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

we reach the same point in the middle of every night,
cards folded,
lights turned off,
i sit on the edge of the bed and wait for an approving word
like a trained animal,
waiting for your hand to extend to me as an act of peace
in the middle of the war.
in the morning, there are notes where you've messed up the sheets without me.
the shower is on while i'm sleeping, the words are scrawled on the mirror.
the cereal made for one is spilled in the sink, it is spelled out in the bowl.

every night we wait for a slight movement,
some reason to pull our hair out and punch walls
some violent excuse for violence that is aimed towards how
i am too stubborn and you are too hot-headed and
i pretend not to notice when you stay out late,
i crawl into bed without permission and the fan echos the sentences
so i don't have to open my mouth when you stumble in
with someone else's perfume closing the bedroom door.

there is a disconnect, the words i am too terrified to say are
painted on every picture you look at,
on the edge of another woman's fingertips,
in your hand of cards each night.
and i dream that i scream it,
i write it on the brick side of abandoned buildings,
the top of cardboard boxes,
***** doors of train-cars,
every place you pass has my handwriting, marking my territory
making you look at what you've done to me.
it is everywhere,
the soles of your shoes,
the stoplights on the busy streets to work,
i follow you like a ghost,
the back of a notebook you bought me with pages torn out
and edges folded:
*you used to love me, baby, dont you remember?
you used to love me.

sometimes i know i need to
write about you because my
body will start to buzz like
there is electricity inside of
my veins and i will itch
to get rid of your eyes in
the back of my head, and even
if i don't exactly know what to
do with my hands they will
trace themselves over your
memories and they will whisper;
do you remember when you
were in love? do you remember
when you had it all? and i keep
writing to erase, i write and drink
and try not to remember how it
feels to lose you, every time i open
my eyes i lose you again. i write
to keep my hands busy so my chest
doesn't ache and no parts of me
whisper your name to the dark but
i could write for-ever and
i would still break pencils in half
and keep my hands clasped to
avoid any painful wandering;
*of course i remember.
how could i forget?

its one of those moments where i want
to crawl into your skin, underneath your
eyelids and trace my fingers on your neck
the moon has nothing to say to you anymore,
the ocean is defiant, She won't look you in the eyes.
the stars keep falling in and
out of place How did you let it get this far? and
your head is between your knees and you're chanting
I dont know, I dont know, I dont know, and
i want to wrap my arms around every part of
you that hurts, twist my limbs over the pieces
of you that ache for the sunlight, How did
you let it get this far? There is no force in the
Universe that respects me enough to respond. All
eyes of the world on my fingers burning marks
into your flesh, How did you let it get this far?
There are black holes, it
is all empty, planets are hanging on your answer and
its one of those moments where i want to expand
into the palms of your hands and tell you that you are your own God. and I would let
you tear me apart with your teeth.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i have these dreams, smelling
the three-AM summer night
through the screen of my window.

my hands are pressed against my
stomach. i am in bed and i keep my
eyes shut the entire time. i am
trying to hold everything inside.
my hands trail up and down my
arms, im begging
myself not to forget your lips,
i am holding every place you touched me
permanent. i am tattooing the way you
look at me to the spaces of my ******* ribcage.

in these dreams, you have always just
left. i can still smell you on my skin and
in my hair, on the clothes that need to
be washed, on the sheets.

my fingers are gripping the bedframe
and im begging it not to change. the Sun falls
in and the dust falls over and over the blankets
in a rhythm that makes it look like your
side of the bed has life in it again. my hands are
around my throat and on the back of my head,
looking for places that have a trace of you on
them, looking for pieces of you that you might have
forgotten to take with you.

in these dreams, i am hollowing out the
walls of my body, trying to find every memory
so i can feel it vein-deep and to the bone, you have
always just left. i am always just looking around for things
to replace the space you used to occupy.

when i wake up, and its still dark out, the dust stays where
it always has. the Sun won't even help me pretend that you're
still here. when i wake up, its like you have just
left all over again.

its not a love poem.
its a poem about your mouth,
your hands on my thighs
and around my throat and,
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your eyes,
all the way across a room or
an inch away from mine, like theres a difference,
like you've
already gotten a taste and you're asking
for just a little, baby just give me a little bit more.
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your words, all of your
unkind, your hands around my throat, your
eyes that have twisted my gasps into mockery,
all empty like you've tasted just a little bit of blood
on my lips, on my wrists, my thighs,
and its an inch away, just a little bit,
baby just let me give you a little bit more

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

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

it is called she, hers, her and it was named after a poem i wrote on april 15th of 2017 after i had gotten my heart broken and i decided to turn it into art because i didn't know what else to do with it. im not great with speaking words, my mother always tells me that prose is not my forte, and i believe her. anyway, i wrote a book of poems, because its the only thing i know how to do. actually, i've written two. you can find the other one on my twitter (@altyrlog) because i feel like im breaking rules by linking things here. sorry, hellopoetry. they are both free to read in PDF form.

she hers her: http://docdro.id/s4EJay8

thank you for sticking by me and giving me the encouragement i need when i throw up words and put them into stanzas and then plaster them all over the place. you make me want to not give up.

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

light a cigarette with shaky hands.
i never felt like i deserved the sweetness,
it cascades over me like fluorescent lighting
harsh and uncomfortable and out of place.
take a drag with trembling fingers.
i never feel like these words can do it justice
it being your lips on my skin.
it being your name falling out of my mouth like blood.
will you stay here, darling?
will you help me clean up this mess?
im scrubbing myself clean,
expunging all of the sins from my skin so i am
someone new just for you.
someone without so much weight on my shoulders.
someone lighter. i wish i was someone better for you.
and i can’t help but self-deprecate,
i cant help but never forgive myself for my mistakes
but you hold onto me and it stops the ache in my chest and maybe that deep breath is enough.
maybe taking a deep breath and knowing there
is no second-guess, no punchline, no catch is enough.
flick the ash onto the ground with weak palms.
with exalted memories. i am trying to be something i can’t recognize. i am trying to be someone else for you.
but how much of myself can i lose,
how much can i get away with before it becomes some sort of ******?
there’s blood everywhere.
take a drag with cold fingertips.
i don’t know if i’ll ever feel okay again.
i don’t know if i can stand to let you burden this for me.
i don’t know if i will ever feel like i’m not giving away my pieces on the sidewalk.
here. take this. take something. take everything. please. i’m begging.
please, i’m begging. i’m on my hands and knees. please don’t leave me just because i don’t know how to make you stay.

it has become less like poetry and
more like a confession,
more like if i dont get these words out
of my palms i will burn up under all
of my anger.
how do i talk about not loving you
in a way that contorts my words into
honesty?
how do i immortalize this pain
into writing to remove it from
my heart?
i come apart, i am
undone, there is nothing i can
say that will erase how you
felt,
starry eyed and drunk in the
drivers seat.
be careful, slow down, don't
stop
there is no pity.
i cannot force myself to forget.
all i do is remember.
all i do is not-forget.

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

i 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

a terrible poem about how i fell in love
when i was a child and i grew with it
like moss on an abandoned building,
and i stopped being a child but
i held onto it with the winsom that only
a fresh-faced little girl knew how to
handle things with care,
how to touch gentle, the only way
you can when your heart
has never been broken.

a terrible poem about how i write about
you every day and i'm not sure if anyone
who reads it knows what you did to me or why
i cry in airports and i don't think i can write
enough terrible poetry to explain it

a terrible poem about how i leave my bed and
i see my friends and i do whatever i think my
ribcage can handle and i'm not sure if its a desperate attempt
to forget or a desperate attempt to revive
that girl who knew how to
feel things without breaking her wrists,
how to love things without suffocating them,
how to touch gentle because her heart
had never been broken.

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

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

it has been
five days
since we had that big fight,
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore it has been
five nights of me dialing your
number but not pressing call
listening to songs that i did not share
with you to send me to sleep
it has been
five days
since you told me that i was unrealistic,
a dreamer in the worst way possible,
all hung up and angry at what i cant change
and i have spent
four of those days chasing away my sobriety
once because my friends told me that
i needed you out of my head
once because i sat in the middle of the grass
and closed my eyes and took what was
handed to me because i told myself i
needed you out of my head
once because it was late and i didn't
want to keep dialing your number without
pressing call
once because i wanted to drown you in
the poetry but my hands still shook
too hard to make sense of the words i had
left it has been
five days
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore and i'm not checking up
on you, i'm not asking how you're doing no
matter how much i wonder and if you ever
asked i'm sure the words would come
spilling out of me no
matter how many days have passed
or how many times i reason with my chest
i am not sure
i am really ready to do this the rest of my life

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

isnt it sweet?
how much the human heart is able to bare,
the lines between support and manipulations that
past-lovers have drawn for you,
isnt it sweet? how much you will
carry for the people who arent quite yet
past-lovers, how you will draw boundaries
and cross lines just to touch, just to feel, just to
create some sort of tangible memory for when you
sit with only their names left in your mouth, isnt the
line between sweet and naive based on experience?
isnt it naive? how far you will go to love people into
boxes, how you will let yourself fall apart and
you will watch them spit you out onto the floor and still
you have so much faith in every single rushed kiss and
almost-memory that one of these people you let touch you
with the lights off, one of these people you will drink
into your poetry will be more than just a past-lover?

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

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

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"

there are ghosts that sing our story.
not inside of me, they surround and encompass
me and stick to me. i peel them off of me like
a wet blanket, like clothes that haven't dried all
the way through, like glue on the sticky hands
of a child. they write better than i ever could,
they wrote you this poem after i promised my
hands i would never compose another lyric about
how you left. you just left. you just keep leaving.
there are no words that can rhyme with your
descending footsteps, there are no
metaphors that can complement
the pen stain of your lips on mine. there are ghosts
that hum our story, they write about how we used
to puff cigarettes that we hated and drink ***** from the bottle
and walk around barefoot in the damp grass. they
scribble out all of our memories, like smoke tapping the
ceiling of the room with all of our remnants shelved
away. they have nowhere to go but up to the floorboards
of a chamber i can't get to. there are ghosts that keep
me awake, they whisper what you gave me and what
you took, they write you poems about how you can keep
what you have, about how i don't want it back. i would
never write you this poem. i would sit here and let the
hurt hit my face like rain, but i would keep the deluge
to myself. i would keep my stubborn arms folded across
my chest to keep my heart in its place. there are ghosts
that are not inside of me, they besiege me and they
say your name over and over. these ghosts still love you.
these ghosts know the things that i do not. they wrote you
this poem, they will write you poems like this until i forget
that your name sounds like sharpening a knife.
until i uncross my arms, until i let my
heart steady itself. there are ghosts that will love you until
the day i die. until the day i learn to love you until the day
i die, until the day i learn to exist in consensus with them,
until i become pliant, until i dry myself off, until i step out
of the rain and open doors to new places and let the
smoke of what we were never able to be find somewhere
else to go. go upwards, go out the window, go through the floorboards
of a room i am learning to unlock. there are ghosts that stand next
to me and catenate me just like shadows, they know the things
that i do not. they wrote you this poem.

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)

just let that girl be wild, let her
convince herself not to miss you, let
her stay headstrong and fearless,
standing in her own rain soaking wet,
let her dry herself off. let her run through
the woods all muddy and face-first to the
treetops. let her swing into rivers and scrape
her knees, let her break her wrist and cut her
hair, let her erase who she was when you touched
her last. just let that girl watch the deluge and
thunderstorms in the spring, let her wash away
who she was when you last said her name,
let her point to the sky and tell you *that came from
my chest, that came from my fingertips, that came
from everything you left, and it doesn't need you to
be real

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

And then, you.

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

i have spent sentences like
cheap trade-offs,
decreasing their worth
in the currency-exchange where your lips meet.
it is not my fault you cannot afford
a single letter.

i have spent time like
hour-hands are suggestions,
as if pride made the minutes move faster
so i pushed it in the drawers of my chest
and threw away the key
pretending my love does not move mountains.
it is not my fault
you cannot stop counting seconds,
it is not my fault you are always waiting,
and i am always watching you get ready to leave.

i have wasted parts of myself,
thrown them entirely into your puzzle
your fix-and-repair
all sad-faced and
taped up with glue and apologies
i have sacrificed my sunlight,
my clouds,
my hurricanes and shifting plates
in an attempt to make you whole.

i have always been ashamed of the destruction,
i know
my love moves mountains,
it is not cruel.
that does not mean it is kind.

i cannot fix you
no matter how much i give,
time, words, sunlight, clouds,
i have given you my breath but
i cannot put air in your lungs.
it is not my fault that
in all of its destructive glory,
my love moves mountains and
you can't even climb
a foothill.

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.

there is a night
with the moon hung so low
it courses itself over my outstretched palms
and i lay in the middle of the street
with the gravel digging into my skin and
im repeating to a boy whos not listening to me
this doesn't make any sense and i try
my hardest to keep my fists clenched around
the surface of the moon but it falls through
my finger tips like sand he lies next to me
and tells me that maybe i am just hard to
love.

there is a morning
where i stumble down steps and into a bed
i pull blankets over my shoulders and i don't
cringe when you touch my stomach i used
to map out all of the bad parts on me like
a highway but all of my lines are blurred and
i feel less like roadwork and more like wandering
hands there is a version of you that i like most
it is right after we kiss and i pull away and
look right at you and i used to think that being
loved at all was the right thing to waste my time on
with car crash endings and angry words at least
it was love at least it was something now

there is the middle of the day
and all i am is that moment after i pull away
that split second where i feel so naive
for thinking i had any idea what love was before
i met you. that i could have ever let anyone convince me
the way they hurt me was a product of what my
heart could handle. that any love
besides this love was worth any of my time.
there is before and after,
night behind us and morning ahead of us and we
always just move forward.

i am young. i am in the habit of saying things i think i mean because
i have no one to tell me right from wrong. i am in the habit
of giving everything i have to every one i pass because i have
no one to tell me what is enough and what is too much. it is
all just enough, i give every piece of me to every stranger with
warm hands and it is all just enough, i fall into myself in an
endless spiral of every stranger with a gentle first touch and it
is all just enough. part of how to stop being young is learning
to choose your words carefully, learning what i mean and what
i want to speak into meaning are very different things. part
of how to stop being so young is to learn that i should not have
to empty myself into a gentle touch or a warm hand because
there is no place for me to go besides inside of myself. no one has
the capacity to contain me, no one has the ability to hold all of
what i involve in their cupped hands. i fall through the cracks
in their fingers and onto the floor like sand, how to stop being
young is learning that i am concrete, i cannot push myself into
anyone and expect them to carry me on their shoulders. how to
stop being young is learning that i don't need anyone to fill me
up, to fix me, to calm my brain, to keep me kind or save me.
but i am young. i am in the habit of wanting what i can't have,
i am in the habit of wanting to love so hard it kills me, and that
being said i miss you so much it hurts my skin.

where do you go when you think of me?
do you go to lying on the wood floor with my head in your lap;
do you go to driving with the windows down and the cold air running past us;
do you go to the songs i wrote down and hummed for you through hour-long car rides;
tell me what you think when someone says my name.
tell me where you go when you miss me,
where do you go?
do you try to drown out evenings where we smoke too much and stumble around grocery-store parking lots
with all the streetlights shut off behind us;
do you try to erase the way my thumb moves over your hand, like reflex, like my hand in my hair, like unconditioned and honest;
do you bite your lip when you hear terrible radio songs and your passenger seat is empty;
tell me,
where do you go when you hear my name?
where do you go when you think,
oh my god,
i lost her,
i lost her

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.

one.
your smile can cut me like crashing waves on sharp rocks.
I was always warned not to jump ship in deep waters.
I was always told not to get lost in steady waves,
but my reflection smiles back at me and the ocean is six miles deep and
if you were at the bottom, I would swim to you
until I ran out of air and then some.

two.
If you asked me for the stars,
I would rope them around a blue silk string
and hand wrap them for you.
I was always warned not to give too much too soon
but I hate being told what to do.

three.
it is a testament to everyone that came before you,
all of the words I wasted on them instead of you,
Isn't it rotten?
I will love you until you fall apart under my fingertips.

four.
comfortable silence has never been my strong suit.
I fill every space up with words, with dreams, with bad memories
and the worst things that have ever happened to me and
you sit there, caked in sunlight, and you listen like
i'm telling you a bedtime story.
and it feels safe, sharing the journey at how I arrived at
the point where your chest meets your heartbeat
and your lips meet mine.
I made it here, I know you were waiting for me, I know it took a long time, but I'm here now.

five.
I've never been good at writing love poems.
I'm better at writing loss poems, but these words have forced
themselves out of my skin and into the ink.
I dont want to lose you. I dont want to write our eulogy out
and replay it in my mind. Just stay. Just stay, just stay, just stay.
I could slip it
off of my tongue like a bad habit forever. I have belonged to you since the beginning. we will have new beginnings indefinitely. I promise.

it repeats in my head like a
mantra or a desperate prayer,
hands clasped tight over a
crucifix necklace. but i cant envision
myself praying just to god, i am so
desperate at this point i am yelling
my invocations to any force that will
listen and my eyes are shut tight like
a little girl wishing for time to
slow down, reciting
"please dont get sick of me please
dont get sick of me
please dont get sick of me" and i
am never sure of what happens when
i open my eyes and i am terrified to
unfold my palms as if someone will
catch me by my wrists and hit my hands
with a ruler and assume i have ever wanted
anything this bad before in my whole life

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

GIRLS LIKE ME
are made up of pieces,
shaky legs and furrowed
eyebrows constant questions and
cutting off sentences we are existing
in every direction we are never quite
exactly one thing we are
everything all at once and we buzz
like a hive of nervous tics and anxious stutters
this energy cannot be created or destroyed
it is transferred from soft songs
to reminding GIRLS LIKE ME that you still
love us when our mouths cannot form words when
we are not entirely existing in the same place as you when
we get scared and write poetry about how GIRLS LIKE ME
fall in love with boys like you and we never really
tell them we wrap our hands around our own throats we
were never taught to be cruel, we were never taught to
be kind we are exactly everything and always nothing and we
never know what to say so we fall in love with boys like you and
we wait and wait and wait and cannot be created or destroyed

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.”

There are some things you could never bring yourself to say aloud
But if you ever did you'd have no choice but to scream till you went hoarse
I put to paper my feelings toward you
Because there's not enough air in the world to suffice
For all the shouting I'd have to do

“I like when it loops over and over like that”, they said.
God if only you could see inside my head,
Playing sensory details over and over again
like there's a secret hidden in the way your eyes curl when you smile
or in the delicate shapes you trace on my skin that keep me anchored to the conscious world

Could you ever understand the way you
pull my heartstrings
round my neck like piano wire,
what a rotten way to go.
the way you
clog up the chambers of my heart,
kiss after kiss,
word after word,
drifting down the length of my chest,
falling softly on the floor of my condemned building of a heart,
like dead leaves piling up in the gutter,
the river runs over its banks,
and spills into my lungs,
i bail myself out in the silence of your sleep
let my heart be a vessel, its water your grief

Neither wholly light nor dark
Both the sun and the moon dance circles round our hearts
Will you still be here after dusk?
Will you still be here after dawn?
is every a precaution of scaring me away just an entreaty for me to stay?
a hundred little love notes folded into paper tigers
a hundred little red lights for me to run
a hundred little cuts for me to bleed from
when we decide to crash let’s be going to fast that it’s fatal rather than paralyzing
You promise yourself to me in totalities and you give yourself to me in teaspoons,
They said, “all of it is yours’,
Worried if all of it is something my heart has room for,
I promise, I promise, I promise, if only you’d just be unafraid to open the door
Do you think you won’t let this work?
What if I won’t let you?
Do you think you can hurt me?
What if I’m willing to do a lot more than just bleed for you?

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

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

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

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"

the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like my father raising his voice.
i have always recoiled into loud noises, slamming
doors and heavy words have caused me to
flinch in record-reaction time. i fall in and in and
into myself and you say it quietly, but it
is louder than any breaking glass or screeching
tire noises in the driveway of my childhood home. i
have always chosen my words very carefully in a
world full of carelessness, i choose gentle and i choose
compassion and i choose kind. the way you told me
you didn't love me anymore sounded like the fight
where my mother said she was collecting her things.
the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like packing a suitcase and putting a for sale sign on the
glossy green suburban lawn. the way you told me you
didn't love me anymore sounded like the music my
sister would turn up to drown out the voices of adults
downstairs, or the creaking footsteps of a man coming
home late, wafting in someone else's perfume. the way you
told me you didn't love me anymore sounded like the wail
of a child after a blow to the face, after another blow to the
face, after another blow to the-
the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like something i had been waiting to hear since you told me
you loved me. the other shoe drops. the other shoe drops.
a swift, clean, repetitive blow to the face.

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