you love him
you love his smooth hands and his rough cheek
you love your hands in his denim shirt
and the cinematography of you together
everything else is an afterthought

the knife in his eyes that is not always pointed at you
but when it is
you kiss the fist that rattles plates
the lips that wrap around clenched teeth
melt him

fail to understand his poison tipped arrows
that are aimed at the mother who threw bottles
if he could only pick one more fight it'd be with his father
you kiss him when he knocks his brother's teeth out

he leaves in the morning for coffee and comes back a day later
welcome him with open arms and abundant questions
he will be a tower of irritation and concrete
he will point fingers that will curl into fists
but they are not fists for you
they are for the devils that dance within him
and behind his wild eyes
and in his childhood home

you will not be fooled
he loves you
you know by every sweetheart and the lips on your forehead and the way he smells in between the sheets each night

he leaves
he comes back
purple flowers that bloom around his eyes are the bouquets he brings home for you
the front porch sags when he puts his hands in his pockets
his face buried in your chest
on nights when the lamp swings a little too low
and his body is wracked with sobbing and shoulders shaking

he mourns the gentle temper he never had
he mourns what he would be like without you
he mourns what you would be like without him
this is how he loves you

your hands in his hair easing soothing shh shh
you are the mother who left
you are better than every last ex-girlfriend
for reasons he will be happy to name
this is how you love him

you came because you are drawn to the shipwrecks
but you stayed in the water for him
ancient child
furious soul
you salt his wounds
and then you clean them
this is how you love him

she was as see through as her
fish-netted leggings.
she sat on the quad with flowers tangled in her braids
and a book of poe on her lap.
she told me about how his voice at 3am over
the phone sounds like god, and how his eyes
look like jesus; she was a catholic girl, raised
with a bible in her right hand, and a handful of experiments
she thought up to change the world when she was seven
in the other. she told me about the cracks in between
his fingers, and how they resemble the roman roads;
not perfect, but they all lead to his heart. sometimes,
she likes to picture the way her right eye
twitches when he kisses her, and then she
starts to wonder about him and how he
treats her similar to her father but the words
to describe this aren’t coming out of her mouth fast enough for her to think of the next sentence.
“tell me about you,” she asked.
i write poems in the dark hours of the night you talk to him;
i am envious of whatever faults you find in his fingers.
i never knew god, but **** i swear i met him in your laughter.
i see your teeth in my dreams but when i wake up, you’re still
talking to him at 4am.
i memorized the way your foot lifts off the ground when you’re about to
take another step, it’s hesitant but curious, similar to the
way i want to tell you all of this but instead,
you sit on this bed of snowbound grass
sharing stories of poe and not enough of what makes your
eyes twitch, or what faults you can find in me. open your hand,
place it over my black heart, i don’t remember the last time it turned red.

I don't want to
Get lost
In you
But I fear
I have travelled
Much too
Far.
I never planned on
Staying up
Till four am
Wondering
About the thought
Of us.

I filled your veins with water and wrote you down on white paper so I didn't have to read you back anymore. Girl's got a suicide pact across the pacific and all I can do is taste the dust.
2. There is a certainty in the way your body moves out time with itself when you think too much.
3. You told me you wanted to be a saint but you were too afraid of the sight of god. When you asked what belief tasted of they told you: fresh buttercream and a wasp's sting. We didn't see you for days.
4. There is a certain tension and it only exists between the bends of girl's legs and the concrete which holds them stronger than any arms could.
5. I want to run every cliche by you and watch you hold hands into the night with it instead of me.
6. Some people can be replicated entirely out of candle wax.
7. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO ******* SELF AWARE ALL THE TIME. You can't even watch yourself.
8. You know you're a halfway house of cells and who are you to say I can't keep up?
9. Say would you tell me if I was just a little off key?
9. Would you tell me the answers to the questions I never asked?
9. Would you play that evening differently if you could turn back the hands that bind you?
10. I burnt you a bridge and sent you the fire like we could ever fill a room with your god. I want to ask him what he thinks of our sins.
11. There is a fluidity in the way your words turn back on themselves.
11. There is a fluidity in the way you turn back on yourself.
11. There is a fluidity in the way people leave doors open for you.
12. I don't think I'd even know what to say to you if I saw you.
13. I only feel comfortable on even numbers.
13. I guess I made myself an odd number.
13. I don't know what we're left with.
13. This is not how we were supposed to end up.
14. I wish you could see the holes you left in the back of my throat.
15. Loving you was as easy as leaving the lights on.
16. And that walk to your parents house was a floodlit symphony like you capitalised every word of every passage I wrote about you with
17 reasons to stay.
And 18 to leave.

The first was the last time I shook like a guard rail and you were a concrete staircase, and I swear, I ain't never seen nothing like you yet.
The second: my fist on your name. But I am here now, like a lit splint bursting into flames, you won't ever find a ghost like me again babe.
The third. And you just want to **** everything. I said you just want to **** everything in your Berlin Wall house.
Your girl's got a bullet hole for a mouth and when it rains, it really does pour round here.

in writing poetry...
......you are writing
intimate love letters
to the world.


you bare your heart,
soul and .....***** laundry
....for all who care to read.

but there is anonymity
in your intimacy...
and there is ..
the dispensation of .... ....absolution, acquital, emancapation.....
leading to.....
....proclamation, jubilation
and .....discovery of a .... ....different self.

when you put...
words  to paper
.....as  a poet....
you allow the world
access, to your heart
....in times of joy and sorrow
and all the mileposts
..... lying inbetween.



you

things aren't going so well these days and writing no longer comes easy but i picked up a pen and paper last night and i wrote about you