it’s all very quiet,
very human,
very desperate.
each kiss a promise.
each sentence calculated.
each look lingers.
what are you trying to tell me?
what are we doing to each other?
my mother says i like to destroy everything i touch
like the composure is a foreign language,
tranquility isn’t as good a muse as all of this tragedy.
but you touch me and it isn’t destruction.
in fact, it feels like you’re holding me together
with your finger tips.
i know it must get exhausting,
i’m sorry for all the times i wake you up in a panic.
but i won’t apologize, i won’t hold onto this guilt that
i don’t belong to. i will try to do that for you.
i think i’m writing this poem to tell you
i’d do anything for you.
and you say be careful with big words like that.
promises of forever are currency that can’t be exchanged.
so take my words until i’m flat broke.
until i’m begging on the street.
always, forever, anything, everything.
i’ll sell those words to you for cheap,
if you can find a place to hide them like silver
in an old box. just keep them safe.
i cement these feelings into existence by talking about them.
by writing them down.
i’ll write you a poem every day.
good morning. here’s your coffee and your desperate love poem about leaving and staying and waking up just to kiss each other before we drift back into sleep.
good morning. another morning. i’m glad you’re here. here’s a love poem.
i love you.

What a rotten time to fall in love.
When I'm on the brink of tragedy,
On the edge of something so insurmountable that
I can't even contain it in both outstretched, weak, aching arms.
When I'm so close to the capstone of calamity that I can taste
The wreck on my tongue as it rains down my face.
I'm a goner.
The cataclysm that all good poetry is known for-
I am drowning on the words before they reach you-
I asphyxiate on the dark after you fall asleep.
Steady, lulled into a composition of notes and gasps.
I wonder if you know what I'm thinking about
When you wrap your hand around my throat.
I want to be the kind of person that your love deserves.
I just want to be the kind of person who isn't dripping with
Grief.
I'll find a sermon in every word you speak,
I'll chant it like prayer,
With my hands clasped to my chest in some
Frenzied, violent attempt to swear to God.
There is no reply.
Just your hand on my skin-
Less like touch and more like collision.
Please, stay. I'm begging now. I'm on my knees.
How do I look?
Do I look as pathetic as I feel?
I sink into the sadness but you're still holding my hand.
I don't speak, I overflow.
I don't love, I anesthetize.
I am destroying myself and you won't turn your head away.
Like a car crash. Like a collision. Like your hand around my throat.
I am paralyzed with a fear that God can't hear me.
"I love you" and I suffocate on the silence.
"I love you" and I choke on the apology that follows.
"I love you" and I am so sorry.
“I love you, too.” and I take my first breath.

there is the sunlight pouring through wafting curtains each morning.
i whisper “cover us” to the window.
if to stay here in your arms would mean giving up my life outside of this bed,
i would throw it over my shoulders like laundry and carry it to the return site of my heart breaking.
i would let the sickness air out.
what was it that you said?
“your smile is a panacea.
not a thing in the world it couldn’t cure.”

if to stay here, basked in the flickering brightness would mean slipping my love through my fingers and into yours,
i would tell you to use both hands.
dont be gentle,
but be kind.
remember that you’re holding a broken thing.
it just needs the right touch.

i wish you knew what you were grasping so tightly.
i wish i could press my forehead against yours
and you could hear what i’m trying to say.
what i’m trying to say is i always felt like
a puzzle piece in someone else’s picture but
you make me feel like i fit just right.

if to stay here, in the glow of a new day would mean my head would become vapid of anything but you, i’d let myself go dizzy.
you, you, you.
and who needs them, anyway?
to fall in love again and again as the light drapes itself across your cheeks,
how unchanged this heart is.
even after all of the hurt, the trauma, the pain
it is still a beating thing at its core.

There are some things you could never bring yourself to say aloud
But if you ever did you'd have no choice but to scream till you went hoarse
I put to paper my feelings toward you
Because there's not enough air in the world to suffice
For all the shouting I'd have to do

“I like when it loops over and over like that”, they said.
God if only you could see inside my head,
Playing sensory details over and over again
like there's a secret hidden in the way your eyes curl when you smile
or in the delicate shapes you trace on my skin that keep me anchored to the conscious world

Could you ever understand the way you
pull my heartstrings
round my neck like piano wire,
what a rotten way to go.
the way you
clog up the chambers of my heart,
kiss after kiss,
word after word,
drifting down the length of my chest,
falling softly on the floor of my condemned building of a heart,
like dead leaves piling up in the gutter,
the river runs over its banks,
and spills into my lungs,
i bail myself out in the silence of your sleep
let my heart be a vessel, its water your grief

Neither wholly light nor dark
Both the sun and the moon dance circles round our hearts
Will you still be here after dusk?
Will you still be here after dawn?
is every a precaution of scaring me away just an entreaty for me to stay?
a hundred little love notes folded into paper tigers
a hundred little red lights for me to run
a hundred little cuts for me to bleed from
when we decide to crash let’s be going to fast that it’s fatal rather than paralyzing
You promise yourself to me in totalities and you give yourself to me in teaspoons,
They said, “all of it is yours’,
Worried if all of it is something my heart has room for,
I promise, I promise, I promise, if only you’d just be unafraid to open the door
Do you think you won’t let this work?
What if I won’t let you?
Do you think you can hurt me?
What if I’m willing to do a lot more than just bleed for you?

I thought I had wandered into a dream.
Like someone said, ”Action!" right before you came into the shot.
These are the things people write about, you know.
This is what they make those movies about.
Cut to, a moment.
Theres that moment you were looking for,
Where we stop becoming separate lives and
We cross paths like striking a match.
Take a boy,
take a sad boy and give him a small bird.
Something to hold without crushing it
He knows how to be careful.
Take a girl,
Take a sad girl and give her to the softness,
Watch how her body tenses around something kind.
Please cover my hurt with both hands.
Please make room for what is about to happen to your heart.
Take a boy and a girl and put them in a room.
Wild animals.
Two people searching for something to give away.
Please don't let this be too big a burden to carry but,
I need you like air and I love you like poetry.
If the orchestra was playing, the music would swell and we would kiss each other like it was the ****** of the story, and everything that follows is a mere afterthought.
No more questions,
The main characters never play it safe and the camera
Pans to us sharing a blanket that is too small.
I'd toss and turn all night if every direction I turned in was
Traced with your touch. If every memory that
Wakes me up with a gasp is quickly followed by your hands.
You cover the sadness with both hands.
My armor is cracking, and I forgot the key to let us into
Something soft, something secure, something vulnerable and big and
Fatal,
So lets break down this door.
I'm ready when you are
And someone is yelling ”Action!”
Take two people,
Put them in a room,
And ask them to trust each other.
Watch them touch,
Kiss,
Explore,
Think,
Love.
I'm knocking on your heart instead of
Forcing myself in, I'm reminding you that I'd stay through every piece of doubt, every time you say you're sorry,
Every time you fumble over a line, I see you at the end
Of each day and it's coming home, finally coming home. finally coming home.
I sleep with the lights on. I am scared to be in the dark.
And you let me sleep in the shifting moonlight
With your hand on my chest and your words in my head.
We are creating better memories,
We are creating a better universe.

one.
your smile can cut me like crashing waves on sharp rocks.
I was always warned not to jump ship in deep waters.
I was always told not to get lost in steady waves,
but my reflection smiles back at me and the ocean is six miles deep and
if you were at the bottom, I would swim to you
until I ran out of air and then some.

two.
If you asked me for the stars,
I would rope them around a blue silk string
and hand wrap them for you.
I was always warned not to give too much too soon
but I hate being told what to do.

three.
it is a testament to everyone that came before you,
all of the words I wasted on them instead of you,
Isn't it rotten?
I will love you until you fall apart under my fingertips.

four.
comfortable silence has never been my strong suit.
I fill every space up with words, with dreams, with bad memories
and the worst things that have ever happened to me and
you sit there, caked in sunlight, and you listen like
i'm telling you a bedtime story.
and it feels safe, sharing the journey at how I arrived at
the point where your chest meets your heartbeat
and your lips meet mine.
I made it here, I know you were waiting for me, I know it took a long time, but I'm here now.

five.
I've never been good at writing love poems.
I'm better at writing loss poems, but these words have forced
themselves out of my skin and into the ink.
I dont want to lose you. I dont want to write our eulogy out
and replay it in my mind. Just stay. Just stay, just stay, just stay.
I could slip it
off of my tongue like a bad habit forever. I have belonged to you since the beginning. we will have new beginnings indefinitely. I promise.

light a cigarette with shaky hands.
i never felt like i deserved the sweetness,
it cascades over me like fluorescent lighting
harsh and uncomfortable and out of place.
take a drag with trembling fingers.
i never feel like these words can do it justice
it being your lips on my skin.
it being your name falling out of my mouth like blood.
will you stay here, darling?
will you help me clean up this mess?
im scrubbing myself clean,
expunging all of the sins from my skin so i am
someone new just for you.
someone without so much weight on my shoulders.
someone lighter. i wish i was someone better for you.
and i can’t help but self-deprecate,
i cant help but never forgive myself for my mistakes
but you hold onto me and it stops the ache in my chest and maybe that deep breath is enough.
maybe taking a deep breath and knowing there
is no second-guess, no punchline, no catch is enough.
flick the ash onto the ground with weak palms.
with exalted memories. i am trying to be something i can’t recognize. i am trying to be someone else for you.
but how much of myself can i lose,
how much can i get away with before it becomes some sort of ******?
there’s blood everywhere.
take a drag with cold fingertips.
i don’t know if i’ll ever feel okay again.
i don’t know if i can stand to let you burden this for me.
i don’t know if i will ever feel like i’m not giving away my pieces on the sidewalk.
here. take this. take something. take everything. please. i’m begging.
please, i’m begging. i’m on my hands and knees. please don’t leave me just because i don’t know how to make you stay.