i wanted to write a poem
about your curls
and how they made my heart
beat like a drum played by a five-year old
who had chocolate cake for lunch
how my fingers were fighting each other
and fighting the urge
to tangle with yours and
make their way to that
chocolate colored head of yours
and get tangled in it too
and i wanted to write a poem
of how much i wanted to be like Cinderella
and leave something behind
with the hopes that you’d call me back
something like a notebook or my
polka-dotted waterbottle
but i guess the only thing i left
was a tiny little part of my heart
on the backseat of your car

i was going to write a piece using the word we entirely too often. talk about the slip of your palms down my cheeks, the floaty high after you don't sleep for forty-eight hours and then skip gallantly through the albertson's parking lot. i was going to write this immense prose with weaving metaphors and phrases that begged to be spoken. a piece with a moral, about a boy and a girl, or maybe two girls, or an animal and the voice that haunts it. about a willow bride with gauze wrapped firmly around a puncture wound. describe the inner monologue of a park bench. but maybe not, because that would be deleted.

i could write you a letter, because you know who you are. or the empty waterbottle that is staring mournfully at me, or burlap sacks, or the words that i speak of constantly but never speak.

The first girl I liked
Liked the Black Eyed Peas more
And she would sing
As she skipped circles around me in the schoolyard
My mom always told me she would grow up to be a lesbian
I wished she was right
The second girl I liked
Had a Hello Kitty tracksuit
And I still worried
About what to wear around her
I told her her religious waterbottle was tacky
And I know we’ve both cried over that
The third girl I liked
Sailed on a pirate ship
And sometimes we would laugh about it
But sometimes we wouldn’t
I liked the way her eyes looked when she laughed
I still do
The fourth girl I liked
Was the third girl I liked
I liked her for a long time
And sometimes we would laugh about it
but sometimes we wouldn’t
My mom always told me she would grow up to be a lesbian
I wished she was right
The fifth time I liked someone
For the first time I liked someone
They turned out not to be a girl
but it was okay because I turned out not to be a girl either
I would never call a religion tacky now
The sixth time I liked someone
The fifth girl I liked
She wore a crown of fire everyday
Something someone else might call hair
We didn’t last long because she came to realize that for her
I needed to be a girl too

I am twenty years old
I don’t sing in the shower,
But I always try to harmonize in the car

My waterbottle is my favorite accessory
I still wear youth large clothes,
And steal from my mom’s closet

I like to wear the color red,
But I usually buy things that are blue, and my favorite color is purple
My thoughts and my actions often don’t match up

I never pay attention in class,
and sometimes focus more on IMDB
than the movie in front of me

I always run out of free article reads online,
but have a tough time reading body language

I used to be vegetarian
I don’t eat salmon
And I am pretty sure ranch dressing goes with everything

I like snapchat
But the idea of big brother scares me
Perhaps its because I am an only child

My hands are always dancing
And my shoes are always laced up to run

I always talking about growing up
As if my future is not already knocking on my door

I don’t think its fair that  we don’t have enough time to be everyone we’d wish to be
That we only get one lifetime to figure it out

I want to be a professional dancer who acts on the side and is a nurse by night
I want to travel the world, but also have a picket fence house
To be a bachelorette for life, but have a family waiting at home

I have been blessed with good health
But I’m not convinced that there isn’t a disease hiding in my abdomen

I have good grades
But somehow I have a hard time making sense of everyday life
I wish I knew what it felt like to be friends with me

But still, I don’t like myself very much
And I don’t like other people either
Or maybe other people don’t like me

I used to love the color gray
Perhaps because I was trying to find comfort in the uncertainty
Or I couldn’t decide whether light or dark made me feel at home

I believe in Sunday mornings,
And rainy days

An overcast sky makes me feel more alive
But if you ask me why,
I probably would not have an answer

I don’t like having my picture taken,
Though always smile when I’m taking someone else’s

I am afraid of tomorrow,
And yesterday’s should haves,
Scare me

I am not very good with a GPS
But being lost never worries me
Except for that one time,
In the woods,
Alone

Probably because being alone feels infinite
And being together feels fleeting
I treasure my alone time, but am
Always missing
You

I’m not sure if this is all worth it,
But for what its worth,
It just might be

i'd been saving
this cream colored
dress for you
with the silk lining
and lace flowers at the
hem,

instead i am brushing
pollen off my shoulders
knee deep in dandelions
pulling canada thistle
and sheperds purse

a black and white
filmstrip on the refrigerator
moving in stop motion
empty moscato
a blue flannel
and a half drunk
waterbottle still
on the right side
of my bed.

you, soidal
like a wave that comes creeping
under my cages.
covers.
and the hairs in your ear.  stand still enough so as not to get caught-
in empathy
under a reaming sleep.
i tricked you into going for a ride while the roads were still wet.
there, nothing left to do.
and i,
the lisping slit filled to a two fingered fist.
front feet dragging
across
the threads of a plastic
waterbottle mouth.
            the
bullet passed through.
wetpennies.numb-deep in the lungs
the slippery film of a chewable vitamin still clinging under molars.
socks slipping down into the toes
the air swept aside into a new season, lips flared
a weekday in the back seat

and when i sweat
i check the threat
of thunder storms on my weather app.
and it calls out to us:
                   have an awesome day and a fabulous weekend
have an awesome day and a fabulous weekend
don'tfuckwithourhearts
don't let me down
hold on to it.
don't go believing in better things

and in and around the ocean, i need a fake friend
now

repeat it back to me.
fix all my mistakes.
**** me at the right time.
kick me in the skin cells
keep me.
itching at the skin

Looking up, a glance through the room,
the eyes searching for something to hold on to.
Our eyes met, right between your neighbors waterbottle
and the back of my frontmans chair.

I blinked and you looked away again.
My first day in the new class and yet,
are your brown eyes everything I remember

Ive never been known for giving up easily
and never been told to be a coward and yet
Did your eyes make me feel helpless like a fly
trapped in a web with no chance of getting away

The following weeks, months and years
would not differ much from how this whole thing started.
For every word we spoke Ive liked you more
For every laugh you laughed my heart stopped a beat
Every smile claimed a piece of me.
Every waking moment, every single dream

As time went by, my feelings did not stop
And I started to feel more positive around you.
Ive loved before. I thought I knew what I had to expect
but you showed me that I was wrong

Ive never told you this and I probably never will,
but you made my life better than you would ever imagine.
We talked. We laughed. We even danced together once on the schoolyard
when we got told we could graduate.

I never asked you out. I was afraid you would reject me.
I thought I would not be good enough for you.
Every time you laughed or smiled and you sat there with your friends
I realized that I would just be in the way. You were happy all along
So all I could do is make things worse for you

The last time I saw you, was at our prom.
At our graduation ceremony. We all drank that evening
And the last time I saw you, you stood next to me at the bar
ordering beer for you and your friends.

You with your red dress, your braided dark hair
looking at me with your brown eyes.
We exchanged a few words... nothing to memorable.
Not as memorable as you when you took the beer
smiled at me and went back to your friends.

I met you nearly three years ago. I learned to like you
and even to love you. Yet I never told you.
But maybe I should have..
because I will probably never see you again

The Middleman is at the start
with a fistfull of pockets.
He walks more than he talks it, with
empty hands.
Orange Peel knuckles; peeling, showing
A segmented truth. He mocks it.
   Wholly revealing hisself with
waterbottle lungs,
   Breathing, squeezing; knuckles popping
   cracking, rabble-rousing-
The
Jenga game of a rib cage -
   - sounding skeleton and shouting -
As the beating heart un-falls apart
Unprotected, Uncontained.

By what unscrutability
can a pure heart be blood-stained?
   As his vain-ed cadence flows below the stone
The stone; a frame, posed.
Humble, yet reigns.

Like, the middleman comes to the end and
By God! Someone's killed the messenger, By God!
   Inadvertent
   Changing channels, all this
   static passive
   staging Battles
   A rib cage match like unintended, homicidal rattles
      As spinal shivers, the Middleman Delivers.

i had to take off my glasses when i tried to convey the depth of it. its not that im nearsighted its just that the lenses are not crystal, if thays clear. transparent like the ice inside a silicone tray, would you decline to drink the sky? stars do softly clinking inside a waterbottle, the flavor of the universe converging in my palms and concentrated night pouring from my eyes - do you understand?