I might make this the year I tell the men in my life when they do something that hurts
Probably not but it’s what I curl up and close my eyes about at night and let soak behind my eyelids into my dreams.
Katahdin is not a volcano. You can’t come into my life whenever you want. The way you forget everything I did for you makes me feel like garbage. I would like you to acknowledge the hurt and not just how I’m reacting to it.
Will it make me a *****? Will you like me anyway? Will you be in the headspace to hear that? Do I care?
I used to say I didn’t make friends with men because I thought they wanted to hurt me on purpose. I think now it’s on accident.
Is that better?
I think this is the year I say something and don’t cover with a joke to make you comfortable
Probably isn’t but I really want that to be true
One day I’m going to wake up and make it so
And with myself intact, my day will go on

Everybody knows who they are until they lose.
But if I scrape together my earnings I have enough to show for at least a little time where things were probably true, and ok
It wasn’t the proudest I’ve been. Probably not even the second.
But my score is woven so deeply into the fabric of how people consume me that I shudder when they put the fork down before
they’re done.
I’m done too.
Too well for anyone’s taste and especially not my own. No one’s famished anymore they all ate what was up first.
Mediocrity spills out of me like a fountain rotting from the underneath. Nothing can be contained forever, least of all shame.
I can plug it up with all the sacred earth and dead flowers that I want. It’s still a broken vessel. It will still be an obnoxious mess that begs for demolition.
No one will care enough to even destroy it.

It will feel the seasons and cry the graffiti off of its sides while the moss grows over. No longer serving its purpose, it begs to be gazed at. Lounged on. Wondered about how beautiful and useful it was before time tore it down.

When the bugs crawl on me I am reminded that I was always earth.
The sticky detritus that folds in nitrogen and small stones
Buds and sprouts that yawn from the loam
Combing my hands through the sharp green shards of grass
I think of how we’re growing at the same time.
Smaller than is visible but large enough to hold between my teeth
To bite down and gnaw through the woody rush stems. Stretching out each strand of reed grass until they’re thin as violin strings.  
How would I live without the harsh air? Or the sun suspending me in a chamber full of fog and soft knowing.
I can’t believe I’m one of them: that I’m made of moss and memories and I live in a pocket of air between the ice float and river flow. Funny how
We’re on one side of the ground or another. There’s almost no difference at all.

Run two over 10 minute miles.
Feel sick on the treadmill.
Buy $15 worth of Whole Foods hot bar.
Go to work.
Drive slow, it’s snowing.
Drink some good wine to learn
Drink some **** wine to unlearn
Be seen, feel wanted
Don’t get forgotten
Leave while you’re still memorable
Run another 10 minute mile
Stop
Work when the sun comes up come home when it’s down
Base your entire self worth on one thing
Stop
Consider dyeing your hair back to brown
Change your mind. You won’t get noticed
Crack some wise *** joke about how you were ugly in middle school so now you have a real personality
Drink a bottle of wine
Make someone laugh
Cook a soft boiled egg just right
Make someone cry
Hate yourself but only an amount you can come back from
Don’t be perceived but definitely get looked at
Order a shot and a beer
Go to the bathroom and watch the door stickers spin
Go to the beach and find meaning
Water the plant that keeps trying to die in your perfectly ******* lit living room
Wake up and watch your partner
In stillness except for breathing
Leave your bed before the sun is up
Be the first thing the world sees

With my head all the way under I can hear it
The drain from the overflow
My lengthy breaths like brush strokes
The tinny crack of a joint in the vacuum, in the lone lake of one
The closest I’ll ever be to a sea monster
Not in a legend way, but in the way I’ll never be as still
I’ll bring my hand up and over, ride with the mist up out of the four rounded walls
The archipelagos of my body are many. They don’t all fit beneath the surface
I wonder if islands feel fractured, vulnerable and sparse
Or if they feel fortunate to be earth and sea
The water always tinges green, from my hair, no matter how many washes I’ve done
Like the way a green glass wave might be harnessing the sky
All I’m missing are rocks to tumble and coast to encroach on
Then I might feel what it means to watch something soften
Then maybe I’d know what it means to watch something roll under me so easily I don’t even notice as it leaves.

For as long as I can remember
I’ve wanted to be older
Older than I was
Old, like my friends’ parents
I couldn’t stand being reduced to kids menus
Cold grilled cheeses and apple juice
I wanted to drink wine like a 29 year old that had two jobs,
But not for the money - just to keep herself busy
I wanted to be old enough to be mad at someone and have it matter
Old enough to never have a tantrum again
Or to drive a car with all the windows down on the highway.
To live alone and only be a little scared
“Talk like a kid, eat at the kids table, you can’t give adults money in birthday cards, you’re too young to know”
So many rules from a group of people who didn’t have any
And so I did grow up.
Worked too many hours and stayed up late on the weekdays
Skipped some 8am classes and tattooed a dead bird on my upper thigh and still I’m so young
So much younger than when I was 9 and sure about every fact I made up
More naive than a child that saved all her money and counted it on the living room carpet
Less knowing than someone who would have a bedtime and ****** strawberry daiquiris. Saw her friends often and didn’t relay all my mistakes to anyone I met just to make sure
I’m still good
When I’m too old to be so wise for my age,
or an old soul,
I hope that means I will finally be myself
That me and time will meet in the middle of a familiar place
And continue our conversation like two old friends
And walk without looking behind us.

I’m a soft moan in the mewing darkness
Our skin is see-through just around the edges
Paler than we might remember
Softer. Always softer in a way not weaker
I follow my own line of symmetry
All the way up my body and out of Breath
Beneath the sea there’s more earth but never more than there are stars. Above you
There’s no other. Above you
There never was.

There are two things I’ve had closest to a fear
Needles,
And my own uncertainty
My insides wince when I see either or both
In the same room
Lit by the same gritty flame
Parked next to each other on the couch and gripping two glasses
Of mid shelf
They both look at me with a gaslit glare
They’re not there, or not in the way
At least
I know my moms arms are
The grass when it makes my back itch
A book when I flip it through like I know what I’m seeing.
Their eyes follow me to the back of my head and
The roots of my fiberglass brain
I haven’t showered, in days.

Not like eggs in a frying pan
Prying them shyly as to not burn your breakfast
It's not like
the leaves as their moisture dissipates
as their color fades
Its spine rolling forward, rolling up onto its edges,
Its legs.
It can be something like
The way a dress fits snugger
On your torso, when it looked so wide, laid flat.
The circumference, the girth, of a moment
Underestimated.

But if even water shrinks when frozen
How much smaller is my mind
when my molecules stop moving,
when my motives less inclined?

I'm not stepping back from ledges
I'm not broken, on the mend
I'm just pulling away from the edges
Pulling away again.

Wasn't I wanted
When I was there?
Your four sides to these long rides
of your square?

So say it, I don't want your copy and paste
I want your old broken self
Filled with liquor, and haste

The way shelves of fine China used to crash down
Inside of your chest when no one was around
You would grapple and shake, you would fall to the ground
And you'd cry
You'd cry.
Only I knew that sound.

I wish I weren't sour
Wish my thoughts about you
Didn't seize up and freeze the moment that they come through

I also wish you'd stop acting
Like I'm an asset of the past
Like you are happy now at last
You should see the way it hurts me.
It's selfish to act like I'd cross rivers for you
When you know I don't swim, unless you're drowning, too.

My hair gets caught in everything and I,
I'll never really learn to sing
I'm alive and all my limbs, their working
I should get it the **** together.

But I forgot to mention how I'm shaped like a square
How my legs will not pass that eight minute mark
I eat til I'm sick and I'm afraid of the dark
I am space unfiltered.

If people are acidic then I am a base,
There's no thing I've not done that is not in bad taste
I'm a good person only cause if not, I'm a waste
I feel jilted.

A casserole of other peoples roaming vices
Not mysterious enough to be considered lifeless
It's not dreadful, or sad
It's not even a crisis

The prescription exists and it says to just fade
Just fade until the ground becomes sky
Not depressing, nor anguished
I've already complied

I'm here to check names and recognize faces.
I'm here to watch people fill their perfect circle spaces.

Just act aloof and overhead
Like a plane less inclined
for its needs at the ground
Take a drag of what's in your hand,
Let time run as fast as sand
This life is unattached as your intentions are complete

It's looking out over a choppy sea
Where everyone's riding it fine but me
They don't care if they drown,
That's how they maintain
Easier than a relationship
to sustain

I'm angry
I am angry and ill
Ill with my allies weak sense of will
I believe in energy, the transfer of waves
I believe what you give is what is returned
And also I know that people don't learn.

It's the circle of all, taken down by the larger
Wouldn't want my dependents to starve
They tear and they take
My words healing their hurt
Once they've pawed through the bones,
I return to the dirt.
Once again,
With the earth.
Me and Her.

And if I decompose then
I will wait below,
Just more ground you can tread on
Just more plants that won't grow.

If she let it hit her
At a run or at a crawl
She would feel it the same way,
She'd feel it not at all

Some taste life on their tongue
In purples, reds and golds
But by the time she swallows it
It's aleady gone old
She reaches not for sweet
Not rare or medium well
How can you have a preference
When you can't even tell

Sometimes
It hits her like a wave
It crushes her, she's scared
That is until she realizes
She doesn't even care

If a piece of paper folds 7 times,
She'll fold over 8.
If everyone has their time and place,
Then it looks like she'd be late

'Cause life fits her into places
She didn't know she'd go
And people gave her knowledge, she didn't
Know she'd know
But when molecules
of thoughts and dreams
Don't look anything, like you thought they'd seem
Then what is your life made of?
That's whens she feels nothing

When you recollect
All you troubles
What do you do, is it all untrue?
Who do you even tell them to?

When someone's driven out the color
The laughter in their days,
I suppose you've chosen the best solution,
And that's to run away

I refuse to stand in the weight of your path
Comprehend your childish math
Could you be more specific,
About whose time you wish to waste?

So spout about your plans
The places you'll be seeing
It could matter less to me
When you have no moral being

I wish that we had exchanged stories
Opened up some long locked doors
But would I even see you?
Would you hide away some more?

I wish someday, you'd come around
Find the problems to address
I once was glad to call you a friend
But now you're a victim, at best.

If memories take time
Then I'm giving them away,
'Cause all I want's the closeness
Of thoughts from yesterday

If you turn your back to a tree
It falls, and you don't see
Is it different when you return to reality?

It remains that the tree is wood
The cores and rings and fibers still good
But I'm sure that doesn't matter
Because it changed the way it stood

I do my best to be unchanging
To coax you when you fell.
For friendship,I'd even let
You chop me down, as well

But you've sunken into shallow soils
Called these termites all your friends
And though it's your integrity rotting,
My memories have spoiled.

So think about that once again
When I've grown tired, and tough
Because height can give you limelight
But it's the roots that give you love

She's got galaxies between her ribs
And dials in her eyes
She's got liberty and justice lips
She's got lilacs up her thighs

Her knee-high boots say everything
She's unbearable and kind
Her flannel's thin as phillo
But her insides are fleece lined

She walks into a coffee shop
Asks for something extra hot
The steamer screams and the cold milk groans
She stirs until there is no foam.

There's a man, that sits feet away
And he cannot stand the way she plays
With a strand of hair that's been ***** for days

Look at those ugly, misshapen scars
Her body like a project car
Does she think that she's mysterious?
Does she think bad clothes are who she is?

She stands so fast he can't look down
She spots him as she turns around
Sees the recent trace of judgement
So she walks away, and smiles

Just then, his lungs were made of marble
His heart started to rehearse
The story, of how she made
His world a universe.

I only know my idle shows
When the beads fall down my back
The more I show my colors
The more my favorite's black.

It surrenders to the drain
No symmetry, no pain
And I wonder why
I can't wash away like that
When the people that I've come to know
Would rather
Let their idle show
It paints one of the colors that I lack

If you could drag a brush through time
Smother it, and stroke a line
I'd want it to be solid
And precise

Cause when you soak the paper through
With a wet brush with little hue
You think that I see something
Then it rips, and I see you

Let's skip the part where
You pretend to care
Cause your kind of cruelty's very rare

So with peace of mind
I'll wave and smile
And won't save you from your self denial

I think that you might notice
That I may have gone too soon
When you stumble upon houses with not enough doors
And too many empty rooms

I think it might hit you
When you walk past my swung open door
With no warmth to the core
With no bags on the floor
So I'm not the coldest thing that you knew

Honestly, it'll hit you
When the carpets unvacuumed for days
"It's so messy," you'll say
Like this is fixed with a broom
How's that house with no windows,
And too many rooms?

I don't fill my days with nothingness
I don't sleep until noon
For air, I crack the windows
And I rearrange the rooms

And it's fine by me
If you think
I can't leave a minute too soon
Someday I'll return, won't look through your windows,
Someday I won't want a room.

Abiding in tidy quarters
In which space I will confine
But my life is full of hoarders,
Pack things rashly in my mind

Some more obvious, some more subtle
Seems likely I'll never
See through the rubble.
Rational thought can be transferred
Transplaced
Deterred
Through the nostalgia of a *** once stirred

Finding divets of respect
For those who expect me
To level at their self inflicted debt
Is beyond words that come to be

Break the dams down of succession
Find my daily dosed oppression
Is within the people I reside
I can't run, cause they know where I hide.

Move with me; I've moved with you
Contorted into mentalities by body couldn't do
Just to watch you stay untrue
I can't reflex anymore,
I'm deadened to your dramatic lores.

Done waiting for the progress
For reciprocation past due
Cause I'm waiting to wane this fever,
And the antidote's not you.

It's hard to lose
What's still around
To watch the subtle splitting of the seams
Voluntarily squandering dreams

What're you diming up for?
Another so-called "even score"?
Don't fool yourself, don't fool yourself
You've never felt more alone

Why nurse it back to health
If it wants to fly away
So mend them well,
'Cause time will tell
If they'll thank you someday

Help is only living
When the victim gives it breath
Don't take my words
And twist them
Don't try to give them depth

It's true that I'm not in on it
I get that life's unfair
But if I'm the one who's been here
Why are you always over there?

Fall into the hollow feeling
Of giving all the time
Derivatives of my appeal
Will justify a crime

Wrapped in one own's self resent
Relationships are resident
Glance at primer peeling on the ceiling
Rooms are vacant past first floor
Content with not expecting more
Interactions feel like I am stealing

If some could see the sediment
Left of peoples' good intent
Sifting of ignorance
Dry with self exuberance
To kneel and watch it run through my fingers

Make a pact of solitude
The signature will last til noon
Apologies in schema with a meaning
I guess it's just a waiting game
Not that there's anyone to blame
That humankind itself is always fleeting

Push back the gag reflex for this capsule
Blue as pooling engine coolant
Reached for some water, made it faster
Or it will be stuck in my chest all day

How not to let delusion
Elude your feeling for his grasp
Keep you unglued in solitude
To watch your own collapse

Bereft of arms that hold you still
When scrambled minds go underdone
Your their's to pick apart
And some
Your timeline half erased will mill

Perfect as you've made it, you're never far apart
From a brick wall crack
From another attack
In a circle, pass the start.

I'm not saying that I'd
Pick up smoking, kick my grade point
Out the door
I'm not saying that I'm too great
For a university's education
Won't be showing up late
For Spanish 4

Doors won't slam with the gust
Of rebellious teenage luster
My fights will be well-picked
Won't apply my eyeliner too thick
I'm not saying
These paths won't match my
Spirituality

I'm not saying that I wouldn't miss
My friends
I won't pretend my home is not of the peaceful,
Higher end
I won't say I've reached clairvoyance beyond your ration

I'm not saying that I'm above this
That this world revolves to slow
I'm just saying if you asked me to run away
I've a feeling I wouldn't say no.

Sunkissed and messy headed
Blessed be that fashion sense
Her tangled mane is a metaphor, a facet
To her mangled brain
Not in the cute black-and-white, scrawled notecard manner
A carved-out, paper cut of a sheet
Crammed in the bottom of her bottle brained backpack

Worse than the weekly
Chic self-harmed hipbones,
She sits and eats and watches the world from the real world clones
The blanket's just hot enough to cook her down
Reduced to the ruched Jovani gown

She's got lists of friends, you have to
Scroll down a page
It even has to load awhile
Then why's your radius clear of anyone?
Pixelated fixtures of her mind, too close to miss her
Too close to care
So close, all they are's aware

Minds drone, like bone picking
Knowing you're the stick in the mud
Warm blood behind a boil, just kicking for
Another tab to click in

She's been braless awhile now
Profiled with purchases levels lapping her current state
She pinches skin impatiently, chocolate scouring her teeth
It's the bitter taste of something so horribly surface
They erase away the beneath.

Destroy me
You phantom of a frostbit branch
The window thin as ice but
Thick enough to shut you out, I'd say
To throw a cold shoulder
But you hold the thermostat in your palm
To bade our blades much colder

It falls so softly, induces
Coughing, ravaged throats
Coated in mucus and eucalyptus
And dry as toast
Your accumulation stings.
Builds around my every-thing
Traps me, while you sag on limbs
Sapping at the sight of heat, you
Squelch beneath studded rubber
Soles, and unsuspecting stockings

We react to you in opposites
Sway a daydream tropical
In stiff and childish ways of yours, you drop your toys
Ground to numbing dust
So it falls among the rest of us just waiting
For your twin's return

It's not your choice, to have remains
That soak the grains of greater plains
That lavish in the wreck of your rule.
But to keep the warmth, from coming on
Long after silver bells are gone
Are cold and jealous actions of a fool.

I'll have my thought-provocative chamomile island
Hold your breath if you'd like
As long as it lasts, I'll pull you to the pools
Where the warmth doesn't sink nor spike
It bubbles with treasure awaiting
Marked as rubble that keeps procreating
These caverns, they'll be warm as a mother's arms
The sea life will smile back, warm
As the breeze that will dry your walk home

This is sand I could sleep on, sand that couldn't exfoliate, it's
Smaller than your pores
The roar of a ******, the waves arching spine
Sighing as the loamy foam symbolizes sweet decline
Rind of the ***** sun
So ripe it could puncture with your own thumb
Heated juices soak the soil
Feed the trees, learn your new roots
Swaying palm leaves lap your back
Laughter breaks out in the mouth of the land

Pigmented petals kiss your core
The trustworthy breeze tucks around your form
Of course you'll be staying, even though you never went
We'll pass our days more perfect than the prior hours spent.

My time would be running if it had a place to hide
Filmy ridges of my interest bids to fly in the riptide
Back of the bug encloses and traps
Outside the warm inferior chance to fly
Mind filed down like narcotics in the spoon
Melted just above 232
She drops it in the drain
And knows why so she holds today's paper like fine phyllo
Her ceiling looks like pepper
Her floor dry as bone

It's not a good sweater without the holes,
Artistic and shapely, the sleeves sewn for show
The leather of your sailing shoes gone

Knuckles knee-deep in bright orange dust
Her words half-crunched
In a hurricane of hurried lunch
I mix in wit to her serious plot
Her mouth flies open, filled with half-chewed corn starch
And she still looks like a matriarch

We turned the radio on
But was gradually turned down
The ridged **** twisted all the way around
So she'd mention a song and I'd ask her
"How's that goes again?"
To hear her voice slip in and out
When really I knew it all by heart

Even when there was no reason to,
We smiled
Giggled off each other's cues
She looked from me once
Her eyes widening like a telescope
Mouth gaping, absent of laughter, as she braced a hand against my chest
The liquid-like sucker punch
Of the metal colliding quick
Like jelly under a rolling pin, I stuck
Grasping onto prayers with my fingers loose as God
She didn't scream, just held my shirt
As my tumbleweed Taurus vaulted yet another foot
Into the same solid ground, the same stars of shards
Mingled with bright orange dust sifting through the air.

Wish I had something more to give
Than what is given to me
I'll provide some stale, bland
Day-old bread and some hospitality
Don't be taken at the little eyesight
Conveys when love takes hold
The peripherals that passion gathers
Is the greatest you'll ever know
Your morning breath is perfume
My bubbly laugh is wine
Our three course meal is the sizzling of
Our fingers intertwined

My will is all but cracking
As my threshold strips of pain
And even though it's familiar
It's a joy to be free of the game

The endless nights of fretting
That can now bring me no harm
When I'm encircled in a bed of hope
And my blankets, are your arms.

I love the crystals in my mane
Drenched in sunlight, glowing bone deep
Everything is smooth as butter
Rolled and tumbled from the blue

The sugar on my eyes and mouth
Interlaced in arm hairs
Filling my brown bag
Taste the savory on my fingers
It reaches deeper every time

Strolling foam, fantastic vastness
Fills my mind with emptiness
Hated breezes
Find the towel
Sink til you're beneath it

Lumps of plant life
Look like mountains
I shove my chin into the grit
Level off my point of view
Thousands of years of sediment

Locks as parched as hay
Skin as crisp as chips
I taste you, summer, in my blood
And I know you by your lips.

I cannot fathom a particle
More beautiful than stardust
It builds from core to sediment
To rocks and slabs of ocean floor
The grass that dies and breathes again
The sand beneath my arches

The rubber soles
The air we breathe
The air we share, the air we need
We care for youth until they're meant
To add more forms of sediment
They'll cry, and their babies
Will cry
Not quite out of frustration, but everybody's inclination
And urge to touch the sky

Because we can't breathe this vicious air
We belong to the world up there
Of imploding super nova sights
The nebulas crossing like interstate highways
The traffic of matter holds orbit over all

You can take pride in the life you live
In the air you breathe
In the joy you give
But as for power? Nothing.
Humbled is what you are
Even behind your material goods
You're just the remnants of a star.

Lover
Float to me unraveled
Wrap me in your arms of travel
Let your fingers prattle on

Your shirt, my skirt
I feel unearthed
Tell falling fractions of my climb

A line
Strewn from frown to frown
And as one flies up,
The other floats down
Lips are not full with atoms but with laughter

Stardust is ******
The clippings of a song
The dresses hem
A lemon rind
A dog who bit too many times

A stitch in the side
Don't play with your food,
Can't you tell when I'm in a good mood?
We're firing on cylinders
And prisms, cubes and cones
I feel liquid limelight in my eyes
I can taste it in my bones

Digging back from China
We're channels in the ground
But we can make a life well spent
The second time around.

You can't hear me talk, can barely hear me sing
My apologies fall deaf on you and what washes over, stings
I fall head first into your ocean, enveloped in waves of rough cement
But through this capture you are peaceful
My battered form makes you content

It's funny how they call the past, the past,
And not the present
You greet the currency of times with nothing but resent
You tell me you know what I see
Laugh toothily as I fall to my knees
Engulfed with pain deeper, than my own
As I watch you fall steeper

It is impossible to stamp the blame
To disrupt your flawless form
I wouldn't dare to place a mark on you, nor tell you what you've worn
I'll motivate my stiffened mind, though you tell me that I can't
Collective moments form the clog
And I have become the ant

It comes as no surprise that
Your comfort scares me so
Behind each understanding is a reckless anecdote
A fury-littered monologue
A venom worded rant
The apology won't matter
Cause I am still the ant

It's difficult to swallow, though
My pills were hours ago
I softly stroke the future that I know is doomed, but floats
It treads above the water, as buoyant as it can
I guess future doesn't matter
I will always be the ant.

I feel as though I have found peace, as the pieces have found me
Stuck to my skin, want to push within
But for now I let them be.
I'll drink with you tonight my friends, let laughter build me so elate
But at home my mind waits
Thoughts are clawing through gates
It purrs as it asks, "Why so late?"
I sink to the abyss, bobbing my head
Trying so hard to tread in these doubts and these bouts
As soon as something's clarified it finds a hole and flourishes
And the fears I've repressed, it nourishes
The animal inside that coerces me to abide
And let it have my courage.

"Let yourself feel what you feel,"
It's not hard to argue that the feeling is real
It's primal, this feeling
But still keeps me reeling every time you've upset to a point where I'm lost.
And even in these times of tough navigation
I find brutal elation in the fact that you want me
So stay, disappoint me, corrode while I watch thee
A same mistake twice is just one time to little
Because I know you take pleasure in the way you belittle.

That soft, sensitive side turns so raw, becomes blind
My words hit like seashells on diamond, and slide
The hopelessness curls in my stomach and sighs
Just a night gone awry, just a night gone awry.

I can't explain who
I can't explain why
I can't even explain what, but
I'll just have to try
Because friends, they're the glue that assembles my mind
They're the day's daily tread
They are the thread of my life

But, I would stand my ground for each one of you
Cradle your head as you cried, told you things that aren't true
So wait,
Are you a friend of the memorable kind?
Am I the seed of this plant
Or the unspoken rind?
I define this, but crumple and toss it away
Do I define those who go, or judge when they stay?

So call me in distress, when your friends have parted ways
Trade with me the garments that we'll wear every other day
Share with me the word that we've defined all on our own
And let me give you reason to live
When all your others are on loan

It's somewhat of a hobby, a pastime I can grasp
Let's clear away your awful thoughts, or feed them as they pass
Whatever makes you safer, or feel just less alone
I'll hold your hair back
Hold your hand
Or let you use my phone

They say, there's a reciprocal
A counterpart to all
An indebted soul is restless
And it needs somewhere to fall

But I can't take anything from you
Even when you've asked of me
But it circles around, feels so nice to be found
A friend, is what I'd like to be.

I can't explain who
I can't explain why
I can't even explain what, but
I'll just have to try
Because friends, they're the glue that assembles my mind
They're the day's daily tread
They are the thread of my life

But, I would stand my ground for each one of you
Cradle your head as you cried, told you things that aren't true
So wait,
Are you a friend of the memorable kind?
Am I the seed of this plant
Or the unspoken rind?
I define this, but crumple it and toss it away
Do I define those who go, or judge when they stay?

So call me in distress, when your friends have parted ways
Trade with me the garments that we'll wear every other day
Share with me the word that we've defined all on our own
And let me give you reason to live
When all your others are on loan

It's somewhat of a hobby, a pastime I can grasp
Let's clear away your awful thoughts, or feed them as they pass
Whatever makes you safer, or feel just less alone
I'll hold your hair back
Hold your hand
Or let you use my phone

They say, there's a reciprocal
A counterpart to all
A indebted soul is restless
And it needs somewhere to fall

But I can't take anything from you
Even when you've asked of me
But it circles around, feels so nice to be found
A friend, is what I'd like to be.

I boil alive in the summertime
Feel the fields fold within me
Vast as our climb
I grow restless, grow short
These thin winds wring me dry
I yearn for heat to dowse my worries
Smooth me flat and let me fly

Some find displeasure in warmth
The thick of the air that mops your neck
With the kiss of a season I'd never forget
The exhaustion of heat embosses those
Who struggle with it so
But it lulls you to baste and bake in it's waves
As reminder to let the cold go
To embrace sinking in with intent clear at mind
To assemble, observe
With the thoughts left behind
The world, it goes covered
For months it's at sleep
When its ambiance rolls, it just sings,
"Watch me be."

I know your brain's amuck
With the slush of old snow
Yet within you holds humidity
Thick with memories known.

Don't be acting so sly
I know where your eyes are
They're surveying my life
Reading my poetry, my handwritten strife
They're not all about you but enough to seem off

But you went looking,
Found your place
Of which you'd like to stay
Made a fire from your own self assurance
And a bed for you to lay
With poems so many it's an avid invitation
But isn't complete without your blonde inclination

So read these, I dare you, cause this one's for you
And you'll remember the cornbread
You devoured
And who
We ran into at Westcustago Park
You'll remember the 29th
We had in the month of May
You'll recall each crazy, impossible day
As much as I recall, Mr. Elvankal
And I do, recall them all.

All I want's a man
To take me out to coffee, that costs too much
Impulsive midnight Wendy's runs
With the alter ego of a natural bed of hair, of which
He is actually obsessed
And will look in anything reflective

Longs for the ocean
But doesn't spend a moment in the water
Wants the sun to warm his skin
But bathes in a bottle of SPF 80
'Cause he knows I'll warm him from within

I won't call our love hotter than the summer we spent
Our temperatures fluctuated faster than the seasons themselves
But we always dressed appropriately
Bundled or shed accordingly
Just to spend our time in the other's climate

Mid-day munchies conquer us both
In different states of mind
Let's hike somewhere
Let's sight-see
Spend somewhere out of your house
Let's take a run at Royal River
Lose hairpins you will keep
Let's spend each waking second together
And in our dreams, while we're asleep

I am weak as the sand, as you're taking my hand
Mulling over the times 'cause I'm the maleable kind
Pressing each of my fingertips with intervals here
Folding over like clay as you knead the austere
We were always in love, and always means further than
The now we know is occurring, and what we know is the end
I am falling apart but you say that's alright
'Cause all you need is a beating heart to get through the night

We were always the ones who took a good look around
Heads higher than clouds, but with our feet at the ground
Surveying the world through the eyes of the paired
This is our love, something no one else shares

I held hands with the sun and he said to me
"Why feel you've lost him when you've got memories?"
And those thoughts are so bold they could make their own lives
Have their own kids
Start pointless fights
Pay their own bills
Make their own way
Just like, the memories that we'll make someday.

If it gave me anything but flickers
I wouldn't be able to breathe
The smog of a fondness gone stale
Goes lazy with the thought of reprieve
If it gave me anything but memories
It would be too tangible to leave
So it moves down and out
With a face full of frame
Waning is my consistency

If I gave it anything but progress
It would shy from all that I've grown
It is sparse
But until these thoughts shake loose from my mind
It's the closest that I have to home.

He looked ahead and said
For the life of me, I cannot recall
A life held just for you
I twisted sour, hurt by the words
That cut
Made me come to

But if it drew me close enough
He'd close the walls and brush my weighty smile aside
He'd say there's too much here to **** out
There's too many shells to find the good inside

So I sit back on my headboard
And think about the times your rational side, touched mine
Let me in
Or how our legs intertwined

I didn't sob a bunch from sadness
But from the intensity that shook my frame loose
Of a direction it should be going in
And the one your heart had in store for us
The latter
Is always the one I will climb

This ground will thaw
And the irrational might touch again
But as long as we keep ourselves in line
I think that I could call you friend.

Your semester's over
And you'll be back
And everyone will be seeing you
But me

But what else is new?
My life without you.

The pretty people do the drugs
The criminals will do the time
The homely people do the work
Inside,
They don't like what they find
They don't have you
The way I do
Your t-shirt's large but belongs right here

You think I'm hot in yesterday's get-up
You prefer me when I'm fresh from a morning
When we both have a twang of slight halitosis
You're gross
But you loved the smell of my hair

I know that it's wrong
To think of you and grin
To recall the definition of your chin
The freckles on your chest
You hated them, wanted them removed
And I'd shake my head
And press my nose against your neck

Remember when we used to dance?
Front and center, your locks of gold would gather
Corkscrew
And condensate
Salty, sweet times
I'll find them once again.

Dragging feet though out of time
Such a new-found face to climb
Be my sweet, sweet paradigm
Be mine.

I wanted an afternoon
An afternoon was all
A stroll through distraction
Some paintings on a wall

All I wanted was an ornament
To brighten up a room
Instead I bought a boquet
One for me, one for you

It's temporary
Yes it is
To hang in windows and dry
But what a beautiful, lingering way to go
What an excellent way to die

I set out on certainty to
Find myself a blend
Life's a dash,
A one line race
So let your fingers touch the end

Toss your hair and bend the straight
Don't color in lines and out-run fate

Learn that a race is only won when there's two
And learn that though there's anyone, there will always be you

So sure.
Make sense of the theories you'll never define
But I won't trust anyone
Unless that anyone's mine.

The other day you turned your head
And looked at me
Nostalgia clouds my memory
The recoveries I've conjured are
Pointless, as I find you

I remembered your meter
I remembered your lines
As cut and sculpted as I recollect
Your control is spectacular
Teach me what you know

We are so young yet
Feel so done
Each milestone wraps a bow
Around an old run finalized
Let's take the new one for a spin
A journey untouched is just one to begin

We've waded in the waters of everyday
So boring, so gray
We want alochol!
The ferment of life,
Let me lull in it all
Let me dive in and feel
The bubbles in my nose
The fizzing of my mind
The growing of my carelessness
The numbing of my toes

Sip it, hold the fruit of life
It's heavy and dense but easy to slice
The skin is a facade, a
Surface just longing
To be punctured
Be prodded
Peel away all its wronged

So strange
How the flesh of our lives is repitition unearthed
But from my deirvation,
A new life,
I give birth.

The emotion
Of what I've become
Is something of a pendulum
I drift in lows and soar when high
I move, unless disturbed

If you'd like to feel my pressure
Feel the weight of keeping time
You can hold me all you'd like but
Hold me by the chain. At times
It seems like a boundary
But I take precaution
When healthy heart beats tug my core
Because if you hold me
Feel me
Knead me in your hands, you'll find the sharp point
Of what I'm living for

It may seem teasing
Delaying or sly
But I'm messy, so restless
Just test me
Swaying is what I do the best.

We've had our bout
Gone our route
Discovered some functions we
Can't live without
Made our spill and soaked the stain
Had our kisses in the rain
Found the grain that splits us quickest
Picked up thick-skinned suits to slip in
I've had alone, we've met before
Yes I've had alone

We made the discovery that had no end
Created a world of pure pretend
Found some mess and made her a lover
But the dirt clings tight and soils and bends
Coy coincidence made me a friend

So let's close the door and never look back
It is fruit of my labor
To taste with the sanity we lack
Attack of the mind may join hands at a time like now
Let's throw our smile at the light and crumble in for a bow
Let us say with certainty that we will never mix
But certainty is only valid
Until I find the fix.