My skin cracks
when you touch it,
and I can not stop crying
because you think that I am beautiful,
and I hate you for that.

The way you used to say my name
Sang to me louder than any church choir
Ever has before.

And don’t you remember that time
I sang to you?

You danced with me on your bed,
And accidentally put your t.v.
right through the wall.

I will probably never know
How to love anyone as much
as I loved you right then.

Don’t you know,
That I am the dirt
Underneath your fingernails?
And don’t you know
How vile that feels?

The summer I was seventeen
I kissed a boy,
And together we made
A perfect tangle
of youth and vulnerability.

I went back to our river
After he had left for the west coast.

The tides ran lower.

Sometimes I think of you
And you still make me feel like
*** and sunshine,
Frank Sinatra
and street light kisses.

I sat and watched a bug crawl across your skin
From your leg to your hand to your wrist,
to the scars up your arm.

Scars I’ve never noticed,
Scars that look familiar,
Scars that amount to more than mine.

And I looked to see that
My skin appeared to be held together by spiderwebs.

I felt ugly.
I felt human.

And then the sun shone brighter
and I was a million little stained glass pieces.

A million little stained glass pieces held together by spiderwebs.

I folded into myself and
tried to listen to the choir sing
But they were too far away.

I was alone.
I knew you were too.

Alone with the sunshine. Alone in our stained glass.

I just sat there in the grass,
folding and unfolding.
Letting the sun shine into me.

To be under our skin and
To see the way all our little fragments shone.
I wonder how we would look turned inside out.

i spent too many ripe summer evenings
chain smoking on my rooftop
all alone, thinking of just you
and how you hate my cigarettes

I remember back when
I promised myself
I would never kiss anyone
who I did not think the world of.

Red lipped and soft spoken,
the world is kind to girls like me.
But we are dark eyed and dark minded
and our quiet mouths are burning.

I hide beneath
the ocean's waves;
cursed to always be the tide,
never to be the moon.

I read something somewhere once and it went something like this:
“Love is the opposite of power. That’s why it makes us so uncomfortable.”

Well, I’m not much good at love
But I’m good at surrendering
And lucky for me,
Most people can’t tell the difference.

A collage of sheets and skin;
I breathe my poetry into your bones,
And you paint my shoulders with kisses.

Neurotic girls make terrible wives,
But fantastic lovers.

Summer days go like cigarettes.
One after another
and another
and another.

Gone.

I wish I could sink into the moss
And stay seventeen forever.

I can’t buy myself any more time
So I suppose I’ll buy myself another pack.

If only I could figure out why
Every single beautiful thing I see
Makes me so unbearably sad.

And I just keep remembering
All those times I felt so dead
I truly wondered if I was a ghost.

The little things don’t resurrect me like they used to.

How low does six feet down really feel?

I’ve been feeling rather lonely again
And I’ve returned to my old ways,
Trying to find company in my own words
But it seems I have nothing to say anymore.

I held you up against the sky,
Believing that you could surpass the stars,
Never once fathoming that my heavenly contender
could burn out just the same.

Even all of the stars and sun and moon
Cannot be seen both day and night
And I’ve been trying to figure out
which you are: my sun or my moon.

I tried to make you both,
But you are neither.

You are human.

I have lived my whole life
just supposing that I was nothing more
than wasted youth wasting time,
Standing here on planet earth
beckoning to the stars.

“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” the Universe always answered.

Nothing.

And so it appeared to me
that I just was sitting here alone in the cosmos,
tracing constellations to pass the time.

Somehow I failed to realize
How lucky I am to be anything at all.

Our very existence, in itself, is glorious.

And here we are,
a small part in this mess of madness.
Do not waste a precious second – sing out.

You, too, are a prophet.

Let your wisdom reach out
to the corners of the galaxies,
So that the echoes may bounce back
to the very spot you stand right now.

Make something of yourself

so that one day
you may join the stars
just to shine a little brighter
when a lost soul is right here
beckoning for you.