no one ever taught me
not to make homes out of the people i kiss,
not to make space in my ribcage for every meaningless "i love you"
so, more out of habit than kindness,
i have given myself to every undeserving wanderer.
i have watched them walk away with my pieces.
no one ever taught me how to keep myself whole in love
it echos through the walls of my chest,
what is left? what is left?

it is late, cut holes in old linen sheets
let light pour through into a space we have designated as our own
"our kingdom," you whisper, "you and me versus the winter."
it is lazy sunday morning, time trails behind us and you count freckles on my face
familiar like old habits, strumming against my stomach like your favorite guitar.
it is tired, staring at glow-in-the-dark stars like a discount planetarium
"a serious question," we know these words are never serious. you dont always have to ask, just kiss me, just kiss me, just kiss me.
it is tuesday afternoons, barefoot dancing in refrigerator lights
like safe habits, like a home to go to when the people you love cannot contain you.
like free space to be completely not contained, like breaking necklaces,
"please dont leave, not yet, a few more minutes."
write poems, i will turn them into songs.
make movements, i will turn them into habits,
running my hand up and down your arm like executive function
hushed whisper, a just-you-and-me whisper;
it is a poem every time you open your mouth.
you are the sunlight coming through the linen,
you are the lazy sunday morning,
you are what i hold onto during winter,
you are my hope for spring.

i have played this scene so many times
back and forth; it feels nostalgic like a memory.
i am lying next to you,
legs tangled up,
running your hand through my messy hair
using your chest as a pillow
your breathing is some tired syncopation and your heartbeat is an alarm clock,
it is lazy-
whatever happened before is over
it has become quiet
no shirt, blankets in a ball at the end of the bed
maybe i was crying, maybe we were having ***, maybe you yelled and i got defensive, maybe it was nothing at all
it is still,
we say sorry without speaking,
it is understood and we come to agreements
we fall asleep and wake up and whatever happened before is over.
it plays in my head so often
it feels like i am recalling your smile
domestic moments,
some moments where you are here after it is over.
some painful, fake, imaginary memories where you stay,
you stay, you stay.

I type and erase, and go back, and start over
I repeat this until I can write some shaky confession that resembles poetry
About something that is not how your lips taste
And how you pull me on top of you
Grab me by the waist and lace your fingers with mine
Something that is not how I quiet my terrifying fear of intimacy
Just for a moment, just for this second, just to type and erase,
and go back, and start over
And they tell me, "write what you know"
So my pages are empty and I scream back, "I've forgotten everything else but you."

i am so in love with someone
who is so in love with me
i can't write about it
because every time i look at her
a verse writes itself
i am hands-off
i am all-in
i am so completely ******.
it will hurt like hell.
i am doing it anyway.

i called to tell you that
i don't love you as much as i thought i did.
i want someone to heal me
in the permanent way
i have never been able to stick a band-aid over.
i want someone to make me real
in the way that pinching my forearm has never
accomplished.
mostly,
i want someone to teach me
that man is not inherently evil
that the good in the world sticks to your lips
after goodnight kisses
i want someone to restore
whatever childlike wonder i let go of,
to pick out the resentment in me like shards of broken glass
and make me a whole person.
i have tried to tie my loose ends together,
i come apart like a fitted bed-sheet,
like trying over and over again,
like falling just short.
i called to tell you that,
if i think hard enough,
if i make my head less cloudy,
if i stop pretending,
i do not love you.
but i want so badly, so selfishly for you to love me,
to fix me,
and i called to tell you that it's just because
i don't think i can do it all by myself.

sometimes, it feels like the bath filling up with water,
you lie there and try to relax as it
slowly inches up your thighs and past your slumped shoulders.
or like watching the clock move, watching the day turn on and off-
incoherent, stunned, you try to drown your incapability in apathy
like being strapped to a bed
like being force fed, out of your control in a way that forces you to feel it.

sometimes, it feels like breaking your bones,
a sharp snap you can hear for years when you fall asleep
shooting pain up your spine and straight to your fight-or-flight response
it feels like choking,
it is not slipping in and out, it is violent crashing waves
the tide came in while your eyes were closed
and you're being thrown headfirst against the rocks

sometimes, it feels like keeping a secret,
like holding your tongue, like shy muffled smiles
and pulling misguided threads on your years-old sweaters.
it tastes just like guilt but also a little bit like copper,
almost familiar but with a difference that keeps you up drenched in sweat
it feels like "you did this to yourself" and all you can hear is "it is your fault"

it feels like nothing, sometimes, too.
it feels like emptiness, it feels like 'scared-to-be-touched'
it feels like absolutely hollow,
like knee-**** reactions when people put their hands on you
like your fight-or-flight lever is broken and you're trapped inside of a burning building with flight on your mind against painted-shut windows
it feels a whole lot
like they took the exact definition away from you that day
like you have a bunch of "almost"s
like a puzzle that has been worn through generations, sticky fingers and gluing together corner and middle pieces

it feels like something is missing,
it feels like you do a manual reset of every feeling to try and sew yourself back together,
it feels like someone bent your needle and frayed your thread and you are trying but they took all of your chances away from you

a little bit vague, inexplicable, 'you-had-to-be-there', like everything, like nothing,

like helpless, if you had to give it a title.

I am unsatisfied in a way that feels violent, that rips through flesh and punctures lungs and coughs up blood. I am unhappy in a way that makes my hands shake and i create new letters out of the pencil marks i draw. I cannot breathe in a way that makes my lungs black with tar and my mouth hurt, i choke on spit and take four deep breaths where girls need one. I want something in a way that makes me want to occupy my time, I write needless poetry just to get it out of my skin and into someplace more permanent, it falls out of me and when I move it trails behind me. It repeats itself in my head like a mantra, I torture myself in the knowing way that things can never be as good as they are when I close my eyes and I am touching you and every rule we have is broken or did not exist in the first place, there is no good or bad space there is no mess ups or fumbling hands there is no regretting it I am absolutely desperate because I am out of options and I know you warned me not to get attached not to get conflicted not to mess it up but I am out of my mind in a way that is so over my head that I cannot even hear you I am absolutely drowning in my bad decisions I am so crazy about you I don't care how many deep breaths I take just to keep going I am not even counting anymore

you feel like bursting through hospital doors.
repeating names, rushed hands all over my body looking for signs of distress.
you feel like dialated pupils,
like throwing tequila back and standing gutter-in-the-street still until you feel every drop of poison fall down your throat and into your stomach.

you feel like waking up the neighbors,
like throwing wedding shower vases,
like turning on neighborhood streetlights and calling for backup.
you feel like the anguish that sticks onto places you cant reach in the shower;
how im not sure i will ever get your smell off of me.
you feel like chaos, like burden, like a level of wretchedness that takes two hands to control.
you feel like showing up unannounced,
heart racing so hard i feel it bounce along to a chorus of ringing in my ears.

and maybe that's why i can't get rid of you.
because you have replaced impulsivity with spontaneity,
you have taken the fear out of failure and you have made the way danger sounds so easy off of your lips
you feel like the "speak now" instead of the "forever hold your peace."
you feel like the selfish "wait," the last desperate pleading case;
you feel like the passion infecting my lungs in breaths of smoke and dancing dandelion seeds in my ridbcage like a magic show.

like an age-old story, some different form of you all strong women must endure,

you feel like the irresistible situational irony they whisper about when they say "it is not love if it is not torture."

i will write every time i miss you
i will choke out words and mix this feeling into permanence
i will listen to the blackness of the sky when it speaks to me
like it always has
before you,
after you,
this time, do not forget what he has done to you.
it is not your fault that you mistake pain for love
but untangle the wires
do not forget how this feels.

i will write every time i miss you
i will tell the world how i am feeling
i will tell them which i fear is worse-
the emptiness you have carved out of me,
feeling every bone in my ribcage expand and contract with my breathsounds,
versus the way i let you
the way i laid in place and pretended it did not hurt

i will write every time i miss you
i will exist openly and let the world understand how much i am feeling
because if i don't have a course of action every time
a wave of you washes over me
i will fall into the comfort it reminds me of
i will manipulate the skies until the stars spell out i forgive you

i will write every time i miss you
so you can read the damage you have done
and understand that with every word i write
with every second i do not come back
i almost do

i fall asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
and wake under a dying tree.
red tears fall around me and land next to fingertips
ladybugs crawl over my knees and find a home in the straw.

what once was filled with life has become quiet,
the sky sends apathy in place of the sun,
i wish that the wind would
speak softly and say you are safe in the pace the earth has set up;
push away my pieces gently
in the way it taught the sea so many years ago.

while we were trying to see who could hurt worse,
the world spun in circles like a child on a playground.
the seasons changed without us,
and the wind pushes and pulls you away like the tide,
it gathers your pieces and tells you you are safe without me.

the equinox spins backwards and
i am cultivated to the place where we decided that enough was enough.
my roots spread and break through the painful words we
planted in each others ribcages

i fell asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
the flashlight flickers of tiny bugs
long, dazed evenings where the sun falls in slow motion;
and woke permanent to the comatose forests.
you left,
you took the vitality of the cosmos with you,
the wind pushes past me,
scatters me,
tells me,
*look around you
it is slow; it is rusting, flushed
it is flaming.
he set the world on fire when he left you,
do what he has taught you.
create from the ashes he has left you,
and you will make yourself safe.

she owns stars  
they are hung in place of humming butterflies in her stomach
she does not get nervous, she gets enkindled;
set aflame within seconds
she is ultraviolet fearless,
feeling her penitence only where it is absolutely due
her name is attributed to shameless like a title
she does not make herself small
or fold neatly into borders and build refuge in corners
not smooth like a statue
she is rough around the fringe;
you can tell by looking at her
she is the definition of wear-and-tear, she is whirlwind
kicked around,
hung-out-to-dry,
her mouth has messy margins;
she possesses no absolutes
she is extraordinary,
boundless,
she embodies intensity and fills every word she speaks with volume
she cannot just touch the ones she loves,
she must wreak havoc in their lives.
the stars beg for forgiveness as
she ignites fury and forces conformity to her accompanying chaos.
the slightest hitch of breathing is suffocating
comfort is mistaken for smothering, extinguished vitality drives
an exit in ballerina form tornado
it is so carefully constructed,
a technique so practiced
it confounds the lines between art and destruction,
bitterness seeps from her tear ducts
acidic, every dance looks like an escape method around her wrists
she whispers;
"you cannot love
the constellations.
i contain multitudes,
i exist past your competence and occupy negative space;
i am made of what people wish they were bold enough to apperceive ."
and the stars translate in echo,
"you cannot love
what is scared to be touched.
oh,
what a lonely, impermanent space
frightened arrogance must occupy."

i think that you are lost
your hands shake and you try to make yourself small
your hands shake and you try to make yourself very big,
like a bird that sticks out all of his feathers at once
you are desperate,
you are, "tell me you see me."
you are, "tell me i exist to you."
i think that you flinch when i touch you because
youre not sure where you stand
or which version of you must take place in my palms
when its dark outside and we sit in a miserable room to be happy together
your eyes wander like a lost kid in a grocery store
untouched terrain surrounds you
and you are terrified to take your first step.
your voice drops when you are honest,
your eyes get cloudy when you mention your parents
there are things i have written in a notebook of you
people i have seen you turn into to hide yourself
and you'll tell me,
"you are crazy,
for writing poetry about a boy who can't speak."
and i will tell you,
"i am crazy,
for falling in love with the words i hear in the silence that belongs to him."

i have survived
storms.
i have survived a father's voice like thunder;
handprint lightning flowers petal over my skin
like i am a garden to sinners-
adam and eve call my grassroots their home and hum lullabies-
i have survived
anger.
pros and cons of
clock-ticking therapy sessions where money is thrown at my gaze,
fixed on the wall,
dollar-a-second drumming fingers
screaming so loud that heaven shuts the blinds and hangs a "closed" sign on the door.
pros and cons of
stumbling home,
under a murky peerless crowd of smoke,
slurring words trail around and behind me like moths to a porchlight.
morning headaches,
angry adults
damaging drywall and breaking family portraits
exhausting search for answers
exhausting search in a silence that lengthens the disconnect from child to mother
where your mind goes red and the honest truth that stays stuck to the roof of your mouth falls out
where you become an overflowing mailbox and your hands shake
the absence of parents who never taught you to hold your tongue
i have survived
hurt.
i have survived the specific type of loss that you feel in the pit of your stomach
the one that lies next to you
when you stare at the ceiling and your face hurts from crying
tears scrub your eyelids raw and you promise,
"if i ever make it through this,
i will never be here again."
i have survived giving up,
taking it all back, throwing it all away,
parallel structures of contemplation and decision
i have survived
lonely.
angry storms of abandonment, melodies of the lonely and the hurt
i reprise to the ones that add injury to insult,
you are not the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
i echo choruses to the people that force me to grow up at sixteen
i have destruction embedded into my neurotransmitters
i have shooting post-traumatic pain in my memories
i have survived
a hell that your hands are not stained enough to touch.
i assure you,
my love,
i will survive
you as well

love is patient
love is kind.
it does not envy
it does not boast
love is virtuous and accepting
and whole
it is not angry
nor malicious
nor ill tempered or weak
loving someone
however you hear these words
is not written in textbook
it takes forces far greater than those printed on paper
it takes forces far greater than love alone
human progression is not overshadowed
or exempt of love
it is not absent
nor negligent to its person
love is recovery
love is healing
love is not a cure to the ones who experience it
ask them,
they will tell you.
their love has bursts of anger
moments of temptation
it has ill temperament
it has anger
it is boastful and envious
it has weakness
love is expansion
it is movement and growth
it is acceptance of envy
acceptance of weakness
loving someone is a full time job
it is not pure in nature
it is not the romantic era poets
it is full of lust
and anger
it is selfish
it is not a cure
it is an extension, not a necessity
it is not exclusive or inclusive to growth
it is something no book can teach you;
you must learn through experience
that love takes far more complicated emotions
than just love

yesterday i could see myself falling apart
its harder than i thought to miss you
and my chest is tight
and i always feel like everyone is looking at me
i never know what they want with me
and i travel all over and meet so many new people
i beg myself to fall in love someone tangible
sometime i can do more than just miss
someone who can be real
but it doesn't work anymore.
i wish it was still easy
and i could fall in love with everyone i met
like i used to when i was younger
and less afraid of what the world can give to me
less afraid of what i can handle
i am older now and i am so terrified
because i am in love
and i hate it
all anyone has done in my life is fall apart
and i don't know what id do if you fell apart
i need you and that is the scariest part of my world
i cannot replace you with a temporary solution
or a quick fix
you are it
you are it
i wrote this to ask you to stay
please don't fall apart on me
i am not strong enough to do this alone anymore

i never really understood what
"it comes and goes in waves" meant
but now i can see
no matter how stationed i am to the floor
imagining my feet are tree roots extending into the earth
i have always felt myself
falter with the tides heavy motions
stumbling along in a dance i dont know the steps to
falling face first behind the crowd of people who have got it figured out
jealousy hitting the palms of my hands before the asphalt
missing you is a constant heartrate
but these memories, feeling you so vividly it shakes me down
it comes and goes in waves

i never understood what
"time heals all wounds" meant
because my skin is painted with bruises that share no connotation with love
even when they fade i can recount the ache theyve left
like a worn out map
of every time i have pretended not to hear the exhaustion drip from your words
i used to hear your voice in my favorite melodies
and share my songs with you like lullabies
but now music is just noise to erase your voice
i dont think that time will ever take you away from me
i dont think i'd want it to

i wish on every flash of light and every makeshift airplane shooting star that i could leave the piece of me that can't stop thinking of you on one of these one-time roadtrips with no destination
no cliche seems to cover how quickly the word love disintegrates or how mixing up being happy with being scared is coincidentally more common than anyone would have expected.
i will forget this trainwreck you put me in
this half angry poetry you made me write
because even if it holds no meaning,
time heals all wounds, it comes in goes in waves

it sounds like something you say to someone you can't stop thinking about and maybe when i told you i hated you i was a hypocrite and maybe i have always been a hypocrite but i did i do i hate how you planted seeds in my lungs and watched me choke on the roots i hate how you filled me with beautiful things just to see the smoke when you lit it up into flames i hate how you were a liar and you told me you loved me and you didn't mean it i hate how you created me from something destructive and ****** and you watched me want you and you watched me love you and you watched me suffocate and im a hypocrite because i hate you and i feel like an idiot for doing anything for you i hate how you made me be the person i never wanted to be i hate that our odds never improved i hate that you didn't love me i hate that you lied to me i hate that i let you i do not miss you ive told you there is nothing here for you under a cheap tapestry there is nothing here for you do not mind the girl behind the curtain writing poetry about the boy that broke her heart there is nothing here for you i can repeat it while i move boxes of our memories out of my chest out of my heart i can repeat it when its late and i want to tell you i miss you (i do not miss you) i can repeat it until it sets the forests in me on fire and i think i am on fire because i never got to be angry i sat in tears and never got to be angry i wasn't able to hate you and now i hate you i do not miss you there is nothing here for you and im a hypocrite because i am a liar because i love you because i miss you because if you told me you missed me too i would resume position and give you everything but anger is easier than acceptance and i can't play with fire anymore i do not miss you i do not miss you i do not miss you

i do not deserve what you did to me
what youve done to me
i have no poetry to write
i have no words to waste
i hope you remember that
there is absolutely nothing here for you anymore
i hope you never forget how that sounds
when you wake up
i hope you remember that
i could've given you every star if you asked
there is absolutely nothing here for you

i have no tragic epic to force out of my palms for you
i gave you a blank page and
you chose not to be a part of my narrative
i will spend the rest of my life trying not to blame myself
for my bad editing skills
and red pen i miss you marks
maybe these letters would feel more natural
if my writing was neater,
my words were easier to read
or they sounded nicer falling off of my tongue

i write and recall and revise
and try to come up with a story about
how i could’ve made you stay
if i gave you a pencil
and some paper
would you put me out of my sonnet-style misery,
take the blame out of my cramping hands
and tell me there was nothing we could’ve done?
let me stop searching for words that are
synonymous to the way you looked at me when
i told you 
i loved you for the first time
take these cliches off of my fingertips
let the writer in me learn to
grieve its muse
instead of immortalizing the pain of loss 
and tell me
we never even had a chance

i know there have been moments where you pulled yourself down the stairs just to collapse onto the kitchen floor
i know there have been moments where you repeated,
"i will most certainly not make it out of this alive"
and you wake up the next morning and make it an inch further
my dear dramatic girl
there is no fault in loving with all of your heart
you will grow up and know what each word he presses to your chest means
you will have an Oxfords Dictionary for every time he tells you he was just out late
but if you keep putting pieces of you into everyone who runs their finger over your lips
or tells you "forever" as if it hasn't already lost its meaning
you will lose yourself
do not let the world desensitize you to its contents
theres nothing more tragic than watching a romantic become a cynic
you are full of a quality you cannot let every boy that stops loving you when it's convenient take from you
you are truthful and forgiving
you are trusting
and whats left of your heart is safety-pinned onto your sleeve
your heart belongs to you alone and i know its been a while since you heard this, but
you are full without people miles away telling you that they think you'd look pretty without your clothes on
dust it off,
lie on the kitchen floor and remember what it felt like when you said
"i will most certainly not make it out of this alive"
for when you wake up one morning and forget how it sounds
to be despondent in love
do not let the world take you and spread you over people who push you to fill pieces of them they have lost in others
you are prevailing every time you whisper
"i love you, too"

seven months ago:

i. i will fall asleep and let it infect me like a virus and if i die before i wake up my obituary will explain to you how i felt tonight so i never have to

ii. it’s cosmic, i’m telling you. you’d miss me if i wasn’t here.

iii. it’s all quiet. i am here but no one can see me. they can feel me. it’s easy and unpleasant. i just exist, past their realms and in their blind spots.

iv. i want to go back in time and pick you instead

six months ago:

i. i have a lot of pent up resentment towards people i used to love that are successfully existing without me in their lives while i am struggling without them

ii. cant stand you. cant stand being away from you. thank you for calling me beautiful, even if you didnt mean it. i don't feel that anymore, but i did. even for a moment, it was there. we were there.

iii. of all the things you did to me, the worst was making me believe they were in my best interest.

iv. if i could sit in a puddle of nostalgia and let every memory with you hit me like a rain shower id probably contract pneumonia or something.

five months ago:

i. it’s comforting for me to know that you can miss someone and love them without wanting them in your life.

ii. ive spent too much time treating myself as if my love is not sacred, as if it can’t stop time and heal people and create magic. everyone i love is lucky to have me, whether they know it or not.

iii. i’ve always had vivid dreams but last night made me feel something very weird and unexpected.

iv. it’s exhausting falling in love with and getting your heart broken by every soul you meet but i am strong

four months ago:

i. i surround myself with nice and beautiful people and in turn feel disgusting and destructive and ******.

ii. i know people can see me but i feel entirely translucent and invisible

iii. i can’t wait to be 18 so i can check myself into a psych ward

iv. i have stood where you stand and felt what you feel and it’s tortuous and inhumane but you exist outside of the boundaries it sets for you

three months ago:

i. i feel like my life is balanced between the moment where you realize you are falling and you are going to hit the ground and the second after you feel it beneath you

ii. i am not a savior, i am not an angel. my words will not heal you. don’t put the pressure of your will to live on my shoulders, i am tired and i have a lot to balance.

iii. today i am a raincloud and not even just a raincloud i am a cloud that is full and dark and waiting and it won’t rain it will pour it will storm there will be sirens and lightning bolts and thunder and people will cower in safety and i will stay here and be destructive

iv. i woke up safe yesterday, today none of it is real and i hurt when people touch me

two months ago:

i. i think i am in love and it’s inconvenient it’s pestering, i am trying i am trying i am trying.

ii. i want to feel love but i feel so unattainable like i am so out of touch with my genuine emotions that i wouldn’t even know how to feel it (if i even could?)

iii. you have no ties to the people you have been. every day you grow- every day you leave your mistakes behind you and shed all of your previous versions. keep going.

iv. nothing has changed. dont mistake my compliance for forgiveness.


one month ago:

i. i wish the things i care about in my life were concrete instead of the distorted abstract i deal with everyday like a chore

ii. i think about what being dead would feel like a lot and every time i am done i feel like i have to apologize to my mother.

iii. you are not an antidote, i do not need you to survive, you are not sunlight, i do not need you to grow

iv. i am afraid i will never get better.

v. i have always had a hard time with holding grudges but today i climbed onto the other side of the railroad bridge and sat above the water, in line with the trees, and i felt so high and real i whispered into my own palms “i forgive you.”

share your favorite things with the temporary people in your life
staple your favorite songs to the foreheads of people you've known for two weeks
dance around in artificial lightning and touch them for as long as you can
take pictures with disposable cameras, pin them to cork-boards and write down their dates
scrawl their names in sharpie ink on your wall, ignore when your mother gets mad at you for it
watch your favorite movies with them
kiss them during your favorite part
write down the taste
write down what you hear
fill notebooks with their sentences
take their hand and lead them to your favorite places
count the blades of grass under you
record the rocks
the tree leaves
the sand
the hardwood floor
read them your favorite books
tell them your theories
match them to main characters and laugh when they try to imitate their dialect
read them your poetry
whisper your favorite words in their ear
pass them notes with your favorite lyrics
give them tastes of your favorite ice cream flavor
promise yourself not to forget their disgusted face
at your favorite weird food
smear the color yellow into their palms
because it has always been your favorite
trace the lines that crack the paint
give them your favorite sweatshirt
let them make it their home
smell them on you the next time you wear it
let them enter your world and include them in your list of favorites
and
then

when they break your heart,
you will be forced to conform to the sadness you feel
you will have to turn off the radio when that song comes on and you see their smile in the melody
you will have to pay for a new camera
burn pictures and blame the smoke for your teary eyes
stock up on white-out and erase those dates
when they pass the next year you will stay inside all day and your hands will shake
you will have to paint a new color on your wall just to quit staring at their name while you try to fall asleep
you will paint three, four, five coats atop their handwriting and
at night you will still be able to see it
you will have to go to the movies and categorize new favorite scenes
when that movie plays on sunday morning you will taste them and it will taste like cold coffee and
eventually you will be strong enough to change the channel
you will tear pages out,
buy new notebooks
drive by your favorite places and don't stop
you will have to read new pages
find new characters
its okay if you catch yourself running over the spine of the book you woke them up to read at four AM
buy a dictionary and find new favorite words
make up new favorite words and drop them into casual conversation
eat new icecream,
try more weird foods at restaurants you can't pronounce
look at colors more closely and determine a new favorite
buy new clothes
ones that smell like mass production and the local mall
you will leave the world you gave to them
and you will create a new world
with new favorites
with new songs, words, memories, places, books, movies, foods
with new pieces of you
and you will let someone new enter that world
they will tear chips of paint off of your wall
and ask you what your favorite color is
its okay to hesitate
say blue.

in·ti·ma·cy
i. the catch they refuse to put down in books forgotten in church pews is as follows; heaven only exists in your memories. you create heaven in moments that have already happened, without the pearly gates or judgement. it is why you always reminded me that i am not aware of what i'm missing until i've immortalized it into something i will never be able to experience again.
ii. you do not, cannot, exist in the emptiness of one person. the brutal truth is that no one is worth it. everyone lies on their back and sees the same world in different shades, everyone is making mistakes that keep them up at night, they have no room to contain your multitudes.
iii. you are only subjected to understanding how selfish this notion is when you become too much for yourself, when you wish more than anything to stuff your runoff emotions and times you've stayed up singing to the sunrise into the cracks of someone who'd rather get drunk late and leave the bed cold in the morning than tell you that you are not as important as you like to think you are
iv. i am not as important as i like to think i am

ab·sence
i. i can't bring myself to say sorry for leaving, i am chasing sunsets and even though i hope you are sitting in one dimension or another, i refuse to be tethered to these actions. i love the noise of your boots on the asphalt but i will keep you in a moment that has now already happened and make you heaven after i stop hearing that sound like my favorite song when i wake up at three AM and forget that i am alone
ii. i have always had intense eyes and you used to tell me that the way my hair falls in front of my face was your favorite thing in the whole universe but you stopped brushing it away to see all of me and i can't help but be worried that maybe i stuffed all of my anger into the parts of you that were still grasping for air and i smothered your flames like a child holding onto a bird so tight it dies in her palms
iii. i remember waking you up in the middle of the night and saying, "do you think that love is just timing how long it takes you to get the other person to hate you?" i don't remember your exact reply but you started sleeping in a different bed after that

in·sol·u·ble
i. one time my mom told me that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result so even though there is no medicine that will numb my senses and make it hard to wake up early but keep you foggy in my memory, we should stop trying to mean it when we mumble out "i love you" all the times we are both bored and too lazy to find someone new
ii. like most people who choose writing over therapy, i am a liar. i have always been a self-centered liar that only cares about myself  but for the sake of inspiration on my fingertips i can pretend we were in love at one point or another.
iii. i talk too fast and you told me that you hated that about me before i threw something in your direction aiming to miss and hitting your shoulder (i'm sorry) that was our worst fight and you stopped looking me in the eyes until i packed up all of my things and tiptoed around your temper and out of the house
iv. i didnt exactly keep count but i think it took around seven months and twelve days for me to make you hate me and you've never said it but the whole world feels like it has shut me out and gone cold and if recounting all of this is what heaven is supposed to be like, i would rather fall backwards into hell because at least it is warm there

rep·e·ti·tion
i. i've exhausted all of my apologies because i have been conditioned to feel bad about not fulfilling peoples expectations and you made the word sorry sound sharp, i am far away from my ambitions and if you were still here youd call me lazy but youd kiss me after
ii. when it is very late, i start to believe that maybe i have the capacity of multitudes inside of me and thats why all i do is feel sorry for myself, because i am the only one in the world capable of carrying the hearts of the people that don't love me anymore
iii. when morning comes, i am always able to convince myself that i am not as important as i like to think that i am.

my hands are shaky
my eyes are the kind of dry that only happens when you wake up after crying
my breath catches in my throat like there is a roadblock in my lungs
i regret every word i write and stick into permanence
but i don't know how else to explain the whirlwind feeling in my stomach
i want to go back and mute our conversations
push my future self to stop before staining my favorite songs with memories that hurt my chest
i want to go back and tell myself,
"darling girl,
take a break
sleep early
watch the sunrise a different day"
but you were magnetic, baby
and i could help myself but that was no fun
ive always struggled with emotional permanence
i grew up being told i was trouble
the absence of feeling is the absence of memory
in a repeated cycle that sets flame to the things we created together
i watch it burn with tools to smother the fire
but my arms are paralyzed
i want to go back
and tell myself that
sitting on the kitchen floor
scratching poetry into the floorboards
was not a valuable consumption of my time
feeling cold in june was a waste of hot days and
we could have been so good
if i had let us
if you had let us
here is my promise;
july will be sun kissed and sweet
my mistakes will fall off of me like water
weightless and improving
i will find new music
i will create more
there is nothing wrong with putting your heart into the wrong thing
there is nothing wrong with being naive,
i can't keep falling apart when june refuses to bend to my expectations
july will be without you
sun kissed and sweet
i will not fall asleep trying not to cry
no morning headaches and sad poetry
it will be new
i will make it new

it is light
it is how i write and write but that's the only word worthy of describing
it is waking up in the middle of summer on your own time
it is closing your eyes with the sun on your face
comfort in blankets when safety is thousands of miles away
free thinking and blushing and taking day-naps
one thousand questions with repeated answers
it is smiling so hard your face hurts
clean sheets and sitting in empty fields
it is car rides with the windows down
the way the moon reflects across water when the sky is deep purple
it is dancing in the refrigerator light
with no socks on
at three am
to a quiet song we hum the next day
it is coffee in the morning
alcohol that stains your brain and makes you feel like you're underwater
it is the first time we touch
with enough electricity to power a city for a week
it is the weightlessness of your laugh
and messy bedhead
it is the way distance disintegrates like poetry
and your promises in prose
always on my mind
in my words
it is that thing people are writing about when they say,
"when you break my heart, it will hurt like hell"

i'd do everyone around us a big favor
and apologize
i'd do them an even bigger favor
and forget you
but baby you knew
my stubborn masochism was my best quality
when you told me you didn't love me
so tell me
does it feel good
when i make you feel wanted
when i pull you close to me
and hold my tongue
when i regurgitate your fantasies and choke on your scripts
is it everything you wanted it to be
am i lifeless enough
am i suffocating enough
tell me
did you keep me within drunk arms reach
because you knew
i could learn to take your blows
like a ******* champ
is it everything you wanted it to be
do you see the way you hurt me
in the way i left you
you cornered me and expected me not to show my teeth
you shouldn't have been
surprised when i fought back
there's nothing wrong with being a monster
can't you see who you made me be in your reflection?
look closer

i feel like i am the only one who gets upset about how quickly the earth moves and it took a lot of time and a lot of people to sit me down and explain why i can't feel each second and each rotation like a carnival ride and i think messing with my placemat at the dinner table asking why we all don't get dizzy was the first time my family made me feel stupid. this isn't poetry as much as not being able to sleep but when you're a writer i doubt there's much of a difference. things go over my head a lot so i always ask people to be blunt with me but sometimes the force trauma hurts so bad i want to throw up honesty and i can't admit that i like beating around the bush better than knowing exactly what's happening and being able to cross off and narrow down like a game where i never learned how to deal with feeling genuine emotions for other people because there is a strange comfort in ambiguity knowing that even though things change all the time and the earth spins at a million miles an hour that's not the reason why im sick

If I had a better memory
I would let those conversations lull me to sleep
And play that vocabulary in my mind like
A handwritten song
And there are a lot of things that make up a human mind
Components that reach all the way down into your ribcage
Through trembling hands and empty stomaches
But I intend to feel them all
One time,
A long time ago,
Someone used the word "frightening"
To describe the uncertainty
And burden
That comes with having complex emotions
That word is used as a scapegoat
To expunge yourself of the shadow of vulnerability
It takes hours to reach the tips of my fingers
With everything I feel
And maybe I write so much
Because I never remember exactly what people say
Or maybe it's because
I would like to remember it through rose tinted glasses
Either way
It stretches across miles
And I would use that scapegoat word
To describe what it feels like to be vulnerable
When you realize all of these pretend walls you've put in place
Can be destroyed with the right knock
And I think poetry
Isn't about that frightening feeling
It is about
Feeling it
Being frightened
Having emotion
And continuing
Where others would not

maybe its because it hurts somewhere in the pit of my stomach to think about how far away you are and how close we used to be and thats why i try to stay moving all of the time because i'm trying to distract myself from how long it would take for me to get there and how long id have to hold my breath in order for you to admit you wanted me where you are.

maybe its because i never got over the first time you told me you wanted to kiss me or the first time you told me you were tired of me because they felt so similar that sometimes i get the syllables twisted and i felt like too much work and detail on an abandoned project so i let you place me somewhere between your old memories and your new ambitions because whats the difference between compliance and being too exhausted to argue?

maybe its because it hurts to think about all that you've done and all that i've done and it hurts to lace them together in a spiderweb of why we didn't work out and maybe its because we didn't try hard enough or maybe its because we have always been written as a tragic story where we are both victims of self sabotage with emotional damage that keeps us up at night and our own demons that could never learn to love eachother

maybe it hurts because its not our fault or maybe it hurts because it is and we are both too stubborn to admit it

i sit in a boat
and im so far from shore i have forgotten which direction the horizon follows me
i am so far from home the word sounds foreign and construed as an apology
i am so out of reach the seagulls will never dive deep enough
or swoop shallow and barely disturb the oceans sequence of tides and rhythms
to pick me up

i sit in a boat
the waves steady flow acts as a clock to keep me sane
it rocks me
it rocks my boat
back and forth in its tick tock motion
the fact that i haven't seen any fish glide by
and wrap themselves in the warmth of the crystals dancing on the top of the water
creates a feeling more violently lonely in the pit of my stomach
than the fact that i sit in a boat all alone

i sit in a boat
in the middle of the ocean
in the middle of nowhere
its easy to comprehend that there is nothing above me
the sky is a blank sheet of paper
the horizon falls all around me an encompasses me
looking up makes me lose time with the waves

its harder to comprehend the likelihood of nothing below me
when i fall in the water
and when i wave my arms towards the diamonds above me
when i blow air though my nose
and keep my eyes shut tight
when the water begins to get cold around my feet
towards my chest and on my shoulders
when the light green water that has comforted me like a mother
that has taught me like a father
the waves that have kept me in sane like a teacher
disintegrates into a dark murky black
so quickly i have no time to notice
where the pressure is too loud to hear any lessons
where the touch is so ice cold every hug feels like a constrictive hand around my throat

i sit in a boat
its easy to understand i am alone up above
no one calls dinnertime
no waves rock me to sleep
no birds call their mates
no bugs fall in and out of their reflections
its harder to fathom that
under the peak of the water
under the tired lazy strokes
i look intently and see nothing
i look intently and all i see is how
in an ocean that stretches forever
and falls off of the horizon
i was alone before i realized it
i was alone when the sun reached down
and bounced off of its blue playground
i was alone when it comforted me and i was alone when it choked me
all i have ever been
is completely alone

i have wasted so much paper for you
i have told strangers things i haven't thought about telling you
i have written poetry like
its a cheap substitute for therapy
and i've held the pencil so hard the lead breaks
when my hands shake too much to keep going
i have gone to all of these great lengths
i have written epics about the way you left me
i have written sonnets about how you came back
ive never shown you any of this in fear you will see how my handwriting slowly deteriorates into shaky lines and abstract complaints
in fear that you will make the connection that i havent spent one day free of you since we met
i feel like i have so much to say
and maybe im an expert on beating around the bush
or maybe you're just too self absorbed to hear me
i have tried every way to encrypt my words and say them without letting their meaning sink into your skin
ive got enough for a novel but i havent made my point
i love you
stop hurting me

i try not to write poetry with your name in mind
because maybe im afraid of getting optimistic
maybe hopeful is too much of a burden to carry around
and staying angry is more safe than
all of the colors i feel when i look you in the eyes
and believe me baby-
sorry-
believe me,
i avert your gaze with probable cause
its easier to hate you than to hate our odds
and the comfort i feel when you say my name
like a whisper
like a prayer
like a moment for me alone
its easier to keep this pessimistic mindset
because i think, even as a raincloud, i can admit
if i describe the way my hands shake
when you touch me
i will never be able to silence myself
its easier to keep all of this bottled up
and sent out to sea
with no recipient
than to reach across the table
and break the silent rules we never put into permanence
believe me,
it's easier to avert your gaze
than to confront my feelings
because you know how i feel about confrontation
i can sleep surrounded by white noise
and i'll still have said too much
because every time you slip up
i feel it in my chest
and maybe i can admit that i dream about the eye contact i avoid
without destroying the way we both hold our breath around eachother
i dream about you hating these urges the same way i do
i dream about you wanting me and your sacrilegious mindset
and maybe if i fall asleep sober enough
in that dream
i can find a way to reach across the table
and write optimistic poetry about
how it feels to break the rules

because it echoes inside of my head
and i stare at a blank screen waiting
for the grace of God to light everything up
to light me up
to follow my parents footsteps and pretend im not in
desperate need of a deep breath
we are putting on a show and i am the star of their exasperated
"just get through it, alright?"

i know its over
because it has slowed to this gradual
remedial stop
after so much time and fake kinetic energy
and all i am left to do
is ponder the imaginary hypocrisy of something real
that is unable to be created
but destroyed in an instant
that manages to take hours
like my own personal paradox
my own personal big bang
i starve while watching everyone eat full meals

but, i suppose, my pauses cause bitterness and i know its over
because it took you this infinite instant to form
"i don't care anymore"
and you watched the expressions dance across my blank face
like you were my very own god
and in those words
that instant
that feeling
that remedial stop
you were telling me
"you don't need a deep breath.
you need an oxygen mask."

love is your recovery room
it is not the accident that puts you there
it doesn't matter how many times
i push my pencil into paper
and pass metaphors off as my own

i know its over
because i know you well enough
to know what it looks like
when color drains from your face
when your eyes gloss over like you've never said my name before
you are worse than a corpse
alive and breathing while i stay hooked into an IV with your words pushing through my bloodstream

i can write and write and write
about how much i know
how well i can pretend
how many big breaths i need

but it will not make it less over
it will not change the fact that
while i sit in the middle of my own big bang
while i choke on this instant
i use my last words
to apologize for making so much noise
i use my last words
to ask if you're breathing alright

There is a part of me
In the middle of my chest
Surrounding my center of gravity
That wants to write you out of my palms
For the hundredth time
And
Tell everyone in the world but you
In a collection of sentiments and drug induced nightfalls
My exact and precise emotions

There is a part of me
In the back of my head
Next to all of my memories
That begs for the erasure of your name
For the thousandth time
That pushes me to write down how I feel for the times
I forget that I loved everything poisonous about you

That I make art and I do it for you
And I can't sleep anymore and I do it for you
That every word I drip onto paper I say it for you

There is a part of me
In my fingertips,
In my stomach
That hurts to be natural
That hurts to go this distance
That hurts to write one poem about you
Where I dont come up on the losing end
That waits for your touch
The words I know you dont say for me

There is a part of me
In the front of my brain
Behind my eyelids
That remembers your apathy
That soaks in your words and
Refuses to settle within me in fear that
This repression will spring to life
And I will spend my nights in the echo of your words
Letting it scratch into my skin
Letting you scar me

It balances
With the part of me in my ribcage
That opens and closes for you like
A white picket fence
That does everything for you
That watches me listen to you
And fade in and out of consciousness
That remembers your antidote like a phone number
That silences the rest of my ******* body
In the hum of the drunk times you've told me
This time will be different
This time I will love you

There is a part of me
That wants to eradicate the existence of you in notebooks
In sentence structures and walls of words

And it strains against something that is not a part of me at all
But surrounds my body and pushes against me like gravity
That keeps you trapped in the center my palms
Against my skin with no puncture wounds
It flashes your face every time I blink
And I havent figured out how to free myself of this heart crushing weight
Than to write that

My body agrees
Loving you is not worth
All of this pressure

you felt like a still life.
i laid next to you and held your hand
and tunnel visioned on your IV
while everyone sat around you in a circle
coloring you in without looking up from their paper
convinced they can capture the color of your lips
as if they exist in a way that isnt
completely unique to you.
scratching their pencils in an echo
that stretched across the grand-*******-canyon.
(i'm no artist
but i traced a smiley face into your palm)
i've watched your eyes fall over your pale skin
cursing your own body for making you into
a stone cut marble statue
instead of a vibrant painting on the wall.
(this poem does your portrait no justice)
if i could drown myself in a thesaurus
i would come up with words that are
synonymous to the hole you are leaving in my chest,
you felt like a still life.
you reached out and ghosted your hand over river water
you reached out and pulled budding flowers from trees
you reached out and broke pencils and snapped necks
you reached out for please do not touch signs
(you reached out and your arms fell short of distance.)
and i refuse to believe your legacy will stay in this artwork,
that your vibrant light will be caged in the chest of those who know you,
that your masterpiece will be shoveled into the storage rooms,
and pushed around and cracked at the edges,
that eventually i will forget how your voice sounds
and how you reach out and touch right through me
(and how you clung to your body and forgave it for betraying you.)
i can only imagine
that you will leave me
(with a grief that is waiting in a sickly anticipation
crawling up my legs and surrounding me like ivy)
i dont know anything about grieving
but it sounds so heavy, like a cement weight subject
a sixteen-year-old isnt supposed to teach.
(with deafening echos of people who scribble over your eyelids)
(with a calling into the earth like there are stones in my stomach and i make a home in the bottom of a riverbed)
and don't understand what it means
to watch art be nothing more than art
when your words become quotes
and your life becomes dates
and your eyes become a memorial
(i will live with you
trapped in the holes)
covering the parts of me i left at your bedside
drenched in the ironic taste of brushstrokes and immortality
you still feel like a still life
you are your own genre
you give art a new definition
(and i will spend the rest of my time
getting your details right)

i've spent hours cramped over thesaurus pages and days ignoring warnings to write about the people who make me feel the things i am supposed to feel

i've spent sentences and words and enough knowledge to fill volumes like a life-time credit debt, pouring sentiments and metaphors over people who won't even bother to read how i venerate their actions, their touch, their reactions

how i analyze each detail like ive got a four year degree and student loans to last me until im ninety in How to Make Yourself Sick With Overthinking

i've spent so much time deflecting like a broken pinball machine in the back of an old restaurant, telling anyone who listens that people make me feel human, give me emotions, make me feel real

i've never spent enough time away from instant gratification, reaction, attention, to know who i am without the people that fill gaps in my lungs and ribs, who stitch me up and send me into a field of disconcerted intentions and bad messes

i can't wite much about who i am, how i react, my actions, my touch, my reactions. my soul is based off of the fragments of other souls that have touched me.

and still, i want the words and syllables and poetry.
i want the actions and touches and reactions
i want to mean something to the people that mean so much to me
i want someone to raise me to this compulsory apotheosis
it's impossible i am the only one with emotions bursting inside of them like nightlights and meteor showers

i suppose
i haven't spent enough time thinking how
there is a vain narcissism that encompasses a person who, without people, would not be a person at all.

ive been told
many great poets relied
on mind altering drugs
opiates and pills
in order to force their hand
to the paper
in order to jumpstart their brain
like a side of the road
two degrees
junkyard car

i have nothing to write about
when I abstain from your name
and calling you my ******
gives you the power to roll my eyes
back into my head
with pleasure
it gives you the power to **** me
typical bathroom scene
slumped over your
"i miss you"
choking on the apologies
i couldn't spit out
in the middle of winter

ill never be a great
and self destructive artist
not because i light your memories up under a spoon
not because I let you infect me
not because I roll you up and set you on fire
and breathe in your sentences

ill never be a great
self destructive artist
because there's no jumpstart
or moment
of connection
ive tried
every drug i can find
and im still
sitting with the shower running
letting it burn me
begging to feel something

because really
what's the difference
between numbing me
and telling me
you don't love me anymore

there was a time
where i would've tied rope around each star
and handpicked every comet
and gift-wrapped them
if you asked me to

where i woke up in a hospital bed
with your apology still laced in my IV
begging for contact
like i was addicted
to the way every goodnight
sounded like a suicide note

i remember the first time
you told me you wanted to kiss me
like you were sharing a secret
with a part of me i can't get to anymore

the moment it exited your lips
and echoed inside of my ribcage
i could feel you reach for it through my lungs
sacrificing me to the burden you carried

there was a time
where i would have jumped off of trains
and written you poetry
about how everything you do is lethal

and my death wish is no longer imminent
and i could tell you that you were the sun and I was Icarus
and i got too close and everything i remember went up in flames
and my arm hurts from trying to capture the stars
and trying to leave the world in darkness
that i didn't care if the plants would die and the oceans would still
if it meant you told me you missed me

but ive attached new memories
to the ones you burned for me
ive made up moments for the time ive lost

and i don't listen to your favorite songs every day
like you're trying to tell me something you couldn't reach through me and take back
because you weren't
you never were

and if i could go back in time
id tell the girl stacking ladders to the sky
rearranging your name in constellations
that you're not even worth
a nightlight

You don't have to remind me to listen to three AM school-night words that come out in the soft whispers you've been waiting to share with me in an attempt to shield it from the rest of the world
I'll remember the things you didn't say like engraved textbook lessons
when my skin starts to dampen and stick to my body like a raincoat
my head hits the wood desk so loud everyone stops pretending to pay attention
and i have to write
"he doesn't love me anymore" one hundred times on the chalkboard
and bang the parts of my past i wake up forgetting together
watching the chalk dust from the day my mother told me; they almost lost you fall to the floor
Every negative hallway interaction bubbles over in an abandonment issue chemical reaction
and I had to drop chemistry because I found none of the connections and formulas could fix the imbalance I carry around with me like i shouldn't be failing Psychology 101.
Maybe I'm clueless because I can't tell you why weather changes or square roots of negatives
But I can recite the lisence plate of the car my dad has never visited me in
and my sisters contact information for the 4 minute and 57 second call i can pay $6.43 to make to sit on the floor and learn about juvenile detention while history notes offer me cold faux-sympathy
Maybe I'm clueless because id rather memorize the way your hand moves down my back than the quadratic formula
and give up on poetry mid sentence
and change "moves" to "moved" because it's all in past-tense and the difference between present and present perfect and banging erasers and not sleeping and
forgetting how to function off of autopilot mode
and
there are lessons I will remember that won't come from staring at a projector screen
when to stop talking
how to look like you weren't just sobbing in the bathroom
the unwritten "give a stranger a ****** if they ask" rule
I'll remember every word you tell me like the test is next period and I'll study every syllable and drown in iambic pentameter
and I'll still fail

my whole life, i have ascribed my identity to feelings
rather than concrete items and ideas.
i have been made up on abstract whim-thoughts
this presents, as you may believe, unstable ground
i would like, more than anything else, to have an idea as to the person i am.
i pick people apart like a vulture and steal their personality traits
to badly pass them off as my own.
i have no confidence that the person i am in this moment
typing this anything-but poem,
will be the person i am next year, when i forget about writing down my words and letting the world in on my secrets.
i have assigned my many fleeting names to colors, videos, a collection of short stories
but never a permanent solution
and now, i sit at a crossroad
and beg to be hit by a passing vehicle
i am a student who tries, i am an artist and a writer, i am a best friend, a girlfriend, a human being who is present in every day life.
i am not the color yellow, or the myth of the angel, i am a small girl with very tired eyes and even more tired ideas
its typical to lose sight of who you are
but i have never once had a clue as to who this soul is
i have spent most of my life pretending to be other things
feeling "real" is just as foreign as any other emotion
when theres no "real" to fall back on.
i, unfortunately, am trapped in a mind of someone who has woken from a long nap
i wander disillusioned, answering to the description of hopelessness like a nickname.
this adapted persona,
if it is, indeed, a persona,
is different in a dissociated sense.
my fear and inability to take action and base my personality off of someone else
gives me implications that,
halfway through high school,
i may finally be on a path to understanding who it is i am.
i was told that you start developing a concrete personality
at the age when you're old enough to understand words and make coherent sentences.
who would have guessed that,
at sixteen,
i am just opening my eyes and understanding words i would have previously thought so common?
if this person is who i am stuck with,
and it has taken me so long to figure it out
based on a time slowing personality disorder
i will continue to learn that i am not made up of feelings and thoughts
but up of the art of continually creating myself
and isn't a life of not knowing,
of guessing,
of trial-and-error and discovering unheard of mysteries
better than a dinner-plate life planned out in front of you?
i guess i will never know
or, maybe i will.

its taken me too long to unstitch my hands and free every thought you shuffled and stuck inside of my head

one. i think you lost me somewhere between wanting to cross miles to get to me and forgetting i exist because at some moments it feels like you worked overtime to fix the abandon architectural artwork inside of me like i was community service

two. after you came and knocked down trees and shifted the tides, every ounce of clarity was able to mirror
your whimsical efforts of drowning me out with pretty girl phrases and only calling me when you were too high to choke out my name

three. i had something inside of me that was kept under glass and i let you behind closed doors and watched you destroy it
i let you build me up with toy blocks just how you wanted me, and i let you lose interest when you decided it was more fun to knock me down and listen to the noise i made when i hit the concrete

four. the Worlds Most Fragile museum was being catered to in the holes in my chest and if i was an armoire and you opened me up your name in red pen ink would spill out of me over thousands of artifacts and priceless memories that you've bubbled over and consumed

five. even as i write this, you'd think i would find a home in an elementary classroom by the way i can barely remember how to speak
and ive got no doubt that you went out with your usual bang
and when you left you took a goodbye that never quite delivered and all of my words with you

six. my grandmother told me insects sing, for months, the same song in hopes that they will attract a mate with their repetitive soliloquies and maybe that's my hope when i tell you i love you even when you hurt me, hope that maybe one day you will pick up the phone and echo my ache with a clear, sober melody that sounds like home.

im sure the insects will find someone who enjoys their neurotic patterns and im sure i will sleep alone in an uncomfortable bed only shushing the silence as the mailcart comes by my front lawn and pauses for a second as if it empathizes with the way i stand at the door.

seven. im always waiting for a manilla package addressed to me
containing every night i spent trying to be anxiously clever and overlooking your bad judgement and the flickers across your sentences where you were forcing yourself to care

eight. every night all i receive is the crickets and a reminder that the letters that spell out your name had become my own personal hamartia before i started whispering it in my sleep

nine. ever since we met you've infected my veins like you were a deadly back alley drug and there's something so addicting about wanting to fix someone and figure them out and work for their love

ten.  if you steal my expressions and bury them in your ground and stick a wooden stake through my last words in order to make sure i only resurface when your sobriety is fully compromised, i will, as writers do, create myself a new dictionary

the act of your name will become a verb: forcing time to scrub the inside of every part of me you touched like im a sold off garage sale item and you're trying to expurgate any emotional damage that might have been done to lower my price

the way the bugs echo will become an adjective for when i am too tired to go out and pretend that my feet arent sinking into the floor

the drilled-for-oil glass museum in my heart will become a noun;  the eighth wonder of the world, and i will continue to let people destroy it and piece it back together for the sake of art

the way you left me and the ferocity of how you stole every part of me i showed you will join adverbs and Aristotle's tragedy principles among people who created their own cloudbursts.

the way i wrap everything i've wanted to say to the back of your head as you walk away into a bulletpoint essay will become my new definition for poetry and i will build myself up from the ashes i will create from your destruction, i will sing my own songs and showcase my own museums and mail my own letters and i will **continue.

ive spent my life indebted to people
like my presence costs $2.50 an hour
and the global minimum wage isn't high enough
to sit down and listen to me mumble about how sad it is that people at grocery stores artificially dye flowers to make them bluer than your eyes as if the world is a losing competition against your hands around my neck
i have not spent all my life afraid
its worse than nostalgia
and not as present as deja vu
but i used to dive off of cliffs
and fall in ignorance
but ive known since i was young
everything costs something
$2.50 an hour
a lifetime
a century
whichever comes first
i was told to be afraid
because no one wants to stick around a raincloud with no umbrella
and every word i say is fragranced with an apology
i lost the person i used to be
there was no funeral or mourning
i can't even bring myself to thank the people who dont mind getting their clothes soaked

I'd like to be your space between starting a new sentence and picking the words up from behind dusty knocked over shelves

I'd like to be abstract in the way that you can cut me apart precisely and place me in misunderstood misplaced directions and give me the power to be able to yell at the top of my lungs and call myself art

I'd like to be a thousand miles right of where I am standing because home is the breath where you gather yourself up and home is when you have to stop dancing because your laughing interferes with your drinking and home is this song over and over and over

I'd like to kiss you a thousand miles right of where I am standing but what I am boxing up and categorizing as pain is not unique

it is just pain

I'd like to erase you from me and reach inside my head to free my brain from your rose thorn words like what I need to hear is the only airsource wonder of your distorted reality

I can't tell if I want nothing to do with you or I want everything at once because love is this song and that space and the way I stop from laughing and drinking and dancing love is this homemade pain and love is this art love is every mile

love is all of these indistinguishable thoughts my pain is not profound but I will yell whether the people who have cut me apart view
me as art or not

i wanted to write you poetry but my hands haven't stopped shaking since you told me you didn't believe in love but you believed someone would one day put up with me and i can't tell whats ending and whats beginning im sure i'd like to say our relationship began last night but it would taste sour in my mouth to lie like that and i like how you say youll never grow up and you want to throw away what you have and kiss people and taste like alcohol all the time youre not realistic and your head is under water i can't even try to make myself write about you because every adjective is risky and i am on thin ice between hating you and caring too much what you think

1.) I never liked how I always felt like I was suffocating under the conviction that you were counting down the days to leaving an equation of your life that included me in the numbers and I never liked how I brushed it off under the false pretense that you were terrible at math.

2.) Every word you said was so lucid and real it felt like putting out a cigarette on my skin after asking for an ashtray a hundred times you're the one who pulled me out of my poetic dream-state so hard that I choked on condensation ice crystals from the clouds below me and now I am tied to the ground like a dog and I miss flying like that.

3.) I tasted her in the way you kissed me since the moment we met and I wanted to lock down every word I told you and erase everything that's been written for you but I didn't say anything because I was scared that I would float away without you.

4.) You came back and expected me to be fourteen and looking for someone to love me so hard that they fix me. Since your absence I had learned the hard way I don't need to be fixed. And even if I did, you would have never made a merciful god.

5.) I could sense the way you wanted control over me like a lion to its prey and feeling like I was being stalked by someone I tried to convince myself I loved was almost as exhausting as pretending I didn't notice.

6.) I was only beautiful on days you were drunk and wanted to outline the shape of my hips and I tried so hard to leave my consciousness in the other room while you never showed the decency to stay after you were finished with me because being used is better than being replaced.

7.) I shared the small things that brightened my heavy rain days with you. You made me feel like I was trying to plug in a nightlight in the middle of the dark.

8.) You devastated me and told me that's what love feels like; I still have moments of panic at sincerity and kind words seem foreign against the misery soaked syllables you broke me down and replaced me with.

9.) You did all of it because you were bored of watching the clock tick and you figured passing the time by ruining me was easier than repenting on the ways you've ruined other sad girls with cold hands.

10.) I was so used to throwing coins in the air hoping they would give me a heads or tail answer if dying would be easier than missing you forever that I didn't even notice when I ran out of money.

Maybe it's because
No one helped me up
When I scraped my knees
On pavement
And every
"not good enough"
I receive feels like
An avalanche
And I ponder
Moving words
From present
To past tense
Maybe it's because
My hands shake too much
And my mouth moves faster
Than my brain allows it to
Maybe it's because
I'm too focused on myself
And write ****** poetry
That doesn't compare
To car crash love stories
Maybe it's because
I dream about change
But hide in
Blankets and
Behind baggy clothing
Trying to find a source
of this
Unhappiness
Maybe it's because
I was dealt a ****** hand
I was treated unfairly
Or maybe it's because
I allowed myself
To take these things
And scream
About how miserable I am
Without trying
To change them

I've tried to record
The way your name falls out of my mouth
When I drop glass onto the floor
Like my mothers list of forbidden words
In spreadsheets
Counting with fingers and letters
Every time I pass a red pushpin in a map
Of where you told me
"You're so young and immature"
Like a compliment traced with
Sobriety and melatonin
I've picked up pencils
That end up in pieces
After scrawling your dialogues
Onto "it's your own fault" paper
I've scrubbed myself raw
With people who wont
Look me in the eyes anymore
With your goodbye words
With the flashbacks of
Your hands manifesting
The uncharted areas
Of my brittle hips
How my ****** syllables were
Dinner party jokes
There's nothing that can hurt
A god of power
And business suits
Someone who's never told no
Holds a child
In a way that erases the thought of comfort
And now
I lack the maturity to refuse requests
And you tell me
I'd make a good corpse
At a funeral catered towards
Twenty-nine year old men
Who never learned the difference
Between property and personality
And my promises
Tighten around my throat
Gratefully
Like your hands
Fostering the
Aurora Borealis of love
In a way that
Makes me choke on
The things you've shown me
The things you've ruined for me
The words I will never get back
And I sit
With you surrounding me
In and out of every crevice of my body
You've claimed for yourself
Helpless
And defeated
Like a child
Just how you like me