I want to be in a love like this forever.
With your eyes grazing my skin,
Following your circling fingertips.
You touch me in a way, so delicately,
So lovingly, like you actually care.
Your kisses that you place on my forehead
As I’m drifting off into paradise
Remind me what spring love is supposed to look like.
The grass under my toes pull me into the present
While we dance across the lawn with our hands intertwined.
Butterflies zig zag across my vision and you spin me around.
The music drowns out all of our other problems.
And life feels beautiful.
When I’m in my sundress and
You’re watching me from our picnic blanket
You tell me you love me, and my heart begins to flutter.
The last days of cold are erased by your beautiful laugh
The warmth of sunlight and the soft cool breeze
Further pushes our passion and solidifies our feelings.
You grip my waist and lift me into the air.
Time feels rosy and fair, while the birds chirp and call.
With no real agenda, without the controlling menace of time.
We hold hands and spend the afternoons enjoying the bliss.
The newly bloomed flowers and reappearance of green
Feels like a long awaited, highly anticipated surprise
As does our relationship.
We take in the pink skies together,
Hoping we will never have to say goodbye,
Affectionately kissing one another.
Knowing this is a time we will always miss.
Spring, is a time for new beginnings.
It is the perfect time, for a love like this.

The grey coated ashy sky screams that we should in fact be inside. 
But instead I’m rushing across a lawn in black, breaking flats.
With my heart in my chest, and my hands shaking from the rest.
I’m not prepared for what’s to come, for the repentance,
That will be taken, as we lie here hidden away from the sun.
The fluorescent lights are stinging away the outer layers of my eyes.
I can feel my confidence drastically shrinking in size.
All that are in favor stand up, a man in a blue button up calls out
I don’t stand. I’m scared, I don’t want to be the first one to lose
You’re unaware of the magnitude
Of your actions, as you rise.
Thereby sparing me and cursing those that I despise.

I fell in love with your appearance almost instantly.
With the softly curled hair that so gracefully
Rested above your eyes.
I had known you for a matter of minutes
And there it was I was in love.
It was a strange moment in time,
Where your eyes turned around to look into mine.
I felt a connection, immediately, without even a second thought.
Who was this impulsive romantic?
And what had she done with the particularly critical
Normal version of myself? Where had she gone?
My failures have never been so prominent as I’m sitting there
Wasting away in that old uncomfortable creaky plastic chair
I spent the time awaiting my fate,
Dangerously lost in the loose linens of your being
But I assume it’s now about eight
I don’t know exactly what my heart is feeling
I’m absentminded, free. Finally free from the
Troubles and worries of my everyday life.
As my overactive imagination overwhelms the logical side
In a landslide majority vote, I’m lost without a sense of maturity.

And so, I allow myself fall into your eyes, and slightly imperfect smile.
You were almost obnoxiously beautiful, but
With your snide offensive comments, and your homophobic sentiments,
And worse of all your willingness to sacrifice
The shortcomings of others to build yourself up
Was more than a little off-putting, and your arrogance
Was more than a little disgusting
For the image in my mind of us, to ever exist.
Darling, I wanted you to know
That is a future, I will never miss
And I truly hope to never have to see you again after this.

a t-shirt. one that is a terrible color. 
my mom's least favorite, burnt orange. 
it shares a disgusting likeness to rust. 
and yet my dad would wear it everyday. 
regardless of everyone around him's distrust. 
"no one would dare to wear that in public" 
my mom said, she was wrong. 
perhaps when she married him she was not aware 
of my dad's inexplicable connection to 
this terrible color, or to t-shirts in general i guess
for about six out of the seven days a week regardless 
he would be wearing that same shirt
for the almost 20 years they have been married 
he can be found wearing that same shirt
however, there's a slight misconception
he doesn't have just one shirt 
he has dozens of those nasty burnt orange colored shirts 
and i suppose i forgot to mention that it's to support a football team
which seems shallow in theory but the aforementioned is
non-other than the texas longhorns. 
my dad grew up there and attended college there. 
he wasn't even a part of the team, and yet 
for the last 35 years he's been wearing that same shirt.
i simply can't understand his undying affinity 
i barely recognize the mascot of our own school team. 
there is a certain dedication, a certain love that he must feel towards this place, towards that team. 
however as i'm writing this poem i simply can't ascertain what it's all supposed to mean? 
texas, a place of southern accents, cowboys, and racism. 
not somewhere i typically tend to associate with even
though it was the place where i was born in 
on a Tuesday almost 17 years ago at about 1pm 
and of course i arrive
too early for my own good, 
so i stayed in a hospital in ICU until they said i could
be taken home to a house i barely remember. 
i wouldn't call that place home. 
and yet, my dad wearing another variation of his classic burnt orange t-shirt today 
that reminds me that's where i came from 
i came from burnt orange beginnings. 
and even though i might live in a blue ocean paradise as of now. 
that's not where i started. 
i tell myself that i am so much more that the place my life began in. 
so instead of loving where i started and the color that comes with it. 
i continue to despise that burnt orange color and compare it to rust 
and all other things that fill me with unexplainable disgust. 
but in the spirit of honestness. i don't hate it as much as i contest 
don't ask me about it however because for sure all i’ll do is protest
but even when i was little seeing that orange shirt and ******* car 
arrive in the driveway of my old school was truly the best 
looking for that ugly orange shirt at the end of the day when he always asked me what i had learned
hugging that terrible orange shirt when i'm crying 
after scraping my knee on the concrete
taking car rides with that orange shirt seated beside me 
that seemed as long as a lifetime to go see the turtles on the north shore  
after watching him present himself at a showing of a house we could never afford
watching that orange shirt fumble and stumble teaching me to drive 
fixing my air conditioner with this orange shirt at 2am
after a nightmare session that left me too rattled to sleep
that orange shirt who attends these loud rock concerts that he doesn’t necessarily enjoy simply to watch me be happy
that awful orange shirt that has seen me sad and happy and everything in between.
you know seeing that orange shirt for nearly every day of my life
has conditioned me 
and truly i hate it, the dustiness, the rustiness of it all. 
it’s disgusting, appalling and above all terrible. 
but for some godforsaken reason i also love it. 
i love it with my entire heart,
i truly love that stupid orange shirt for all of its awfulness
and logically i know it's not the shirt but the person inside.
because my dad is one of the most amazing people
i know and i hate to admit
but that color has grown on me, because of him
it's become home to me, 
it's my dad.
and maybe i'll never figure out why 
my dad loves his college football team so much 
maybe i don't need to 
what i know is that while burnt orange may be a truly terrible color, 
it's become home to me.

I’m listening to the teenagers fall in love next door. 
Music plays softly in the background, setting the mood.
It’s a beautiful sight as I’m watching it from my spot in the window. 
Strings of lights surround them while they gaze up at the stars. 
They are making pointless conversation that goes in endless circles 
But both of them seem to be completely ecstatic and enthralled 
With just each other’s company. 
In their own little corner, in the limited space that is
Someone else’s backyard, they are protected and safe from reality. 
It gives me hope. 
I can feel myself getting lost in the excitement once again.
Maybe there’s a love out there that is only precious and clean. 
Without a single speck of imperfection, infidelity, or mean
Where’s the magic? The one that I’m supposed to believe in. 
Where is my soulmate the one with which
I’m supposed to keep dreaming
In my imagination, these teenagers are so much more
She’s the shy belle of the season, attractive beyond measure
And of course, he’s the charismatic boy with 
A good amount of reason

But truth be told, I don’t know her.
Or him. Or if they are actually even a couple. 
Or just friends stealing kisses under the pale moonlight. 
They just seem so perfect from up here, 
Flawless, absolutely faultless. 
That’s not practical though, is it? 
I want the magic to be real.
For their smiles and loving feelings to be genuine. 
Unfortunately, in my experience I’ve learned
Real love doesn’t work that way. 
Maybe in the movies, maybe for a couple of days. 
But it’s not real, at least, for a love that lasts. 

However, the real point of inquiry
Is why I’m sitting by this window
Completely captivated this beautiful maybe, maybe not
Couple hidden away from the world
I think a part of me wants to be them.
I want to be in a love like theirs. 
One that’s filled with soft glowing candlelit discussions,
Filled with smiles and gazing into each other’s eyes.
While watching the stars, with their gentle hands intertwined.
I want to be in a love like theirs. 
But what does that say about mine?

A student weary from the week cries out, it's like
"We're trying to one up each other in misery"
Day by day,
Every single one, lines up straight, and rigid
Takes the time to confess and lays down
What's going on, around in this town?
The culture that is spreading is toxic.
Similar to a disease, where is our CDC?
Who is supposed to protect my life from me?
From my destructive, wasteful ways
From those long and uninterrupted days
Why do the teens have less and less life jumping between their minds?
Less and less excitement found in their blurry far too tired eyes
Dull, dreary, and exhausted
Walking into here feels like pushing against an immortal force
We trudge through the mud afraid of what comes next
I'm wondering if the girl next to me knows.
If she believes that the way we're going leads to the cold
To the undeserving, to those that remain untold.
I wonder and wonder for hours, but it's in my mind and I know.
This life style that is so widely encouraged and yet also frowned upon.
The controversy sets up success almost as a paradox.
Impossible, not achievable at least in this reality.
Should I sacrifice my health for a good grade in a class I don't even like.
Education, the path to freedom, but it feels as if living our lives in a hell.
Consuming coffee with enough sugar to make heart spike far above normal and to pump my adrenaline.  to get me going
My heartbeat is pumping too loud for me to hear.
“I despise where I am,”
the repetition of my statement is nauseating
I mean I do what I can, but it seems to never be enough.
And yet so many of us find ourselves relating
Why would students today rather die that go to school this way?
Why would I rather stay home sick just to avoid the stress?
How do you change our system, our very broken system that is no where near the best.
I don't know how to fix the problem, if I even can.
May, the time of finalities, whether it be exams, projects, or tests.
A performance scheduled during AP week, what a brilliant idea
Why don’t you just sign the forms to drive the students completely mad.
I'm not good with time management.
I’m not good at taking math tests or test in general that is.
So why have I taken 5 standardized in this week alone.
That seems a bit absurd.
We’re giving it our all, I promise.
Please give us a break, please let’s change the mentality
The toxicity of the prepatory student mindset
If not for me, or my fellow students, for the future.
Please the pressure is capsizing our success,
And our SOS doesn’t seem to be getting through
So I hope this message reaches you.

The glow of your back basking in the sun
Causes my heart to flutter and beat faster
There is no place I would faster run
My brain doesn’t calculate what’s going to come after
All I can fathom is a life in which I can
Live in your glory, with each touch and every glance
You remind me that this is such a marvelous trance.
Come back to me, my love.
From the moment, we met
I could tell you were sent from above.
Our fate was something more than just a bet
I saw you differently, in a light that
Melted my heart and froze my eyes simultaneously
With your arms wrapped me, I believed I would never fall flat
I know that the way that we love is dangerously
Likes fires glowing and burning until we’re no more
The finale is coming soon, I’m more than aware
But imagine just for that one moment, we could soar
Before we fall, someone should have warned me to beware
Of a love like yours.
To save me from the crushing call of the floor.
That would leave me beyond miserable and sore.
With our heads swirling in affection
Too far out in space, and our bodies too empty to even move.
We waited too long to phase out our reflections.
There was a reason why my mother told me she did not approve.
Because you were far too beautiful,
Far too perfect, and yet not insanely unlike usual.
The pieces that you left behind, stain the linoleum tiles
As you leave to another girl, enchanting her with your smiles.
I promise myself to not fall again, but it’s all a facade,
Hopefully before my name on your lips is forgot,
My heart will be rebuilt, and I will find someone new
Your abandonment inspires the disappearance of a heavenly view.