1.
A boy dropped his pen on the floor next to me
and I took it.
I said it was mine when he asked about it.

2.
I didn't cry when
my cat
or my dog
or my great grandma
died.

3.
I read the text.
I just didn't want to talk to her.

4.
I broke up with him
on the phone
because I thought he might cry
if I did it in person.

5.
I stopped talking to him
when I got a boyfriend.
I started talking to him again
when we broke up.

6.
We flirted for 2 years.
He told me he loved me.
I told him he was like a brother.
He started doing ****.

7.
I knew his dad hit him.
I didn't tell anyone.

8.
I told her to stop talking to me
because she was too depressing.
She went to rehab for self harm.

9.
When he told me he wanted
to **** himself,
I told him a million reasons he shouldn't,
but never once said
*don't.

She said
I like your mind

What I should have replied with was
I like you.
You are the night sky to my mind's cavemen
An enduring thing of wonder
Inspiring tales and legends and worship
And all that jazz.

Should have.
I would be mad to bare myself
Just to wither under her gaze of supreme boredom.
A man cannot embrace a star
To dance in her purifying flames
To cavort in pure energy
And live to tell the tale.

All mortals can hope for
Are those dark interludes of breathless awe
At the fearful display of the heavens

I was never meant to walk on her surface
And explore her depths
To foster such ambitions
Is to court death
To plunge into immolation

After a night of slack-jawed gazing
I have to do nothing else but retreat back into my cave
And paint on the walls.

I wrote this for you a long time ago on a coffee stained napkin, after you left me, full of love, lingering in a cafe.

"For you, in all your follies and faults and the way they make you so perfect for me.
For you, in the moments that linger in the vehemently insignificant corners and corridors of things, as if drifted of their own grandure.
For you, for the words that spill to the floor and the brilliant way you understand the deafening silence that follows.
For you, for your supernovas and clever shades, for your daylight smiles and nighttime skins.
For you, for your familiarity and the impossible truths that stand as martyrs to say that I have loved you before.
For you, despite the treachery and quiet sinister fun of the world.
For you, for making me so terribly scared of dying."
Yet here I am, in your wake, so full of so many thoughts and demons. Know that I have died, that I have loved and lost with equal measure.

Born into a house of red hair
soulless people and
beer

my great grandmother is 101 and four months
and she has contracted Alzheimer’s
which means she sees those who have died before her
like her husband
two of her sisters and
four of her nine children

Her sister died just yesterday at 100 and 17 days sleeping in her bed

I was named after dead relatives

Moira for a cousin who died at 20,
before I was ever even born,
a cousin who sang like a bird
and could have been a mermaid
a beauty with straight white teeth and blonde hair
who found death after struggling with anorexia

Katherine for my great aunt who I never met
but my mother told me of her wearing sunglasses and
her sleek black car and
silky hair always tied back in red ribbons and
how she would sneak cookies to the children
holding her legs in the kitchen

I was born into an Irish house
I was born to people who have slaved their life away to make it

My great grandmother was born in Ireland in 1912
and came to America with her family when she was 10

my great grandfather was a French Canadian born in Quebec
who I was told was gentle and quiet
who smoked when he was happy or sad
and worked on houses and cars and a large family

I was born into the legacy
I was born with their blood in my veins

Dear lover
By the time we fall in love i would hope that you will have already learned my name, but just in case you havent i will tell you. My name is danielle lauren shorr. danielle like some ancestor i never met, lauren because my mom liked it, and shorr like the beach. I like the beach. No more like love the beach. Maybe almost as much as i will love you. I like the sand between my toes, the way the wind blows through my hair and makes it an ugly mess, i like the way pigeons search for any trace of food like its all one man for himself and this is the hunger games. I like food. But at first i might be embarrased to eat in front of you, i can attribute this to my history of insecurity and that ******* belief that girls are supposed to order salads on dates. But fear not. Because i hate spinach and fries with extra cheese are my favorite, and soon enough i will learn to embrace it. I will always want to embrace you. To hold you, to be close to you, i have an overwhelming need for touch. But a slight fear of intimacy. I will be afraid at first when you try to get close to me, i will put up my guard and attempt to hide my battle scars and everything i dont want you to know about me yet, ive been hurt before. And i know im not the only one on this earth who has been. But when i tell you that i want to get to know you i am telling you that i want to memorize every part of you like the way i used to stay up at night as a kid memorizing lines of books. I love to read. I love getting lost in the words that someone else wrote that so closely manage to speak to me. I want you to speak to me. When you are struggling or lacking in anyway i will assure you with 100% certainty that things will be okay. I will pull you out of pits of depression with every muscle, bone and limb i have in my body, i have not always been comfortable in my own body. And thats been a cause of my own depression. So when the day comes when i give myself to you, i am hoping that you will remember that every part of me is devoting itself to learning you, i want to learn you. I want to trace the lines of your skin, connect the dots with your freckles or birthmarks, play silly little games and hope you let me win, i will let you in. But only if you let me. And theres parts of me that arent my brightest, i will have days where i will be unable to see anything but darkness, i want you to hold me regardless of what i say, or my stubborness, i am stubborn. I am a taurus. When we fight i will be a bull, strong in my pride and unable to see any other side of the argument, i will tell you this right now: give up. unless its important. I want to feel important. I will want to be included in every part of your existence and when I’m not i will get annoyed and ******* and demand to be the center of your universe. I will act like this because i want to feel like i matter. Like i am matter on this earth so important that if i disappeared even for a mere second the earth would crumble and fall into pieces. And if i crumble and fall to pieces, i only ask one thing of you. Do your best to help me back up, im not asking you to put me back together but to try your best to keep me from breaking even more. And when you break, know that i will be here to comfortyou. To hold you. To tell you that i love you. to make you laugh at the most innapropriate moments about the most innapropriate things, to make life seem a little less painful, and a little more bearable. I will do my best to help you stay your best. And if we end up not working, it will be okay. Because nothing will matter more than the love i gave to you when it was good and if in the end it doesnt go the way we thought it would, well, we'll be okay. But if it does. If this love stays, know that i will love you and give you every single day i have, i will make you remember why you decided to fall in love in the first place, i will make sure to make you feel okay, i will always make sure you're okay. if you're having a bad day, I'll be right there with you. I'll be here now and forever.
Sincerely your future lover.