i will stop writing poetry like a eulogy when you start making me feel alive

The silence you clothe yourself in will become a second skin. You will work hard to remove it. You will scrub yourself raw until the sweet scent of orange blossoms replaces the lighter fluid that has seeped into your pores.

When you finally tell someone, you will be drunk. It will be 2 a.m. You will tell your parents, it will spill out of you as you hover over the toilet. Your secrets mixed with ***** and something sour, something burning, something permanent. It will feel good, to flush the pain out of your throat.

It will be hard for you to be intimate. When you talk to that boy in your English class, you will feel butterflies for the first time in months, those same butterflies whose wings were clipped that night last July. You feel the butterflies, yes, but you will cringe when his hand brushes up against your own.

When that same boy asks you out on a date, and he opens the car door for you, you will want to run. You will feel the air in your lungs combust when he kisses you. You will think he is trying to draw blood when he bites your lip.

You will wonder if he can he see the bruises and fingerprints that still stain your nakedness

You will not believe him when he says “I love you”

When he asks why you never want to touch him, why you talk in your sleep, why your chapped lips are a graveyard eroded from the salt streaming down your cheeks, you tell him everything.

You do not cringe when he tries to hold your hand this time.

the truth is no one ever taught me how to fix a flat tire or how to ask for help or what love was even good for in the first place

and the truth is that the cookie was good but the lemon icing wasn't and the truth is baking should be done without any kind of lemon at all

and the truth is i wish you'd hold me close enough that our skin fused together and i could burrow into your spine and learn all the things you won't teach me

and the truth is you were never good at making eye contact but i dare you to look at me long enough that i can trace the line that connects your iris to your pupil and count how many shades of black a person can produce

and the truth is i don't know if the grass has fingerprints but i know that yours are cigarette stained and no better at letting go than mine

and the truth is i am a dump site and you are an inhale and i am clockwork and you are a melody and i can't keep my teeth off your eloquence

and the truth is my feet are covered in acrylic paint from leaving smudged footprints in sparkly things

and the truth is i don't want you all to myself but you can pretend i'm yours when i'm engulfed in the ocean and making it hard for you to breathe

and the truth is i'm looking for a different kind of intimacy from you

and maybe it's just some teenage girl talking but the truth is that i want to drown with you. i want to burn with you. i want to scream with you so violently that the body that crushes my lungs crumbles and i become a balloon for real this time

and the truth is, if you hadn't called me beautiful, i would have mistaken last night for a paradise i don't believe in

i spit metaphors
and stumble to my knees,
i wipe similes from my lips
like blood and teeth.
i am pummeled with irony fists
as i stagger and crash
across barstools in anapest reels,
with splinters of broken
clauses enjambed in my flesh
and choppy flashbacks
blinding me, pounding my head.
i slip in spilled spirits,
scrabbling and scrambling
to steady my psyche.

i flail, i falter, i fall,
again and again in alliterative agony.

this is not a beating.
this is catharsis.

what if in the night i let my girl-heart out
its muffled murmurs, its soft
unfolding sounds;
let it go completely

would i almost learn how to settle in life
learn to unbloom the bruises
on skin too tight
to remove completely

would i lose colour and find it among flowers
would i lose colour at all

the marks of abandoned faith
are etched into her flesh
a sheep beneath a lonely flag
a crescent moon hidden under her arm
tattooed remnants of a dead deity
neither of us believe in anymore

with each declaration
of secularization anointing
scarlet lips
i yearn to reach out
with fingertips and rhetoric
to more intimately understand
a dizzying intellect
she shares willingly

a life plagued by faith
scarred by family
trying their best
and failing
miserably

she glances at me furtively
eyes as green as the foliage
of ancient trees
standing watch
over whispering rivers
in silent summers
long forgotten

she holds my gaze

we recognize
ourselves
in one another
there is trust
and intimacy
solidarity in suffering

she smiles
when she thinks
i'm no longer looking

but     can science explain why
people seem to feel
      especially insignificant         at night

can science tell us why
the moon    seems to smile sadly back at us
during our loneliest moments
and tell us ‘i know, i know’.


call a ceasefire.
extinguish     the burning city:

do not    fear    the night
it is filled with light we cannot see.

my small frame always had no place in your wandering eyes.
you dream of unmapped universes – endless seas and abstract love.
but i was stumbling in the little things:
        all of our moments and our lack thereof.

you waltzed through the days, the months and the years
you sought sunsets and moon phases in an endless chase
but i was left begging after the seconds,
for another moment in your embrace.

to you i am but a dismissive sentence in your explorer's log,
               a grain of salt in a desert of sands.
but to you i will dedicate stanzas and lines –
all the prettiest adjectives for our abandoned wonderlands.