Build me a piece of you to keep
Chairs and tables of my own
I will take them all away
And make of you my home

You're in the clattered traintracks
And the static on my phone
I know you've found your heaven
But you're always welcome home

Strawberry leaves crushed in your palms
Green painted down your thighs
I wished and wished 'till you were gone
You never said goodbye

Ruby, ruby, I dream of your lips
Words like smoke and fire
Kiss me soft and sweet my dear
You are all I desire

I fell in love with Peter Pan
But they flew far away
So love goes as they all said
Nothing gold can stay

And I wish the words grew out of my skin
Not from my head to my mouth to my hands to a pen
Blurred thoughts taste better in dark ink
Than in spirals blooming from my head

We grew up in leaps and waves
Our hearts and minds went dim
It seems now I am not so brave
And you don't always win

Lady grace, you **** well know
That you have caught a dove
I know now it's not my place
But I am still in love

The Earth
is one big ball of twine
Every person has a piece of string lacing up their leg, like ballet slippers that you can walk on
You don’t dance through life on pedestrian slippers
There’s no form of tap, jazz, or hip-hop that’ll keep you from knotting your threads with mine
So as you sit in a cafe in Paris
sipping limonade and watching the river of people on the Champs-Elysees
You’ll pretend you don’t feel a tug on your ankle
from that the little fille in Hong Kong who got an A on her test
the teenager kneeling down to rest a rose on the cross with a Jewish étoile
the old man letting out the sail as his bow skims la ocean
As you stand up from the cafe table let yourself be pulled into a dance
People these days
abuelo says
like people are spit off the tip of his tongue
People these days
always rushing to a place they don’t have to get to yet
Back in my day
in my dia
everything
was
just
slow
Back in your day abuelo
Back in your day
there weren’t seven billion people that had dance slippers made of twine
there weren’t so many playing cat’s cradle with their feet
People rush because they do have somewhere to go
Somewhere to be
obviously, that somewhere to be is not where they’re rushing to
obviously, they wouldn’t go where they’re being pulled
obviously, abuelo

So my abuelo can tap his feet to seven billion cats‘s cradles
As you scrape your feet along french pavestones in Paris
And the twine will knot and twist and make all of us dance
to the beat of the world instead of the beat of sound
because music is made using hands, not feet
and under your feet
there’ll be a ring ring ring
from an Earth made of twine
the best sort of telephones
were always the ones made of Campbell’s soup and string
and as the world goes to voicemail
you might tap answer with your feet
say a prayer-
miss you, please-
I’m sorry, I didn’t-
There’s no way-
What? I can’t-
On that off sort of chance
You pressed answer
and all the messages come flooding in
Pressing answer is like cutting a wire
the electricity sparks and freezes
the caller is stuck
Your answer is like trying to speak over a jet engine to someone underwater
Silence is the loudest muffler for anyone who
Doesn’t want to hear it-
You just don’t understand-
I can’t believe you!-
Wrong, you’re wrong-
Someone else hears a ring from their soup-can-and-twine
You let your’s drop down and tangle with ballet shoes made for walking

Humans are alive for one hundred years
People only live for eighty or so
From when you were a little baby, you’ve felt the beat of a thousand hearts
The breath of a thousand dreams
The spark of a thousand smiles
Through the ribbons of twine that wound up your ankles
But the older you get
The more you fray
And it shows in bruised eyes, callused fingers, wintered hair
That you’ve been walking for as many days as the earth is wide
Collected enough footprints to feed a soul on stories
And when you die
mourir
pethaíno̱
umierać
Death cuts your string with his blunt-honed scythe
Your voice goes from the twine that twisted up your ankles
To the crystallized light that filters in between the leaves of trees
The crackle of firewood on a misty evening
The waves that slip on shell-laden sand
You won’t move so much as whisper
Talk so much as laugh
Be so much as exist
The earth is a ball of twine
We all walk in pedestrian ballet slippers
Die into beauty that we’d never thought we’d flow to
Never going where we need to or where we want to be
Your string is caught up in a thousand others
Twisted with mis-steps and calls made over soup cans
We are a thousand beats off rhythm in melody
A thousand stories in tugs and sound


Welcome to Earth
A world of 7 billion connections
Silence instead of answers
Once thousand languages to say seven billion stories
french pavestones in Paris
abuelos who step in rhythm
Dead who live in warmth
Welcome to earth
Population: twined

He scraped bits of stars, crying like the wind and the cough of an empty volcano. I stood there, a blade of grass weighed down by smoking rain, waiting to stand again.

Blood on my hands and ink on my wrists and your fingers tangled in the telephone wire and I am falling, falling, fallen

(I tried to write letters but the words got stuck)

Milady all in white,
with sparking eyes and shaky foundations
the world is too big for your icy hands
reaching out for her smile like you were fire
and she was rain, heaven sent
you see ashes where there’s mist
wings splintering from your bones
and I pray that you find freedom
without leaving me

My fairy who dreams of Neverland,
with leaves in tangled hair
eyes crinkled with smiling
you are so very powerful
I fear you would rather consume yourself
than let go of her at last
and from all the things you don’t tell me
I begin to hate the world a little more

My pixie with straight curls,
I was in love with you for the longest time
but I know both myself and you better now
and I will always stand beside you
your  beauty is in your imperfections
drawing the best sort of people in
you’ve saved me a thousand times
and I've missed you more than I can say

My quiet one with a smile of steel,
you are so kind without saying a world
he leans so much that I’m afraid you will fall
and still have to pick him up again
I only hope you know your worth
I only hope that you’ll let us catch you
you are a beautiful human being
and you mean the universe to me

Milady with a bow-tie,  
your mind is a brilliant, vibrant thing
as are your eyes and smile and laughter
you are a warrior and a scholar
a charmer, a singer, and a lover
you've made me feel loved and wanted
without hesitance of any kind
and it is the best gift I have ever been given
so thank you for slow dancing to an off-beat piano
I'll always love for you to lead

Milady of dragon's fire,
you are fiercer than your flames
and stronger than them as well
you are learning and beginning
and I can only watch in awe
I believe in every part of you
in your beauty and your strength
so thank you for not taking ****
and may the world quit giving **** to you

Milady of the angels,
you have the brightest soul I've ever seen
and a mithril backbone to match
thank you for helping me be myself again
for shining brightly and staying with me
you deserve all the best the world can give
for your beauty and grace and laughter
I would give my soul to see you smiling always

My lady of the wiccan elves,
you are the loveliest being that I know
both in body and in spirit
I'm sorry that I did not tell you so
I'm a bit of a coward that way
you are a thousand miles out of my league
but I will always marvel at your crooked grin
and the way your mind runs circles 'round all others

Milady the endless ponderer,
I am not half the friend I should be
your thoughts are beautiful, have always been
and it lights my heart to hear your confidence
I will always listen and try to understand
though I am not always as there as I should be
and for that I am truly sorry
I know that for the philosopher
it is the greatest punishment to be unheard
you deserve the best of listeners

My quiet greek goddess,
you somehow thought I was worth staying for
I would have kissed you given the chance
but we all know how I am about that sort of thing
you made me feel at home again
when I felt like I wasn't worth existing
thank you, for everything
I'm sorry I wasn't the right one

My legend in royal hues,
for some reason you picked me to love
(you can't imagine my bewilderment)
thank you, for all you've given me
for all you've let me show you
and for your smile that reminds me of home
I hope you find what you're looking for
without falling to ******* your way


Milady of the summer court,
all wide eyes and lovely braids
you made me feel wanted and infinitely happy
but I will never be enough for you
may your mind always wander into beauty
and may you someday learn the workings of souls
come back and tell me when you do
I will always love to hear your voice

Milady of love and loss,
I hope your list helps organize your mind
you deserve the best of happiness
but I fear you'll look towards the wrong eyes
I'm going to miss you dearly
but I know you'll find your own way
you don't need me much at all
but you make me smile when I'm beside you
so don't you ever lose that light
you'll find one to match it someday

Milady the beautiful and free,
you are fiercely kind and lovely
I look up to you more than I can say
in your strength and in your thoughts
thank you for your words
for your smile and your love
you brought me back from myself
and I will always be grateful
may everyone marvel at your existence
and at how far you've come
it is, after all
the very least of what you deserve

How can I help someone who's sad? Anything's welcome, from stories to lists of links. I just want to be able to help.

-c.a.s.

(P.S. Sorry that this isn't really a poem. I'm not really up for trying at the moment)

Miss Lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell (ding ding)
Miss Lucy went to heaven and the steamboat went to-

"Hell, you're king of asphodel and I'm the
queens are only figureheads pretending to
'rule the chalky darkness and master your
light' fires in my soul with a lonely wet
match up the boys and the girls and ignore their
desire is a sickly sweet syrup, poisoning your
veins are so easy to reach when a blade is your
cure me cure me but only how I want to be
cured minds are a cracked figment of our
imagination is henceforth forbidden, it hinders
conformity of anger is an empty and broken
safety has always belonged to those who lie the
best hate others or they'll love to hate you
first come first serve, no matter where you came
from the sewage of the silt of society we will
'rise if you believe in miracles' no, but I think there's
hope is the thing they say we have but forgot to give
us quiet kids are always too busy being
NORMAL is not what you said it was, nice try
though we are free, you have forgotten to tell us
so it goes, so it goes, one day I had been
dreaming is something she hates so she's begun to
smile, it's a wonderful mask to wear when you're
collapsing is my specialty, I'm just like all the
others being in pain does not mean I should not
cry out all you want, science proved that God's not
listening to the sound of silence is long since out of
style is a name and a number and a broken
incarceration may cure me, but once I was just like
you have the power but we have the money to fake
it cannot drown softly if it never wanted to
begin at the beginning and we will all be
lost along the skeleton bridges, I began to
walk with me, walk with me. It's always a day that's-"

Darker than the ocean, darker than the sea!
Darker than the underwear my mommy put on YOU NOT ME!

I wrote this five times over because it wouldn't come out quite right. Because I’m tired, and there’s nothing I can hear but the silent chatter of my mind on repeat, screaming at me to be better than I am (better than I can be).

In January, we slept in the same bed and I dreamed of kissing you, of taking your hand in mine and pulling you close and never letting go. I followed you around like a lost puppy as you talked about nothing but home.

In February, I was told to wait and left to wonder and doubt and dream. My thoughts swirled until I convinced myself that there was nothing between us but my arms reaching out for you as you turned away (not out of spite, but because you didn’t know).

Felicity, you call me Serenity but I am by far the best at convincing myself that I am unloved, and by far the worst at thinking that I’m worth loving. Felicity, you have been extraordinary from the day I met you, a cacophony of color and beauty that shocked me and entranced me. You are all that I want curled around me at night; you are beautiful and wonderful and mine.

Felicity, most times I am not quite there. I am in the past or the future or the could-have-beens. I am not always whole. I am not whole. It’s hard, for me, to give the entirety of myself when I have trouble finding it, when it’s rotten and breaking and lonely and hiding.

I’m afraid of the dark and blue cheese. I don’t like hypocrites or the way I act when I feel like I can’t breathe. My mouth is bitter from too much coffee, my mind is buzzing from too much worry, my hands are empty because I can hold nothing without it slipping away from me in the end (it was never there in the first place). But you- you are a certainty, and I don’t know if I want to cry but I do know that I want to hold you forever and kiss you a hundred times until you know that you’re worth more than should be possible.

In January, the ball dropped over Erie Bay and I looked past the stumbling drunkards to see you, cheeks pink with cold, and wondered what it would be like to be brave. Now it’s November, and I backspace the ending words to each goodnight text and think about the very same thing. There's sugar in the edges of your fabric, darling, chalk dust kicked up along the road, and I am better when you smile; I am home.

I lie facedown on the tallest tree branch, hair bleeding into greenish-brown wood that tastes like dark rain. I reach my hand up and curl it, ring finger to thumb, just within my sightline. My fingers feel soft against each other, slick with moss and the places between the bark that glisten with last night’s rain. The circle I form with my hand fits perfectly around the edge of sunlight melting over the horizon and I stare until my eyes begin to burn.
My grandmother once told me that the cure for anything could always be found somewhere in the world. “It might not be five minutes away,” she had said, pinching tea into bags that had gentle embroidery along the edges. “But it’s out there. Be careful what you give away to find it.”
I close my eyes. Open them. Smile at an aphid making a home for itself on a twig near the sun between my fingers. I like this silence before my house and my friends wake and take away the light. I like the cadence to the world, the light between my fingers, the water against my cheek and the rhythm of my heart slowing down. I put down roots with the old oak tree, drinking in the medicine of the mineral rain.

The old man chip chip chipped away at the star, orange peel shavings pooling 'round his feet like molasses. He looked at me and sighed out ******, drifting towards me through a wall of undecided fruit trees. "Sometimes," his hair murmured at me, "you learn that gray's the only color." He paused. And paused further. And the not-pause became silence.

I picked at the Stairway to Heaven with my eyes till it turned black and blue. "What about your fireworks then?"

He cut himself on the chipping knife and the not-pause was more. "Other times," he disjointed, hand dripping copper taste in with the orange slices, "We paint over the gray and forget."

I lit the fuse and blew up the sky, streaking it with sparks of gold. The clouds smell like molasses and rain and all I can see is gray.

You're swirling in embered light
Gravity breathing out of your pores
I am a comet, burning ice in my wake
And you are the sol I come too close to

If I could breathe anything, it would be lilies
If you could hate anything, it would be air
You are so bright that when I close my eyes
I can see nothing but feathered fire

At the center of the universe, there's a tree of souls
Eris and Phobias collect its molt
They rain it down through the smog 'till it shatters on concrete
I watch as you catch it on your tongue

I found you on the drenched roof
Pale and glowing and still
Stars clinked in the sky with a diamond jangle
One had fallen, burrowing under your skin

And you told me you were sick with trying
And you told me that it hurt to burn
And you were cold and apathetic
You were you, but not the one that knew me

You flamed and flamed and flamed and flamed
You crashed and told no one at all
I miss you and I love you
Though you shine so differently now

The flames in her lonely eyes
ignite flowers in her wake;
bright blooms twist in a wreath
to crown a queen, though
she’d rather her footsteps be
encircled with love;

Her footprints fill with pearl water,
pinky finger hooked with mine;
I can feel the love she doesn’t know
she has flow through her veins
and from her smile into my sighs;

I miss walking beside her,
fiery water licking our toes;
but she’s become so afraid
she can’t trust in me
or her compass to guide us home;

We follow lanterns hung from treetops
make a path where we’ve not gone
with pixie dust trails
and fairy garden archways
and the second star to the right;

Straight on ‘till dawn.

Declaring that you’re in a relationship will change some things.
(So maybe I'm putting it mildly)

What it doesn’t mean is that everything will suddenly be perfect.

It takes more than labeling a relationship to hold conversations just by looking into each other’s eyes,
To laugh together while having ***,
To let them convince you that when they tell you you’re beautiful they aren’t disregarding your flaws or glorifying them, but instead loving them because they’re part of you,
And that you’re the loveliest being in the universe,
No matter how many freckles they have to kiss to prove it to you.

It doesn’t mean that you’ll suddenly be able to touch your heart to theirs by giving them a goodnight kiss,
Or that they’ll slow dance to Here Comes the Sun at midnight in the middle of January,
Just because they know it makes you feel so complete inside that you’ll never, ever, want to stop kissing them,
And that you’ll be crying at the same time,
As you smile when you trip over the arm of the sofa and land with them on top of you, holding them harder than ever.

What it does mean is that what you have is mutual.

It means that you’re willing to learn how to lace your fingers together, not caring who sees how awkward it is when you can’t get them to fit quite right,
That you’ll let friendly hugs turn into blushing kisses on the cheek,
Tickle fights into a silence that fits like a missing puzzle piece around you,
As you bump noses and grin for the forty-fifth time,
At two in the morning because neither of you can say goodnight without seeing the smile on the other’s face and blushing again.

It means that person, the person you just let take your label,
The one that that lets everyone know you’re their’s because you want to be,
Is willing to try to get there.
To get there with you.

It means,
That this is a start.

Don’t let go.

When it was time to leave (for you to go)
You found me in cross-hatched darkness
Stirring sugar in the smallest cup
Standing on pebbles of acrylic nothing

The syrup coated my cotton-pink fingers
Snakes of cold air clicking along my spine
Sweetness nestling into baklava layers
Elbows bare and cracking

How long did you watch my shoulders break?
Gelatin soft bones pulled by lack of gravity
Obsidian hammers pounding against my skull
Negative space swirling in the sugar bowl

I am only as small as I think you are
You are largest when I don't know you at all
I can almost feel the salt of the wind in my eyes
But you've told me I lie worst when I'm all alone.

When I become more
Glass will splinter out of my bones
Fractals of light pressing on the gears of my machine
Cold dew under the tips of my fingernails
Green flowers dotting freckles on my skin
I sometimes forget how I fit together
Ashes of silence sifting through my lungs
Fingers of darker nights drift
Lighting my skin with cloudy stars
Once upon a time, I was able to ask
When will I feel like more?

I dreamed (once) (twice) that there were flowers on your hands, a corsage mismatched with tattered jeans. I asked who had given it to you (wink wink nudge nudge who’s the lucky one) and you said that it was me (I’m the lucky one?). There were vines growing from your veins like I had infused something beautiful into your skin. Like I had something that beautiful to give.

You smiled at me as we walked down the road, past tornados of chalk dust and children playing hopscotch with flashlights to see by. I wanted to hook my fingers in your belt loop and hold you against me, press my face into your neck and giggle into your ear as we stumbled our way down the street (I’m in love with you).

Somewhere along the way we found a salt shaker full of diamonds that burned hot like stars and we shook them out and stomped them into the asphalt, grinding down a path that lifted behind our steps, ghosting off into the atmosphere. And then we ran out of salt. And then I found some in your eyelashes. And then you kissed me.

And it wasn’t real.

I’m told you had a crush on me. I’ve convinced myself it’s not true (and I miss what I never had). I wish I could pave a street full of starlight with you, but all I’ll get is a smile at my tired eyes (which is close enough and warm, warm, warm). I’d like to fly with you, to see the world you’ve stayed in and loved so, to make you blush again and smile and laugh (you're beautiful).

You think that I don’t love you. I don’t know if you love me. I wish that you would, I wish that it was me that you say you are so in love with, that you want to fly away with and live forever young.

(There are words written on my arm that I'll never say, never sing. Not unless you ask. I'm kind of a coward).

It’s 12 am and I should be asleep but all I can think about is chalk dusted streets and the echo of your smile (warm and mine (I wish I wish)) and the reminder of how you said that you didn't think you'd ever fall in love.

(Just my luck that the most beautiful girl in the world is in love with someone else. Just my luck that I can't be that someone. Just my luck that I'm a coward)

(Just my luck that I quite like being in love)

I'm told that I should dream so brightly

Light bound blades and angel swords

Care not to close my eye too tightly 

So long as it's right side of war.



But I can't sleep with lights so singing

Torture methods loved by good

When bright roots down my words mid-winging

My walking tiptoes turn to wood.



Let me go where winter follows

Play with wisp-lights in the dark

Friends with larks and darker swallows

Bending trees to leave my mark.



A candle lit midsummer night

Burns stronger come the Yuletide snow

Mirrors lie more than lover's sight

March's Ides won't blind me so.



So let me taint my wings with ashes

Chip my sword with ****** smiles

Wear my words in tattered sashes

Beat a path towards every mile



You color with a paper paste

Richer blends don't fit your mold

Now isn't that just such a waste?

You've lost your palette to the cold.

He took the ribbon and let it fall down with the water, thundering along the current into a cove that his veins couldn't reach, burrowing into the salt-laden cracks. There's sugar in the edges of your fabric darling but that doesn't mean you'll ever mesh with the night sky, no matter how high you climb on your ladder made of UV Light or birthday candles (it falls to pieces beneath you either way). I remember the way he used to write letters because it's scratched into the desk beneath my forty-two empty notebooks, simmering in the silence.

I sit on the floor to write the ends of words because that feels more like making a home.

Did you know (you always know) that once upon a time I was made of pixie dust and dragon fire and lonely midnights with ghosts on the rooftops. Did you know (I don't think you do) that I'm afraid I no longer know how to get lost in that place, that I am an erosion, so prone to cuts on my wrists and bruises under my eyes that I'm no longer worthy enough to fit there.

It hurts not to tell them so but it hurts them to know so. Do you see, do you see? There's a mirror that says she does but my vision's unreliable (so they say so they say. I lost my glasses again).

My, but I missed the ache in my knees that speaks of too many nights spent lying awake doing everything. They hurt more now that I'm doing it (everything) to avoid nothing (nothing at all) think nothing of me thinking of you because if you knew, it would never be the same and I never want to miss you more than I already do so it's nothing. I promise, I promise, I always promise.

He stood at the edge of the falls for the longest time, and nothing happened but the rising sun and whispers from the druids bending their trees. They wanted to walk away away away but roots are hard to break once you no longer hate the soil. Then he took the ribbon and drew it back up again, frayed and wet and (not the same) said "Go back to who I wanted you to be. This isn't what I created."

(No, you held the end of it all. The current did the rest.)

Love is the crushed diamond white of summer snow, blemished with frost burned sprouts and the last of fall’s molding leaves. It sprinkles the road like powdered sugar, glittering in the sunshine and merging with melting rain. The snow is not perfect- It has little hills and footprints and muddy swirls, ringed by spring finches chirping petulantly over the bruised cherries that have rolled on down the hill. A worn red scarf loops round a carrot in a pile of melted frost, coal pieces staining the white ground gray. The footprints on the ground are from two people dancing to music that flows between them, sending the birds squawking and shadowing the flowers that twist and vine out of the winter, smelling like pure sweetness when crushed below twirling feet.  The powdered sugar snow is not perfectly spread, but standing still has never been the best way to dance.

“Once I was a princess, and moonlight was my kin
My hands as soft as silk, jewels dripping down my skin
I am still a princess, though I seem not to be
My hair’s gone coarse, my eyes pure white, and yet I am still me
My mother was a queen and my father was a saint
My soul’s as pure as dewdrops, my blood bears not a taint
I spin a web to catch the dreams that drift down from the stars
They dance and jump and weave till I collect them in my jars
I am but a humble merchant, I only sell you what you’re due.”

Said the fly to the spider:
“I was once a princess too.”


-Chloe S.

I picked the whitest lily boat and set it on the shore
I thought it held a diamond prince, going off to war
I kissed him and I set him free; he wasn’t back today
I guess it’s just like Mama says: some things aren’t meant to stay

My prince is on the river now, finding sea-glass sand
He’ll take the brightest jewel around to put on my left hand
That must be why his boat’s not docked! He just needs one more day
I’ll wait and whisper to the forest; it won’t sail away

The sky is weeping soft and slow like Mama’s lullabies
Mist tiptoes in from water’s edge; wind skims my hair and dies
I hug my knees and close my eyes; I listen to the rain
The red leaves are my castle roof, the lake: my windowpane

Dandelions are soaked through now; no wishes left for me
The branches quiver, twirling down some helicopter seeds
Someday soon my prince will bring white lilies to my door
His smile will light up the air and I’ll be at home once more


-Chloe S.

Well you know boy, if you play the earth in a game of loaded dice you'll find out real quick that it don't roll so great on empty gravel with all them melting icecaps shiftin' the balance.

And you know girl, the dealer's gonna say "Your loss, my gain," and give the ****** dice right back to you, melting poles and all. "Try a stretch of universe full of cheaper stars if you wanna get rid of that ****."

And kid you'll take that dice and pay the price because all the guns they say they have ain't gonna stop the world from goin' bad real fast as that dealer smirks and says "Not much time left 'till it's gone. Not much time at all."

Dark floats out into the silence
Crashing on the banks of Prometheus's wings
Opening a velvet-silk curtain.
To a fabric of shadowed stars
Cloudy fingers sew it clean
While invisible hands stitch pearls back in.
A ghost flits on the hallway stair
Reaching for the last shafts of sun
Tumbling off a silent dream
Blind as black with a lullaby hum
Filling the gaps in an empty line
Somewhere between dusk and dawn.

I once met a girl made of flower petals
She was lovely in all her thousand pieces
Colors curling deliciously across her skin
Honey dewdrop tears whispering down her cheeks

She tried to kiss me but her lips were shadows
Cigarette flame breath dripping up my nose
Sweetness traced the corner of my eye
And she prayed, “I am gone, love, I am gone”

I once met a girl made of holy sin
Story up in flames and eyes of shattered glass
She whispered sanity and climbed the stairs to hell
As her world drowned in vibrant ghosts.

If there is a god
We all must be chess pieces
Our anger trickles down from the powerful ones
(Who play monopoly with real estate agents)

-C.A.S.

You are misty in your blindness
Shackled to the light
The night is loud with echoed dust
Cloudy red consumes your veins
Shattered exhaustion creeps 'round your crown
Uncomfortable breaths empty silence's shelves

All hail the queen of the future
Lonely eyes grinding like stones
Dark arms curling 'round feathered calm
Murky explosions from crackling lips

We are only ever lonely when we are not cold.

Once upon a time, Everything was in a bottle. All the little universes were fizzing little bubbles, and the paths between them were made of clear clutter. There was a cork on the bottle, sealed and marked with an old sort of stamp, the kind that drips wax all over the glass and reminds old seafarers of rolled up scrolls and dreams thrown into the waves.

And once upon a time, someone melted down the wax, eased out the cork, and took a sip. All the stars burned spicy as cumin and the black holes left a sour sort of taste behind. It wasn’t a very orderly sort of soda. It wasn’t a very perfect one either. But it was the most delicious thing in- well, not in the universe. That’s what it was made of.

Once upon a time, Everything was in a bottle. Then, it wasn’t.

"This is nothing," she says (like nothing is the touch of her lips or kisses of freckles or anything she says with her eyes that I'll miss when she turns away).

"It never was anything," I say (like never is the day I first met her and was swept under the current under the water under the sheets under her skin)

So we go now (so it goes, going, gone) our separate ways-
In a parking lot at midnight (asphalt gravestones and keys in our hands and does it say something about us (about me) that we're safer walking home alone in the dark than we ever were with inches between our hands).

No one ever told us we shouldn't try to make ourselves two of a kind but it's too late now (we meshed the parts that hurt and the buzzing of the streetlights reminds me of her and the way she looked at 2am when I first realized that she no longer made me smile)

And then we meshed our stars and diamonds
Standing in the acid rain
The universe swirling down the drain
And our hair was all in strings
Wet from the darkness and the cold and the ice forming
And I'm not crying, not crying, no
My face is just wet with tears.

Stars are history lit by lightyears of time
There is one for every being that ever lived
Every blade of grass, every greatest mind
That is why they are uncountable
(The value of life cannot be measured)

Light travels in years and years
Faster than cars every drunken day
It’s no wonder that it starts the planets spinning
Sets the universe in a haphazard dance
(Though music doesn’t conduct in the absence of air)

We don’t see stars like the dinosaurs did
We see stars as they existed back then
A lightyear is a tower with a thousand floors
On every one there’s a doorway filled by glass
(These lives are not yours to live, not yet)

You and me, we’re all condensed explosions
Speckles of supernovas and molecules of galaxies
Humans are a thousand sparks of history
Condensed into one hundred years
(The past repeats because it is always reborn)

Dreams are a symphony played by chance collisions
Seconds in a blink of eternity’s eye
Yet a single thought can flash-bang a revolution
Save a life or take a future
(No matter how you’re small, you really do matter)

We can map space to the edge of our sightline
Make quadrants for fire and roadways for brightness
Though it’s hard to draw lines through thinner than air
To hold electricity in a loop of motion
(Mastery over kinetic does not a monarchy make)

Every day we walk through echoes of motion
Fading into combination and reflecting forensics
Don’t dust for fingerprints, dust for enlightenment
The inspiration in the flowers of a fairy ring
(Eternal dances with skeletons always have the best music)

Shake hands with the ghosts of every stuttering memory
Life is a game played with actions, not words
We the people has always meant people, not person
That’s why East Coast waves echo on West Coast shores
(Midwest sings salt ’n dust chemical rain)

I’ve met people capable of infinite kindness
I’ve been beaten down by unconscious hate
It’s always a game of chess in this world
No one has less than twelve reasons for what they do
(Except with love, which is madness, which doesn’t count)

Every star has a person to belong to
Every past holds hands tight with the future
Every spark has a little bit of kindling
And the crescendo of dreams shifts the world on its foundation
(Burning bright means so much less than helping others catch flame.)

(If you knew this place as I know it)

I am not just me. I have never been just me. I am a patchwork of everything that has been done to me, and that has nothing to do with being just. I am not perfect because I have never experienced perfection, my life has never been picked through for the best footage. I’m bearing the weight of the dailies, every last one of them.

I am not a story. My body is not made of letters, no meticulous thought has gone into me, I have not been drafted and re-drafted until there are no spelling errors in my bones. That does not mean I cannot create stories. I may not be made of the things I write, but the pieces of the world around me are enough that I can give a little of myself to many while still being whole.

If you knew myself as I know me, you would hate it, too much, too little, unevenly and over-dramatically. I don’t know myself at all and too well, all at once.

If you knew this world as I know it, you would love it. Love it and hate it, hate it because it’s going and love it because you’re going with it. I will keep telling myself that different does not mean good or bad, but I’ll still miss picking a crimson leaf out of a stream of sunlight in the middle of snowy fall.

You would miss it. You would miss sleeping. You would miss not being scared. You would miss being able to love everyone. You would miss thinking that everyone was willing to love you. You would miss your friends being free and knowing what you wanted for Christmas and not worrying about being afraid to look in the mirror.

You would miss six feet of snow in November.

And you would love it. You would love knowing more, knowing better, knowing more clearly, more complexly, and more meaningfully. You would love knowing that spellcheck and calculators that do long division exist. You would love re-learning how to imagine the world, to question everything, to accept and believe, to understand a life that is not your own.

I am not just me. I have never been just me. I am not lonely. I am not alone.

(I'm sorry if I sometimes need reminding).

A text from a friend:* "When you die, will it matter whether you loved or hated? When the world does not exist, will it matter whether you lived a good life or sliced open your throat at fifteen?"

My friends all love philosophy
So forgive me if this seems a monstrosity
To say that the constant cut you feel
Is a wound that you can heal

(let me explain)

When you stab a knife into your heart
Tearing your own world apart
Because you can't bear that every day
You mean nothing to those worlds away

You will bleed out on the floor or sand
Gun or knife in your own hand
Hurt so much more than you thought you would
Then you're gone, darling, gone for good

(bear with me here)

Someone will find you, family or friend
Because if you're missing, who else would they send?
And I *promise you to the end of their days
They will walk around with an empty haze
Over their heart and mind and body and soul
Never forgiving themselves, always so cold
For not talking you out of it, for being too late,
And darling, let's get one thing straight

(Only you could every forgive them, and you're gone, aren't you?)

And pardon me if this sounds strange,
But there's one thing more that'll never change
A ghost of you will always be
In everything they touch, everything they see
Because those who loved you once and love you still
Have known you then and always will
And that little ghost will stab them in the heart
Whether they're near or far apart

(Who ever thought you could be haunted by a memory?)

And as for the love and of course, the hate
Let me take a moment to calculate
Because by the (very) young age of just fifteen
It is impossible, unheard of, completely unseen
For you to not have saved one life
Helped heal someone, brought them out of strife

(And you're so young. What about when you're thirty? Sixty? Ninety?)

And of course, there's that one person out there
That special someone, the one who infinitely cares
Let me ask this, did you ever think
That by killing yourself, in just a blink
You're taking that joy, happiness, and love
Only you could give or even dream of
Past, present, and future, you are the only one
Who could love like that and their heart won

(They will only ever have the chance to be content. Content is not the same as happy.)

So to my friends who love philosophy
Forgive me if this seems a monstrosity
But we aren't meant to matter to the universe itself
Humans are meant to matter to someone else
We mean so much more in all the little ways
Who cares if our name becomes a holiday?

(You are made up of little bits and pieces that make life worth living. Don't ever tell me that you don't matter.)

Tiptoe with me through roads of mottled rainbows
We’ll build a city of coffee cream clouds and crystallized light
Our sticky shadows can stumble jump rope with fizzling stars
And our light will tang in the air with peace

Every streecorner will have an off-key symphony
Played with tongues broken from laughter
Raise your arms to catch the words that’ve ballooned into the stratosphere
I’ll tangle my fingers in your palm to lift you higher

You’ll collect liquid moon in a sandcastle bucket
Drips of silver catching in your spidersilk hair
I’ll pour it down all outside the doily mold
It’ll twist down to earth in fractured motion

Trust me, I never knew how to fly
Only to fall, and to fall with broken hands
Jump with me and skate down a sunset
Dorothy ain’t got nothin’ on this kind of color

I’m blinder than an arsonist with night vision goggles
But only ‘cause I see with my heart instead of reflections of light
Life is opaque when your soul is an old one
Though I’m still getting drunk on the learning wine

Take a rose and ***** a finger on a petal
The softest feelings always have the sharpest bite
The devil’s left the details to hammer her way up to heaven
She’ll shatter kaleidoscope bullets into mosaics of sin

Love is the game that all the best dreamers play
I think up slow nonsense that fills my lungs with longing
Bright towns are always blurrier than the grey
And my brush is shaky from absent disuse

So bring me home (my home is you)
Build love from the broken rubble souls
Sing for our voices reaching higher than the sun
As my hair links with yours in the summer breeze

Frozen bubbles can chime on every door
Our bare feet will press into wet desert clay
Smiles will be painted pure and golden
And all the colors will fill our footprints as we walk away in joy.

The sun is not in love with the moon (she says), reaching for the edges of his hair as it trails down his skin as it trails with the wind as it trails off into the misted atmosphere. The sun, she says, is in love with the stars on your fingernails as they scrape against the bark of the flaking oak tree. She is in love with the way you move against the wind, like you are the inevitability of nature, or a mountain, or a rusted engine snorting out musty smoke. They stand quietly in the field, like the sound the air makes when the sun filters into the cracks between the dust particles in your room at 3:00 pm on a Sunday and the TV’s off but you can still hear the whine of the electronics in your ears.
And the stars move in circles until the hand twists open the bottle cap sky and all the things they’re made of liquefy and stretch out to fill the spaces between the galaxies, filtering in like the sunlight does. You watch them walk along the sidewalk, under the dim streetlights next to the cheap dead end restaurants, yells and murmurs punching out their doors. The air smells like ozone and cigarette fumes, and rain is slithering down the sidewalk into the slick gutter.

There’s a sway to the way you move
darling, like pieces falling into puzzled
places, a song in your hips and a soul in your
breast, in your chest, on your
mind;

Let the color roll on out of you, like the
waves that emptied you at home, like the
flare of your skirt and laugh in your
throat, like the vibration of your ribs when you
sing;

Your clothes are just as much skin as they are
salvation, as they are an invitation, incantation,
invocation, of all the ways you lift your body towards
the sun; towards the sky;

To the fairest;

To the wave of your body, to the pieces you’re
missing, to the way you love like motion is
emotion, like freedom is a right, like there is
nothing you can’t do while your heart is still
beating;

To your confidence, your eloquence, the way your
eyelashes fall against your cheeks, how you make
love like a thunderstorm, drink tea like
meditation, dance like honey, laugh like spring is
coming;

To the one who lives and flows and
sings, the one who wears flowers in her
hair, the one who speaks of the end like it’s
the beginning and never learned how to
stop;

Raise a glass;
Break the plinth;
You need no apple to prove your worth.

Hi.
Can I just say that you’re beautiful?
I can’t see you.
I can’t hear you.
I don’t know if you can sing like an angel or are as off key as a drunkard on Christmas.
I don’t know if you’re porcelain pale or have laugh lines and freckles on your cheeks.
This isn’t a pick-up line.
There’s no punchline cause there’s no joke.
Just me.
Ordinary, imperfect, me, telling you that you’re beautiful.
It needed to be said.
It needed to be said because I’m one thousand percent sure that you’ve never said it to yourself.
I’m one thousand percent sure that you’ve never looked in a mirror and loved every single little part of you.
I’m pretty sure that you’ve looked into a mirror and said ‘Heck yeah, I’m lookin’ fiiine today’
But fine is…well…fine.
It’s not beautiful.
And today means today.
Not every day.
So, hi.
I don’t know your name.
I don’t know where you’re from or where you’re going.
I don’t know the color of your skin or the pigment of your dreams or who you love with an infinity that burrows itself into the very tip of your bones.
Quite frankly, I don’t need to.
Some cultures have a tradition of naming people for their personality. I don’t know you, but I’m sure you’re a thousand scribbles of a pencil knotted in lovely uncoordinated whorls that paint themselves into a smile.
I don’t know those scribbles
So, for now, you are Beautiful.
Beautiful, and I don’t care whether you think that’s a cotton candy sweet cliche or not, Beautiful your name is every single piece of you that locks together with puzzle pieces that only fit you, Beautiful, you are highs and lows and tears and laughter, a soul that soaks up warmth like it’s sunlight and huddles away from the cold by blowing on sparks of imagination.
Beautiful is the name that spreads your heart out until it fills your chest, pushing against your breastbone until it feels like there’s an ache, right there, from pure joy.
Beauty is not perfect.
Perfect is cold, so very very cold.
Beautiful, you are not perfect.
That does not mean you are not Beautiful.
You are every single facet of your mind, body, and soul, mirroring off each other in endless harmony, sharp love and soft frustration, pushing billions of molecules aside every second with just a tap of your finger.
Aren’t you extraordinary?
Call yourself Beautiful, call yourself by your name, say it as softly as you need to, as loud as you can bear it, let it fill you, take you in, take every part of your beautiful self in. You don’t have to smile if you don’t need to, but let sink into your muscles and your blood, let it blink out of the tips of your fingers.
You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t have do be perfect. You just don’t have to.
Because beautiful is not trying.
Beautiful is just being you.

From the one who needed to hear it most,

Hey beautiful.

I press my thumbs into your skin
Kiss pearls along your spine
Your sighs are full of half-said words
Your fingers lace with mine.

If we were angels, I'd have one wing
My halo's in your hand
I wish that we were better
We're no more than we can stand.

So tell them that it's all okay,
Your soul's not shattered gems
I may be broken, but I'm not wise
You sigh; "Kiss me again?"

We laugh and laugh 'cause if we cry
Our lungs won't take in air
We are statues made of stardust
I'd forgotten how to care.

I am the sparks within your nerves
You're marrow of my bones
I smile and smile and tell them all:
"At long last, I am home."

I once met a girl made of flower petals
She was lovely in all her thousand pieces
Colors curling deliciously across her skin
Honey dewdrop tears whispering down her cheeks

She tried to kiss me but her lips were shadows
Cigarette flame breath dripping up my nose
Sweetness traced the corner of my eye
And she prayed, “I am gone, love, I am gone”

I danced with her, molasses slow
Fingertips touching in butterfly kisses
Speaking sign language in shuttered eyelids
Ashy nicotine dripping holes in our feet

Asphodel tickled the webbing of her fingers
Her smile was full of gossamer sunbeams
Papercuts littered the tip of her nose
She laughed to fill up the hole in my lungs

I once met a girl who scraped out my marrow
Kissed my hollow bones with cinnamon lips
Once she could laugh, she sailed away,
Lighter igniting the mist to trace a ribbon back home.