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.

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?

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.

take a girl. take
all of her hurt, all of the nails piercing her hands, all
of the dead flowers taped to her skin. take her hair,
tree branches woven through and choppy bangs,
take her chest, how you can practically see her
heartbeat move the rest of her body. take her rib cage,
cracked open and tacked together, held up with fishing line
and guarded with rose bushes. take a girl who has never
been touched tenderly, who prepared for the storm so
vigorously she erased the calm that anticipates the rain.
take a girl with bugs in her brain, who can't help but
look like she's walked through hell barefoot, who
can't help but retrace her steps, who lusts after the heat
and overlooks the blackened char that coats her figure.
take a girl who runs, bolts at the first manifestation of desertion,
who obliterates the promises that lie in front of her just to
watch how easily they erupt. take a girl and call her "chaos"
because it is what she was birthed into and assembled from,
dark dirt packed into the crevices of her smile. take this girl and
give her to a boy. watch
him touch her gently, so gently it feels like he does not touch her
at all. so gently she wants him to ravage her.
give her to a boy that covers her face with his hands, clean hands
that he has scrubbed raw, clean hands that have learned gentle
through trial and error. give her to a boy that has always
done the leaving, he packs his things in the middle of the night
and only takes what he needs. the rest can stay. he is made
up of "look, don't touch," he is stone like marble with cracks running like stitches up his side. he has scars that cover his
clean hands, his arms, his chest, his back. take a girl and give
her to a boy, and watch her trace her fingers over his flesh gently,
so gently it makes him shiver,
so gently she wants to devastate him.
watch them interact like animals in the wild, people who have
grown with their fists up, people who have started from empty
and have learned what it takes to present entirety. watch them
tear each other apart without moving, eyes fixed on their
reserve, begging to know more without flinching.
watch them pull each other apart and fold the pieces around
in their palms, they stick every moment back into it's place,
gently, so gently that they want to rip what each other has
been wrongly taught into shreds, so gently that they want to
scrub what has stained them until it is clean. take a girl and
give her to a boy, let her kiss him so gently that they
want to do something stupid. so gently that they want to make
a mess of each other, so gently that they want to fall in love.

there is a bed that you haven't slept in twice. i should have asked you who taught you to
lace up your shoes in an instinct
that feels just like a memory,
your luggage is always packed.
you love out of a suitcase, always
ready to pick up and move. your hands are stained with their last
names you have boarding flights tattooed
on your palms because you're so used to
leaving, there is never a good-bye it is
always departure gates and terminals, and i'm writing this in on connecting flight over the ocean because close to nowhere is
the closest we've been in months
just to tell your passport that i understand
how you cannot love me. i could
taste it in your gas-station coffee breath i could
feel it in the hesitance of your fingertips
you are always close to the highway you are always waiting to hitch a ride with a new girl who will write poetry about how badly you feel like permanence and i
am always trying to unpack you, begging
you to stay one more night.
i understand how you cannot love me, i stay on the ground and you buy plane tickets with spare cash, with a turbulence that makes me
want to fasten my seatbelt.
there is a bed that you haven't slept in twice and i whisper to the sheets
"i thought i could've made you stay."
your face is always towards the
humming of the window and
i like to imagine you can hear
me if you can hear me, you can leave all you
want. you can travel across the world and exchange your
heart for currency, you can walk through
security and stuff your belongings into the closets of cheap
hotels. i understand how you cannot stay because you're always too busy leaving,
but there will always be a place for you to
unpack in my chest.
there is a home that remains unoccupied.
there is a bed that
you haven't slept in twice, i keep it unmade in case you
ever feel like coming back.

I. watching a lot of sit-com television. i notice when the audience forces their track-laughter at all the bad jokes.
II. listening to music from the seventies. i had to get new music taste. all of my old favorite songs have your name written in the lyrics, i turn them off as soon as they come on.
III. reading a lot of poetry books. sometimes, people write things and i feel like they are coming directly from my fingertips, like they know exactly what you've said to me and how hard it knocked the air out of my lungs.
IV. writing. sort of. every time i try, i feel like it is more diary-entry and less poetry. i am scared that i made myself a new person and this one doesn't want to feel anything.
V. kissing people. i keep my eyes closed. this new persona i've adopted doesn't want to tell you what i think about when he puts his hand on my thigh.
VI. not calling. sometimes, i write out long messages and i do everything but press send. i feel like i have to record how many times i almost do, oh my god, i almost do, but i don't.
VII. talking about everything. i never stop talking, it is something you used to hate about me, something about a bird in my chest always trying to free itself. sometimes, i don't always say the right words. another thing you used to hate about me.
VIII. wearing everything but the clothes you gave me, everything but the sweatshirt i slept in while you were away, everything but the dress i wore when you kissed me first, everything but the t shirt i wore when you kissed me last.
IX. writing. sort of. writing about how if i had known that was our last kiss i would have dressed nicer, or held on longer, or not walked away, or kept myself from crying.
X. doing everything, absolutely everything, so i have no time to slow down and miss you. i haven't slowed down enough to tell if it is working. i can't tell if i am a new person without you or not a person at all.

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

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?

in a different world i am waking up from a nap when you walk down the stairs with your work clothes on. you pull your shirt over your head and lean in to kiss me on the cheek. i am curled up in your blankets and you lay down next to me. you whisper something against my skin and i fall back asleep.
in a different world i don't savor every second i have with you, i let them pass by lazily. there will be more and more and more. more you walking down the stairs and pulling your shirt over your head. more leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. more blankets and more your skin on mine.
in a different world we eat dinner together, we split one meal like we always do. we eat off the same plate like we always do. we fight over the best bits of the dish like we always do. i win, like you always let me, because you like seeing me eat. we do dishes, we take turns. sometimes you cook and sometimes we walk to the store and sometimes we go out and sit in the same booth. your hand is on my leg the entire time. we make fun of the conversations around us, you mess with the waiter and i drop my silverware. when we get outside you wrap your arms around me and kiss my cheek for no reason.
in a different world you wake up from a nightmare, you rarely have them anymore but every once in a while i can feel your chest rise and fall in a mismatched syncopation. you **** up and mumble something, sometimes its my name and sometimes its not. in a different world i sit up with you and put my hand right by your collarbone. we sit in the darkness for a while. we fall back asleep and your grip is tighter on the space between my hips and my ribcage.
in a different world you read your book and i sit next to you and draw. you start speaking aloud, a passage i've heard a hundred times before. i listen anyway. in a different world i underline excerpts of poetry and read them to you while you fall asleep. i read you what i write. i show you what i draw. in a different world you watch my eyes fill with passion and you nod along to my nonsensical fits of expression. when i'm done, you smile.
in a different world there is a house. there is a ring. there is a dog, a cat, a garden. there is a garden. we give each other everything we promised. there is a garden that we can sit in, there is a mess in the kitchen from a girl trying to make strawberry jam. there is a house, a ring, a dog, a cat, a garden, a girl, a boy, a life.
in a different world there is a life waiting to be built. in a different world it works, we sleep and wake up and think of each other all day and we love each other so much that it almost kills us. in a different world that love is enough.

he can't write sober.  the mind of a man who
drinks too much whiskey and touches girls without
blinking. whos body is cold no matter how large the fire in
front of him is. he just can't write sober. i feel like the girls he touches,
rough coarse hands on peach fuzz skin. tongues battling in
and out of holes in my cheeks. angry apathetic grunts and dissatisfied sighs. im afraid this is where my life is headed. i am afraid i am the girls he touches and bitterly touches and fiercely touches and
he can't write sober, but he doesn't always drink. sometimes
his hands shake too much to drink. sometimes he smokes,
sometimes he crushes up pills and snorts them. sometimes
he doesn't bother crushing them up at all, he downs a
stiff drink with three pink or white circles and he sits in a
chair in the living room until he can see his hands move
in front of him, until he can pick up a pencil without wanting
to snap it. he can't write sober, so he doesn't. so he waits
for his mind to come to a tachycardic rhythm and he writes.
and when he does, he writes and writes for days. he can't write
sober but when he's not sober he will write for miles, he will
tell you about why he touches girls like me with soft pink skin
that is fresh, that is easy to bite into, that is full of life and not
stained rough and harsh. he can't write sober, so when
hes not sober he will tell you her name. he will not be able to do anything but tell you her name, her name her name her name-
he gets stuck, when hes not sober. when hes nodding in and out
of consciousness. he gets stuck on her name. he gets stuck on how
she felt under his hands, they weren't rough and calloused when
she touched him. he gets stuck on how she smells, he tries to
speak it onto the page but he can't, not sober anyway. like lavender.
stuck on her name and the lavender, the pretty girls with short
hair that sort of look like her, her name, her name and the
lavender on her neck and her wrists. her pretty wrists. how she
left and she looked like a ballerina in a performance, grabbing her
coat and her hat to cover her ears. that short hair never covered her ears. she looked like a dancer. the lavender, her name and her name and her name like a dancer. holding out her hand for him,
her small pink hand, her fresh hand, and
he can't catch her sober. can't keep up with her movements sober.
can't smell her sober, can't say her name sober. but when hes not
sober, he can write it all down. nod in and out, the lavender, her
name, what was her name again? what did she smell like?
until he passes out in that chair, by that fire, i feel like the girls
he discards and the whiskey he drinks. he can't do any of it sober.
so he doesn't, he doesn't have to.
her name, drink.
lavender, drink.
like a ballerina, drink.
her name, drink. her name, drink. her name, drink.
her hands, drink. her ears, drink.

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

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?

you keep leaving,
chained to exit signs and
one foot out every half-open
grocery store door
chalk it up to curiosity,
to wanting new things,
to blooming in nature with no roots,
you keep leaving.
and i keep staying,
growing on the side of the childhood
home you told me you loved me in,
stable and wrapped around a tire swing
where you kissed me for the first time.
chalk it up to memories,
to sentimentality,
to the comfort that surrounds safety,
i keep staying.
and every summer, you leave and you
drag your feet through the dirt from
my porch to yours,
past every cricket-chirping dusty town
and i wait,
letters pinned to a mailbox and
welcome home mats on the floor,
i am taking my keys with me this time.
i will always stay here, i can't
imagine my body living any other way,
but i lock the doors at night.
you keep leaving,
you keep running away and i just
can't force myself to chase you anymore.

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.

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 fell in love and it curled its hand into a fist and hit me right in the mouth.
i got up and it hit me right in the mouth again.
and i got up again.
i got knocked down into kind words, i threw love into the empty
space between them thinking that it was a drawer to store my belongings in and not just
a black hole with no edges for containment.
i fell in love and it was a dragon that breathed fire all over my clothes
and in my hair, the smoke swirling up into my mouth and nose and eyes.
when you are young, you forget that what is warm can also burn.
i get my head bitten off and lay still on the glass floor until it grows back,
and then i go back to the dragon with my sword bent
and i yell that i am strong enough to keep fighting.
keep knocking me out. keep breathing fire. i will spit my teeth
onto the floor until i am nothing but blood and gums and black eyes and
charred skin.
i fell in love and it was a dragon that i was too small and clumsy
to keep up with. whats the big deal? i'm not comparing myself
to a knight in this analogy. just one of the naive girls who fight
against forces out of her control because they don't know when
to give in. but in every analogy you are a dragon, or a monster, or a big animal with
claws and teeth that sinks into soft pink skin and can't mumble
out an apology with a full mouth. in every analogy you are
something i can't beat, something i let grab me by the throat and
shake me around like a dead rabbit. in every analogy you
are the predator and i am the prey.
i used to fight it, i used to hang dream-catchers in my room and
hold crystals in my hand and talk to the moon. i used to
tell her all about you, tell her to make you more gentle and
keep my heart safe. i was relying on the world to take care of me.
you are the dragon, the monster, the big angry animal
with no remorse and hurt eyes.
and i am not the hero or the knight or the champion. i fell in
love and let it beat me down and knock me out. i win by giving in. i win by caging
you up and putting my sword down. i win by taking my
belongings back and finding safety. i fell in love and it destroyed me. but i win by losing, by never letting it happen again.
i win because im staying down for the count.
i win because  it will never happen again.

the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it had been barreling towards me for miles.
falling in and out of holes of communication,
we dont talk anymore but i still love you,
you wont say goodnight but i still love you,
im not even sure you remember im alive but i still love you,
because i didn't know any better.
because i was never taught whats enough and whats too much
the line between compliance and forgiveness is a lack of strength
and im not sure which direction it points to.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it was seven in the morning, it was dreary bright like
all early summer mornings are. i kept repeating,
i know you dont want to hear this but i still love you,
i know its late but i still love you,
i dont know what im doing but i still love you,
because i never learned how to stop. i never
knew what i could give and what i could take back,
which parts of me were okay to lose and which parts
i would stay awake until seven in the morning wishing i still had
all to myself.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it
was to shut myself up. to tell myself enough. to teach myself to stop.
a simple compliance without forgiveness, separating the pieces
of my body i wanted to stack in suitcases and send across the country
with the pieces of my body i wanted to hold in my hands and
apologize to.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it rolled off of my lips like honey and it fell onto the floor in scraps, all shaky and rehearsed.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore he didnt even
have to say it. he leaned in close and he picked up all the pieces that
belonged to him and told me:
*you beautiful, terrible, stupid thing. you couldnt stop; even if you tried.

there are poems from years ago when i loved you most
shaky hand thoughts
where i couldnt focus on anything but your mouth
where i couldnt sleep because i wasnt sure if you were loving me correctly
i sleep soundly now,
i write about more than your words in my head,
swirling around and making themselves comfortable
you were not loving me correctly.
my hands have stopped shaking.

he said i was all blurred lines and
soft edges he said baby
you are sweet like honey you
are soft like the quiet summer
and i couldn't open my mouth
i cough up blood i couldn't say
i am the snapping jaws of a wild animal i
have poison in my veins and i break
things on purpose i break hearts
on purpose i am angry hash marks
and biting words i am choking back
bile he said baby you
are innocent and lyrical and sunlight and i said
i am still cold in the
middle of july

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 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'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

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 is a vision. an image. a clear view from the reflection of a surface of water.
you reach your hand out and it passes through, you pull
your hand back and your memories drip into the
pool and disperse. it makes sense. it is like clockwork. in and out.
it is a vision, image, reflection that has
no shape or form, but it falls off of your fingertips and formulates
rings around your mind.
we are standing in an empty room. i tell you that you
can do whatever you want with this space and all you
do is pull me close. it makes sense. it is like clockwork. it is
less like falling in love and more like opening your eyes,
letting your fists unclench when you didn't realize how
tightly you were holding onto what hurts. that's the
problem with letting go where you are used to holding on,
like muscle memory. like clockwork. it is less like
falling in love and more like i have been here this whole time
with my hands over my chest, always just a second-and-a-half
away, just missing you, on the other side of the pool just
waiting for your hands to grab hold of me. we are standing
in an empty room and i tell you that this is all i have and
i am waiting for you to reach through me. it is less like falling in
love and more like catching up. like, of course, there you are. finally.  
i've been looking all over for you.
and it makes sense.

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"

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'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.

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

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

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."

IT IS A TESTAMENT TO THE OBEDIENCE OF YOUR HISTORY.
YOU ARE BORN. YOU WILL LOVE SOMETHING NATURAL
UNTIL IT ROTS
AND YOU WILL DIE WHEN IT WITHERS
LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER KNOWN THE SPRINGTIME.
IT IS WHAT YOU DO.
A TRIBUTE TO YOUR ****** HEART,
YOU TAKE WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL
YOU WILL EAT IT UNTIL IT IS JUST THE BONES OF
SOMETHING RAW–
YOU WILL ACHE WITH SOLITUDE
AND SHATTER EMPTY DINNER PLATES.
A EULOGY TO ALL
THE GIRLS THAT BLOOMED FOR YOU
IN THE WINTER,
IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ECHO OF THE BITTERNESS YOU KNOW TOO WELL.
TEACH A MAN TO FEED AND HE WILL
DEVOUR WHAT IS IN SIGHT.
TEACH A MAN TO LOVE AND HE WILL
BREAK HIS KNUCKLES
DIGGING GRAVES INTO THE DIRT.

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

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.

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

i want to fix myself with more
than just glue and tape i want
to calm down i don't want
to be so much i want to let the
water wash the broken parts of me
away but i always get caught in the
tides, in the waves, in the stream
they keep saying
"if you do this,
what will be left?
what will be left?"
i keep my feet out of the water.
i don't have an answer.

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

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

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.

i cant help but replay it
like an old tape, flipped over and
shoved into dusty corners of bedrooms,
labels scratched off, there is a scrapbook
of the first time you touched me and there are
no pictures, this story has written itself and has been
stuck to the refrigerator like surviving it is some
accomplishment that i am patted on the back for and
it repeats, its stuck somewhere and i stare and flip it
over hoping that each time i hear your voice it will say
something different, something softer, something
sweeter there is a notebook somewhere quiet
and it sits by itself with my ink scratched into its pages
it has words you promised me that i haven't touched like
every time i hear this song there is ringing in my ears it
is static, there is torture dripping off the lines where you said
i am yours, i am yours, i am yours and i cant force myself
to let go of it just yet, it has made comfort in my chest it has
made its own home and i keep waiting for this story to
end differently, i keep waiting to write about something else
but its all over, i cant help but replay it, in every part of me and all encompassing like a virus like something i fall asleep
wishing i hadn't heard, i cant help it baby i am
yours, i am yours, i am yours

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'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 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.”

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."

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.

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 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

it's
something out of a movie scene it's
something in its own language like
art or maybe something just a little
bit better, a bit more tangible than
words on paper or paint on canvas.
i want to keep you all to myself. i
would write a hundred letters and
mail them out to sea if it meant that
i could let your heartbeat hum me to
sleep every night. if it meant i could
tell you i love you without choking,
it if meant i could sing your name into
every bad place and let it coil around
my head and stick to me like glue.
one time, someone told me that even
when people leave, art remains and it
will never break your heart as hard as
mean boys with switchblades for mouths
and claws instead of hands. and i repeat
into the silence of your bedroom,
id do it all over again, id do it all
over again, every heart break and hurt
on my tongue, every evil hand on my
body and every single tragedy that sent
me packing and running outside barefoot
into the storm, id do it all over again
if it meant that the wind would send me to you at the end of each tornado. i used to
think that i loved art more than anything
in the whole world until i saw the
smile you kept for me after i kiss you
in the dark. i used
to write about the things i saw, museum
walls and blown glass that holds
heat and traps light under fingernails. i
used to love a world that didn't love
me back and i would write about
man-made beauty that sent artists
running for the hills and off of buildings
just for some inspiration.
now i
can't help but write sonnets about how
i am proud to love someone who is
more beautiful than any
god made, god ******
masterpiece i've ever seen.

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?

i’m so sad that it doesn’t even feel like you anymore. it’s
vein deep and in the pit of my stomach, it’s
all around me and when i lie down it
clings to me like blankets in the summertime. and it
used to be you, you mouth, your hands, your words,
all wrapped up and ticking like a time bomb, but now it
is just me without you, my own mouth that feels like it’s
been scraped raw on the inside, my own hands that
never stop shaking when it rains or when it’s
too quiet or too dark, my own words that i haven’t
been able to collect back, all scattered on the floor
of your bedroom and underneath a mix of your clothes
and mine that neither of us have touched.
this used to be poetry about how it felt when you left me
but now it’s just poetry about how it felt when i
was not enough to make you stay.