come to the river of your longing,
put your grief down next to mine.
i will show you how i can bleed,
let time play on your chest like
the hands of a lover.
i will pull back the covers of the sky,
i will pull my heart back from the Dark,
i will pick up your pieces and bring them home.

Your lips-
The first disaster.
A strange sea of intense blue,
Dangerous and horrifying like love.
Our bodies walk untouched by the light,
Shadows supreme and arrogant.
My love is not cruel-
That does not mean it is kind.
That look is breaking the ground underneath me,
The way an earthquake does when two strangers meet.
The roots spread and break through every goodbye planted
Inside of me.
We are trying to see who can hurt worse.
The tide came in while my eyes were closed,
I am thrown headfirst against the rocks.
All this time,
The world was spinning in circles.
The wind pushes and pulls us away.
All of the places I can't dream of going  
Have my name taped to the mailbox.
You love out of a suitcase, always
Ready to pack up and leave.
Holding faith that one of these people
You let touch you with the lights off
Will be more than just a past-lover.
And the phone rings,
Like a call back from the darkness,
"I love even the parts of you that have to go home."

I liked to be in Hell, and
I liked to be there alone.
Violence tangled in this tissue,
This shame,
I am cut open,
A faithful mutilation with scars that
Read like atonement.
This Rage is violent and mine-
The wrong kind of ugly, I know.
The living body of a survivor
Wakes up each morning in a grave.  
I have always carried my love for this world,
Carried my horrible reverence for this world,
This world is sick like a knife.
I can feel eternity pressing against my throat.
There is Nothing,
It comes to devour from the inside.
The length of silence swells                
like a syndicate of ants.
In Hell we are alone.
What can you do besides hold your hand out to the dark?

love rains from my mouth,
it drips down the front of my t shirt.
i am pouring,
i overflow.
with the lightning and thunder,
with a heart drumming
the beat of a hummingbirds wings-
briefly, breathlessly.
existing on the brink of tragedy;
what was it all for?
if there is comfort it is one thing,
you are here.
if there is fear it is another,
i am here, too.
i give up, i give in,
i won’t fight any more.
there is too much hurt here
but still, i am giving you this,
the right hand and the wrong one.
trusting that you will take both and hold them
to your chest, to your own
weathered heart.
you hurricane, you fire raging,  
i have been looking for you in every broken piece.
if it was all meant for this,
all meant to bring me here,
i would understand.
i would understand.

To tell the truth about myself,
A confession to my untidy spirit.
Blood dries under nails,
I'm not sure which me it belongs to.
Once, I had a man tell me,
"Forgiveness looks beautiful on you."
I unhook my ribs
And hang my lungs on a coatrack,
I do it for love,
For love I abandon my self.
A soul stretching like one uninterrupted wound,
Climbing up the length of my spine.
Forgiveness looks like an accident,
Spilled on the pavement,
Reflecting the light.
I have never learned how to decay gracefully.
An affinity for crisis,
An empathy that runs deeper than dreams
And thicker than blood,
You couldn't wash me from your memories if you tried.
All the ways one heart can bruise,
Love in itself is a sort of solitude, you said.
The timid ghost of myself
Casted here at my feet,
I am looking at myself only to be seen.
How cruel a forgiveness which
Doesn't know when to trust itself.
To tell the truth about myself,
To be the sun instead of light emitting from a dead star,
Would be an admittance that even God isn't ready to hear.

It's a funny thing to lay next to someone, to sleep with them in a bed.
I can start off close and drift away in the summer heat, morning  brandishing my dreams until it rattles me awake, gasping for sunlight. I can account for the missing space between our bodies, getting drunk on the warmth of his skin and waking tangled up in his curly hair. I can count the stars and talk to the moon while I trace my name into his palm with a finger, listening to the sound of his even breathing and the steady drum of his heartbeat. The world is quiet when my lover is asleep, my heart takes a deep breath and the soul pauses. I exhale all of the days worries in the middle of the night when he takes my hand and pulls me closer to him. In the spring time, we wake up further apart than we are used to, and my sleepy head turns to face him, and it's like waking up all over again. That moment where we are remembering the bed, the person in it, coming back to life, and he runs his hand down my back and kisses my forehead. "I've missed you," every morning, like a daily prayer for our survival, for another day of bliss.

My grief and I are well-acquainted.
Two strangers sharing the same body.
How else to explain grief but as a mirror?
The grief and my body.
The grief or my body,
It is my grief every time.
I torture it,
I lay in it,
I set it on fire.
A still burning star,
A still living thing,
A still life of my first night alone.
The room is still, too.
It does not breathe
It does not turn over, reach for my hand,
Cough, or flutter its eyelids open onto my face.
It is just a room with two bodies.
I hold my grief,
I do.
I hold it until it stops bleeding,
Until it too is a lifeless thing,
I hold it.
How many more times can I say I miss you
without flinching?
How do you write about what it should've been without sounding like an *******?
Without losing yourself in the fantasy?
Like a hymn,
I give my grief to God but it doesn't go anywhere.
This is where the poet in me stops breathing,
And it hurts,
It hurts,
It hurts to breathe.
Pulsating through my body like adrenaline,
Fueling these poems with empty traces of your name.
The grief opens my mouth and says your name.
Over and over,
Chanting pleas of worship.
How are you still standing?
The grief knocks me over,
Like mid-day waves against the rocks,
And now I am a hollow body of devotion,
I tend to my grief like a garden
On my hands and knees,
and watch it
Grow into weeds.
At least there is life here somewhere.
I lay in my grief.
Two bodies laying in the dirt.
How can you just stand there and watch me die?

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.

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?

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.

You trace your thumb across my palm and God clears his throat. This is free therapy, this is the moment where we take a breath at the same time and our faces are so close that I can taste heaven in the space between them. What would you do with my hands if I gave them to you? Do you have an answer for that? Do you have the answer for everything? What would you do with my heart if I gave it to you? Think carefully. Be careful. There's no use in pretending that we're not going down with this ship, so honey hang on tightly. Because I'm waving the white flag, and you're standing on the shoreline with your palms up. What would it look like if we both surrendered? I imagine your hello on my lips and it tastes like sinking underwater. So what if I want the misery? So what if I've given up on trying to save us from destruction? Maybe I like how it feels to have something to die for. To die for. God clears his throat.

We lock eyes.  
Thats how it starts. With a look.
You can see through me and there's nothing there,
There is no hurt to cascade my shoulders and no
Pain in my voice. It is sweet. It is light,
I invite you in.
Thats how it starts. With a touch.
You can move through me and there's nothing there,
There is no anger to wash over me and no
Wince when your hand meets my skin. It is calm.
It is calculated.
I let you in.
And that's how it always starts, right?
When the other shoe drops. And it hits the ground
with a thump like our bodies on the bed. But it's not
Over yet darling, the lights are still on
And there's still blood on the sheets. Can you help me clean
Up this mess? Can you help me fix this?
We lock eyes and it feels like a reminder,
like ive been waiting for you
The other shoe drops and I'm on my hands and knees
Scrubbing my old memories clean for you.
You deserve better than this, you deserve that much.
You deserve someone who is sweet. light. calm. calculated.
You open your mouth and say my name and it sounds like
"come home"

you asked if you could touch me.
if you could cover me with your hands,
warm like you just buzzed back to life
under my skin.
and I said, "you can do whatever you want
as long as you don't leave."
I guess I should've been more specific.
What I meant was,
I have no respect for this body.
It holds me like a
creaky old home, dripping pipes and wind that
moves the ceiling tiles out of place until they crash
Into the floorboards.
It has never felt like me, it feels like a midnight bus stop
on the long journey to something softer.
something calmer.
What I meant was,
you can hit me if you want to.
Over and over you can leave bruises on my
hips and
my neck.
But don't tell me you love me in that voice I've almost forgotten.
It bubbles inside of me and suddenly
I am sitting on that bus,
going who knows where.
running to your home,
running away from mine.
Looking for where I found this body.
I feel like a guest in this body.
So it doesn't matter if you paint my walls black.
It doesn't matter if you grab my throat too tight or you
destroy me completely,
I die each night and then live again in the sunshine
of the morning.
Because I have never even been there to begin with.
Does that make sense?

This is my apology.
it is my apology for how long I held onto you,
for how long I refused to let you go,
I loved you too long and it felt like my fault.
This is where I leave you, darling,
cold wet body sitting at the bottom of something dark.
Id like to step into the light now.
I loved you too much and didn't notice when you
Stopped loving me back.
I try to be gentle now,
I try to be all of the things I couldn't with your
Hands around my neck.
This is my apology, because
I would've died for you if you had asked.
I'm ready to live now, darling.
In this new life I've created out of what you left me with.
You left me so many times that it felt like my fault.
But love is faultless, it is ageless and nameless.
I've apologized to my love, I've held it back to life
and I've laid next to it in bed.
I'm sorry, for loving you so hard you felt like there was no way out.
This is my apology, my big red EXIT sign.
I'll let you go now.

The art of being lonely,
Something I've perfected after years of
Screaming and pounding. The act of being
Alone, the verb of it as it trickles down your face.
I cry when I'm scared.
I cry when I'm happy too.
The word alone slips away from my cheeks,
It falls out of my mouth.
A new lover I have found in a bed that looks
Like mine, but sideways when I can't pick my head up.
I cry when I'm angry,
And the lonely clears its throat.
It pushes against
The walls of my chest like a drum, like a beat pulsating
Out of my sobs.
A new taste on my tongue,
still here,
but if I lose my mind
In my own lonely,
will there ever be anyone
Around to notice?

my therapist says, it's time you write about your psychosis
I show her a journal full of names, and some dreams
That I may or may not have had.
Inside my journal, there are pieces of my body and flowers,
There is a to-do list with nothing crossed off,
There is a hidden script for a medication I never got filled;
There are pictures over every word, disguised in a metaphor
I can't remember the language to describe.
Expression makes the most sense when you are
Expressing the bad.
This is eruption, compulsion that is combusting from my pencil and into black ink.
I point to the bugs that crawl over the page and say,
I don't have to. My psychosis is in every line.
It is in my eyes darting back and forth.
I write so much the page turns black and I have to erase it.
My psychosis is the shadow trail behind every letter.
It is the blood coming out of my mouth when I say I'll Do Better,
The scratches on my hands and feet are from holding on too tight
To demons that know how to fight back.
It is my teeth, and the holes inside of them, spit onto the page.
Spit onto the floor of my therapists wooden office.
I wince. I turn the page.
I try to say it so many times it becomes meaningless.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
I spit again.
My mind looks like a ******* minefield and these words are just the smoke.

I never understood when people would tell me,
“You are just like your mother.”
Always with a tone in their voice I didn’t quite comprehend.
I run back to my dad at the grocery store
After wandering through the aisles alone and he rolls his eyes.
“You are just like your mother.”
I thought he meant always getting lost and I wonder how
Many times he had to lap around the store to find her sniffing candles
With someone she hasn’t seen in five years,
Laughing like a joke shes told over and over.
See, I always thought I was like just like my dad.
We have the same eyes, and we don’t like to approach people
The way she can so easily catch an audience.
But when I make a joke a little too loud at a family reunion
My cousins laugh,
“You are just like your mother.”
I wonder what arguments she has invoked with her words.
How she has said what
No one wants to hear, but always like she picks it out
Of the middle of the air it was sitting in.
When I get upset and my ears start ringing, and I hold onto
My stubbornness like it is my last breath, my older sister tells me,
“You are just like our mother.” I figure she has better eyes to see
How shes grown,
How shes learned patience at my hands and taught to extend
Love in all directions as a choice.
Love is not always a choice, but loving yourself enough to see that you’re wasting it
Looks like my mom picking me up from my worst day and standing in
Line to buy me a milkshake as I cry in a chick-fil-a.
She told me about a story of a time she held on too tight to someone even though
She knew it was the wrong thing to do.
“I think you’re a lot like me. You always want to see the love.”
Just like my mother, I learn the hard way. And sometimes I do it more than once;
The way she will teach a nine year old how to read over and over again
Until he stops sounding it out and it rolls off of the tongue.
I know that I’m capable of sharing, of teaching, of patience,
Of honesty and love because my mother
Taught those things to me.
I think of everything I love most about myself, and all of the possibilities
For what I can become in the reflection of my mother helping me curl my hair for the prom I’m not going to.
When she needs to remind me I am quick witted, I am eloquent, I am smart, I am beautiful, I grin and say
“I am just like my mother.”

Picking up where we left off. Picking up a body from the floor.
Arms stretched.
Teeth falling like seeds to the ground.
To the dirt underneath it.
What to do with something cold:
Stare at it,
Cover it with your palms,
Die with it.
Picking up from that moment, from the place I died for the hundredth time.
I cover up my puffy cheeks,
my rotting lips cracked and
caked in chapstick.
I smoke a blunt and wipe makeup onto a sweater.
It doesn’t feel like coming
Back to life, but it reminds me of a waning moon
and looking for the brightest stars from your driveway. My hair falls out in clumps in your hands,
If you notice it is only for a second. It doesn’t hurt because
You look through me, you can see someone else in my face.
Someone without maggots crawling out of her eyes.
I die again, when you look through me. When I follow your gaze
To the gravestones behind my back.
When you tell me
“I can’t do this with you anymore” and you break my fingers kissing them goodbye;
I die then, too.
Picking up where we left off, I am a ghost hotel for your lazy mistakes.
I am surrounding myself and hiding from myself.
I carry old versions of me in a funeral precession; I drag them on the
Floor behind me as I walk. I am still more gentle with myself than
You were.
I died last week when you called, when you tell me,
“I just want to hear your voice,”
I die before I can reply.
The body knows blunt force trauma but can’t
Recognize poison until it’s too late. It bubbles out of my broken jaw
And seeps into the mud.
I pick my teeth up and put them in a pile.
I would call back but I am choking on the grief.

there is a version of me who is covered in ash.
that girl would rather jump into the fire than put it out.
there is a version of me who is scared to be
the fallout, scared to be the end of the
sentence and the last touch.
i want to hold that girl in both hands.
i want to touch that girl gently.
that girl never listened.
i want to tell her in a language she will understand:
you have been wandering through the smoke for
so long, you can't see that this is just a room. this is
just four walls of a house, with a boy and a bed drenched in gasoline.
this is just a boy, this is not a home, this is just smoke and mirrors.
there is a version of me who wanted to save him from the flames.
i want to brush the dirt from that girls forehead and hold
onto her shoulders until she stops shaking. i want to tell her in
a language she will understand:
it will always feel like this. it will always feel like gasping for
air, you never know when its safe to be yourself or when its safer to be a version he wants. it will always feel like planning an escape route you never use. why wont he open the window? why wont he let you breathe?
there is a version of me who needs someone, and i wish to God that i could cover her eyes with both hands until the pain dissipates and it is just a room once again. until it stops burning.
that girl is so brave.
that girl tried to leave so many times.
when she puts one hand on the doorknob, i want to stand behind her.
this is just an empty room with scorched walls. there is nothing
more than the nothing that is left.
when she asks. "where will i go?"
i want to whisper, "you will come home to your heart."

i make up rules for myself and then i break them.
i have spent so much time picking out seeds from my brain.
i am trying to remove the rot i planted.
i promise i will smoke less,
and drink less, and
write more.
i promise i will spend less time living inside of my brain.
i can't explain this method of self-destruction.
it is not detonating.
it is perpetual loneliness, like sand through an hourglass.
i dissolve.
a steady rain
for days.
and maybe its stylistic,
as every writer enters a page the same way,
to pour.
to let the flood cleanse your skin, to feel
relief, reborn.
i make up these rules for myself as terms for falling apart.
i am only human, i have been buried with these words
and have the grief to prove it.
i smoke too much,
i drink too much,
i haven't been able to make it out of a poem alive
in months.

the last time i saw you, you told me that there is a string connecting us. that you tug on it and hope it is still holding onto my end. that some days you feel like you have to stretch it far, so far you can pluck a eulogy out of the thread.
you wonder where i go, when you spend all day with your arms stretched out to me because you just can't quite feel me there.
the truth is, there are days where my love feels like lace around my wrists. i carry the weight evenly in both of my hands, secure by my side when i walk.
there are days where my love is tethered to the end of a kite. it circles the sky under the breath of something magical. it puts on a show, soaring and floating carelessly through empty space. these are the days we go up and down, i can't predict how the breeze will shift us, how far we will go, where we will get stuck.
there are days where my love is a spiderweb, and it curls up in dusty places and covers what is rotting in the dark. it is a trap, it is like glue, it encases all of the bad memories we've gotten stuck on until it is a grave site for what i haven't been able to forgive.
there are days where my love is a strand on your sweater that i can't stop pulling. i unravel the sleeve until i'm too embarrassed to give it back to you when you ask. these are the days where i take it too far, i want to fix things but i keep making them worse. these days, we are a pile of fiber on the floor, and i don't know where it started and where it ends. i don't know how to put us back together.
i imagine us connected by our fingers now. pulling at each other when we feel sick, or when we're far away. i realize that all of these days, i am using your string to fulfill my creative fantasies. there is only so much space between us, and i am sorry for making you
give so much line just to watch me tangle myself up in it. i am full
of knots, of nonsensical anxieties and depressive fits.
when i need it, you tie kisses in a necklace around me to make me feel safe.
some days, we give more than we take and this poem is a way of saying that
when you tug on that string, i will always be there.
whether it is up in the clouds, or in the corner of my past, or drowning in myself, i am entwined in all of this endless love.

to bring back what you love the most. to reach your
hands into the dirt and take it from its resting place, all
the dust you would brush off of its skin.  
i bury my losses in my stomach. i swallow every
grievance and eat loss whole. its not enough
just to lose you. i want to devour you.
to hold everything in your teeth for so long that
it turns into nothing, wet and falling apart against
your tongue. you cant repay what you owe just by
looking at it, just by being there. you have to do more
than just hold it to fix it.
nothing you bring back to life will ever be the same, cracks
form in new places and life grows in the space where your
skull meets the grass. if you lay still for too long, you will
hear the bugs whisper and feel the ground move.
to be reborn in
all of the places you're used to, like a mountain range
changing with every rock that falls.
to be able to look at the same person twice without flinching.
i just want all the things i can't have, my stomach twists when
i think about where you're lying under the pavement. to bring
back what you deserved to have taken away, to get on your
knees and beg for rain to wash this taste out of your mouth.
all the words you would spit up, all the stories you would
tell and bile you would choke on,
to bring back what you love the most.
to look at yourself.
to look at anything in the eyes.

ive been thinking a lot, you know, about being alone. about my body as a vacant room. about the loneliness of a room with someone in it that wishes they were somewhere else. no matter what corner i turn to, every room is empty.
ive been thinking about forming habits, too. about how they say it takes three weeks to develop a habit and four weeks for your skin cells to regenerate. as the days get closer i wonder if my skin will know that you're gone when the clock runs out on the last day. if it will feel like how you touched me before you left in some expulsion of your last traces. if my hands will shake and i will wish you were next to me again, all over me like you're hiding me from the world.
ive been thinking about how you hid me from the world. i get to this part and i stop writing. you asked me to fight everyone with you and start over, you asked me to run away and build from scratch and it sounded like seduction. you made it sound so good, i get to the part where i wanted it and i stop writing.
mostly ive been thinking about being alone, though. because i can't afford to write it down, i can't afford to break this habit. my skin wont know your touch but these words are burned into my hands, and thighs, my neck and face and chest. ive been thinking about your name burned into my chest. stamped, branded and
ive been thinking about if my dying skin cells are going to miss yours, ive been thinking about if youre dying to see me and if your skin itches like mine does. if every room you enter is empty when youre waiting for me to walk through the door like i used to, as it keeps getting closer, you want to keep the skin that knows my touch because its the only part of me you have left.

I want to call.
I want love to be less violent.
I want you to say something nice just so
I can hear it come out of your mouth.
I want your voice, and I want
You to tell me you love me, and I want you
To tell me I'm beautiful and
Calm me down. I want
You to talk me down from the ledge and
I really want to be next to you but I'd settle for a phone call
And I want you to tell me that everything is okay I don't know
What to do because you're the only person I want to
Talk to and I don't have anyone else to call with all of this hurt.

I want to write about what hurts because I think it will
Stop me from hurting. If I put these words on
A page then they will be easier to digest.
Poetry isn't curative by creation, it is
Just confession. Still, these remedial
Lines are what I turn to when I am holding
Too much in my hands. Right now, I feel
Like I am overflowing onto the ground below me.
For the first time,
I don't want to write about what hurts. I want
To keep it inside of me and let it burn me. I want
To carry it in my palms for as long as I can.
I should write
About how we've said goodbye so
Many times that it turned into a threat, a weapon
We made with our tongues.
I should write
About how I lied and got away with it,
How you got caught with
Your hands tied and no one to blame.
I should write
About how it was over before we waved the white
Flag, and I know what it means now
To hold onto a sinking ship.
I've never had anything to die for.
I should write about how I've never wanted
Something so much that I devastated it completely.
We loved in harsh conditions, under sun and darkness and
I don't know how to write about how
The love didn't save us.
I don't write about letting go as much as I write about
Holding on, and I want
That to change.
I don't want to write hurt just to feel it.
The next poem I write about you will be
About me. About how I held on and how I let go.
It won't be about your love, it will be about
Mine. It won't stop me from hurting, but
It is how I make it out
Of my love alive.

I am not testifying my emotion with the poetry, I am
atoning to it.
I write about God like a friend but we
Haven't been speaking.  
I confess my sins to
Whoever will play the part.
When I write about how quiet the moon has been,
I am saying I'm sorry.

My lack of honesty is writers-block.
I crave all of the hurt. I
Torture myself into unhappiness.
I have this habit of starting things I don't
Finish and they're usually letters
Bursting with nameless blame.
I shut down in the middle of
My emotions because they are too loud, I substitute
all of my connections for a painless quiet.
I am cold because it is easier than being warm,
Than getting burned, than being honest. I am cold
because it is easier than saying that
I am selfish in love. I drain, consume
devour everything that touches me and I
Don't know how to stop taking.

When I write about how I am scared that
Love and violence sound the same from an empty bed, I am saying I'm sorry.
I am not presenting my pain with the poetry,
I am conceding to it.
I can't take a pen to paper without punishing myself with the ink.

When I write about a fence with vines encasing the wood,
About neglect, about a garden full of overgrown weeds and
A cold house, I am saying
Forgive me.

Last night I read a poem about God, and
it sounded so good I almost believed it.
God, hands out the window and hair blowing,
God, smoking a cigarette in a passenger's seat.
Even when you humanize all of your fears,
You can still
Spit them out in the middle.
God, moving her lips with the music and the hot sun,
God, breaking the law with that look.
God, being small enough to cower over and close
Enough to stare in the face,
Where do you take someone like that when they ask?
All the way, I suppose.
The seat next to me is godless, and I almost believed it.
I imagine someone being strong enough to
Cleanse me just by looking at me,
I imagine holding onto something that feels holy and
Not having to deal with burnt palms.
If I could take God anywhere, I would take her to
My grandfathers grave. I would take her to my
Best friends grave, I would take her to the site of
My life changing and,
I would watch her chain smoke cigarettes and cough it all out.
God, with her sharp teeth and quiet tongue and
God, with her hair pulled back and her gaze removed.
If God was in my passenger seat, I would take her to
All of my hurt and ask her to pick it up.
I would ask her to take it all back,
And she would laugh.
God, that laugh.

they tell me
write me a love poem.
but i don't know who i'm writing from,
which version of me to sign it as,
authorized by the words
that make me seem believable.
a love poem about
eating even when you are full and
craving what you can't get your hands on.
a love poem about
two people pressed up against a tree,
how to get lost and
taking the easiest way out.
a love poem about
choking on
gripping fingers on
things i can't put into a love poem.
a love poem about
being afraid of getting caught, the
thrill of not knowing
what was
right and what was wrong.
a love poem about
what never comes. what is almost there.
how do you write about what it should've been without
sounding like an *******?
i could've written a better love story than this.
a love poem about
being stuck, about learning the curve of a body and
memorizing the sounds it makes, the
security of the first who can cover your heart with
their hands.
i can't address these poems.
signed, who?
the girl that i was molded into?
signed,

i let the dark in.
                    i keep the window open and i stare into the trees.
i think about holding onto the edge of anything, i think about
my fingers and if they desire anything enough to
   keep their grip.
when i was younger i always thought that when
bad things happened
there would be witnesses.

who is watching my ache?
                   where are all of the eyes when i need them?
bad things happen quietly.
i keep looking for a beginning,
looking for an end,
                i can't find either. it's over.
in silence, i let all of the dark in.
                  i don't think i'll ever know how to let go.
                  i don't think i'll ever know what i'm holding onto.
bad things happen softly,
there is violence in
everything gentle and
poison in everything kind.

when i was younger i thought that everyone
died in a comfortable bed, surrounded by
their families.
i thought that when bad things happened,
there would be witnesses.

                    so where is everyone?
is it just me staring into this dark?
                       i witness my own tragedy.
      i do nothing but look at flesh and bone.
every animal is greedy, every
           body wants to get away with something.
ive spent too much time on my hands and knees.
if there is blood i don't know where it begins and
            where it ends.
i don't know if i can keep watching this grief.
    i just can't find a place to put it down.

it is about you.
no lovesickness to rock your empty body.
no guilt to beat like a drum in your chest.
no anger, no hurt,
it is about your skin.
about the light that you drink with morning coffee.
how it reflects off of your curves.
about the corners of your mouth.
about your cold feet,
your gentle hands.
it is about the grass in your toes.
the air around you, above you, below you.
the water that you drink from.
the earth will take care of your wild roots,
your wild hair,
your wild smile. the earth will take
care of your lovesickness,
all of your pain.
all of your guilt.
you touch the world with your gentle hands and
it always touches you back.
you are composed of what touches you back,
what you can sit still and listen to.
what buzzes inside of you,
what you contain and
what you allow to escape.
it is about you,
it has always been about you. not
your hurt, not what callouses your palms or
haunts your clasped prayers.
it is just about your body,
every part of your body,
from the bottoms of your feet
to your fingertips, your
nose, the ends of your hair,
it is about listening when the
earth tells you, this body is
okay. this body is enough. it is
about how everything you touch
always touches back.

i talk about leaving in a whisper, like i
shouldn't raise my voice too loud and jolt my
self awake in the process.
in secret, hiding in the corners that you
blocked off in red tape. you dont need
this anymore, you scribble out pieces and
make me look more like you. you dont need
any of this.
you dont need this. you
have me.
behind closed doors, i try to gather my strength
to break down the frame. i press my palms against
the wood and check the lock.
i talk about walking away and my feet are planted. i tell
everyone that i am moving, but they can see my stillness.
what's taking so long? over and over, like an alarm clock
to my sleeping figure, what are you still doing here?
i talk about leaving, but i can't hear it without freezing.
eyes wide and stunned, i can't hear it without trying to
hide inside of myself.
it's just leaving, but i can't stop my voice from wavering.
it's just leaving, but my fists don't make the door budge.
it's just leaving, but it circles around my brain like a fish
trying not to fall down the drain. trying not to break down
the door.
it's just leaving, they tell me,
i am anchored to my pain.
where would i go? i reply.

and if we happen to
explode like a star that has
held it's breath for just a bit
too long, an exhale of
the memories we press into each other,
i will acknowledge it as less of a cheap shot to
my stomach and more like a tender tide
between the skin and the bed.
i have come this far on the back of
every single mistake,
i had caved into your mouth the second
it collided against mine and
i have let all of this love leak from the
cracks in my skin.
if our feverish and hungry hands
soften into gentle fingertips and
quiet, distracted touches, i will
lull into the way it still feels like you are
coming home every time. when we
get old and we collapse into the safety
of our own walls after one of the long days that
never end, i will take the silence as less of a bitter
absolution and more like a shift into the refuge of
each evening. i have spent my time
wanting, i have spent my time craving and
devouring all of the you that i could get my hands
on. if we kiss each other until our deprived shoulders
slump into acceptance, i will kiss you again and
we can carry each
other through phases like the moon. if we happen to
love each other so much that we do little else, i will
cherish every second that we spend doing nothing.

there is depth to the light that you can't
watch without squinting, without flinching
and moving towards shelter.
it rings true of the body you
are gripping so tightly.
i am the body that i have always been,
dimly lit and shaking like a wet dog,
cornered against faces that are pointed like knives.
i buzz like there are bees inside of my stomach, i harbor
nocturnal animals and bugs in my hair.
the edges of my mouth are not illuminated with
warmth when you touch me. not anymore.
not ever, i wont lie to soften the shadows.
you cover your
eyes with your stupid warm hands and the darkness
clears its throat.
you try to touch me but it doesn't feel holy, it doesn't
feel sacred, and the darkness
clears its throat.
i have never had exalted palms against
my skin. the good ones see the black hole of
my empty space and the bad ones see my
glow as a lack of commitment.
i am containing the twilight, right after
the sun gives up for the day.
if there is a light i will swallow it whole.
if there is a god i am going to make him turn his
head away.

all beauty is
is the beginning of abhorrence,
it is horror that is easy to look at.
when can you twist your body
and turn it ******?
i can do it on command,
i have skilled the viciousness of my mouth to bite
willingly, to tear without reserve.
all poetry is
is running hands over skin,
touching yourself.
i make templates to map out the faults of my words.
i curve my neck towards my blame,
i rehash my faith on repulsion.
this madness has a frame to hold onto
in the middle of the transition
from something digestible
to something noxious.
beauty morphs itself into something
that burns to cover with your palms,
like a child trying to trap light between fingers,
maybe you should learn to keep your hands
to yourself.
all love is
is pressing our soles into the dirt and our
deception into the other side of the bed while we
construct a way out.
if we never love each other,
there is no refuge to fall from,
only towards.
when can i take my love
and make it hurt?
where can i place my lust so
you can watch it burn,
so you can watch it brand the only
body i can still stand to identify?
i can spit this truth from my lips without choking.
i don't care what it looks like while it is lying
dead on the floor.
this is the disgust that is so final, this is
what all beauty mutates into; something holy that
i can't love because i can't recognize.

i cut our dreams from the carcass of someone who didn't know any better.
i slice fresh pieces off of the things you speak into wanting,
a knife in the fist of someone who doesn't know any better;
begging to tinge the skin with devotion in place of disease.
i drain blood from soft and nameless remains, i hand pick silence
from marble statues and posed family photos,
i carve into the stomach of someone who didn't know any better.
i take her lungs and her ribs, i take her bones and
i take her heart and i ring my ***** hands
in a kitchen sink until the red washes down the drain,
chunks of carnality pressed into the palm of someone who doesn't know any better;
devout offerings to the darkness in the corner, to the chains on
the wall. i rip our love from the body of a stranger who didn't know
any better, i'm holding her
chest in my hands and i'm begging her discarded scraps to sink
into my fervor in place of condemnation;
i'm holding her chest in my hands and i'm chanting prayer;
"creatures must fall apart
to gratify the selfish wanting of warm bodies.
there is no creation without devastation;
if not you, me.
if not your flesh, mine."

two people go in circles, one
extending arms, holding a heart in hands,
dripping blood onto tile floor.
and shes asking what you'll do with it,
so it's about time you decide whether
to use your hands or your teeth.
whether to cup your palms and
let her relax her shoulders or dig your
fingernails into the muscle because there is blood
all over the floor and she just wants
to know if you'll go ahead and tear
her apart.
it is a dance that never stops dancing,
indecision thrives on the only defense you
have left. she doesn't stop dancing with you,
arms tired, legs spinning in circles and feet
slipping on the tiles below her and shes
asking you what you'll do with it,
so what's it going to be,
hands or teeth?