my life without you, your life without me
the saddest, worst kind of life that would be

radio radio radio
running running gone
playing drums, playing hits
i dont recognize a song

typing writing rhyming
my hands shake and curl
carrying notes on my phone
nothing heavier than words

wait wait wait maybe —
my voice caught in my chest
nothing beats the weight
of the words left unsaid

I'm sorry I could not love you
through all of your endless metaphors
or in all the ways you handed me words
of what your heart had in store.

I'm sorry I could not love you
when you loved me with so much magic.
I'm sorry somehow I made you realize
that fairy tales did not happen.

I'm sorry I could not love you
for your hands or for your eyes,
for the way you kept me laughing
or for the way you loved my smile.

I'm sorry I could not love you
and you decided to say goodbye.
But now here I sit and write
remembering your lullabies.

I'm sorry now for telling the truth-
but this has become a tragedy.
I'm sorry I only learned to love you
when you had stopped loving me.

I've run out of stories to tell
about how you took
the best of me.

You used to chew tobacco on late nights like this,
on late nights when we couldn't find the stars in the sky.
You would always say you hated the world
and then kiss me when you remembered I existed.
Then suddenly you fell in love with a new kind of light-
no longer the ones that burned in my hands
but a name like a hushed prayer
on your lips
that no longer met mine.
Nights like this became worrying
as I sat by the piano-
quietly playing your favorite song-
hoping I'd hear your
car in the driveway.
Nights like this became following the smell of alcohol
up the stairs to our bedroom-
you said over and over again about how you
were too tired to talk
and I was always too tired to argue.
Nights like this became blurry vision from wasted tears
and pressing cold meat to my eyes--
but I never stopped waiting for the constellations
to appear
hoping that the stars I once found in your eyes
would return.

I will never be able
To fully describe the way
The morning sun
Rises like your stuttered phrases
Yet my hands find their way
To yours,
Like flowers bending
To face the light.

You see him at a bar
And suddenly your hair
falls on your face.
You see him at a bar,
With another girl
And your heart starts to race.
You wonder how he replaced you
Like a red balloon
that escaped his fingers,
And floated over the buildings
And disappeared into the blue.

             *You wonder if he actually ever loved you.

You were far away.
Farther than halfway across the room,
A glass in your hand and that crooked smile
Rising like the sun on your face.
I was swimming-
Maybe drowning in a sea of people.
He was trying to talk to me-
About the every days that composed of
Almost nothings.
I swear I felt my skin wrinkle in my
Little black dress
And my toes pinch in
My high heels.
I told myself it was worth it.
He said I was beautiful
But I look across the room
And your eyes don't meet mine.
Each time I look at you and
You don’t notice me,
I feel myself taking a step into
The inevitable stairs of
Heartbreak.
I danced all night with him-
He taught me how to waltz in squares
And spin in turns.
His hands fit into my curves
Like those plastic cylinders
That build towers and cities.
But I still felt it didn’t belong there.
Your hands
I bet would fit like roots into
My earth
And this would beat any hundred story
Building because it was natural.
He might have disagreed with that
And at one point through that night
So did I.
If my heart was beating a thousand times
Per second and
My palms rained over my knees
And my cheeks were apples ready to
Be picked every time you passed by,
Surely that isn’t natural.

Slowly, I was pummeling
As the night neared its end.
I had not danced with you.
I had not talked to you.
I had not even walked by you
And yet I could have.
But with a heart beating as loud as mine
I didn’t want to risk you hearing it.
One thing for sure though,
I know was completely natural,
Was goodbye.
It was going to happen
And most say that it's the worst moment
Of any night
But honestly,
I had fallen in love with our goodbye.
Good night wasn’t enough but your
Tan rays of light blooming the roses
In my cheeks,
Proved you to be a source of life.

I’m looking at you-
Looking-looking-not.

I’m pretending I wasn’t staring-
Now I’m looking-looking-caught.

There is no real date
To know when I had loved you
And there is no fear and limit
For the things you'd say, I’d do.

I'd swim against currents
And drown in tides fathoms deep.
I’d climb the highest mountain
And jump when you say, “Leap.”

I’d break the largest mirror
And walk on its shattered glass.
I’d run around the earth a thousand times,
Just to make us last.

I’d fly a plane through a storm,
Never stop until it’s through.
Yes I would do this all,
So you would love me too.

I want to tell you I could love you.
I could make you happy.
I could make you fall apart on the
bedroom floor,
helplessly and desperately proclaiming
that our love was more
than the nights of
raised arms and oceans of threatening depths.

But fifteen is an age when all of this
is just a dream,
a cliff where the jump is even more
dangerous than everyone says it to be.
Fifteen is the age when I believe,
that my hands have grown rough enough
to take yours
and maturity and age
have always been our similarity.
But fifteen is just another name for
"You're too young."

I cannot promise you that a wedding ring
would worth more than
the freedom to love the women
of taller heights and wider hips
for their lipstick is much darker
than the lip balm I use to
smoothen the dried skin.

For I do not know what it is like
to slide the glass between my fingers
and to taste the golden bubbles
freeze my teeth.

I do not know how to light a cigarette
or how to inhale the scent and death of rebellion.
I do not know how to let the ashes fall
unto the tray without burning my skin
and dirtying my nails.

I do not know how to make you want me,
how to dress and turn my curves
into mountains you wish to explore.
I do not know how to turn my tongue
into a weapon much deadlier
than the wind.
I do not know how to make you
feel beautiful.

So with all of the worlds streets, corners and
dimly lit bars,
I am nothing but a little pigtailed girl
with a lollipop in one hand and a poorly written
love note in the other.
And there you are,
as tall and as handsome as I've always seen
you as
with no time to look down,
only straight ahead.

But I guess, thats okay.
The heels would never have fit me anyway.

One spoon of cough syrup*

              Pour
   Lines pulled against
         the currents,
like the strings of my day
      and you have set
       underneath my
            horizon;
    flares of your colors
         settling into
           my earth.
                                                     Taste
                                          Read my eyes and
                                             longing looks.
                                      Find the nerve behind
                                           the trail of scarlet
                                          and embrace your
                                           lingering shadow
                                         the one I've learned
                                                  to love.                                            

          Swallow                                          ­                                                  
   Cling to my desire                                                           ­                              
 and entangle yourself
         once more
don't struggle instead
     press your bones
        into my grave
   and bury me in your
         flesh of broken
                dreams.
                                  ­                                                                 ­                                                             Repeat
                                         ­       Defrost your denied
                                                         approval in
                                                         my warmth
                                                     and wrap me in
                                                           attention.
                                                      ­ Turn me into
                                                  your poison apple
                                                and sink your heart
                                                  deep into my core.

And I wish your smile
was meant for me.
I wish
that we'd stare*
into each others
eyes,
knowing that
the reason they
light up,
was because of me;
because of my effort,
the effort that I
try so hard
*to hide.

I look into the mirror to find
emptiness.
I should be seeing my pale skin
and brown eyes,
but I find betrayal,
dishonesty,
evil,
immodesty.

I see sin.
I see sin.

All the efforts to be near
by being far away,
like the shoelaces we
pull apart
to tie together.
Like the ***** white shoelaces
on your worn out night sneakers,
And to be together would be a tangle of us,
a knot of seemingly simple twists and ties,
but naturally young children,
the young children we are,
must learn to do.
A series of overs and unders,
that we forget
when we ripen.

Yet to untie us would be easy,
one pull and we'd fall lifeless,
next to the black skin of your sneakers,
knowing that we'd be brought back together again,
until you wear out of us,
and replace us with the new leather and fancy threads.
But we'll always be there,
at the bottom of your closet,
wishing to go through the loops once more,
just to be tied together again.