There's never a perfect time for a guest to arrive.
Unannounced, you didn't even knock when you said you want to help me.
I stopped being a charity case the second I picked myself off the floor.
Breathless, gasping for a reprieve,
I told myself I need all the patience my body and I can give myself.
I lifted myself off the floor
where I had earlier found pleasure in the depths of my mind,
in the arms of a neglected fantasy.
You're here uninvited, but I'd like you to stay.
Look at the peeling walls of my home and love them.
Love me or leave me.

I devote myself to you.
I have found every bone in my body and every inch of skin on them.
This is all the treasure I have in the world to give you.
Skin and bones is all we are.
If you would, we could fill it up with the air of your words.
I’ll validate myself and sprout wings.
I’ll sit in the temple of your mind and listen to your thoughts.
Sing songs of these words I will learn to understand because that is all I need...
... I need to get through to you for myself.
Listen to my pleas, my secret love.
A secret only you and I hold in a box we forgot the key to.
I rise to the altar to look you in the eye.
I will not be blinded by your divinity,
nor by your claims of redemption.
Hands and knees don’t need to be redeemed.
They need to be held.
Hold me, for I have nothing but this body to give you.

If someone gave me a time machine –
A time machine that worked –
I’d probably go back to a night of hushed voices and muffled laughter,
The only version of pillow talk we’ve ever known.

Being seventeen meant neither you nor I knew any better,
But, we were too busy talking to even notice.
We built our fantasies on nothing but clouds,
Wispy and filled with air, but so comfortable to float on.

I didn’t know the first word about love and you said,
“… and the best thing about him is that, he’s starting to fall for you.”
We laughed it off as a bad joke, but we hesitated.
There were many things I wish I’d asked you then.

But, I guess that little girl lived on those words for a week.
Put you on a pedestal built with the same pointless fantasies,
Just to watch you fall and not even being able to catch.

He told me he likes it when I know what I want
And then just go on and do it.
For someone whose stubbornness wrote her destiny,
I have been led to believe that you cannot want someone stubbornly.

That's not how people work.
"It's not that easy, you know?"
I know.

But, we'll pretend we're on this crazy ride,
You and me.
It's a great story to tell even if we don't know how it ends.
How do I make this end?

What's behind the smile?
I am hiding at least ten secrets I won't tell.
What's behind the smile?
Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
What's behind the smile?
I think I remembered an old joke from way back when.
What's behind the smile?
Stop asking.
What's behind the smile?
I won't tell.
What's behind the smile?
I am not telling you how I counted every spot on your face and made a constellation out of it. My stars in my universe.
What's behind the smile?
I don't think you'd want to know.
What's behind the smile?
I don't think you'd like knowing how much I have been trying to look away from your eyes.
What's behind the smile?
You should never find out I probably won't ever be able to see those eyes on anyone else ever again, or that maybe the next time I see a smile like yours, I will stop smiling. So, maybe I am smiling because somewhere, I am thanking God you're okay. If God exists, he better listen to every word and every fantasy I am playing out in my head. It's a dream now, but how far are dreams from the truth unless we try. Right? You needn't know these things.

So, what is behind the smile?
I don't think I have ever enjoyed losing to someone so much.

If you think time waits for no one,
I am going to try to change your mind.
Sometimes, my watch slows down time itself.
Our days and nights are separated by distance,
Your skies a different blue from mine.
A word from that end is all it takes to transport me to your nights.

It's days like these that time remains immaterial,
As if nothing mattered - not mind, nor matter nor me.
I wake to the sounds of my own days,
While you rest to your smoggy nights.
My watch, still on my wrist takes time to come back.
The dials are stuck in your days and nights.
My days, your nights.
Your nights and my days.
Always ticking away from,
Not towards.

you should’ve never unpacked your bags,
because it gave me this expectation that you were in this for the long run. i’m still running. i have swallowed so much blood that tastes like your regret from biting down my tongue to cage it behind my teeth from screaming about you to a world that wants my blood for ink.
i am more than a number, but 24 makes me feel better than 26, so i sit in jeans that leave red marks on my hips and make it hard to breathe, but see it’s two inches and
i am more than a number, but i know every test score i ever got and still remember fourth grade and question three and crying because suddenly my mistakes had weight and i couldn’t fix things by saying sorry and
i am more than a number, but i was always the middle child, always the not-quite one, not the best friend to anyone, just a girl with kind eyes and jeans that are a little bit too tight and
i am more than a number but to you i am seventeen, ten and three. and lets be clear; it’s the three that haunts me, because *** doesn’t matter and ‘girlfriend’ is just a label, but i wish i was the first girl you truly loved, and sometimes i still wish i was the last, but with you i fear i’ll forever be just another number.
i drove over 17 bridges the other day and next week i'll do it again and i think nobody gets what that means except maybe you.
i just tell them i love the scenery, that somebody must've made these trees blush just for me.
you know how i love to change the subject?
i bet they'd love the view. i bet you would too.
and all these metaphors for other things are beside the point.
this is a metaphor for why i don't wear my seatbelt, a metaphor for why whiskey knows me better than you could ever try to.
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars are doing that cliche thing where they talk quiet jet noise and some lumbering giant made everything shake.
not those hand metaphors, not another one of those & keep the sea to yourself,
i think it was a train, it's sound hugged the embankment for a moment and then trailed off into nowhere,
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue' close to my home and it's no coincidence that i've never been there.
i’m just flatlining now and hoping that you can look at the next girl the way i looked at you.