want me.
i'm tired of thinking i deserve things,
it's good to be reminded of my faults.
want to feel like i am the one girl in the crowd
you chose to come on stage and be by your side.
i want to say "i don't deserve you" until my voice stops working.
i don't want to deserve you but i want you to love my anyway.

it's interesting, the colors the rain chooses to paint with.
evergreen and mulch brown.
bursts of white and grey.
black boots, black polish.
a winding staircase lined by glossy red bricks.
it transports me back to when
silk gowns and dusty books sat on shelves too.
i just don't think my heart is in it.

lately i've been mourning something.
i think i miss loving myself.
i grieve for the girl of sunlight and pride.
she is not here anymore,
what has taken her place feels like
the fog of no man's land.

To be a woman is to be creation itself,
at the heart of the world.
The hidden, shared laughter between mother and daughter.
The audacity and bravery to prevail,
and the low, licking flame of ambition.
Hands of friends firmly clasped and
shoulders open for tired hearts and minds.
Knowing smiles on knowing faces.
To be a woman is to be magic.
It is setting ablaze the world as people stop and stare
and wonder.
Oh, how they wonder.

i hope one day somebody loves my eyes as much as i do.
i hope they notice how often the black takes over the green.
lashes that refuse to curl and how eyeliner looks in the corners.
i hope they love the way i see the world, i hope they like the insight.
i hope i can make them fall in love with a new color.
because i will show you every hue
and tell you it's my favorite
and it will be the truth.

electricity no longer runs through these tired veins.
eyes are shattered glass. vision obscured by a film of numbness.
laughter sits on my chest uneasily, not sure how to fill
the cracks in my heart.
talking has become an anomaly, my voice lost on deaf ears.
no one notices the splintered girl
trying in vain to feel the currents of heat rising,
to feel anything.
what i would give to be able to see lightning in the sky
and to feel the static between my palms.
the purple-white flashes leaving imprints
on the backs of my eyelids,
they make me remember who i used to be.
i miss the crowds and the voices of the broken
acting as conductors of the near tangible energy.
i could have flown into the sky
when i had those nights in the palm of my hand.
i was charged, alive.
sometimes i swore i could see the webs of lightning
raising the hairs on my arms.
it was real to me.
so here i remain
praying for my spark.
just one spark.

it's been one year of loving a girl who
has fallen on her knees for me and
who has raged like an electrical fire.
a girl who sits in the car alone and
sings for her own ears.
a girl who has been torn apart more times
than i've ever been kissed.
from the outside, it looks like loneliness;
just one girl in a coffee shop corner
who takes up one side of the bed.
but it's been a year of writing over
every annotation you left on the margins of my pages.
now i've finally gotten to the part where the slate is clean.
the part where i let you go with concrete certainty.
i can hear the shackles clattering to the floor.
that sound means i have made it without you,
that you were not the end of me.
and i've changed so much this year,
would you even recognize me?
it feels like i was put back into direct sunlight after
feeling the radiation only through your glass window pane.
i wear skin you have never touched.
i live on a college campus you've never been to.
i've listened to new music that you haven't heard of.
instead of loving you, i love the things that are just mine, just me.
she's an acquired taste, she is work to love.
but i do.
i love who i am without you.

i'm sitting on a purple bus, swaying back and forth and
didn't my mother used to rock me to sleep like this?
i'm going back to a dorm room with a twin-sized bed and,
at the age of five, wasn't my bed this small?
because you see, things change but not really.
the parts of our past just fall into different molds
and take on new purposes.
they run underneath every aspect of our lives,
containing bones and bruises and memories,
like catacombs resting in our corpus callosum.
you'll recognize the feeling like
it's from a different lifetime, a different reality.
but it's yours, it always has been.

isn't it funny how
sometimes
the best things come out
after you're taken the fall.
how my heart had to break into a million pieces
before i realized what poured out of the cracks.
the potential to love
like a cup that's been filled too much
and it pours down the sides
and on your hands
and on the floor
and suddenly it's everywhere.
something so tiny, you didn't even know it was there
until it was plugged in
and now it's thousands of lights
that won't burn out.
you're blinded by the brightness
and you think "how could this all be contained inside me?"
and all you want to do is throw open the doors and invite everyone in because you know your heart can withstand it.
you know now you are strong enough to
love and break a billion times over.
so jump then fall and see what comes out.

the news from the telegraph is bittersweet today.
they say they've found a way to take out the pain
of forgotten memories and blocked pathways in the brain.
i wish they would've cleared the road a little sooner.
swept off the loose branches and debris just a little faster.
because... what if it could have saved you?
what if you could've been the one i hugged at my graduation?
what if your letters were the ones waiting for me at the post office?
i can see it written in the corners of my mother's face
as i tell her the discoveries.
it doesn't take long for me to uncover
the bittersweetness she tastes too.
nothing is said but
i see it in the downturn of her eyes and
the ends of her lips, how they don't quite lift up.
that's how i know.
life has moved so fast since you've been gone, hasn't it?
and i know that she would've remembered the pain
of loss, of grief, of loneliness.
but maybe she wouldn't only have to live on
in film pictures and old grocery lists.
maybe my essay wouldn't have ended with a hope and a wish.
i have to trust that it's better off this way because
i know she is in a place with endless beaches and
not a single stone to weigh down her pockets
and that has to be enough.
i still think about the roses and red cardinals in the backyard
and it is enough.

trade a pretty penny for some change.
she'd give it all in a heartbeat
for some new lungs and new eyes.
she said the air felt cleaner there,
putting on this phase like a second coat.
but i wouldn't give a quarter, nickel, or dime
for any time
spent away from here.

no matter what time i wake you up in the morning,
you have the soft glow of happiness after seeing my face.
(i want to wake you up every morning for the rest of my life)

even after sitting in a car together for seven hours,
you put your arm around me and sit right next to me on the couch.
(i'll never get close enough to you)

midnight apology hugs heal my restless soul
and wipe worry from my mind.
(meet me at midnight, every night, and i'll always forgive you)

you cuddle me until we're both sweating and suffering from a lack of cold air, and then some.
(i'd move to antarctica if it meant i could hold you forever)

you like hunting for seashells and you're not afraid
of the ***** in the sand.
you love the whole shells
and i like the broken ones.
(did you know my love for you is greater than all the seashells in the world)

you trade sea dollars for kisses on the beach and in the waves,
you put your sandy hands on my thigh too.
(i'd kiss you for free)

I could feel you move
just the slightest inch to separate us.
Funny because I've been the first one to
let go of things recently.
When you said "I love you"
as you walked away for the last time,
I knew you meant forever.
And when I whispered it back,
I hope you know I meant always.

i once said you were like daises in a field,
dotting through my history.
but honey, you're the whole forest.
you're the shade and the sun,
the moonlight and rippling waters.
speckles on leaves and the wind that carries birds.
it's been dark lately but just know,
if we don't make it out of this forest fire,
at least we'll be ash together.

why do you get to charge straight ahead
and still i linger,
locked behind a fence.
still i watch my tears fall onto the sheets.
i don't think this festering wound will ever fully heal.
think there will always be this little broken part of me.
i thought i was strong and cunning.
instead, i find myself a push over,
a doormat,
a fool.
second chances, third chances, fourth chances.
in the day i write love poems
but by night i stitch my bleeding heart.
why is it that this pain is a hollow chest, numb lips, and shaking fingers?
a feeling you can't quite explain,
until your sisters tell the same tale.
and then the wound is back.
worms and knives and caves.
you cried and confessed
yet i still dream about the times i acquiesced.
you lived in the guilt for a week,
i live in it permanently.
so let's bleed together
with our permanent wounds.
watch me bleed out...

not scared of the dark, or spiders, or rollercoasters
but of this feeling of falling... with you.
scared to let myself really go, because i know i'll blink
and i'll be over my head in all that you are.
but i hang onto you
and you lay on me like a blanket.
and so i think this works.
you laugh at the stupidest things i say and i just laugh at everything.
and so i think this works.
you tell me you'll marry me
and sometimes you say it with so much conviction
that
i know this works.
and then i'm not scared anymore.
only scared of the dark, and spiders, and rollercoasters
but not of this, and not you.
i'm not scared.

my mother used to tell me
that the stars were all the people
we had loved in our past lives.
each one a person that we had called a friend
or someone who had lived in the warm house of our hearts.
i would like to think it was true.
i hope that one day i can be an entire constellation
in somebody's night sky.

i dreamed of the day i would wear white
in silk, or satin, or maybe even lace.
"speak now or forever hold your peace"
after awhile,
i realized your dad's face was the one mischievously smiling
and your hands were the ones
i'd been holding the whole time.
because your hands were the only ones i had known for a year.
it's been two months now
but parts of your universe still bleed into mine,
still some tiny part irrevocably tied.
maybe i'll find a pair of scissors soon.

two life rafts, you and i, in the open ocean.
it's weird to be on land now, isn't it?
i think i miss the motion of waves beneath my feet
but i don't know what that says about me.
i just know that on the darkest and coldest of nights,
you were the warmest thing i have ever known.

when i say "i miss you"
i don't mean the current person who stands before me.
i mean the one you were
before the complications in calculations
and labels on boxes.
i just want you back

i've heard thunder and seen lightning
every day this week.
had some tough goodbyes over lunch,
wide smiles morphing into pixelated grins.
there's been tears and short breaths
but there's freedom too.
her hairpins still in my car
and the passenger seat remains
adjusted to her.
so maybe this isn't the end,
just life taking a different shape.

watching snow pour to evermore
with milk and honey handsoap

if one day, i get a love
half as bold and sweet
as the classics,
i will think i have won.
i would lose every loss again (and again)
just to keep this.

i talk in circles until i'm dizzy
because i'm scared to break the cycle.
when every thought feels borrowed or stolen,
where does originality come from?
when is anything ever truly just ours?
there are hash marks on my walls
of every day i have spent in this cage.
what happens when i run out of room?

a door i thought would unlock
remains unmovable in my grasp.
the shock of the fact racing down my spine
faster than a dead man falling from the sky.
a stone dropping in my stomach,
the word "Wait" haunting my every step
and consuming every minuscule thought.
i believed tales of my grandmother and
speeches about the future would be enough.
they were not.
so now i turn back.
looking to find the key buried among the bushes
or hanging from a tree branch.
and retracing my path to find
what stepping stone i missed along the way.
the heavy knowledge that this battle isn't over yet
bleeds into every step, making it harder than before.
and yet...
i can hardly stand to speak the words
but...
in a tiny corner,
half obscured by shadow,
there lives a young ember named hope
and it refuses to burn out.
here's to praying it'll start a forest fire.

your favorite pine, the breathless static.
the bold month fades away
and you go with it.

how do you define this feeling
when it's
the taste of honeysuckle on your tongue
and the feeling of the wind running through your fingers.
how do you explain this feeling
when it's
the bright spill of chalk on sunbaked pavement
and the glow of sparklers on the 4th of July.
how can you save this feeling
when it's
the sound of crickets and grasshoppers playing your favorite melody
and the brilliant pop of purple heat lightning
in the air that promises a million things to come.

i've been angry like a forest fire
and i want everyone to see the ash.

the room spins and the earth spins
and it's an ecstatic kind of vertigo
to have your life turned upside down,
to watch the dismantling of a metropolitan city.

but i don't tell you about the times i try
to think of my future
and all i see is the color black,
like shot out lightbulbs
or dark corners,
only pitch black.

i don't tell you about the times
i think of spreading my wings
and flying away
and my throat starts to close
and i can feel the hunter's watch ticking
away the minutes of my life,
the minutes until he lets the arrow fly.
piercing, through my heart,
my last descent a great crescendo to the grief and the joy.
the arrow doing the one thing i cannot:
to fly.

but i guess i'll wait in this purgatory
for a day
or a year
or whatever...

a treasure of classic poetry,
oh how i wish you'd read to me.
sing it sweet and low in my ear,
for only you and me to hear.
it shall be my best kept secret.

i went to the dentist's office today
and found out, for the first time, i have two cavities.
i almost laughed because
i actually felt as though the outside reflected the inner.
the dentist used the word "decay"
and i had never felt more understood.
finally, a word for this sick green hollowness.
i think this is what i have become,
just rotted teeth, one by one.