How many words
Arranged for you?

How many hours
Awake because of you?

How many kisses
Given to forget you?

How many times have I given up?
I want to say many

How many lies
Have I told myself?
:
"How many times will my heart break?"
"How many ways will I lose?"

How many of them
Will your soft truths erase?

How many landings
After falling out of dream-state,

How many dreams
Allowed me to caress your face?

I have suddenly emerged
From long
Restless
Hibernation.
My cells even,
They scream for you,
Shouting out endorphins

You make me feel like a child
Because only children are able to feel pure,
Unabashed,
Uncomplicated happiness
The way you make me feel it.
Only a child can lose itself
So completely as I do with you
And only a child would be so eager
To run towards something pretty;
With untied shoes,
With legs not fully grown
And not yet often used,
With an unsteady gait,
But a focus so clear it could only come from a head higher even than the clouds,
Knowing what tripping means
Knowing what falling feels like
Knowing fragility,
And not knowing what it is to care.


How many poems
Have I written you into?

How perfect must a piece be
To start to color in
The picture of you
I've written?

How many adjectives
Must describe love
Must describe laughter
Must describe honesty
Before I can see your eyes glowing in my work?

How can I summon these words
And more
To let you in on yourself
While your fingers run through my hair?

How can I speak?

You make me,
You make me,
You make me stutter sometimes because I'm so caught up in how sweet you are
And repetition is so sweet when you're a part of it
And no matter how many times I say your name,
It will never lose its flavor.

I am more for you
And, somehow,
I am the same as I've always been.
I am more aware of myself than ever before,
And less self conscious,
Because you bring out the beauty in things simply by allowing your own beauty to be with them.
It's hard not to feel worthy of something
When something so wonderful
Doesn't even give you a chance to wonder if you are.

How many chances
Have you given me?

How many times will I fall for you?
It doesn't matter,
Because every time I do,
I remember
Just

How easy
Falling for you is.

Art:
Bending or breaking a set of rules
Until the broken system
Finally resembles you.

Hey, where did you go?
You have such a beautiful voice,
And though I've never heard it,
And I've only ever read it,
It always sounded so wonderful through your prose.

I miss seeing your thoughts.
I think I've read you,
Straight through,
sEVEN times at least.
It's been since February that
You finished your work from January.
I want to know your mind again.

You started
Me.

You told me I was good,
A shock after my first attempt.
It electrocuted my doubts,
And saw sparks bursting from my creative capacitors.

Then you told me to grow some *****.

Well...
You can't change everything.


Then you said you wished somebody would write you the way I wrote her.


Hmmm...


When I call words to mind
And haphazardly plaster my paper with them
They're really just scattered collections,
Lessons in literature I've unconsciously taken from my favorite authors.

So,
Really,
You're already in every poem I write.

My favorite authors are the minds
That create bodies for themselves
From the bodies of their work and skill.

Well,
When you write,
You embody the poem.
All I see in those lines is your hand,
Back bent over your thoughts,
Wringing perfection from English.

Point is,
My poetry is already partly you.
But why would you want
A poem of you
Written by somebody like me
When your own poetry
Is more you than I could ever hope to be,
And when you are such a brilliant writer anyway?

I dreamed of love
A drowsy girl
Awakened my sleeping thoughts
With burning memory
And the inertia of hope
Unexpected,
This sudden pull of gravity in my mind
Has sent me tumbling back to consciousness.


Gasping,
Cold plastering clothes to skin
Wondering
Where did my warmth go?
I miss those imaginary arms
That kissed me easily
More surreal than our fantastic surroundings
Less beautiful than her trust in me
Just as perfect as anything dreamed

Her name was Erika
My name was a blush and a hello
In the beginning.
But by the end,
"I'm so happy."

We climbed through windows and laughed about nothing
We played with wolves
We walked, we walked,
So many hills and not an unsure step.
I met her mother, she met mine
Both were so proud of us.
She made me useless things that I treasured more than practicality itself
And I could feel her pride when I hugged her for them.

Shy at first,
Sitting on a bed,
I asked her
"Where are you from?"
She mumbled,
"I don't know."
I said "that's not from around here."
She hadn't taken her eyes from mine. Now she managed two words:
" I'm lost."
And suddenly, I knew I was lost for her too.

We met for the first time in a hotel with no purpose
But meeting her has become the only purpose.

Though I wish so badly to go back to sleep,
Something vital inside me is more awake than it has ever been
Now I will keep my eyes forever open
Until I find her warm embrace once again.
And when her smile buries itself in my chest
I can finally close them.

The older I get,
The more I understand

How little I know

So why does it feel
Like I'm already much too full?

I miss the person
Whom I called many things
None among them,
"Mine."

Never quite naked.
Never quite close enough,
Because we were never
Comfortable enough to be either.

All because from the first collapse,
I had no problem calling myself
Any terrible name
Any thing but
"Yours."

So I reflect,
My ancient mind
Clinging to the time,
And the change,
Confusion,
Eruption!

The only thing I have ever felt
Wrench my heart
apart
And pull my head together

And the only way to define my youth.

The only word to describe


A tragic emotion;
The only thing I ever got to call
"Ours."

How we reflect
To construct eternity;
Gazing at stars.

Street lights
Building the same obsidian glimmer
To light the world.
Not so we can see,
But so when the stars gaze upon us
They can see how gloriously bright they truly are.