I just want to smile for you to see
Every message you send makes me smile
And I wonder if you know that
I feel like I don't say it often enough
I've missed a lot of chances to tell you I love you
And you seem so sad all the time
You don't have to be sad all the time
At least,
Not alone
It seems to be hard for you to understand that you will always have me
You can't break me any worse than anyone else already has
Go ahead and kiss another girl
No matter what you do,
I'm not going anywhere
I've never had someone like you
And maybe you've never had anyone promise to stick around before
But that's me
That's what I'm going to do
I want you to be happy
And I want to see you *smile

I miss the sincerity
The oblivious sort of floating
Reaching out and swimming in galaxies
It's fascinating to leave my feet on the ground
Brilliant to swim in place and breath in fluid
I couldn't feel myself
All I could feel was oxygen, molecule by molecule
The atmosphere bent around me piece by piece
I held onto nothing but I didn't drift off
I held fast to everything that I've never been able to feel
I let the universe soak my skin to my bones and chew on my lips
And my pillowcase made an excellent towel

he died where he Stood
refused To fall
hit and hit again
i watched from a distance
Remembered who he was befOre he joined up
aNd it was just like this
just like him to stand there as lonG as he could
his buddy caught his shoulder, the first one to see him waiver aside from myself
he was gone before he hit the ground

I regret the snow
It didn't make any sense to hear from a girl who hasn't known anything but the Northeast, but she wasn't done
I miss the grass

She was listening to country music
It ripped up her insides and forced her to spit them out
Hiraeth- homesick for a place you've never been
She stitched ankle bands that looked like Grecian sandals but had no souls
She went out and stood on rain soaked wood
I would have kissed her if she wanted to be kissed but she just wanted to be warm

I don't blame her, I guess
Seattle radio shows don't talk about the rain because it causes mass depression
But I gave her something to love
Something other than jump ropes made of hoses and raspberry thorns
I don't melt when the sun dissipates
I could have held her...
She left yesterday.

When are you coming home again?
Just remind me
That you will be coming home
sometime
Because I hate walking into school without you
And I hate knowing that that is how it will be
Every day.
I really don't mind waiting
Because I love you
But some nights,
You're all I have
And you're not here
So when are you coming home again?
When can I hear your voice
And hold your hand?
When can we be lovely together?
Just remind me that we'll be together again
*sometime

The days that we cross paths
The days that you're there when I wake up
The days when I can hear your voice in my head
The days that you say something beautiful:
Sometimes I count them.

We were always in a hurry, and never quite sure why
I think we were excited to go to college and "make our own decisions,"
But I really miss when my mother did the grocery shopping
When she made doctor's appointments and did at least most of the laundry
And I miss my father's pickup truck

I was never quite sure if I liked the teacher or the subject
So I had to take lots and lots of classes
By my third year of chemistry, I had some semblance of an idea that I might be on some sort of right track
(That's how we word things in statistics)
But I still eat breakfast every single day with my tenth grade history teacher

So what if we got it wrong the first time
Or the third time
Or the next time
Maybe we misunderstood the meaning of the term "guessing game," but we had nothing to lose
Or maybe we had everything, and we got that all backwards, too
Maybe we wanted to hear them sing for five more minutes before we broke the news that most of them would not grow up to be singers

The lightbulbs exploded in a groaning twinkling sound
Because of all things, I was not in college to be an electrical engineer and I really didn't understand voltage all that well
But I understood catalytic converters so my roommate gained at least some sort of respect for me
She unpacked her graph paper at the same time I unpacked my sketchbooks and we locked eyes for a minute

Our colors are going to look ridiculous at graduation
And then what?

I know I said I wasn't coming home tonight, but
Leave me space in the bed.

Why must the stars
Only shine at
Night?

You may have dropped your dream,
But it's still good

Autumn hit us like a truck
Our 90 degree race was promptly followed by days of 40 degree practice
Our elbows chaffing against our shirts, nevertheless grateful for the rest,
The shelter from the humidity
I don't think I was actually breathing as I crossed the threshold of the second lap of our three mile loop
In some odd twist of fate, I'll be running in the varsity semifinals next week
As my lungs tried to tear themselves from my chest, I tried to remind myself that this wasn't my first run
I've had six months of slamming my heels into the ground, just like every other ******* this trail
I heave every time someone passes me
I think, "Just one more deep breath and I will cross that line,"
I think that my height is betraying me and my joints are grinding to a painful halt
I think that I am still moving.

My daddy always told me not to wish away time
Whenever we said we couldn't wait till Christmas
Or even our favourite show to come on to television

I feel stories the way a dragon breathes fire
It's magic and it's dangerous, but it's actually real
There are sparks shooting from my fingertips,
Maybe even getting into peoples' heads
I want to show you all of the beautiful things I've seen
The incredible storm you can't hear out your window;
It's everywhere I look and I can feel it
I'm trying to catch light and give it to you before it fades away
My memories are bending over backwards to run away
I'm tripping over myself to put them on display

My daddy always told me not to wish away time
I'm not wishing it away anymore
I'm begging it to stop.

Strange
The lockers don't matter
My body doesn't matter
But here we are
I left my hair down because you said it was ****, and now your fingers are tangled
But it doesn't matter how long I spent in the gym this week when your eyes are closed
I do not feel pretty held up against the hallway outside of class

And we brace ourselves against anything and everything
All of my muscles are tensed against your body
My spine is straight against the wall
I didn't know I was capable of that kind of starkness
The inability to collapse
Of all things, you are not gentle

All of my nervous habits dissipated into your saliva
I don't know where to put my hands
You seem so practiced
I wonder if I taste like every other girl
I wonder if the mud from my shoes mixed on the spot that I'm standing with everyone else's
Or maybe you took them somewhere new
I knew that I wasn't special as you tugged on my kidneys
You couldn't even drag me into a bathroom stall
We were in the hallway
We were picked up on three security cameras
But of course, we both know that
"Nobody was watching"

Things are quiet here
I'm not sure I noticed when you left because my mind was so engulfed in how to get away
It's hard to feel empowered when you've submitted yourself to becoming part of the paint on the wall
I forgot that you would get bored with me
You weren't seductive or intimidating
You were just soft
You were nothing out of my nightmares but that didn't make you safe
And now we're walking home in the rain writing **** poems

It's that moment when you give up on life
That it really begins
That awful second
When you realize nothing is going to work
That it does
That imperceptible instant
When you are trapped
In the bitter clutches of failure
That you succeed

I don't blame you.
I think it was more of a mutual surrender,
And that's okay, isn't it?

The graffiti on the bathroom stalls has been blotted out by butterflies
The world is taking back it's body
Bringing back old fashioned Roman  concrete to fill in all the cracks

She's taken apart the locks just in case something beautiful got trapped inside
Every safe is a time capsule
Curiosity isn't dangerous anymore

Every time she took a step, the air shuddered
The soles of her shoes grew roots and flew away
She was humming and fixing things as she went with just the soothing sound of her sanity
Her soul leeching out like an ethereal mechanic

There were wishing flower seeds mixed in with the strawberries she was picking
I think when she ate them, she became holy
Her hands stroked the wind as they fell to her sides,
Like running her fingers through horse hair

At first, she made the mistake of falling in love with elevator buttons
Up, or down, one or the other, in constant motion
When they cut her open, she bled ivy
She invaded their circuitry and rotted their robotic
She showed them alive and showed them the door

She didn't understand wildfires
She knew passion only by its name,
Only by the monuments, by the mountains, and trenches
By the continents drifting like ice in lemonade
"You can't ruin this," she said

And if this is what burnt out looks like,
Imagine what will happen when the meteor hits
Or the bombs go off, or the oceans flood
This isn't a project we can procrastinate on
These are our wide open spaces and final frontiers

See, the world is taking her body back
Bandaging the scars we left,
Quietly, behind us, when we aren't looking
She's reinventing herself
Just like a garden,
Just like a caterpillar,
Just like a star we couldn't give up on
And we're all standing here, shouting, "We can change-"
We can change.

Tell her to sleep
Because or else,
She won't.
She's afraid of the nightmares,
And she wants to stay awake to fight the monsters

Tell her that there's hope for tomorrow
Because she's probably lost faith in today
And she needs something to fight for

Tell her that nothing is over until she's finished trying
Because she really doesn't want to try anymore
She'***** the ground a few times already
And she's afraid to fall again

Tell her that she doesn't have to be okay all the time
Because she is tired of standing up straight and tall
She's ready to fall apart
Without breaking down

Tell her that she's not the only who's broken
We're all just made of spare parts
Borrowed from each other
Because none of us are perfect

Tell her you love her.

Can you just tell me you love me?
One more time
Before you leave today
Tell me you love me,
Please
Tell me you love me.

I want to be that girl you knew in high school
You associate me with the colour of my notebook
I always had an extra pencil or a bottle of water
I drank tea
yeah, that was it
I wore galaxy tshirts flowy skirts
And I was only there for a second
You turned away from me and I was gone
I walked home from school, you never saw me on buses or in car lines
But you saw me walking my dog
I went to every show you were in
I left a note in your cast bag each time
I invited you hiking every weekend in the spring
I never went
You always noticed when I wore a dress because I almost never wore a dress
We were in all the same classes
You always asked me "how I did on that test"
But you can't remember
You met my dog once,
When I was walking her through the park and you were fishing with your dad
that was you?
You remember me by my glasses and the length of my pony tail in gym
You remember me by my essays which the teacher used as examples
You remember me by the Facebook request that you never accepted or declined
You think you know me, but you can't remember
You saw me at a football game once,
maybe,
Or at the library some Saturdays
You saw my online profile listed next to "people you may know"
I have worked so hard to be part of your background

God look!
A sky
What wonders I cannot describe
Lay not within
But beyond
As life
So expendable
Has no known meaning
And is by far
The most complicated thing we know
As we are just electricty
Anyway
As we have no purpose
I give myself the purpose
To see the most brilliant thing I can
I believe it is there
Out past Venus
Or on the rings of Saturn
That I should find my meaning.

Let's see what we're made of-
Said the chemist to the architect
They built a house out of glass and stone and burned it down
Their technical achievement is of little consolation to family they installed there

I haven’t given up much
They kept telling me that my job was to be a student
I turned 16 and I worked in the local daycare
I brought my homework with me
I got 8 hours a week, if I was lucky

I am this old road that needs to be rebuilt
So I’m leaving behind the walls that I painted
I’m getting replaced with mechanical and systematic
They kept telling me to move to the city where I could get a real job

I don't want to look up anymore
Because I know you won't be there
I've always known, I guess
But I've always hoped
Because it helped.

1.
My coat was still in my hand as I walked into school
My hand meant to throw it around my shoulders and zip it up
It was freezing
My hand forgot

2.
You kissed my head as I walked past you on my way out

3.
Good-bye is a curse developed by politicians
Meant to close an argument with the last word
You didn't even give me the chance
"See ya," I whispered under my breath
As if to lift it somehow
Good luck getting my hair out of your shower

4.
For some reason, we have more respect for airplanes than for beat-up off-road pickup trucks
His loafers were more worn out than his hiking boots
His foul-weather jacket has been dry for weeks
It hangs lifelessly on the back of his kitchen chair, waiting for him to get sick of all this and rush out in a hurry

5.
I looked again at the model in the sports magazine
Holding her ponytail out to the side
"She spent too much money on her running shoes," I thought.
"So did I."
But I abused the laces as if they were any other pair
If I had caught my breath, I think it would have been cheating

I don't think you realise
How passionate I still am.
I watched you put your fire out.

It's the most American thing I can think of
They've been wrapped around my body since 4:15 am
It takes 30 students 2 hours to stick 2,996 flags into our soccer field
The array becomes mangled as our hands blister
As the mud cakes into our clothing
The first stains I will never be able to wash out or forget
It's impossible to envision each flag growing out of the ground into a human being who can go home to their family
Because they can't; we've just stuck sticks into the ground
As if that's any solace to anyone, us, let alone their loved ones
Dead, mowed grass cakes in the hem of my new jeans
Thick and durable, woven for farm work
All of the little kids will wonder why the flags are there- it was before their time
Taught to them as history, the start of the War on Terrorism
I remember it as smoke, as human lives, as stitches in my blue jeans
As people who didn't turn away when freedom was compromised
Our virtues true, we patriots must rise
More than the flags, more than the smoke
More than crashed airplanes and burning buildings

I sat on the edge of the pool, heaving last Friday
"I thought this would be easy," I shouted at the lifeguard who was actually on duty in between heavy breaths
We've been mates for awhile I suppose, so I wasn't uncomfortable wearing almost no clothes in front of him
My relay partner was returning so I stood up, still breathing too hard,
Ignoring the bruises on my shins from the side of the pool
I jumped in, turning to face him (terminator style) as the water swallowed me,
Grabbed the brick, swam the fifty
Stood up on the edge right away this time, entirely focused on my body and my partner

I got lost on a mountain once
My friend and I had been climbing nearly straight up for an hour before we realized we'd lost the trail
We also realized that going down would be infinitely more challenging than coming up
Covered in scratches and bruises, with burs in our hair and the sun setting and no idea how we had lost the Appalachian, we called my dad
When I finally got home, with no help from him, he said,
"I'm glad you got lost. You learned something today."
The water I had hidden in his pickup truck may have saved our lives

A football player pushed me up onto the two foot side of the pool to do a tricep dip at the instruction of my teacher
This was the first time I realized how weak I was, pale and sickly and tired and trying to change
We have already done fifty nine pushups and sit ups and sprints on the deck
I passed out at six pm that night
And got up at six am the next day
Wrapped my wrists for English and chemistry,
And replaced the braces with grips when I got to the gym

I think disappointed was the only word I could come up with as my sister drove me to the ER the day before she left for college
She'd spent eighteen years growing up, and this was the first time I felt like she was still a child,
Scared and vulnerable, turning off the lights for me while we waited for the doctor and my dad
More CT scans,
"Lie still, don't move,"
I could swear I was in a mortuary, in my coffin, too young for my liking
This was before my second training session, and I was afraid I was going to have to quit

My girlfriend and I did our first run together, holding steady to her 11 minute-mile-pace
Except for the mandatory sprints on my training app
I took her in between trees and across the farmland I grew up on
There was no talking, we each had our own music
But she got to feel something I loved, and I got to be with her, sense her footsteps out of sync with my own
We got caught in the rain

"Excuse me, Coach, Sir," I said out of habit, when he told me to call him Coach and not Sir
It was the first time I passed my physical for a sport
He had me running three miles on the first day, and the second, and the third, and I got lost
(This became a running theme in my quest to "get better")
Suddenly, I wasn't the girl in the hospital gown anymore,
Although the one person on the team who knew me asked me if I had my medication every day
If I didn't, he stayed back with me
He was safe, for some reason
I ran my second 10k that year

I don't feel stuck.
I feel like there's a way out, I just haven't found it yet
Somewhere in this whole mess,
I broke my smile
My hair got caught on a branch and cut so I can't braid it anymore
The part of this maze that was supposed to be shaded is on fire,
I can still see it if I look back
And I have nightmares about lighting it and pouring gasoline
The trees are too tall to climb
And they turned off the light at the end of the tunnel
It's there, but I'm not going to see it
Sort of like nitrogen in the air
I feel it though
I feel it like the heartbeat in my feet, hitting the ground in steady rhythm,
Running because I know I could be wrong
And the next dead end could get me to crack,
God knows my skin already has
I'm holding my heart in my hands as a last resort
I wonder if the fire's catching up.

I was sitting next to the mirror
I almost looked into it
I turned away
I don't like the mirror
What makes me real,
And not my reflection?
If I shatter the mirror,
Do I shatter her?
What if somebody loves her?
What makes a person real?
I don't like the mirror.

Everytime I say hello to you
I know that we will have to say goodbye
I know that our time together is short
Was short
I wonder if we will get anymore
Time with you
Is time with angels
You in all of your perfection.
I am not concerned
You are the calm
Of the wind in late spring
You are the ground beneath my feet
The ground which I know so well
You are every star in the sky
The stars which I hold so dear
But you are the only star
That I will get to hold in my hand
Someday
You are my someday
But some days never come
The stars are constant
But are you?

Thank you for getting angry when I didn’t have enough pans to make your eggs
The one thing I didn’t offer for breakfast
I told you over and over again I wouldn’t eat
Still you scowled at my lack of ingredients or kitchen tools
Refused to cook dinner with me
It gave me a reason to leave
Girls stay on bad dates because we’re convinced you’re the good guy
Just misguided
Love will change you, you’ll be better
But you stood in my kitchen and tried to take my roommate’s things and I thought
“I have the right to leave you.”

If independence is my cardinal sin,
I’ll walk right up to Satan and tell him to please leave his shoes by the door
I go to bed early and I shower at night
With time, we can pull him from the bargaining stage of grief
The only hell I could ever be left in is a weekend with man who expects my body as a welcome gift
Into my apartment
Wants me to buy new plates because a table setting for one isn’t good enough for two
As if you live at my kitchen table
Both nights I didn’t eat, was sick to my stomach
Afraid that you might see me settle down and construct an opportunity
I’m not sorry for my lack of dinnerware
You ate off the plate that holds my toast each morning near my diet coke
You participated in the ritualism that constructs me an independent woman
The body you will not lay hands on today, owner of the bed you will not sleep in
I did not let you remove that from me
If I had bought plates for you, you may have come back.

Turns out I didn't need saving
Sure, I was in hell
I came out heaving and sweating
I would have taken a hand if it was offered
But it wasn't
Those who couldn't make it were pulled out by the collar of their shirts
So as much as I thought I was dying
As much as I thought I was one of those being packed up and sent home
As much as I didn't want to be gasping on the ground that day
There I was

I know how scared you are
And how sad
And I know because I feel like that,
Too
All the time
And I know that nobody understands
I don't understand how you are feeling right now
I know that it hurts
But I don't know how
Or how to help you
Just don't let yourself
Take your feet off the ground
Or
Your head out of the clouds.
You have to know where you stand
And see the real world
Take things at face-value
But
You also have to keep dreaming
Keep knowing
That you write your own future
You have your life ahead of you
And don't let right now ruin
The rest of forever.

Everyday seems condensed into a couple pages of pages of notes and that one muscles that I can'tquite seem to stretch out properly
All of the emotion is laced through the doodles in the margins that I didn't have time to draw
I'm just hoping that I'm happy enough to get out of bed in the morning
My nightstand is littered with half finished cups of tea where I made the decision to get up and live for the day
I'm just tired,
But tired is so much more complex than three consonants and a vowel
Tired is somehow supposed to explain why I haven't eaten in two days or why I keep picking the scars off my knuckles
But it doesn't
We don't address things
These are the sidelines that we have fallen to
I asked you about the weather yesterday
We didn't talk about your car crash or my dead dog
I ran five empty miles
The ground was just dry enough to sound hollow
All I knew right then was my body
We try not to talk about until it's silent and our clothes rustle together
I was thinking about the meaning of life and suddenly we were talking about Vincent Van Gogh and you cried
A sort of broad abruptness and then just grey again
We run away from parts of ourselves and each other
We build glass buildings so that men in suits can look out and see more glass buildings
And we don't throw stones
I miss the river that flowed across the street
Nobody has taken me there since I was a child and I barely remember
I barely remember doing my worklast night, but it's there on my desk, finished
I forget what flowers look like during the winter and I seriously wonder if life keeps trying while I'm asleep
I poured all of myself into your hands because I think you understand me better than I do
I don't need any of myself left over to grow up and get a job in a cubicle
They tattooed a bar code on my arm and assigned it a number
They beat the **** out of us but they never laid a hand on me
You don't blow glass to break it
Our hearts were beating so fast in your driveway
I doubt you remember the steps to that but it doesn't matter
Your hand on my vertebra is the only feeling I'll never forget
I was shivering
And our cold feet left blood on the asphalt where we were standing

"'S hurts..." I slurred
"What hurts?"
"...hurts."
I certainly wish I could have been more coherent, but I fell kinda hard
A stranger ran his hands over me, pressed something up against my leg before he called the hospital
It was starting to drizzle
I heard it turn into a thunderstorm against the ambulance
He left our bikes and carried my body off the towpath
I'm not completely convinced I was still alive at the time
He had his shirt tied around my leg- they cut it off on the way, replaced it with something not soaked in sweat
People were asking me questions and I think I was answering but I'm not quite sure
I woke up in a hospital room, the stranger sat beside me
He put his head in his hands, breathing, "Oh thank God,"
He almost had to watch me die, a mistake in manufacturing bike chains
And a steep cliff
His clothes were covered in my blood but he wasn't
They cleaned him up and gave him a new shirt
"Thank you," I whispered. I wanted to say more
But I think I was still digging my way out of my deep grave on that bike path
I was discharged, took a taxi home, and never saw him again

The thunderstorm turned the sky
Orange and soft
It put my dreams a little bit closer
It took the edge off of the 97 degree heat
And it made me smile :)