If we could've known
what we would become
I would have told you still,
out of breath
and full on in love,
that you were gonna be
my favorite home forever.
All of the lovely, broke,
young and dumb, sweet,
smirking son of a gun.

when did all this time
become about passing mine
turns out
5 years and 3 months
isn't all that much

loved at
minimum wage
left living
kiss to kiss
never enough
to save up

the mess inside my head
is as tangled as my hair
on your monday morning pillow

My body likes
to be the thing
you fidget with.

So, feel free
to come and
hyperfocus
with me.

its a violent thing
love being blown apart
to only later
be remembered
like an overly friendly
stranger

She loves his body
The way it fits just right
against her lips
And she kisses each rib
As a thank you
For holding him in it

I've done enough burning bridges
And being burned
And in all these stories
I've never found a heros glory
Or a dragon to slay
Only a bunch of words
That couldn't make the endings change.

Getting older is getting lonelier
As people fall away and fewer stay
There are too many wrongs
For there to be a right
And even when it will all be okay
When it stops and I look around
The scenery will have changed.

Marie was always placed in the middle
until suddenly ushered to be in front.
And when often mistaken for others
rather lonely, being a first, would it become;
but in the end ultimately determined
it was an affront not meant to be unjust.
Maybe it was a clever thing that was received,
a gift to make people always fondly think of another,
from givers that never felt a need to think of it any further.

a paper blue square
took me miles high
to touch the sky
a cosmic make out
melted on my tongue

the arms of a
grief weighted blanket
held her to sleep
every new night after.

You’re Peg Tooth,
I’m Sticky Fingers.

Lets run until we hit the sun
hoping for matching freckles.

You captured All and then it faded,
grayed by a sunburnt haze
before being stored away.
In the boxes under the bed,
        (fingered buttons, clever lips;
          Kiss- click-shutter-snap.)
filtered finely by dust
and conveniently labeled,
        (quiet snores, little hands;
          Grasp- click-shutter-snap.)
All that was forgotten, found,
and once again shifted around.
        (tall grass, wild spins;
          Laugh- click-shutter-snap.)
.

When every outfit change
And new man's body
Never made the feelings go away
She did it anyway
And you never understood
Why her dreams were so small
But the big ones never came
And the world ate every daisy chain
A little girl once made

Kiss me in the east
So I can set in the west
To wish sweet dreams
For your eyes every night

I want to lick
Your disappointment

Taste your bitter

soul eater,
you make me wonder
what is the shelf-life
of good intentions?

her words make her feel like an imposter
the past makes her feel like a spectator
when he asks her how the family is doing
she wonders if she looks pretty enough
if it will ever be able to cover it all up
he doesn't bother to ask any further
and she gets her answer

when the end comes
if we have an after
promise we will
spend it together

My thoughts tripped
into a current
aspiring to drown
themselves
across miles of binary
and lit up screens

kept a smile
through that
tornado
of impatient
anger
and said
"please,
come again"
you wild
bag of wind

The halves that made me
Left me only pieces
To make my whole

.      when she reached
       her fingers brushed blue
       she went to reground but
       her feet had forgotten how

I wonder,
If I were born to walk the moon,
Would you shoot for me?

She no longer has to wonder
How it feels to lose the stranger
Who always stares back
In her mirror

Gilded in gold
but binding all the same,
A contract made with rings
and fine print no one reads.
Local government has to agree
how to dissolve the terms
of all those promised dreams,
reduced now to only physical things.

It is hereby ordered and adjudged:
No longer love.

It is inevitable
to feel so small
on a front porch;
black and bright
sky stretched wide.

painted
by my own hand
I wore my heart
and its resentments
on my mind
for all to see,
daring him
to look away.

I do not wish
to live forever
dancing among
these graves
not yet made
ghost watching

he cursed her
without words
his fists
a blaspheme
against his girl

Let me

                     (Breathe myself into wind.

                            Sink until I’m water.

                                    Lay, for to dust I will return.

                                                  Then I can)

stretch myself into your bones.

the sharp sting of always
settled into routine
the inevitable of morning
each inhale brings
we're living an american dream
five days a week

She echoes in his room
In the way only the empty ones can

Long after she's gone

we all fall prey
to the monsters we create

she burned the cauliflower again
it was for his favorite dish
and the fire alarm wouldn't stop
even after opening all the vents
a great metaphor she thought
for his disappointment
while she tried to decide
what went best with a limp fish
"whiskey or gin?"

one day,
if you think
to find me
i will not be

the shape of it shifts as we hold on to it, like water
it  f
        a
              l
                 l
                    s
                          throu­gh our f i n g e r s
while we blink it's shine from our eyes.

May even your shadows burn bright so I can find them always
Or let your light be so shadowed that I may sleep in the glory
I will leave the shallow summer and wade into your deep winter
live in the seasons that keep in your favor
All I ask is that years take on forever
for time to keep us anchored
Yes all that I ask is that I shall ask at all and should you listen
anything can be rewritten

we are the south pole
of different magnets
that will never come
t   o   g   e    t    h   e   r
now go attract a north

Men would break, bind,
and burn her some day,
of this she had no doubt.
But she let them crave it first,
until a reason had been found.
And when it was finally over and done?
The curse she gave was a hunger,
one that could never be overcome.

hold my hand
so your thumb
can tap that beat
on my wrist
the one my heart
decided to keep

My ghost is pressed
Between pages of black ink;
Haunting bookshelves neatly labeled.
Fingers running down bound spines
vertebrae by paper vertebrae.
Memories that are trapped in fiction,
Lost by a to z organization,
Misfiled.

Keep heart
And use
Explosives
As pillows for
Your heads
While we watch
From the softness
Of our beds

You created a shallow place
Where memories should pool deep
But none are kept to admire

You created love
That was a fleeting feeling
A dream to burn my eyes when I woke

You created a thing grown
That still occasionally stings
As it explains
Who was my mother's daughter

Men
Made me promises
When I was young
And new
They didn't keep
Because they had known
No one would blame 'em
When I felt old
And used

Is this what they meant
when they told her love was a hurricane?


                     (it destroyed her cities
                      making her a refugee
                      inside of someone else's body)


If so,
she might have done without.


                     (and she was never any good
                      at building homes in new places)

Wide awake champagne bubble eyes;
Kissing time already gone goodbye.

These Titans that walk among us;
When they bow to kiss our cheeks
They crush us with their knees.

I rode euphoria
that was not my own
and
somewhere along the way
I think I
dropped my soul