Poems move in currents
changing speed and
splitting ways,
and we watch.
The rolling faire,
the words they share
leave beauty behind,
ignorant,
understood by one;
intentions only guessed
while images we digest
from origin unknown.
We read, we take,
we contemplate.
But unless traversing upstream,
over boulders,
holding rocks,
growing tired as we near the point of pain
we never see its start.
The water breaks through stone,
alone...
And where,
only the poet knows.

And at that moment, I realized that there was never anything there. Nothing between us, at all. The thought of that makes me break.

you told me you were leaving
because i smoke cigarettes
i stopped smoking in fear
of losing you forever
i went by your place to tell you
that i broke my bad habit
i saw you pressing your lips
against someone new
my walk home was lonely
and the only thing pressed to my lips
was a cigarette
i guess it's time to quit my bad habit:
you.

I fall in love
with bits of people,
rarely a whole person.
Like crooked smiles on subway stations
or untied shoelaces
or favorite books
or eyes that look like blinking galaxies--
I see the puzzle laid at my feet,
your collarbones, your self-hatred, your bitten down fingernails, your detachment, the wars of your mind, the curve of your spine, the way you scrawl your name with indifference--
All these broken fragments that
shatter and surround me
like the wine glass I dropped,
Shards of glass,
your eyes
reflect me
the deep blood red wine
Drops like crystalline desire--
I might romanticize your flaws
and I might make walls of disillusionment,
but I swear I'll love you like you're whole.

Tell me that not every guy will
leave black tar in my chest,
Assure me that not every guy
is pollution to my soul.
Promise me that I won't be
coughing up their ashes forever.

So go ahead,
fill me with too many "I love you"s.
Inflate my lungs until they want to burst.
Teach me what it's like
to inhale something that won't hurt.

Show me what it's like to have clean air in my lungs.
*Let me breath you.

My nights consist of getting drunk and typing up messages to you but immediately erasing them. I could drown in a bottle of tequila and still only see your face.  

My nights consist of smoking **** so loud I can physically feel my heart echoing against my rib cages trying to escape this hurt you left me in.

My nights consist of razors so sharp that when they open my wrists they also open my eyes allowing the tears to fall.

My nights consist of many things that use to help me forget you, but are now a constant reminder that this hurt will never go away.

*My nights consist of missing you.

inhale
exhale
skin breathes
your scent envelopes me
i'm choking on every word that
i've never said and i begin
to spit shattered shards
of thoughts into the
palms of my
hands
and this is
when you notice
me heaving and you
roll over onto your other
side facing the steady walls
so you can be a 33 year old man with no
attachment to an 18 year old who mistakenly
emptied herself into your salivating, ravenous
mouth and you inhaled me with such
pleasure it almost had me thinking
that perhaps i mistook your
distance for sadness
as soon our time
holed up in the
nostalgia
of your home town
would come to an end
and maybe your feelings grew
much taller than even our abhorring of
love and strings being tied to you and
anyone else but i think now i understand
that inside of you is a tragic, drafty cavern
filling it all the way up with every thing you're
not has become such a habit that when your wolf-like
eyes rested upon something youthful and impressionable
it was simply second nature for you to devour all of me and
then leave me with a cavern of my own, you know i've seen
a mirror since we had to part ways and if i hadn't known
any better i would've said that i've started to grey
around the edges and my teeth looked rather
sharp, if i looked a little closer i may have
even said there was a canine-like
resemblance that now suits me
beautifully, naivety is dead.