it's
something out of a movie scene it's
something in its own language like
art or maybe something just a little
bit better, a bit more tangible than
words on paper or paint on canvas.
i want to keep you all to myself. i
would write a hundred letters and
mail them out to sea if it meant that
i could let your heartbeat hum me to
sleep every night. if it meant i could
tell you i love you without choking,
it if meant i could sing your name into
every bad place and let it coil around
my head and stick to me like glue.
one time, someone told me that even
when people leave, art remains and it
will never break your heart as hard as
mean boys with switchblades for mouths
and claws instead of hands. and i repeat
into the silence of your bedroom,
id do it all over again, id do it all
over again, every heart break and hurt
on my tongue, every evil hand on my
body and every single tragedy that sent
me packing and running outside barefoot
into the storm, id do it all over again
if it meant that the wind would send me to you at the end of each tornado. i used to
think that i loved art more than anything
in the whole world until i saw the
smile you kept for me after i kiss you
in the dark. i used
to write about the things i saw, museum
walls and blown glass that holds
heat and traps light under fingernails. i
used to love a world that didn't love
me back and i would write about
man-made beauty that sent artists
running for the hills and off of buildings
just for some inspiration.
now i
can't help but write sonnets about how
i am proud to love someone who is
more beautiful than any
god made, god ******
masterpiece i've ever seen.

i have these dreams, smelling
the three-AM summer night
through the screen of my window.

my hands are pressed against my
stomach. i am in bed and i keep my
eyes shut the entire time. i am
trying to hold everything inside.
my hands trail up and down my
arms, im begging
myself not to forget your lips,
i am holding every place you touched me
permanent. i am tattooing the way you
look at me to the spaces of my ******* ribcage.

in these dreams, you have always just
left. i can still smell you on my skin and
in my hair, on the clothes that need to
be washed, on the sheets.

my fingers are gripping the bedframe
and im begging it not to change. the Sun falls
in and the dust falls over and over the blankets
in a rhythm that makes it look like your
side of the bed has life in it again. my hands are
around my throat and on the back of my head,
looking for places that have a trace of you on
them, looking for pieces of you that you might have
forgotten to take with you.

in these dreams, i am hollowing out the
walls of my body, trying to find every memory
so i can feel it vein-deep and to the bone, you have
always just left. i am always just looking around for things
to replace the space you used to occupy.

when i wake up, and its still dark out, the dust stays where
it always has. the Sun won't even help me pretend that you're
still here. when i wake up, its like you have just
left all over again.

sometimes i know i need to
write about you because my
body will start to buzz like
there is electricity inside of
my veins and i will itch
to get rid of your eyes in
the back of my head, and even
if i don't exactly know what to
do with my hands they will
trace themselves over your
memories and they will whisper;
do you remember when you
were in love? do you remember
when you had it all? and i keep
writing to erase, i write and drink
and try not to remember how it
feels to lose you, every time i open
my eyes i lose you again. i write
to keep my hands busy so my chest
doesn't ache and no parts of me
whisper your name to the dark but
i could write for-ever and
i would still break pencils in half
and keep my hands clasped to
avoid any painful wandering;
*of course i remember.
how could i forget?

its one of those moments where i want
to crawl into your skin, underneath your
eyelids and trace my fingers on your neck
the moon has nothing to say to you anymore,
the ocean is defiant, She won't look you in the eyes.
the stars keep falling in and
out of place How did you let it get this far? and
your head is between your knees and you're chanting
I dont know, I dont know, I dont know, and
i want to wrap my arms around every part of
you that hurts, twist my limbs over the pieces
of you that ache for the sunlight, How did
you let it get this far? There is no force in the
Universe that respects me enough to respond. All
eyes of the world on my fingers burning marks
into your flesh, How did you let it get this far?
There are black holes, it
is all empty, planets are hanging on your answer and
its one of those moments where i want to expand
into the palms of your hands and tell you that you are your own God. and I would let
you tear me apart with your teeth.

and you've changed your bed sheets twice because you
can smell him on your pillowcase. and you've showered
eighteen times in thirty one hours, scrubbing your skin raw and
digging your fingers into your scalp, trying to reach all
the parts that he touched, or may have touched, or breathed on,
and you have bruises on your
hips and maybe a hickey on your
neck, by your collarbone, or on your stomach, and
the most you can remember is shaking legs and
trying not to kick and scream like a child, feeling
helpless and defenseless like a child, so you keep
changing your bed sheets and you try not to remember how
you could practically see your fear in the
reflection of his eyes, you can hear your own voice
as an echo, "look at my face.
please listen to me." and you change your bed sheets and
you can't remember how it looked but you could hear his laugh
and you
take a shower and throw away the t shirt you were wearing,
the bra with the broken clasp, the jean shorts that dug into
your waistline.
and when he leaves you fall onto the floor and you cry and
you spend the day trying not to spit out what he just did to you
and then he stops calling, like he threw you against a wall and
didn't even bother to check and see if you were
still breathing, if any of your pieces were out of
place or broken completely, like he knew exactly what he
had done and somehow, somehow
this manages to make
you feel worse. disposable, like it was never an accident,
like he was looking at your face and he still didn't stop
so you change your sheets and wash your hair
and brush your teeth and take a cold shower and then a hot
shower and then you just sit in the tub and pretend that
he is falling off of you like water when you know that
all he will ever do is stick to you like blood

it is called she, hers, her and it was named after a poem i wrote on april 15th of 2017 after i had gotten my heart broken and i decided to turn it into art because i didn't know what else to do with it. im not great with speaking words, my mother always tells me that prose is not my forte, and i believe her. anyway, i wrote a book of poems, because its the only thing i know how to do. actually, i've written two. you can find the other one on my twitter (@altyrlog) because i feel like im breaking rules by linking things here. sorry, hellopoetry. they are both free to read in PDF form.

she hers her: http://docdro.id/s4EJay8

thank you for sticking by me and giving me the encouragement i need when i throw up words and put them into stanzas and then plaster them all over the place. you make me want to not give up.

its not a love poem.
its a poem about your mouth,
your hands on my thighs
and around my throat and,
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your eyes,
all the way across a room or
an inch away from mine, like theres a difference,
like you've
already gotten a taste and you're asking
for just a little, baby just give me a little bit more.
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your words, all of your
unkind, your hands around my throat, your
eyes that have twisted my gasps into mockery,
all empty like you've tasted just a little bit of blood
on my lips, on my wrists, my thighs,
and its an inch away, just a little bit,
baby just let me give you a little bit more