i don't want to smell alcohol
on your breath when you kiss me,
i want to taste the hours that you waited
and to feel how much you missed me.

i don't want to breathe in smoke
when i bury my face into your chest,
i want to hear your barely-beating heart
and feel it pulsate in the warmth of your flesh.

i don't want to see the moon & stars
swirl like diamonds against the onyx sky,
unless i can do so in the comfort of your arms
and have your fingers interwoven with mine.

i don't even want my morning coffee
unless you're the one that brings it to me,
having learned to make it just the way i like it
and committed my preferences to your memory.

i don't want sunrises or sunsets
if i can't watch them dance upon your skin,
or love you between dove-white sheets
on saturday mornings at half-past ten.

i don't want to see the day i become old & grey
an early grave i would sooner invite,
than to live to greet old age without you
by my side to guide me into eternal night.

- m.f.

let me first say, i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing
and i don't really know what this is or where to start.

i am comprised of scratched porcelain and bad dreams -
made up entirely of half-hearted attempts at sanity,
countless unspoken "i need you's",
and ever-faltering faith in myself and those around me.

i am not a poet, or at least not a good one, i don't think.
i feel a lot of things, sometimes all at once -
other times i don't feel anything at all, which scares me beyond
a level of which i am capable of explaining to you.

i nearly jumped in front of a train in april of this year. i don't know why.
my feet ventured toward the platform before it had even registered
in my head that they were doing so. i heard my best friend speak my name,
and snapped out of the trance. not a lot of people know about that.

i've been in love a lot of times with a lot of different people.
i have a fear off falling but a tendency to jump from high places.
i don't read books as much as i used to, but i'm working on that.
i'm in love right now and it's really difficult but it's nice. i'm happy.

i grew up with five brothers, so i like to think that made me sort of tough.
(but i cry every time i see a deer or a possum on the side of the road.)
i don't smoke cigarettes anymore, partly because my father hates them,
partly because they remind me too much of someone who liked them more than he liked me.

i write a lot about people who i don't talk to or see anymore. they don't live in my heart,
but the curse of memory is more often than not unbreakable. i call it leftover poetry.
then again i don't consider any of my pitiful mutterings to be poetry. just a bunch of
raggedly strung together words that sometimes rhyme a little bit.

i used to want to die and i wrote a song about it that a lot of people really liked.
i don't want to die anymore. i will never show that song to my mother.
i am much more content with watching people talk than actually talking myself.
this piece of writing feels too personal and i don't think i like it, but i'm pretty sure
Eleanor Roosevelt said something about doing one thing every day that scares you.

m.f.

contents of a human heart may include:
shifting shadows
wasted space
loose change
mumbled promises
secret hopes
tears - and
sometimes blood

m.f.

torn jeans
dimples
station wagons
shifting eyebrows
eager hands

wry smiles
chapped lips
cheap beer
deep-set eyes
pirated music

hates his birthday
stoplight-kisses
star-gazing in cornfields
****** knuckles
broken minds

lanky limbs
poetry books
scruffy faces
jet-black coffee
calloused hands that still feel soft

adventurer's heart
jumping fences
midnight tokes
always gives you hickeys
always opens your door

worn sneakers
chewed pen caps
late for work
old windbreakers
dirt under his fingernails

omniscient smirks
expensive cologne
good intentions -
but is bad with goodbyes
hates himself for making you cry

broken cigarettes
aviator shades at night
a perpetually furrowed brow
and a laugh that sounds like autumn leaves as they crunch beneath your feet

m.f.

you, my love, are the light of my life, and you - are ruining my writing. lately, when i sit down and try to write, all i can seem to come up with are grossly overused analogies and tired metaphors that have been recycled a thousand different times. all that flows from the end of my pen are flowers and stars and the creases that form in your forehead when you smile and how much i'd like to lose myself in the galaxies of your irises - and it's disgusting. this twilight-esque prose, this juvenile symbolism and puppy-love poetry that pours from me - is not me. i'm no Poe, no Plath, no Kerouac, but i like to think that i'm okay. however, recently the caliber of my writing has been reduced to nothing more than rainy-day romance and child's play. and god, everything rhymes. i feel like i'm sixteen again in the best way. it's because you've stayed, that you are changing everything i thought i knew about love. i catch myself absentmindedly drifting to visions of a shoebox apartment in a city somewhere and furniture shopping and even the B word (babies). that's so unlike me, that is so - amazing because nobody has ever been so serious about me and i think that maybe, baby,  someday i'd like to be 80 with you - oh god. you - you are too many poems that all sound the same, but each time i read through them i somehow manage to find something i haven't read before. you are open doors and patient arms with a voice like a lullaby that resonates in the darkest corners of my mind. you are saving grace without condition and a love so deep i could go for a swim in it - and maybe that's why i'm drowning, because all i ever really learned how to do is doggy-paddle. but you are so patient. anyone else would have quit on me by now. the idea of forever has always terrified me, but the promises you make sound so real that i'm beginning to think maybe they are. baby, you, are eyes like soil and words made of rain drops, and every day we grow a little more. i adore you. i am so sorry that my meager words can't do you justice. my ineptitude is criminal, but i'm trying. and i think that i would rather be vomiting these clichés than return to the world of gray i lived in before i met you. i love you. i love you. i love you to the moon and back and every planet in between. you are the sweet to my tea and the leaves to my tree. and every song i've yet to hear but somehow i manage to follow along with. i wanna scream it from the top of a mountain or the middle of a grocery store, about this love that leaves me with butterflies in my belly and fireworks in my heart. baby, i've never been so happy to embrace mediocrity. my prose may be suffering, but my heart is soaring. writer's block has never been more welcome than when it bears your name. so wipe your feet at the door, take off your coat, and please, make yourself at home.

- m.f.

sometimes
i suppose i am happy.
like when i am out with my friends,
throwing my head back and covering my mouth
as i shake with laughter
at a joke someone just made.

but the days turn into nights
and my grin will turn into unexplainable sadness
worn on my face like a tattoo.
then i lay in bed
thinking about all of my past mistakes
that i am too afraid to admit.

it's nights like this when i realize
i am many things
i am happy and sad
jealous and proud
excited and anxious
and i am still wondering how that could be.

-k.m.

oh annalee
why didn't you tell them about
the crying
and the cutting?

how could they have seen the tears
behind that perfect mask for
a face?

sweet annalee,
how would they have known
that you felt numb
and empty?

you didn't tell a single soul
about how you wished you were dead.
you didn't tell them with that
sweet voice of yours.

dear annalee,
why must've you told them only
with pen and paper?
why were you trying to fly
so soon?

please annalee,
they're desperate to know
what made you feel that way.
they were ready to help you
but you pushed them away.

why did you have to visit
heaven so early?

-k.m.