I've never been good at
Being touched.

Though the fingers
Of endless suitors
Have traced incomparable
Lines of affection,
They all stroke
The same wounds.

New hands feel like
Recycled lullabies,
Humming promises
Of a new melody,
Singing a remedy for
My impassivity.

Whether words fall
Passionate or
Fearful,
Endearment lines my lips
With an expiration
Long enough to convince me,
But short enough to leave me.

Reminding me:
The disintegration of
Indifference
Remains
My prerequisite
For destruction.

So before you
Touch me with
Promises of a new
Orchestration,
I'm already marking the
Days until you leave.

Because my skin
Is tired of
Intruders hidden
Behind momentary
Infatuation.

So keep your hands to yourself.

I'm sorry if I resemble a sparrow
With a fear of flight
When I shield my abdomen
With apologetic arms.

As if my trembling elbows
Could avert your glances
Long enough to distract you
From your examination of
The inadequacy
That lay beneath.

I'm sorry if my fingers stumble
Upon yours when you
Glide them across
Skin that's already been
Rewarded in stripes
And metal kisses.

I only say sorry
Because If I could,
I'd place my regret
In a envelope
Addressed to your eyes,
Entitled the parts of me you
Dare not see.

The parts that make me
Me.

Every now and then,
It drips
Like water
From my ceiling,
Until all I see is
The rain.

It follows me
Through the breeze
And sounds like the word
“Please”
Drowning me in shame.

I can still hear it trembling,
Like a lie
Behind clenched teeth.

A lie that no one can hear but me.

It waits until my skin
Finally feels clean,
And reverts me
Back to a time
That still tastes like seventeen.

I don’t want to remember
You in a place
You didn’t belong.

I don’t want to remember
Because no one would believe me.

But I still feel it here.

It drips like water from my ceiling.

It follows me through the breeze.

I can hear it trembling, like a lie behind clenched teeth.

A lie that only I can hear.

And it makes my skin feel *****.

Let's talk about the girl,
who wasn't ready for the nights events,
ashamed of the fact that she didn't know the right words, or gestures to prove herself worthy.

Let's talk about the boy,
keeping a pace comparable to roaring waves,
inviting himself into a place he wasn't welcome.

Let's talk about the word "please",
how it fell off his tongue like cinnamon; coating the surface of her uncertainty with promises of a tomorrow.

Let's talk about the street lights,
radiating like a warning,
whispering: run.

Let's talk about regret,
humming her to sleep,
reminding her of the view from a dark street
screaming: you deserve more than this.

My body is a temple and my God,
It's starving.
Its edges are still trimmed with ash
From the fire that seeped through paper skin.
If you look closely enough,
You might get lucky and find shards of
Glass from bones
Shattered under
The weight of a heart of
Stone.
Follow my cells like a roadmap
Because I honestly could not
Give you my last nerve.
Look deeper and fall into pits
Of words buried underneath
The soul I misplaced so long ago.
Let me know if you find that promise
That got lost along the way.
I've been meaning to give it back.

Cracks in the side walk make me uncomfortable.
I guess it's because I'm only used to seeing them within my own foundation.
I think the fear stems from my fixation with filling empty space.
Maybe it's why my chest is filled with songs and poems recycling the word "love".
Maybe it's why my hands cling to empty promises like the last drop of rain in a desert.
I guess it's why a drunken "I'm sorry" makes my world spin again.
But maybe, I just fill myself up with poison to avoid feeling hollow.
Words fill me, love flees me and my heart can't divide what only exists in my mind.
In a space breeding sadness and passion in the same kiss, maybe I'm just always busy preparing a eulogy for a love that hasn't even died yet.

Unravel me with words unspoken
Because I know the only way
You’ll take me is naked.

Overlook a thousand
Different ways I’d change your mind.

And I’ll keep drafting all of the endings
That might be.

And you’ll keep using me.

Because you know I am the only
Thing I have left to give.

Empty of words to plead,
My body can scream:

“I’ll still love you.
Not even a little less.”

Voices shaping repetitive poetry
Prosper in the depths of my spirit.

Those who have came and gone
Exist within words and phrases
That have blossomed
In rejection,
And planted me in
Insecurity.

Maybe if I listen long enough,
The apologies of those that
Shower me
With disinterest
Will counter the shadow of
Apathy over my head.

Maybe then,
Will my heart get to see the sun.

Let it melt the words
That fall from excuses
And burn every empty adjective
Lingering around places
I wasn't welcome.

Because apologies have only
Cleared everyone else's conscience,
While silencing mine.

Somewhere between hopeful eyes
And clumsy smiles
Lies everything I wish I knew how to say.

Somewhere between stumbling words
And averted glances
Rests a graveyard of rhetoric,
Haunting a head anything but vacant.

If my affection is lost between shrugs of insecurity and nervous laughter,
Do the butterflies in my stomach
Stir up the words I've swallowed?

If communication's greatest grasp is
non verbal,
Does the sighing of my heart speak for
The absence within my tongue?

Somewhere between clenched teeth
And an expended explanation,
Lies everything I can't say
About everything I can't have.

Some days, it hits me harder than others. I can wake up in the morning and build myself up to a mountain's peak. I can feed myself love and forgiveness, and swear to the sky that I am complete. I can speak to the lives around me of the love that I found in my own darkness.

But my words aren't big enough to hide the cracks that form in my underlying foundation. Other days, everything is still. I'm bottled up with words that I can't bring myself to speak. I lay as time passes endlessly by. I hide myself in the depths of solitude, knowing well enough that no one would make the voyage to save me. So, I just stop. I stop hoping, and expecting and feeling. Time passes, but I don't move along with it.

Somewhere between
Disorder and Longing,
Lives a man that collects flowers.

From near and far,
He ventures toward
A reclusive beauty that
Floods fields
Of happiness,
And paints yellow skies.

Seasons change,
Petals fall,
But his passion fuels
A fire dimming
Within his chest.

The nostalgia
In his eyes
Parallel a love
That is fleeting.

An emptiness,
That can only be
Filled with flowers
He once found
Within her heart.

It makes me wonder,
How I could envy
The soul destructive enough
To fill this vessel
Of sadness.

As seasons pass,
He saves them
For a spirit that
Ceases to return.

But I remain absent,
Because he is saving
Flowers for the dead

And I am only living.

Because he will
Always wait for
A muse

Unworthy of flowers.

Behind tears of
Indifference
My pride is aching.
My heart is sinking.
My soul stopped singing.

Lost between
Reasons to stay
And reasons to plead,
I find myself buried beneath
Excuses
And apologies
Weighing more than my worth.

While words I can’t speak
Swallow me whole,
The only thing that I can do
Is wait.

My head recollects pain
Old and new,
But it all traces back to you.

I wonder which is hurting more.

My tongue
Or my heart?

And that’s something
To everyone
But you.

Hundreds of miles away, my heart beats without a regard.

It averts eye contact,
dismissing any suggestions of interest—
knowing well that familiarity is almost as obnoxious as the word “discourse”.

It works aimlessly, wandering for a place to call home—knowing that home is a hostel full of ideas brighter than my favorite constellation.

Even when directionless, it still finds itself waiting at a door half closed—knowing the only safe space it can stand is the comfort of despondency.

It’s a man of few words,
But of infinite thoughts.

It still makes me hope from miles away.

I know that it’ll be okay,
Because uncertainty is my favorite color.

But most of all,
I can still feel my heart here.

It follows me up empty elevators,
And in between street lights that lead back to the only home I’ve ever known.

And I just want to say hi.

If incense is burned as a sacrifice, I'm setting my heart on fire.
It starts now.

Cut the "sorry" from my lips and rip the worry from my heart.

Sever the knots in my abdomen so I can stomach the thought of you.

Make me into a memory,
Woven together like
Strands of time thinner
Than my patience
And as elongated
As your favorite excuse.

Rid me of your memory that insists on overstaying its welcome.
You aren't ******* welcome.

Burn away the scars on my conscience, but leave the ones on my skin.
At least they remind me that healing still exists.

Let it remind me
To stop pouring myself
Out like honey
For boys that only see their
Own reflection in my emptiness.

Because for you,
I would have  gone to hell and back,
Until I realized that traveling to
A land with no love or compassion
Took nothing more than a visit
In your direction.

But despite it all,
You are art
And you will never die,
Even though you made sure
My feelings for you did.

I sit in the rows at church and hear stories of the Man that fixes the broken.

I hear of all He's done.
l hear of all He will do and all He can do.

I think of all I've done.
I think of all I will do and what I can do.

I think of what you did to me.
I think of what you will do again and what you can do to someone else.

I feel the layers of my skin peeling apart as I find the center of everything.
I find the reason why I'm like this.

I see the parts of you that I've kept away in my chest.

I sit in the rows at church and hear the word "forgiveness."
I hear the words "no one can know" over and over again in the back of my head.

The Man who heals the broken says to forgive.
If apart of you lives inside of me, do I forgive myself too?

"To be wanted" is more than I can
Figuratively scream within stanzas
Shorter than the attention I receive,
Equivalent to the amount times
You silenced my regret,
Yet longer than the excuses on your lips.

In fact, I think I can still taste
The last one you left
Residing on the tip of my tongue,
Too fragile to escape.
Too nervous to change what's become
Expected from a boy with expectations
Sky high.

So let it fall.
Let it fly.
Let it sing a final goodbye
Because if love feels like a tongue
Withering away with words it can't
bring itself to speak,
And a heart emptier than your last apology,
Keep your words to yourself.

behind gazes of admiration,
voices remind you of what’s absent.

it buzzes like a song you knew years ago that you can’t piece the lyrics to.

it’ll hurt just enough to make you
think of her.

you dull a wound anything but healed with a smirk and touch in my direction.

it’s almost enough.

you’ll graze your hand against mine.

it’ll sting just enough to make me believe.

you’ll revisit the ghost in your heart
for the second time tonight,
and i’ll tend to the one in the mirror.

she’s tired of hearing your swan song
about a ghost anything but dead.

it’s singing:

“i wish you were special”

It begins with a spark.

It feels like the incineration
Of every empty
Touch,
Kiss,
And
Sigh
Evaporating
The space you took up
In my chest.

It’s fanning
Flames of disinterest
In hopes that they
Burn everything
You’ve
Ever
Touched.

But it isn’t the destruction of
Love or
Affection
Because that would insinuate
That you were
Important enough to
Feel it for in the
First place.

It’s fire consuming
The idea of
Time wasted
On a person
That couldn’t tell
North from South
Or
A ghost
From a beating heart.

It’s shredding
Every ounce of attention
Spent
On a
Patron of cowardice
Too pathetic to
Write these words for.

It feels like setting every
Word I’ve ever
written
on
Fire
In hopes of
Un-etching them
from my tongue.

It’s scorn pouring out
Of a soul
Scarred
From burning every
Bridge
Its ever walked upon.

But I will continue
To burn these
Memories,
Because
I’ll always be consumed at
The thought of someone
Not being drawn to
The spark in my eyes.

It sits, waiting for me in the same place that I left it.

It’s the same, dark space that follows the death of my care.

The shame of a thousand tears sits abounding on a throne of embarrassment that I have crowned for so long.

It’s flooded with the ghosts of those I reigned in affection, and drowned in empathy.

When their light burned out,
All I saw was empty space.

It crept slow, like a sunset I wish wouldn’t have faded.

It still sits under my tongue, waiting to selfishly abound itself in the only thing that makes me glow.

Light radiates all around me,
But I continue to trace shadows in the dark.

It reminds me of words wasted on hearts  of malice—vengeful and cruel.

I’m falling into dust that feels anything but cosmic, and reigning a kingdom of lies dressed in anything but its best.

And for the first time in my life,
I am my own silver lining.