There were handprints on the glass
Trying to get as close as possible
When the person has been gone for so long
And only one person has come to visit
When almost all hope is lost
Someone will come
To leave their handprints on the glass

You have been here for so long
Never tempting me to come
And look at the handprints on the glass
Try to get close
To a person who hurts me the most
But here they are
The handprints on the glass
Tell me to reach out
To the cold smooth surface
That stings to the touch

I never wanted to leave handprints on the glass
I know you never wanted to either

I let different boys touch me
Because I wanted to know
Even for a second
What it felt like to be loved
Even if the love was cheap
And it tasted like ***
Like the punchline to a joke
I never got because it was me

I let different boys have different parts of me
Parts they didn't deserve
But I offered up willingly because I couldn't give anything else
after you broke me
I was looking for different fingers
to place different pieces and hoping  the outcome
would be a masterpiece
Maybe one of them would find a way
to cover up the handprints you left all over me

I let different boys touch me because I had to prove to myself
you wouldn't be the only one
that these scars marking my body wouldn't define
my worth to be loved
I am not entirely sure  
you aren't the only one who could ever touch me without slightly  flinching

I let different boys touch me because that is all I have been taught
To be a joke
To be silent
To be ready to give until you have nothing left
- they keep leaving me and I am to scared to offer up anything more than my body to get them to stay

When she held me, I felt like an earthquake,
shrapnel cutting quick to the bone.
I’m disaster, an unknown
kind of danger is the most dangerous

When he held me, I felt like a riptide,
all control ran out the door.
With the *** and cappuccinos
I felt out of place in my new home

When she held me, I felt disgusting,
every move my own betrayal.
Yes, she hurt like a gunshot
but I did this to myself

When he held me, I felt strange,
like I should give my whole self.
He never asked, I’m thankful.
I don’t want to ruin everything else

When she held me, I felt like a secret,
like I was something small and wild.
In a room of screaming children,
we were something invincible

He never held me, but that’s alright.
Someone tell him I understand.
Take it slow, like we’re new friends.
I’m alive for once

No one touch me, I don’t want it.
Stop breathing down my neck.
My throat fills with *****,
But the hands never rest

No one touch me, leave me alone.
Stop pressing on my back.
There are thumbprints on my wrist bones
and handprints on my thighs

Don’t touch me when you aren’t here.
So many years have passed.
Is it trauma? I don’t care.
The filthy feeling always lasts

Don’t touch me when you aren’t here.
Nobody ever has to know.
When you’re sitting by your lonesome
Nobody cares, you’re on your own

Nobody cares, you’re on your own

Why are your hands like the ocean?
Pull in, push out.
Come here, go away.

You learned to cry quietly because it's prettier that way. You hate that your cheeks get red- like transparent ghosts found a way to put handprints on porcelain skin. You wipe your tears before they touch your cheeks. Don't give any clues that you're breaking.

Remember the first time your mother told you to not look directly into the sun? You asked why and she just laughed. "You'll burn your eyes, silly girl." You remember this conversation each time she calls you her sunshine.

You were nineteen the day you were told, "you're so soft." It was the twenty-ninth time someone had told you this, but this time those words were coupled with soft eyes instead of a hard-pressed stare. Maybe you could have loved him. But falling in love meant jumping, and there were sharp rocks at the bottom.

You jumped once before. You jumped and swallowed seawater as you watched him standing on the bank scrubbing your poetry off of his hands. You remember water setting fire to the air inside your lungs as you realized that no matter how hard you screamed for him to just love you again, he'd only whisper, "you're just too broken."

You remember two months later- the first time hearing the pop of an orange pill bottle lid thinking that maybe you should write the time- like you're calling the last time you'd really be you. It was a "first kiss, first dance, missed call, last chance, yes, no, maybe-so" kind of night. The kind of night that puts your soul on a sinking boat in the middle of the ocean. There's no coming back from that kind of lonely.

"Be good." She told you. You remember this when you go to type "food" in a text and your phone corrects it to "good". Your ribs drop off into an empty abyss. There is no fulfillment to the kind of starvation your hands feel when you reach out to hands that will never love you back.

Those bones hold you enough for you to sit upright in a hospital waiting room. Spine straight and lungs held in a panic. This happens every time they put cold hands on the parts of you that no longer work. New mothers tell you that children are a blessing- that they'll change your life for the better. Hollow eyes meet the baby blues of another and your hands grow heavy with longing as you realize that your junk really is just junk and you'll never hold tiny hands.

You wonder why you miss someone from years ago. You wonder why it is that you cannot remember what their voice sounds like but you can remember what it smelled like outside the day you two met. The last time you picked up a phone, your hands knew to dial their number. But you haven't called in ages now. You quietly realize that you only miss certain people when your body becomes medicine cabinet.

You now know that you have hands like the ocean because people may love you, but no one wants to stay on the beach after the sun sets.

You remember turning the mirror around and telling you mother the sun didn't shine that day.

First glance, I’m a good Christian girl. But dark purple flecks decorate my neck.
In leather and lace I forget to pray and let you do what you want with me
because pain is complex and melded with pleasure.

Do you know what they say about girls that enjoy ***?
They never dare to say it to my face but I can feel them staring from the pew
at the dark purple flecks that decorate my neck.

Your hands, more powerful than God, make the earth of my body quake
while I draw fault lines down your back with my nails under the broken
crucifix above your bed. The pain is complex and melded with pleasure.

Deep, growling voice shakes the dusty rosary on your nightstand when we ****.
Your handprints are left on my flesh and the hand around my throat
leaves the dark purple flecks decorating my neck.

Coffee in the narthex and I’m labeled a harlot. Sinner. Sacrilegious. Branded as freaks…
Brush it off. I know what you like and how you like me. God will have mercy.
Sensations blend because pain is complex and melded with pleasure

and I can’t have one without the other. To reach our peak
you leave me red, marked and breathless, gasping, “Oh my God.”
Questioning my beliefs with dark purple flecks to decorate my neck,
I know pain will always be complex and melded with pleasure.

My fingers are stiff on the cement wall;
The dry paint holds onto my hand.
It’s a glove aged four grainy years
Which is left as a timeline on the wall.

They said that it goes fast.
We were young.
For us, time moved slowly.
After all, the clock rotates 24 times a day
And our eyes naively were turned from the time.
But those 24 hours go by fast
When you’re not counting the minutes.

Not everything was documented,
The only photographs are accessible only in our memories.
We were too caught up to capture them.
It will be our biggest regret.

We hoped to change the world,
The seniors were saints to us,
We wondered if we would be too
When it was our turn.

But how does it feel to be a god?
After four years, the feeling never came.
Has the heaven created for us to see
been held up by us?
Or are we just pedestrians walking though?

But now, it’s time to go.
The dust on the floor lasted longer than us.
The one mark that will be ours
may not lead to heaven,
but it will last.

Our handprints
are proof that we’ve touched something.

it should be noted that girls don't always come from venus, that some boys might be a little deader than they were before they claimed you took their breath away.
some girls have barbed wire around their hearts, and others have white flags. some boys have touched more cigarettes than thighs, more blades in the bathroom sink than the ones in her shoulders. the city might whisper the name of one boy and tremble at the thought of another; a girl might  have a hit list with only one name on it — her own. some boys will **** just to say they lost their virginity and some boys will spend the rest of their lives making love as though they could gain it back; some girls have lost their tears and sweat in the upholstery of the same car that might belong to one of these boys — and some of those same boys are sweaty handprints on the backseat windows while others are fingerprints on your throat, but no matter how you look at it, he will always leave his mark, won't he?
it should be noted that some girls will miss you like hiroshima playgrounds miss the laughter of young children, but others will miss you like an 11:30 flight at 11:31, and i bet you never knew that some boys will never tell you that they miss their father just as much as some girls calling everyone else 'daddy' except for the one they truly need; you'd never believe me if i said that some girls look at the night sky where they used to see their reelection in the stars, but now only see another broken mirror.
it should be noted, that not all boys are from mars.

On my right;
A pair of girls with trendy leather messenger bags
Permanently glued to their shoulders
That holds no namesakes
On my left;
One ex-best friend,
One once-friend-but-now-an-enemy,
And a third who hates by association

Navy drips from the spot directly above my head
And slides, and spreads,
And covers the teal along the edges of evening

My jaw is ground shut with the tension,
The weight of the hatred
Clamping my teeth to each other
Pulling the muscles with their ties
That are beyond invisible

I’m alone, as always –
**No emo intended.

longing
1. noun; a yearning desire
- i never used to be uncomfortable in my own bed. i knew your name before my rib cage started to sing it in my sleep. every night that has passed crosses itself off of a pocket-calendar that is stuck in the drawers of my chest. you move your favorite things into the empty spaces, you hang your worst fears up like clothes that are waiting to dry, you scratch how you love into the bedpost and put your handprints all over the walls. i can't take a deep breath without
hearing your voice in the refrain of my lungs.

yearnining
2. noun; a feeling of strong want or need
- the first time i heard your voice, it sounded exactly like what
your voice should sound like. soft, barely above a whisper, low
and confident and eager. when you spoke, i wanted
to cancel the outside noise of my breathing to listen to you. i wanted
to close my eyes and imagine that voice next to my ear, barely
above a whisper, low and confident and eager and right there
with both of our breathing suspended by its echo.

desire
3. noun; a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
- every day it is something different. your eyes and how they
almost close when you smile. how your whole family has brown
eyes but you have bright blue ones that turn to gray as the
seasons wear on. your hands and how they look like you
should play an instrument, im saying put those hands to
good use and find something to strum. and we laugh because
you know what i mean. your laugh. it sounds like an answer
to a question i've been asking the silence.
give me someone to love like that. give me someone to love like that. give me-
like a call back from the
darkness. like, here he is in all of his glory and you
still can't have him.