I AM WAGING WAR UPON MYSELF.
THEY TELL ME IT TAKES GRACE TO REMAIN KIND IN
CRUEL CIRCUMSTANCES.
IF THATS THE CASE,
THEN I AM HATEFUL,
I AM HEARTLESS.
I AM SPITEFUL.
GRASPING TO THE RUINS OF WHAT WE USED TO BE,
THRASHING LIKE A WOUNDED ANIMAL.
SHARDS OF GLASS PEAKING OUT FROM MY RIBCAGE,
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW.
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW.
IF YOU COULD SEE
ME NOW.
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN ONE TO CLING TO LIFE,
TO SEARCH FOR A BREATH IN LIFELESSNESS,
TO HOLD OUT FOR A HEARTBEAT.
I USED TO THINK IT WAS A CONVENIENCE,
TO FIND LOVE IN EVERY THING I SEE.
WE LOCK EYES AND I CAN HANG THAT LOOK LIKE A PICTURE ON THE WALLS OF MY CHEST.
I USED TO THINK IT WAS A SACRIFICE,
TO BLEED FOR EVERY MAN I TOUCH.
BUT I CAN'T BE TAMED,
I CAN'T BE HELPED,
THIS HAS MADE ME UNRECOGNIZABLE IN THE FACE OF KINDNESS.
BECAUSE YOU WERE SO CRUEL THAT I HAVE BEEN FIGHTING A WAR SINCE YOU LEFT.
AND I AM SCREAMING THROUGH THE BULLET WOUNDS,
DEPRAVED THE WAY YOU MADE ME.
BUT THIS TIME, I AM CHANTING A DIFFERENT PRAYER.
I AM SCREAMING INTO WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR LOVE:
"I WILL NOT DIE TO KEEP YOU WARM.
I WILL NOT BURN FOR YOU"

I'm sitting in a cramped chair, throwing popcorn at the screen.
"I don't know what to say" - he says, and I'm laughing.
"It's okay," I tell him, and I'm about to spill over.
It's so close he can see it in the reflection of my eyes.
"I know what we are-
and I know what we are not."
I can't bare a sequel to this awful film. I can't stand to look at it any longer.
Are you making her promises you can't keep?
He's running his hands through his hair, trying to find something interesting to say,
to bend the will of someone else and knock her over just to catch her.
Did you rehearse these lines at all?
It hurts the way that love isn't supposed to, and it reminds me of when my mother told me: always be the first to leave.
Cut to:
I'm standing in the shower, washing him off of me.
He sticks to me like blood, and it stains the water red as it circles the drain.
It's a scene I haven't played before, and I'm trembling because the cameras are following me like a raincloud.
I was the bird, and I know that much.
And I gave myself to him softly, as gently as I could.
I gave him a suitcase full of bad memories and said, "here. hold this."
And maybe that's selfish, but its okay because
I'm not the main character of this story. I don't think I ever was.
I think that this story is about you.
Lets go back, shall we?
The cast resets, the cameras pan to the first time I walked past.
Boy meets girl, and he wants everything he can get his hands on.
He's hungry for experiences, things that he can only dream of doing while other people do them.
He wants to be a person who does something- anything, so he falls in love without looking at me.
Without seeing me.
Is it love if you're dangling the telephone cord over my head?
What about wrapping it around my throat?
He wants to be the kind of person who writes about love, so he tries to be everything that he thinks love should be.
But,
I'm standing in a spinning room and I hear someone yell,
"Cut!"
The cameras turn off, and I can't see the way his face contorts into something unrecognizable.
But he bites his tongue so hard it bleeds and calls it poetry for you.
Whats the difference between bleeding out of agony and bleeding out of love?
Cut to:
Us, sitting on the floor, and he's trying to wrap his arms around me so completely that I fade into the outline of his sweater.
But it doesn't feel like comfort, it feels like choking.
And I can't breathe in the space that is left in between us.
Are you trying to close the gap, or are you trying to suffocate me
So I stop making noise?
The reviews are in:
Girl Falls for the Same Trap Over and Over Again.
A tragedy,
they're saying.
A real shame that its not what it could've been.
I scribble out "my love" and write his name at the beginning of an apology note I don't finish.
I don't have anything to be sorry for,
But my love is laying open on the pavement.
He's staring at it saying,
"We can fix this."
But he won't touch it.
And I wonder what is so disgusting about me that makes him turn his head away, makes him flinch.
I wonder if I can pinpoint the moment he decided I wasn't good enough, if I could go back and say my lines better.
Give me another chance to be what you were projecting onto me.
I can be a blank screen, you can use me to watch your own highlight reel.
Its a good scene, so I cry the way that an audience is supposed to.
I clasp my hands to my chest and try to will air into my lungs
For days.
I can't play this role, I can't fill these shoes for you. I don't even know who they belong to.
"Is this how you see me?" He's asking,
And I can't tell if the pain in his voice is recited from memory.
The audience laughs, because its funny, the way
The girl gave him a bird and watched it die in his palms.
I was the bird, and I know that much.
Everyone's eyes well with tears as the credits roll,
Or maybe its just mine.
Thank you for keeping up the act for so long.

What would you like to hear?
If not to listen to the song of my voice,
If not to watch the way my eyes dance over your face,
Trying to memorize each piece as if I'll never see it again,
Then what are all of these words for?
I am breathlessly craving your touch,
If you let me,
I will inhale all of the smoke and exhale all of your secrets
So we can watch them dance away like fog over water.
I can tell by the callouses on your palms,
You've been auctioning off your love like its a yard sale.
Can you find some use for all of those old love poems?
All of the times you thought you got it just right,
How many trains stations did you have to sit in before you finally came home to my heart?
And I'll admit,
I am ardently confessing my wish of forever.
I will hand pick you promises and tie them up in a bow,
We can stick them in a glass jar and watch them grow.
Can you bleed for me, if I water this love until it sprouts thorns?
You told me,
In love, there is no point in being anything but ravenous,
No use in loving someone if it doesn't exist on the brink of tragedy,
The edge of dangerous.
Tell me,
If we take one step too far,
Will we become nothing but two bodies
Haunted by the space that is left in between us?
Will I be pricking my fingers on the stem of our forever
Like a lesson to be learned?
Leave the wild things where they are.
Let love flourish in all directions, the raving thing it is.
When you think of the future, is my hand still in your palm?
Or am I across the sea somewhere?
The sea,
You are swimming there too,
Are you looking for me in the waves that crash against the rocks?
Does it always have to be so violent?
And you laugh,
Because if it isn't life or death,
It isn't love at all.

Sweet, like the way a flame feels on your skin before it starts to burn.
Slow, like how I fell for you in the middle of fall and kept you safe all winter long.
Don't worry about this darkness, baby.
The darkest day is almost over and the light is coming.
The light is coming.
And you tell me,
"Please never fall in love again."
And how could I? How could I find something that matches your laugh,
Or your lazy hands on my skin when the sun peaks through the windows,
or the smile that emerges when we kiss for too long and you can feel my touch wandering around, looking for scraps.
You are not like him in the best ways.
You are so gentle that it makes me feel breakable.
If you want to shatter me to pieces just have mercy. I'd rather not hear the echo of it breaking,
But I won't stop you from destroying it.
Oh, my love, this is going to hurt.
Those thoughts are a like a memory, they don't last in the illumination of your love that feels so final, so imminent like I am walking to my own grave but you are waiting for me in the dirt.
Every place, even a hole in the ground, is home when you are holding my hand.
We could never speak anything but melodies;
Anything but devotion in the spaces between breaths.
Finishing the gaps of your sentences,
You trail off and I'm there to voice the verse.
Our love dog eared like a book reread a hundred times over,
I keep coming back and reading my favorite parts aloud.
Our love like one of those movies where they say,
"if somebody gave me the choice right now, to never see you again or to marry you, I would marry you."
Tender words to throw around, to spare
I could never get tired of the way you talk about me like a metaphor for something divine,
Waking up in the middle of the night to profess my love for you,
If only to hear it come out of my mouth,
If only to watch that look spread across your face in the darkness.
That look where your eyes are to the ceiling and I know you're thanking god.
I wake you up just to kiss you and you never mind the interruption.
Our love like a hundred similes for heaven,
When you break my heart it will hurt like hell.
But we're not there yet, I'm skipping to the finale, I'm reading
Our story backwards out of fear for how it ends.
Those last pages,
Those blank pages, staring back at me, begging me to write
Some soft closure, an end that doesn't spark like a match and light
This chapter ablaze.
Let me hold onto these charred pages, I can find the ending somewhere in the smoke,
But I'm not looking for it anymore, I leave the poems unfinished
And the book open wide.
I'm trying to write a love poem that isn't caked in sadness and you show me how to move my hands just right.
You show me where to touch and when to kiss, you teach me
All the mechanisms for a happy ending, and you hold it in your hands like a gift you're giving to me every morning.
This anecdote like a never ending tragedy that all love is destined to become.
We are not All love, we are not People, we are the main characters for the greatest adventure ever written.
We sing poetry back and forth and neither of us are bleeding.
I will reread this over and over,
Keep it in my back pocket for the train,
Let the rain soak it and the sun dry it completely,
Destroy it,
And when it falls apart in my hands
I will get on my knees and scrawl my favorite lines in chalk on the asphalt.
I will write them in the smoke of mirrors, in our coffee cups,
On our pillowcases.
I will tell this story,
Our story,
Over and over like a lesson I am trying to learn.
You move my hands just right across the paper and it looks like love.

A body self-possessed,
self-embraced,
Desperately trying to tear itself apart.
I write like I am trying to **** something.
Metaphors poisoned with memories.
I have always carried my love for this world,
carried all of my harsh words,
carried my horrible reverence for this world.
I write like I am trying to drown something,
To muffle their apologies in love poems.
I confront love just to consume it.
Lazy in the way that only negligence covets.

And then, you.

The way all good poets encounter a muse:
Terrified.
Terrified of your hands, your touch and how much it feels like
A place to hide.
A place to rest.
A place to put my grief down.
For once, I felt myself become gentle.
Your smile cutting glass and leaving scars on my heart,
Don't worry about that damage.
We will count our wounds when it's all over.
We have survived this much,
What would happen if we were to survive more?
Survive love like it is a creator,
Write for life instead of death,
Be able to live without decaying.
Sharing life with you makes life worth writing about.

I've spent a lot of time staring at myself
In the mirror, thinking that
Love looks like sacrifice.
See, where I come from,
Devotion twists itself into ****** forms.
Agony breathing between a lust for heaven or hell,
Misery dripping like blood onto concrete.
Love stains my hands red and the offering is such:
Here lies this contorted body,
Begging you to dismantle it.
Gut me of my delusions and
Carve out my smile to mount on your wall.
Here lies this mutilated body,
Unrecognizable in the face of faithfulness,
Staring into the eyes of adherence like
Its got a gun to my head.
Make me stand to look at this body.
Maybe its my misconstrued fantasies,
I bid myself to Love and it burns.
Take these confessions,
This ******,
Write about it like its poetry
When it reads like atonement.
Here lies this shrine of a body,
I flinch when you cup your hands around my face,
A knife pressed against my throat
Slicing into my mumbled apologies.
I am sorry
I cannot soften the corpse I am becoming.
I've spent a lot of time looking at you,
Thinking that Love may look like resurrection.
Rebirth in your softness.
Here lies this reviving heartbeat of a body,
If I am the sacrificial altar,
Get on your knees and start praying for my resurgence.
I'll see you back when it is bloodless and lifeless,
When its been emptied of its contents and is just the frame
Of our offerings.
I've had Love to die for
Your Love is holy,
Something to live for.

Your love is anarchic like a storm
and gentle like waking up to raindrops on the window.
It is steady, a drumming on the walls of your chest.
You fall in love, and not a breath is wasted
In the absence of a kiss.
Every "goodnight" is drowned
With your hand in mine under the covers,
Because even next to each other is just too far away.
Your love.
I've been here before.
I've felt this downpour
Against your arms, against your heartbeat,
On your lips.
Intimate and domestic moments,
Grabbing my hips,
A hand on the small of my back.
Your love sticks to me like a wet raincoat.
I've been here before,
Watching the clouds roll in as the day gets dark.
Your love.
Something I had tasted and felt and
Died for a thousand times.
I would do it a thousand more.
Like a steady drizzle on my face as I stare towards the sky.
I am praying for rain.
Let the rivers flood.
Let the water wash away all of our hurt.
Let the clouds pour until there is nothing left,
Let me keep your love.