I imagine myself dangling my feet over
A lake that is absolutely calm.
I wouldn’t dare disturb it.
I would much rather stay where I am,
And admire it from the dock.
It is so beautiful and so pure,
And nothing stays pure after diving head first.

My head always goes to her when I write.
Like there’s something I still need to tell her,
And I don’t know how helpful it is with me
Speaking around what it is that I
Really want to say.

I always dive head first into everything,
And most times I’m hoping the water is more shallow
Than I believe it to be.
I admired her for so long
That I figured the water would be fine.
I’ve never been good at discerning depth.

If you see her, tell her I still think about her.
Tell her that it wasn’t easy to dry off
After jumping into her ocean.
Tell her that hers were the most welcoming waves.
I would have loved to be the moon that pulled her tide.

Tell her that her sea was never meant for me.
And now I find myself sitting on this dock,
Looking longingly at the gentle waves
Of the most calm body of water.
Knowing the depths are endless,
I dip my toe in but I fear
That if I jump,
I won’t know which way is up.

Go ahead and get creative with me, my dear,
Tell me all about how I am a lightning storm
That lights up the darkness within you.
Tell me I bring about waves that leave you wondering
Which way is up, and
If you should go down with the ship,
Even though I have always been the captain.
Personification about how I am a hurricane
Coming to destroy you with my wind
And my waves.
Alliteration and hyperbole;
Right and wrong rust reality.
You are making a mountain out of mole hill me.
I was never something so great to hold on to,
I have never been what was holding you back,
And letting me go may be the best thing to happen to you.
But if you want to keep spitting out this poetry,
Then lay it on me.
I want to know that I’m making my way
From your every synapse to synapse.
I hope that I coat your cerebrum and make you relapse,
Wondering what was, what is, what could have been.
Compare me to any natural disaster
Because, darling, that’s what I’ll be.
I’ll be the earthquake that tests your foundations.
I’ll be the mudslide to wipe you away.
I’ll be the tornado to twist up your world.
But you know I’ve always been your hurricane,
So please don’t mind the waves, and honey,
Let me blow you away.

You always make the saddest noises before you fall asleep,
And wonder why it is that I never want to be awake while you drift off.
I never want to see any bit of hurt come to you.
I wonder if what you don’t allow to run through your head while you’re awake
Begins to attack your mind while you sleep;
Letting down all your defenses, for once.
So the army of thoughts you avoided see a flaw in the design of your defenses.
Or maybe these sad noises come about because
Even a dreamland could not compare to how beautiful your life is.
I often, foolishly, hopefully, wish that is what causes your pre-slumber sighs.
But as much of a fairy tale as this life seems sometimes,
As much I believe that every story is going to have a happy ending,
And all the frogs kissed will turn into princes
And all the glass slippers will once again grace the feet of young ladies with fragile hearts,
It simply did not begin with Once Upon a Time,
So I wonder if it will end with Happily Ever After.
Because this life is so much more full of evils
Than a fairy tale could ever be.
These lives that we lead are all deadly.
From the night that I found a ***** in my knight’s shining armor
And allowed every blow I threw to damage something
I thought to be impenetrable.
From the life that a person can choose for themselves,
To replace all the pain with something that warms them to their souls,
To not lend thought to what has or will happened
And just experience how wonderful it is
To be.
Right now.
That’s all.
But.
Life isn’t always fairy tale.
You can’t put this book down, no matter how scary things get,
And chasing the dragon does not always lead to some glorious victory.
It’s dangerous even for those with the most courageous of hearts.
The fire that once warmed is now burning
Melting
A heart of gold.
And it’s no one’s fault.
This was never your fault.
Because a body isn’t a soul,
And a machine can’t breathe love into his lungs,
It can only rise and fall, like the hopes of how this may end.
But all I can wonder is if you were laying there,
Needing breath to be force fed to you
In order to keep your heart beating,
I know for certain that I would make sure
That every breath that rose your chest came rushing
From my lungs up my throat out of my mouth and falling
Deep down into your lungs to swell them full,
And I would make sure, as long as I was breathing,
You would be too.
What must that say of me?  
Unable to be without a happy ending,
Where one woman would give every breath to her true love
So her final exhale would be his final inhale?
I might have gotten off track,
This may be a different story entirely,
One we might save for another night,
When we’re both not so tired.
I just hope before you fall asleep tonight
That the sigh that you let out right before you enter your dreamland
Is because not even a dreamland could compare to how beautiful your life is,
And hope you never get sick of the book that I am,
And no matter how scary things may seem,
You never fail to keep turning my pages.

It was a cold night when you told me
In the basement of my parent’s house
About how your mother would leave you alone
With your father
Who abused you and your sister
For years on end
Week after week.
Month after month.
You would call your mother to please
Come pick you up,
But she never came.
The truth was she didn’t know.
No, the truth was she didn’t care.
I can’t imagine how bad that must've felt.
How bad that must feel.
I never knew why you were so secretive.
I chalked it up to you cheating on me;
It would be easier to deal with
Than the truth.
The truth was that your back really hurt you
And your mom was on medication for pain
From a car accident she was in when she was 18
And you only took in dire circumstances
When you couldn’t bear the pain.
No, the truth was that you had headaches,
Migraines,
But the stuff about your mother was true.
No.
No, the truth was that you were selling drugs
That your mother had prescribed to her.
The truth was your paycheck went to paying her
For your addiction to those pills.
I found one in my car and you threw it and told me
Nothing was more important to you than me.
I never believed a word you said.
No, not even then.
I was in someone else’s bed when you left a message,
Saying you have been addicted
For the past year we were together,
And now you’re going to get clean.
I never knew what it was like to forget how to breathe.
I only caught my breath when I knew you were there,
With no way of communicating with me.
With no way of communicating with anyone.
You called me the last night you were there,
Telling me lies that comforted me for two years.
I wished I could be deaf so I couldn’t hear,
But you have always been able to paint
Such beautiful misery.
And my heartbeat began to resound in my chest,
And I realized how foolish a heart I had.
A sober house was where I would pick you up.
A halfway house.
I never knew what that meant, halfway house,
But now I knew more than I ever wish I could.
Halfway between rehab and real life.
Halfway between who you could be and who you really are.
Halfway between the old you and the new you.
You figured that we would fall back into love;
I figured I could only meet you halfway.
Because we never shared love.
You never had love for me.
I could never numb you to your past,
To your life,
I couldn’t be swallowed and course through your veins,
Though I would have given anything to be your cure.
I wasn’t allowed in the halfway house,
So we regressed to the age of sixteen,
Driving around and listening to music.
We turned into our old selves in the parking lot of a hibachi joint,
Arguing about how I can’t just be driving for two hours.
“There’s a spot behind the house.”
“Let’s go there.”
And there we were,
Just like the old us, but halfway to new,
With Bright Eyes blasting through my speakers,
I was sure all of Wilkes-Barre could hear,
But they only knew the half of it:
You would pause and sing me all of your favorite parts,
Whispering to my lips as if they were my ears,
Like my body was your own personal musical instrument.
You looked into my eyes and told me
How you have always been in love with me.
It was always me.
I never believed a word you said.
No, not even then.
You could tell me how I was always your cure,
But the truth was, we were
Halfway to heaven and halfway to hell
In the driveway outside of
A halfway house.

I prefer to drive home after drinking too much at 2 AM.
It's safer.
I'm convinced that all the cops are out after bars' happy hours.
I only know about that from my favorite bar, which is 9 to 11.
After 11, I think they prowl until one.
Come two, they are exhausted and bored.
But not like us.
The streets are like a blank canvas and we have all the paint,
And we are eager to make a mess of its purity.
I steer the wheel with my knee as I stretch my arms wide,
While one ends up hugging the headrest of your seat,
You look at me and say, "Pay attention to the road."
You mustn't know.
You mustn't know what it feels like to look at you
When you look at me
The way you do.
You mustn't.
You can't even begin to imagine all the things I see,
But I direct my gaze through my drunken haze to the expressway,
With the lights passing by us like previews before a movie,
And we try to comment on all of them,
Which ones we choose to see and not see,
But we're too excited about the feature presentation,
Because it's the first night that it feels like summer,
And I remember why I can't keep my mind off of you through all the seasons;
You have always been my summer scent,
The carefree afternoon, the elongated dusk, the crickets before bed,
The one that could keep me from feeling the cold that runs through my bones
And somehow make me whole and warm.
And I stop the car
And take you all in
And wait
For your eyes
To meet mine

Have you ever felt so high?
I seem to fly down the freeway,
Hearing every song as if it were the first time.
Each light flies by me, blending into one long stream,
And I somehow feel motionless at this pace,
At this grueling pace that I cannot seem to keep up with,
Yet I am aware I have nothing to catch up to,
And I am not running from anything,
So I lean my head back and let the harmonies whisper their way through my hair,
Into my ears,
Across my cerebrum,
Course through my veins.
And seeing a McDonald's sign was comparable
To seeing the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve at midnight.
And the touch of a friend's hand on my face
Was like flipping the pillow before falling into dreams.
And the smell of the night was a combination of
Winter's freshness, spring's rain, and bonfire in summertime.
And it was us against anything,
And it was me trying to tell you everything,
And it was something to be absolutely nothing.
What I am trying to ask you is:
Have you ever felt so high?

I am chasing you,
And it feels like I will never get to you,
It feels like I will never see you again,
And there you are, sailing down the interstate on a Saturday night,
With the strong breeze from the cracked window in the car,
With the first cigarette of the night,
With ash flying into your hair,
With a laugh that I haven't heard for a while,
And I want to hear again,
But there you go again;
I've lost you in the crowd of young drunks,
With a girl who just burned a hole in my coat
Because she was clumsily smoking a cigarette indoors,
And that boy just knocked my drink out of my hand,
But I caught a glimpse of you through the window.
So I ran outside to meet you,
And you were gone again.
And I was surrounded by this haze,
By muffled bass pounding and slurred conversation,
By distant car sirens,
By the battle of the blinding glow of the neon lights
And the natural light of the night sky.
And I was caught in this feud,
Until I saw you,
In the driver's seat of my favorite Volkswagen,
With a smirk painted on your face,
That seemed to say,
"Come and get me."