Here is where I take your smile and
stretch it into a sunset, I
remember your words to mean
everything they didn't
I make haikus out of eyes and note how
they emit light when you laugh
This is where I draw you indelible
on the pages of a notebook
I color you vivid, write you
permanent, take non-fiction and
turn it fantasy,
Into something we might watch
together on a Sunday night
I designate you hero of the story and
I wait with tired arms
to be lifted into yours
Here is where I create a landscape
out of ash and worship you with
language you don't deserve,
vocabulary that is too big for your small
Here is what could easily be a love poem if
you were someone who wanted one but
the only want you have isn't for me

They will never know our struggle
They will never know how to empathize
With our extreme abundance of feelings
We have so many words living on our tongue that sometimes
We almost choke trying to swallow them down
Therefore
We are constantly spitting them on to paper
And our journal entries look more like convulsions made by spasms of the hand
Than they do legible anything
But that's alright
We keep our heart in a metal flask
Open just enough to let the air seep in
Ready at all times to pour it out to anyone with open hands
Sometimes to the point of emptiness
Too many times do we leave ourselves with nothing
Having given so much of us to someone
Caution is not something we proceed with
Rather
Speed and recklessness
Blind optimism with eager motion
We are not capable of waiting
We are the ones who romanticize too soon
Fantasize in the most unsettling ways
We are the antagonists of our own stories
Yet we seem to always be searching for a happy ending
We are the wide eyed wanderers
The shy bodies built with open arms
Now and then
Love poems will escape from our fingertips
Never to reach their destination
Our memories are books we reread over and over again
Films that we replay just to remind us how it felt to feel
Our senses our heightened to the point where touch
Becomes crucial
And emotions
Become visible
We are the people
That you do not want to fall in love with
Because once we do
We will never
Fall out.

There are some things
that are poetry without ink.
Such as a sunrise and sunset,
with amber rhymes of light.
Also, a flowers gentle growing,
as it blooms vibrant vocabulary.
Then there is you,
with flowing cherry wood for hair,
and pearls for eyes.
For you there is no description,
only the whisper of beauty,
written between the lines of poetry
etched in my heart for you.

you appear
in a
breeze

rustling
a few
of my
leaves

only to
disappear
as soon
as i
remember
you

I always come back
Regardless of what I do
I return to you

I wonder if I'm on your mind tonight more than I probably am
My eyes move between phone and computer screen seeking your name
My ears are perched to their highest capability
My mouth tastes of blood from the lip I've bitten in your honor and
all I can do is wonder where you are tonight and if you're wondering about me too

Just when I thought I've
written you out completely,
scratched your memory off the edges of my bones,
wrung the imprint of your lips from mine,
wretched out every word you ever poured into me,
tore your image from the hippocampus of my brain,
Just when I thought I had said
all there is to say about you,
about us,
about this,
Just when I think I have
finally left it all behind,
You come back to me.

In my dreams
in my late nights
in the bottle of wine I force myself to finish
in the pack of cigarettes I don't even like smoking
in my wandering mind
in the short seconds between each day
in all of my writing,
Your name is always the first thing to be marked down.

Lover, I can't forget
I am still spilling your tongue
from my mouth
You seep through my pores on hot days,
the freckles on my face remind me
of how you once found constellations in them,
you built galaxies in my eyelids,
lover,
the cleansing is only just beginning.

I am too full on our history
There is no empty when it comes to us
I will be forever ridding
myself of your contents
I thought the tidal wave of
still missing had passed
but here I am
drowning again.

Doggy paddling to stay afloat,
I have never been very good
at swimming. I am still
hanging on to the deflated
life raft that is your hand,
you let go of mine a long time ago,
it's about time I do the same.

At midnight I will scroll through all
of the names on my phone looking
for ones my hungry heart can
devour or savor for a moment or two.
I will find yours from two months
ago when we talked most recently
and think yes, yes this is who
can cure the insatiable appetite.
My mind will say no, no,
bad idea, nothing good will
come from this reaching out
of a hand too eager, grabbing
for purpose, don't do it.
Fingers will type regardless, a
text of hey or how's it going
or where are you or what's up
or maybe even a somewhat
unconscious I miss you,
I will try to say I love you
without saying it at all.
Holding my breath, I will press
send and it will mail off to you
so you can read my desperation
like a casual hello when really
I've packed a million words
unsaid into the few that I have
picked out to type hesitantly.
At 12:02 I will stare blankly
at a message that has yet to
be replied to and I will continue
to, waiting until my eyes are shot
from staring at a lit screen for
too much time, I will then stop.
I will turn off the phone but before
I do I will breathe in the letters of
your name one last time to remind
myself why I do this every night.
I do it because I'm lonely or
maybe it's because I don't want to
come back to an empty room, the
quiet of a bed holding my body only.
You are the remedy for this craving,
even if you do not answer until
morning, or next week, or never
I will search for you always

I can spit out words in a matter of seconds
I can twist my thoughts into metaphors and anaphora and all this rhetoric they taught me,
they said it would make my argument stronger,
that it would make me a better writer
well
here I am,
am I?

I can do it all
I can make pain taste like sugar, granulate it so finely to where it melts on the tongue
I can cope my problems into understanding, make feeling alone no longer a possibility
I can even create something similar to hope with the way I form these phrases together
I can almost do it all, but
I cannot write you into my arms
I cannot place you in this bed next to me

I often wring passion into language, this pouring out becomes exhausting and
It doesn't matter how many times I rewrite this poem
Poems don't make people fall in love
People make people fall in love
I wish
I could make you fall in love but
I am not one of those who can

I've learned it doesn't matter how nice these titles are,
the stanzas, the formatting, the content is not important
Whether or not I bury my soul into the center is irrelevant when
you are currently the only thing living inside of it
Every time I pick up a pen or
a pencil or a page I hear you
My head has become a blank thesaurus, everything sounds like your arms holding
I search for inspiration and your name is all I can find
I want to say the same goes for you with mine but
that would be a lie more than
anything else

I guess that's what writing is more than anything else
deceit, fabrication, myth, romanticization
a reflection of everything we know to be false drawn into something it's not
I have been trying to scribe my way into your heart but
it's clear that I cannot let myself in without invitation
the welcome mat means nothing if it goes unread and
as much as I would like to get a call from you tonight,
it would be silly to wait up for fiction
I thought the rhetoric I've learned would help me feel better
I thought writing this might take away the aching, make me happier
well
here I am,
am I?