I note the tone of the way you say, "I love you too."
Always with a hint of doubt that I could taste on your tongue.
Like you were tired of me.
Follow up question, are you tired of me yet? Y/N?

2. I stopped paying attention to my paranoia when we slept in strangers beds for five nights straight and
Each time I woke up I felt like I was at home because your arm was wrapped around my waist.

3. How could I tire of you?
And it sounds so real that I want to believe it.
There are a lot of things you don't quite know about me yet,
And one of them is that I always leave first.

4.  Your warm eyes and exhausted smile,
Your mess of curly hair and fumbled words, you angel-shaped human. You absolute godsend.
Afraid to be looked at but begging to be touched/understood/forgiven (circle one).

5. I belong with you no matter how bad I'm feeling.
I decided this late last night (November 22nd).
When you held my head in both hands and said,
"No matter how bad it gets, we can do it together."
And you couldn't even tell how badly I needed those words;
They washed over me like prayer.
Like confession.

6. If I could screenshot life I would do it now,
I'm thinking as I lay in someone else's bed that we are sharing.
If only I could save this moment in a way that is richer than writing it down.
If only you could see yourself how I see you.

7. The way you twirl your hair in your fingers when you're thinking. The way your face lights up when you're excited. The way your smile looks in the morning. The way you kiss me like you're never going to see me again. The way you-
-Are you listening?
Yes.

8. Walking down a busy street,
Walking through a crowded room,
Walking amongst strangers,
Walking anywhere with you feels like coming home.

9. "I love you, too" sounds assured.
Sounds like laying down for the first time after a long day.
Like my favorite song on your lips.
I could hear it a million times over.

10. Sometimes, you are asleep for hours,
And I stay up and talk to the moon.
She tells me about the tide.
And I tell her about you.

"Full license to my heart."
I am dramatically trying to give myself away,
To burden this body less,
This body has so much to carry.
Skin looks different in the glowing light of abuse,
Shoulders heavier,
Mind fuller with worry and sick thoughts,
Sometimes I am crushed and barely breathing beneath it.
It is too much for any one person to carry,
So I am looking to give myself wholly away.
Desperately tearing myself into pieces and gift-wrapping them for you in poetry. In spoken words against your chest. In unspoken words that write themselves down in silence.
Things I won't say: I am so fragile that sometime you hug me and I think you will take the life out of my lungs. Sometimes you sneak up on me and I flinch.
Just barely, just for a second. But it happens. and it hurts.
Sometimes I ask questions in a language you don't understand,
I worry that you're going to shift into him and stop being the you that
Is so understanding and compassionate.
Things I wont say: if you want it, you can take it. You can take what you can balance, what you can hoist up behind you and
Drag against the asphalt as you walk.
You press your forehead against mine,
We let the silence sit in the air-
you are speaking to my heart again.
We will endure this together.
together.

do more than just touch.
this is your permission slip,
my ENTRANCE THIS WAY sign,
all of the arrows pointing to my chest.
to my ribcage that you play a familiar tune on,
to my lungs that gasp for air every night
at 3:30 AM,
to my heart that is a beating thing;
that is a drum, banging on the walls of what
is inside of me.
begging for your hands
draped around my hips in comfort,
in desperation,
in a moment where i didn’t even know
i’ve needed you this whole time.
i am a room.
a vacant room with two doors and no windows.
i’ve been waiting for someone to belong here.
this is me saying, “you belong here.”
this is your resigned silence,
the kiss we share when i can’t get the words out,
the “i love you”s that come in threes because
sometimes i just need to hear it more than once.
sometimes i have to listen to the sound of my own voice in order to understand what i’m trying to say.
that’s why the words drip out and spit themselves onto the floor beneath us.
i am a room.
a vacant room with two doors and no windows.
i take you into this room and say, “do whatever you want.”
and you pull me close.
i take you into this room and say “destroy it,”
and you kiss me.
every room an escape route,
every room is a home if you’re sharing the
bed with the person you love.
i wonder what you’re thinking when you write about me.
i wonder what you’re thinking when you look at me.
i want to be inside of your head so bad that i scare myself away from my own thoughts.
every room has an entrance,
an exit.
this is me holding the door open,
“please, come in. stay a while.”

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?