The rose for your mom bleeds red while my hands bleed black

I can see the smudges im leaving on your back while you're leaving prints on me
Keep smiling and whispering "please", we can stay in that white room where your emotional shield lays in the second drawer
Where the showerhead washes away the dirt and grime of our every day lives
Where our laughs resonate off the walls and ricochet back to make us feel less lonely
Where you promised you weren't afraid of anything but flinched at the idea of admitting I'm right


Those white walls are speaking our names like a Mantra from a forgotten language, a language only found when our mouths move together.

Whispered to the trees
That rustled with your silence
We are evergreen

You are an undiscovered religion
I am the only devotee
Worshipping at the foot of your bed

You're the fallen angel that was destined for the wrong side of the pearly gates
Where Saint Peter doesn't acknowledge you
Where the front door to your home doesn't recognize you
When God asked you to get off your high horse, he didn't ask you to
Fall
Or leap
Or dive
He only wanted you to brush off the distain and show your good grace to the world.

Where is your good grace now, angel?

You only show the world all your ugly, but i know the secret; fallen angels break every single commandment to find the kind of beauty that they can not find on Earth.

Broken baby dolls are watching me while i sleep
Made of porcelain
Eyes always on me, waiting on me to toss and turn
The jagged edges reach through my sheets, constantly cutting deeper, even from a distance
Pardon me for crying at the sound of breaking glass
I am suddenly glad i kept the ugliest doll; it seems to be the only one who has fallen to the floor
But still reaches for my hand

COUNT THE PETALS ON YOUR FLOWER BEFORE YOU LET THEM FALL // HIDE ONE IN YOUR POCKET TO CONVINCE YOURSELF HE LOVES YOU

I am an artist who's breaking her own fingers to set my art free


My hands are like bottles of champagne that someone shook too much, and next thing i know everything is overflowing; except this champagne is like acid and it will eat away at you.
Don't drink me up like a tall glass of something pretty and don't bust me open and then celebrate afterwards.
I am itching to be near you
I am itching to let you know what it feels like to have your fingers curl when you feel the rhythm of a dull ache
I am itching to tell you that i am not the inspired, i am the expired.

I am in a cage
Sitting in your spacious chest
My wings are still clipped

I CROON YOUR NAME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT SO THAT YOU CURL IN CLOSER TO ME // YOUR TOUCH DISAPPEARED WHEN I WOKE UP // YOU HAVE MADE YOUR BED AND NOW YOU WILL LIE IN IT.

You are an 8 oz glass that only has 4 oz in it. You believe you're half empty and i see you as half full; either way there is something very obviously missing.
I'm running out of poems and it's turning into broken letters that attempt a backwards goodbye, but no matter what form they're in, my words keep mingling with your lips.
I've always told you i wanted to try role playing, but i never thought it would just be us taking turns missing each other.
The IV's in your arm are wrapping around my brain, pumping it with thoughts of you, but i can't shake the feeling that you're going away soon.
I used to plan my future with you, and now that I'm stuck planning a future that tries to get away from you, it's all turned very bittersweet. The bitter side is missing you and the sweet side is that after everything, I'm still able to miss you. I'll never forget that I'm the only person allowed to touch your hair, and ill never forget that that's probably a lie. I'll never forget that after nearly three years, i still don't know how to make you stay. The last 'i love you' that you managed to regurgitate is still safely tucked away between my teeth- better people have tried to pull it out of me but nothing makes my teeth chatter quite like your coldness does.

The next time you're alone and you think of me, please remember that I won't pick up the phone.

let me tell you, you turn me into something else
maybe that has to do with the physical and emotional bending i've done for you
but nonetheless i am an undiscovered shape with more sides and sharp edges than anyone could count

lately i've been comparing myself to a house
i know you think i'm nice to look at
but i've got faulty wiring and a cracked foundation
my ceilings leak and i'm fairly worried you're going to fall right through my floors
you were the earthquakes and storms that ruined my worth

*consider this to be full disclosure for anyone who nearly invests in a broken home

KEEP ME IN YOUR DREAMS UNTIL I AM ENOUGH FOR YOU
UNTIL THE DAY YOUR SOUL GROWS OLD AND YOU CAN CRAWL OUT OF HOSPITAL BEDS ALONE
MAYBE IT'S HYPOCRITICAL, BUT I'LL NEVER FORGET THE OTHER GIRLS YOU'VE KISSED, THEIR NAMES ARE ETCHED IN MY LIPS
I AM NOT YOUR SAFETY BLANKET, I AM ONLY YOUR REMINDER FOR WHEN YOU'RE HOMESICK
I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE LAST I LOVE YOU THAT GOT LOST ON THE WAY THROUGH YOUR LIPS; IN FACT I'M STILL WAITING ON IT
WAITING ON YOU TO COME HOME

i am one sad poem after another.
but i am not ashamed of it because they all reek of you—
my backstage baby

Did you know I only think of you?  Of course you did.
Did you know I'm always writing for you? Of course you didn't.
Did you know I only smile for you? Yes. So now the only time i can see your teeth smiling is when they're grazing my skin, but i watched everything i had left fall through your fingers.

I think you gave up on me, or maybe i gave up on you, or maybe i never even had faith in you but it doesn't make now any less empty.

I am not hostile towards our flat-line but i still miss you.

I SOLEMNLY PROMISE THAT I FOUND ARMAGEDDON IN THE FOOTSTEPS YOU LEFT ON ME.

i can't shut you out
you have crushed my resistance
like a broken branch

This is a list of places I can find you, in case i ever forget my way back home:

Engraved on my headboard

A pill bottle

In my favorite underwear

In your car, with the radio so loud you can't hear me calling for you

Nesting in a whiskey bottle

My shampoo

In anyone else's eyes

My memory box

Overdosed in a hospital bed

Inside a dead pen

Running the stop sign around the corner from your house

College parties in another town

Backstage my favorite place

In your dad's face

On someone else's body
And always on my mind

your mouth on my neck
crooning your resignation
like a flooding dam

I am the tape recorder in your back pocket;

Press my buttons and i will repeat your promises back to you, in the hope that they aren't fully forgotten.

Do you remember the day I told you that your hair smells like home? I don't know what home is. I like to think it's you, but home isn't supposed to be so numb.

I want you to have a special place that you keep the happy memories of me, but i know they're far and few between. Happy memories and you are two things that don't subside together, but I'll always have the day i met your mother, or when you told me you would always be my secret place. You're not so much of a secret now that i write about you, or now that i use you as an excuse, even a weapon.

Sometimes i wonder where my sweet boy is, but i know he's long gone. You used to cry and tell me you wanted to get better, but now you drink all your better parts to sleep, just so they won't acknowledge that this is special to me.

My life is a series of impermanence and
delusions, and you are just another reminder of that. Things are different now, and they'll never get better— but i promise you i will always be there to coax your better parts back to me.

i wonder if your bed remembers me over the others;

not that i spend more time in it or am any more special than them, but because i lie on the same side each time.

as a forewarning, i am neither permanent nor important, but i refuse to stop writing for you.

Lying in your bed and you lying to me in it has helped me learn that you will always wake up on my mind and I will always wake up alone.

Last night i dreamt I was your alien dream girl that kept the nightmares away but I woke up to god whispering that I'm the nightmare to which there's no relief. Disappointing revelations follow me through life and I think your entirety has become one of them, along with the crystal compliments you spit through your teeth.

I wish i could tell you that you made writer's block serendipitous, because the words that crawl out of my fingers ******* hurt, but your nose keeps bleeding and i keep screaming and you don't know how to stop. You don't understand that different places aren't new things, only the same poisons with prettier names.

Keep my secrets— don't tell the others that I like the toxicity, the burns and scrapes in my psyche. Keep that to yourself and I won't remind you of the day i watched you bleed, the day i whispered "I love you" with bloodstained teeth.

One thing you'll never realize about yourself is that your hand is a razor blade, a slender, sharp mountain range; but fingerprints fade eventually, or at least they smudge. I'm hoping you'll smudge away like your fingerprints, ambitions, conscience, compassion, and honesty. But while I'm waiting on you to change, I'll scribble on my walls in permanent marker, screaming "Look what I've done!" the entire time.

I remember the day you got your first tattoo— it wasn't long ago but it was a different you. The gypsy on your arm has a habit of drifting into your head, and i know you can't stay in one place for too long but i promise my arms are warm for you. I'm repeating to myself that i have to let go before you cut me anymore, but the fingerprints i love are embedded in my veins. I keep telling you that i want to stay tucked away in your collarbones where the world can't touch me, but you shake so much that your bones are rattling.

Do you remember the day you told me that i make you change your mind all the time? That was the day that i caught your conscience sleeping in my memory box. Now i can always smell you in my hair, and the only solution i can see is to cut it all off but that doesn't make it go away. You're Novocaine, but i'm already too numb to say no.

I should ask God to fix me, but my knees are far too bruised from kneeling under your weight.

Last night I slit my wrist, so that maybe some of you would bleed out of me
And i'd have one last piece to hold on to

But all i was left with, was the red tint of loneliness and my own scatterbrained hands.

Poetry is the way my fingerprints are left smudged across your hipbones
the way your hair curls around my scatterbrained fingers

Poetry is the taste of bitterness your 'I love you' leaves in my mouth
and the venomous words you use to fend mine off  

Poetry is the dead kind of feeling I get only from your eyes that seem so warm,
and the discontent I know all too well

Your poetry will be scrawled all over my life, in the messy ink of all of our memories of the nights we weren't too cold for each others hands.