It's 1 am
and I am giving you the green light
to kiss me for the first time
in a world where we've always been careful
to avoid the acknowledgement
of this particular intersection
tonight
it exists
and the both of us know it
with your hand in my hair and
my fingers around your neck
refusing to let go of each other
as if we're just now beginning
to make up for lost time
maybe that's why we're so insatiable
too much is never enough
and time is something we can't
ever
get enough of

It's 2 a.m
and I want to sing you to sleep
with songs of the flutter in my chest
and the blush on my cheeks when
you walk into a room
I want to hold the parts you
dislike about yourself in the palm
of my hands
and hold them like first time lovers
careful
and passionate
concerned not at all with the time
but instead the sweat
dripping down her spine
and his face when her eyes are wide
with something far stronger
than pleasure

It's 3 a.m.
and I want to love you so hard
that you wake up loving yourself too
there are not enough mirrors in the world
to accurately reflect yourself back to you
to make you see yourself
the way I have always seen you
there are not enough words in any language
to tell you all the things my heart feels
but my mouth doesn't know how to say
and I love you in ways other people
will never be able to
understand
because they can't feel my heart race
as you reach for my hand
or as your lips land on mine
or when time completely stops
as you mouth the words I love you

in a world where we have always been careful
to avoid the acknowledgement of this particular intersection
tonight
and forever
it exists

I spent the larger part of my life
waiting for the other shoe to drop
with everything
maybe that's why I'm still stuck
in this rut of waiting to find out
what your catch is

maybe it's something as insignificant
as the fact that you take your eggs
over easy instead of sunny side up
or your coffee so black we won't be able
to share a mug on the mornings we
don't feel like braving outside the bubble
of our future bedroom

or maybe it's something as fatal
as not believing in things like
second chances
or true love
or miracles

because is it not miracle enough
that in this sick cosmic joke the universe
has been playing on both of us for years
we are here now and we found
each other

              is it not miracle enough
that we are here together today
here today tangled up
in my bed sheets and each other
sharing secrets and kisses and writing
love letters in the sign language of
your fingers dancing along my spine or
your teeth grazing my bottom lip

              is it not miracle enough
that you love me like I've never
even been broken before
like four weeks ago I wasn't a disaster
unraveling in the palm of your hand
looking to you for solace
for answers we both knew you
couldn't give me
even if you
wanted to

                is it not miracle enough
that we've made it this far
and no atom bombs have gone off
when we're alone with each other at
3 in the morning
doing anything
but sleeping

that the skies don't open up into black
holes when you leave me
              that you leave me
      and that you come back

               is it not miracle enough
that I love you
after swearing on every god anyone ever
believed in that I would never love again
that I love again
because of you


it is.

You never answered my question*         2:51 AM

2:51 AM                           What is your question?

Are you happy?                                       2:53 AM

2:54 AM                                                          I am,

Good                                                     ­     2:55 AM

Usually it's okay until I come across an old picture
there aren't many of them now
mostly because in the midst of my great
breakdown I decided the best thing to do
was burn them all
as if the flames dancing across our smiling faces
could erase the pain I felt now
in the wake
of losing you
and take all of your lies with it

so let's go on pretending that it's over,
                                             that we're done
you don't have to call and I won't expect you to

so let's go on pretending that I'm fine and you're fine and everything is just fine
let's

     but it still happens

somehow an old photo finds its way into
my broken hands and at first I do
not even recognize the people
staring back at me

      it's like a carnival mirror

your reflection moves against the glass
in synchrony with you
your smile is your smile and your arms
are your arms but
it doesn't look like you

      so it's a little like that
your smile is my smile and my arms are wrapped around you
almost as if I knew
one day you would let me go

                                               muscle memory  
                                               is a real *****

I remember the way your hair felt
as I ran my fingers through it
you hated it when I did that

I remember the nape of your neck
how it tasted
how you tasted

I remember your skin against my palms
how you were always hot and I was always cold and we told ourselves we were a perfect match
playing with fire is dangerous
love is dangerous

love

I remember making it
almost as vividly
as I remember you breaking
my heart

my tongue is numb,
my hands are numb,
I
am numb


                                                              ­so what

just get rid of it, they say
you've burned all the rest

I know
but no
                                                              ­I can't

I'm keeping it because I know you've pitched all of yours
that in your universe there is no longer a shred of evidence tying you to me
painting the picture
of us being in love
          being happy

we used to be happy

                                               and I think I owe
                                               our past selves  
                                               that much

so I will continue to remember
               continue to feel it all
because I know you've learned
to walk,
but I
can only crawl.

I was never big into religion
rather I devoted my beliefs of a
higher power
to the reality of true love,
of soul mates,
of faith

coincidence never existed in my good book
but ever since you've gone
my god of choice is crumbling

crumbling under the fact that miracle
and mistake
are only four letters apart

crumbling under the weight of every
broken promise
I swear I still feel your pinky tied to
my own
I swear you still love me
sorry

crumbling under the weight of time
these winter months are brutally cold
the wind is blunt with honesty
and you are a coward
who is afraid to love as deeply
as we once did

crumbling under the weight of the last time
you said that you loved me

crumbling
because as your lips moved
I knew
I knew I would never hear those words again from you

our anniversary has come and gone
and I suppose I'm crumbling under the weight of that, too

but mostly
I am crumbling under the weight
of pretending I won't wait
for you.

Concept.
I am stopping in a parking lot to pick up a penny - heads up - and wishing that you, wherever you are now, are happy; that you are safe. I stopped wishing for you to be thinking of me too many moons ago to count successfully. You are scrambling through the empty pockets of eternity fishing for loose change.

Concept.
You are thinking of me. I am taking an afternoon nap and you are thinking of me. You aren't exactly sure about how long it's been since we last spoke but something about the swirl of your fingerprints says it's been a while. You think of me once, just this once, and I laugh in my sleep; as if the thought of you isn't something that consumes me every cognizant moment of the day.

Concept.
We are still together, only we're different people now. My head rests in your lap and your fingers ballroom dance through my hair. We are laying on a couch in a room that is much too plain to belong to either of us. You are watching something on TV, and I am watching you. I was always watching you.

Concept.
Everything is different, but nothing's really changed. Your hands have always been a bit too big to belong to my own. My heart was always the one getting sucker punched. I was always a *******. And you always loved to see me bleed.

Concept.
I say that always is a big word, and you say it isn't big enough.

There are emergency vehicles screeching
down the inner city streets of me
sirens blaring, civilians cramming their
cars along the curb in a polite form
of avoidance
and you are speeding through the yellow-
lighted intersections of my broken heart
busy with the thought of rescue
because all the aching parts of me have convinced you that it is necessary
and you are my only hope.

It's got me wondering how many
more times I'll have to fall apart
before all the pieces of me are gone

why is it that every single day
I am stuck in this catastrophe
of missing you
and the thought of me is one
that never bothers to cross your mind

I want to ask how you're doing
and while I'm at it I think I'd also like
to ask how the hell you think
you've managed to move on

the cat we never owned has had my
tongue for the past two months
but now I am volatile

irrational
with the thought of showing her the ring
you had plans of putting on my finger
just weeks before everything was
shot to ****

it shouldn't matter
and maybe it doesn't
but do you think of me?

when the sun shines through your bedroom window and catches
against the glass
throwing rainbow prisms on your wall
when you see a stray dog
or breathe a stanza of poetry
when you've been working on something
and your hands are stained with paint the way
mine always seemed to be
back when I was in love and inspired and
always had something to make for you to
look at but never see

and when you look at her
do you see me?

are you haunted by the memory
of everything you promised me?

or is it all just a messy pile of nothing
years worth of everythings that you
shoved into a day
hours of kisses that you erased
from existence
and a body beneath you that all
you had to do was replace

when you're about to fall asleep
can you ******* name on your tongue
telling you goodnight?

when you wake up
do you ever wonder where I am?
whose bed I'm sleeping in
who's kissing my neck
and taking my socks off with his teeth

do you think of me
wondering
or is it nothing more
than just a memory?

It's the kind of loss that shakes your soul
makes you miss all the things
that made a quiet home in your heart
and lived there as tight-lipped tenants
for so long that you forgot
the weight of their existence until they were gone

you, all of you -
your fingertips on my skin,
your eyelash on my cheek,
your mouth on my neck,
your hand in my own -

now you're no more than a skeleton
of recollection from the broken bones
of memory

now,
I feel the loss of you everywhere

I identify with rainy skies,
broken hearts and
sorrowed cries
loud, noisy sobs that splatter along the walls
of hospitals like paint

my heart aches for everyone
whose heart is aching
whose bones are breaking
who is doing their best at simply making
it through the day

I feel every fake smile,
every forced laugh and
every wiped away tear

all of the world's pains
are named after you, dear.

Lately I've been busy trying not to
fall in love with you
trying not to notice how undeniably right
it feels to be right here, right now
how easy it is
pretending not to know
how utterly effortless it would be
to love you

So instead I force the thought
of the inevitable end
the part where you can't even look me
in the eye as you're leaving
you don't even say goodbye
and almost just as my heart managed
to stitch itself back up
it breaks all over again
the deja vu is sickening

While you're busy falling in love with me
I'm busy not even noticing
the newness of it all
because I am hopelessly stuck in the past
yet constantly fearing for the future

You're busy kissing my neck
and I am busy picturing your lips
saying someone else's name
tasting the goodbye hidden in the
it's not you, it's me on your tongue

Your fingertips trace over the valley
of my side as if there is braille
etched into my skin
and you can't get enough of it
you look at me like I'm the last thing
you're ever going to see
you kiss me with urgency
and say my name as if it's the
sweetest thing to ever fill your mouth

You are busy falling in love with me
and I am busy failing miserably

busy
falling in love
with you.

You are the light among my
existential darkness
The song that people sing
when they are in love
What better way to analogize you
than with the words that pass between
the lips of two humans
whose hearts have sewn
themselves together
for eternity

I look at you and see nothing but
possibility
I see hope hiding behind your eyes
and happiness holding tight to your teeth
when you smile

And what could possibly be better
than this?
This moment where we are alone with
each other and the world

My pillows know all of our secrets
and my sheets smell like your skin
You kiss my face and leave half moons
on your favorite parts of my neck
One hand lost in the ocean of my hair
the other exploring the dips of my spine
Our bodied tied together like a knot
that no amount of time could hope
to untie

And while we're talking about time
no stretch of it could ever
be enough with you

You are a church that never closes,
a sun that doesn't set,
a wall clock beautifully frozen

Let me worship you

You are a forest fire
and I
am but a single match
envying the ferocity
of your flame

And time is the greatest tease of all
I am wrist deep inside your chest
working away at the gears
that move the hands of time
Begging them to stop

Wishing on every single shooting star,
every birthday candle,
every penny,
That when we're alone with each other
and the world,
and the walls of my bedroom
are eavesdropping on our
moonlit pillow talk

The night decides to stretch on into infinity
and the sun never bothers to rise

It's an itch I won't allow myself to scratch
A scar that's begun to scab
and I must hit the top of my own hand
every time my fingers start to wander towards it again
I've placed that horribly depressing doggie
cone of silence around myself
Thankfully,
it's mostly invisible to everyone except me
I've built brick walls around my home,
I'm not quite sure what purpose they serve anymore,
all I know is that when I first started building,
it was meant to keep myself
from going back to you
Now that all too familiar urge has fizzled out and died along with the rest of them
That desire to hear you say my name again
The longing to feel your fingers dance over my skin
in all the places you knew made me cringe
with something much hotter than happiness
Yes, I won't lie
Those walls were meant to keep me from acting solely on impulsive
reaching for you again simply out of habit
loving you out of routine
forgiving you
because it was easier
than letting you go
But now
the walls are there to keep you the **** away
Don't ever come back for me
Don't you ******* dare
Don't come to my home
Don't show up here with a fist full of roses and a throat full of apologies,
wearing I'm Sorry's like body armor against the fire you know is sure to spit out from the mouth you used to love to kiss
And do you even recognize my hands?
The ones that tidied everything despite my undeniable messiness,
the ones that folded things neatly so only to please you, because we both know that I couldn't have gave a **** if that blanket was here or there or anywhere, I didn't care if it was folded or not, I didn't give a ****, dear, but I folded that ****** for you,
the ones that wrote poems you never even pretended to read,
the ones that created masterpieces your eyes only glanced at, never allowing yourself the time necessary to absorb their true beauty because who the hell had time for that? Hello? There were video games to play, babe.
These hands that would have moved mountains for you,
these pacifistic hands that would have killed for you,
fought wars for you,
burned themselves on the stove tops for you,
picked up all the pieces of myself that you single handedly destroyed for you,
and then, like a child, handed them right back to you.
Do you recognize these hands, love?
These hands that built brick walls so high,
I only stopped because they kissed the sky.
Don't stop me if you see me,
Don't look me in the eye,
you packed your bags and left,
you don't get to say goodbye.

They say it's been weeks
And by they
I mean all the calenders
constantly reminding me of your,
although undeniably different,
no longer painful absence
The goodbye I never actually received
reminds me of a slow growing tumor
that hugs to your bones
It quite literally grows on you
and while I never saw it
and most certainly never heard it
I felt it in my marrow
And now I feel it's presence so strongly
that I can almost begin to convince myself
you said it
I can almost hear the words
readying for attack,
hiding in the Trojan horse of your heart
that I so foolishly believed
was an unreturnable entity
of the timeless love that you promised me
forever with
It's been weeks
but has it really?
I'm already beginning to forget the sound of your voice, the color of your eyes, the weight of your hands in my own
And while this is a shame for the sake of memory,
I cannot say with honesty that I wish
I could remember
I don't even recognize you anymore
Your innocence has since been replaced with malice
You are no longer the same boy
that I fell so irrevocably in love with
at an age so young
you have to wonder
if we ever really even knew what love meant
at all
If anyone asks,
I won't deny the space you occupied in my heart for so long
I won't lie about the way you made my stomach turn with something I dare say resembled butterflies,
I won't pretend that you never made me smile so hard it felt as if my face was about to tear in two, and that I wouldn't have complained if it had
I won't excuse the existence of the love we shared
for the sake of your ******* conscious
But with the same token of truth,
if anyone ever asks me about that password I never quite got around to changing;
how my fingers fly over the keyboard with equal parts ease and elegance;
typing time and time again that same string of letters and numbers that served as our initials and the date I'll never be able to ******* forget; they will stop me and say,
"That must be significant. What does it mean?"
I will turn to them and say that I have absolutely no idea
It's all just nonsense, really
I've practiced saying it so often
that surely it must be true by now
as the words are dancing off of my tongue
buzzing like children with sheer excitement at the possibility of getting caught in a lie
I may pause for a small moment
and remember my favorite parts of you
hands, lips, neck
candy laughter and sunset eyes
But you aren't that boy anymore
and I couldn't love you again if I tried.

When you were mine, I always wrote about this day and how it would inevitably come for us. I wrote about losing you before it even happened as if I was a professional at living with only half of a heart, walking around with infinitely empty hands and an ache in my chest that never seems to leave. I wrote about how you would leave and I would be devastated, but no string of words could have ever prepared me for this catastrophic mess you've made of everything. I would write about the day you would find someone else, as if writing it down could eliminate the possibility of it ever actually happening. I'm not sure which world that logic even begins to make sense in. I would write about seeing you with her - the girl who undeniably serves as my replacement; although she is only a shell of me - never bothers to pick up a pencil to draw or write and as hard as I try I can't seem to find where her beauty even begins to compare to mine, but I guess that doesn't matter. Your eyes never looked at me the same way again. I would write about her, the girl I was so sure could never really exist, and how I would smile because even though it wasn't with me anymore, you would be happy. But honestly, your so called happiness makes me ******* sick. I want to write about how I looked at you and saw the rest of my life, how despite every single one of our irreconcilable differences and in spite of all your flaws - which were plentiful - I loved you to a fault. You leaving split me in two like a tectonic plate shifting away from its other half on the face of the earth. And despite either of our best efforts, being separated is only proof of the undeniable fact that at one point, we were together.

It's 3 a.m,
and a month ago, I would have drugged myself to sleep to simply steal a few hours of blissful unconsciousness.
I would have cried until I couldn't any longer, I would have thumbed through each and every photo of you, your voice would have been my last cognizant thought.
I would wake up and convince myself that if I had to, I would wait an eternity for you.

It's 3 a.m,
and now, I'm not thinking of you.
I haven't touched my sleeping pills all week, and I'm staring at the stars realizing that even the smallest victories are worth celebrating. I no longer close my eyes and hope to see your face when I finally decide to open them again. I smile, and you are not the reason why.

It's 3 a.m,
and your body wasn't the last one to be in my bed. Your hands will soon forget the feeling of my skin beneath your palms, all the while his fingertips are rejoicing at the sensation and singing hallelujah in their sleep. You let me go, and he can't stand to watch me leave.

It's 3 a.m,
and finally,
finally,
finally,
I am free

I want the boy who's never even bothered to pick up a pencil in his spare time to fall for me so **** hard the only form of solace he finds is in filling notebooks with poetry about how my eyes look like the sunsets he never bothered to watch before he met me, how my skin is so soft he has to say it out loud just to feel the words on his tongue, how my kiss sent him to heaven and how he felt like he had it better here on earth in my bed. And I know I'm not the only ******* the planet, but I want to give him tunnel vision; sunglasses tinted with love so strong that he's only able to see me in everyone he meets, see my face on crowded streets and hear my voice is silent rooms. I want him to love me more than I loved you. I want him to show me that it's possible.

It's a special sort of twisted, really - my subconscious forcing me to endure this hell even in my sleep. I can't seem to seek refuge anywhere now; you occupy every corner of my mind, as if you didn't every day before. And can I ask, how do your hands make it through the day? How do your fingers pass the time, do your palms ever cry wondering where mine have been? It's been so long since I've touched your soul, and I'm just now beginning to realize that that is very different than simply touching your skin. But there was nothing simple about it. There was nothing mundane, ordinary, or casual about our love - and unfortunately for you these are the truths that quite frankly just cannot be denied. You can try all you want, use all your might to pretend that this love never happened between the two of us. You may be able to fool them; hell, you may even be able to fool yourself every now and again, but when you're alone in the deepest parts of yourself, I like to believe that you'll feel me there the most - feel my hair tickle your arm or my fingers drag over your spine or my lips brush against your neck - these are the places you will feel me most, and I will feel you everywhere, forever.

I wished you happy birthday, and washed up on the island of lost love. When was it that we fell out of sync? I want to retrace each moment, pin point the exact place in time where you looked at me and saw someone else. Where you stopped opening your eyes at all when I was underneath you. I know these truths are the hard ones, but I need to know. I wished you happy birthday and I didn't say that I loved you. It was hard, like talking to a friend and noticing that they have something stuck in their teeth. Do you say something or not? I've got all of your promises stuck in my teeth. All the toothpicks in the world wouldn't help. Maybe I'm keeping them like souvenirs for when you decide you mean them again. I wished you happy birthday, and you said thank you. Why do our conversations look like two people speaking who have never even been in love? Do you remember? All the long nights, all the first times, all the last times. I don't think I could ever forget. I wished you happy birthday, and I couldn't help myself, I had to ask. "Was I first?" there's something reassuring about asking questions you already know the answers to. But I can't help hearing that children's song dancing in the back of my brain. "First is the worst, second is the best," but second isn't best. I was so consumed with being your first, you being my first, that I forgot the most prominent childhood truth. First is the worst.
I wanted to be your last.

It's like walking around with your shoes on the wrong feet.
It's like trying to write with your left hand.
It's like trying to keep your head above water when no one ever taught you how to swim.
It's like that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know you've forgotten something.
It's like when you were in school, and the teacher told you to take notes, but you thought you'd be able to remember without them, and you were wrong.
It's like the advice your mother used to give you, but you never listened to.
It's like you were always aware of the possibility, you just never accepted the thought that it could ever become a reality.

"If you love someome, let them go."

Easier said than done. How am I supposed to let you go? How do I unclench my fists, how do I unhook my hands, how do I unstitch my heart? I was never good at taking things apart; I only ever knew how to keep them together.

"If they come back, they're yours..."

Coming back. This quote fails to acknowledge all the lost time in between leaving and returning. All the days that run together like a mess you don't know how to clean up, the weeks that pass agonizingly slow, the months that go by without ever hearing from you.

I know how the quote goes, I know how it ends. Saying it out loud tends to turn my stomach and squeeze my heart until it hurts. I can't handle that possibility - the possibility of you never really being mine to begin with. It's a thought I won't let my mind try to rationalize. It's a theory I refuse to accept.

You were mine. We shared four amazing years of laughter, of adventure, of love. The days went by quickly and the weeks passed with ease, each month came and went without any attention from us. Time didn't matter.
It hardly existed at all.

You were mine. I loved you beyond a reason why, beyond pride, beyond fault or mistake. I loved you regardless of circumstance and without obligation. I loved you so much it consumed me. I loved you, and you were mine to love.
You were mine,
but maybe I was never yours.

"if they don't, they never were."

Whenever I hear a car roll down my street, I stop and think for a second that it might be you. I know it's just my brain playing tricks on me. I know it isn't you. It never is. And still, when I hear the engine stop and a car door slam shut, my stomach ties itself in knots. I know it isn't you. It never is. And here I am, looking out my window at the empty street, pretending not to acknowledge how absolutely ******* pathetic this is.

It's almost been two weeks
and it's safe to say that if clocks didn't exist
this would feel more like two years

I sleep on the left side of the bed
just in case you decide to come back
in the middle of the night
I close the front door behind me but I
always leave it unlocked
incase you need to let yourself in
I keep the key to my heart under
the doormat of my soul
You step on it
and I say thank you
I keep all my belongings in my pockets
leaving my hands free for the off chance
that you come up behind me
and reach for one

You cracked open my chest asking
for your heart back
and I handed you the hammer
You didn't even say thank you,
you must have forgotten your manners
somewhere along the way;
somewhere between loving me and becoming enemies

I can't seem to sleep without you singing
me goodnight
The memories race through my mind like
an old tape that only plays on repeat,
I can't decide if it's broken or not.

You were good at fixing things
with your hands,
all hammers and nails and tape measures,
I wonder how long we'd have to pull
on either end before you gave up
and let go

I tell myself it's all just temporary insanity.
That one day you'll come back to me
with a red tool box in your hand ready
to fix the ******* mess you've made
It's a little like trying to treat
a stab wound
with a bandaid

It's a little like telling myself
that you still love me,
because pretending is easier
than facing the truth
and the truth is that
we haven't spoken in months;
the right side of my bed stays cold;
my hands are always empty;
and the front door never opened
again.

This feels like a 3 minute round
in the boxing ring
Only the 3 minutes lasts an eternity
No one wants to tell me that
before I step inside
Lacing my gloves like I actually
stand a chance
It's the battle between your heart
and mine,
and it doesn't even seem to matter
that my heart has always
beat a little faster,
a little harder in your presence.
I get knocked down
time after time after time,
and you keep looking at me with
a face that asks
"why do you keep getting back up?"
I don't know. I don't.
I can't even see straight anymore.
I'm looking into a world where
you and I aren't in love and all I can think
is that I don't want to see any longer.
I want to tell you that I love you,
as if that will make a difference,
but all that comes out of my mouth is
"I don't want to do this without you".
They're all asking me what I mean by that.
I can't bear to tell them the truth.
I can't bear to see my mom's face when I say that I don't want to be here anymore.
I don't want to hear those sounds
of heartbreak escaping from her stomach.
I'm sorry mom. It's just too hard.
I look at you again and
I want to tell you that I love you,
But all that comes out of my mouth is
"please,"
And I can't bear to finish my sentence.

I feel sick to my stomach when I think of you kissing anyone else
I'm sick with the torturous knowledge that none of them could ever hope to love you like
I did
I want to tell her that I held your heart in my hands for so long that it became commonplace until the day you decided you wanted it back
I want to call you a re-gifter
But I can't seem to get the bees out of my throat
Swallowing glass has to be less painful than this
Than watching you look for someone else like I haven't been standing right in front of you all this time
Yesterday was my first Thanksgiving without you in years
And I'm not sure I remember how to be thankful for anything else
I'm trying to remember the last sunset we saw together
The sky painted itself black and blue and I pretended not to identify with that
I've been writing poetry warning myself of this day for years
And taking this ring off my finger doesn't make it any less painful
or any easier to fool myself into thinking
that I haven't shoved the last 4 years of my life into a box underneath my bed
Like forgetting you is really that simple
I wonder if the ring will still fit by the time you come around again
I wonder if you'll come around again
at all
I want to tell those girls that you don't love them
I wonder if they've imagined what your bedroom looks like yet
I wonder if they know that
the valleys of your mattress are still waiting for me to come back
Waiting to transform against our weight and fill the spaces between your shoulders and my spine
I want to tell them that your walls watched us kiss so many times that it became as common as you turning the lights off
But none of that even matters anymore
and this is the saddest holiday of them all

This feels like a nightmare I've already had too many times before
Only now, I can't manage to wake up
I'm not sure who you were trying to convince when you said you wished this wasn't happening
I wish I could remember the last good day we had
Because all I can seem to remember is four years ago when we were so young and so dumb and so ******* naive and now
And there's no in between
I remember looking at you like you were some kind of God
who swooped down from the sky and saved me
I loved you so much it consumed me
and I didn't ever plan on stopping
The saddest sentence I ever said to you was
"I'm sorry things didn't work out the way we always thought they would."
I wanted you to tell me to shut up
That I had nothing to be sorry for or
that our time wasn't up,
that we still had a chance,
that you still loved me enough to try one more time or a hundred more times,
that love was enough,
but all you said was
*"Me, too."

today
some part of me decided
that the lilac sky reminded
me of you
pale November blue
and a chill in the autumn air
the orange sun hides behind
the morning moon,
you wouldn't even know it was there
if you weren't looking for it
I think that's a little like how I fell for you
the first day I saw you,
you were like the moon I'd never bothered to pay attention to before
but one morning
you look up
its 7 am
and you know the moon isn't supposed to be there
but it is
and it's beautiful
it was a little like that
I looked up one day and I saw you standing there
I'd never noticed you before,
but once I saw you,
I found myself always looking;
always averting my gaze upwards
towards the morning sky
to see the beauty of the moon.

it hurts. it hurts like you never thought it could hurt, never imagined it could hurt. it hurts to be alone, it hurts to know that you don't have him anymore. and what does that even mean, anyway? to have him?
for me it meant safety. it meant never wondering how you were going to spend your free time. it meant always having someone to tell your secrets to, someone's hand to hold, someone to hold you, someone to kiss. it meant having someone to love.
it hurts, having all of that taken away. all of the circumstances, every reason that led up to it; they're all irrelevant because nothing makes it hurt any less.
it's kind of like walking around with a hole in your chest. a big, enormous, gaping hole where your heart used to be.
one time I cried at the orthodontist, and it was awkward and all - lying there, crying with some strangers hands in my mouth.
but it's been even worse at night, lying in bed, crying, when someone who used to be my entire world has their hands inside my chest, scraping out the half of their heart I'd become so accustomed to carrying around, I actually let myself believe it was my own.
it hurts. I know.
and I'm so, so sorry.

I cried taking my
birth control today
because I don't know the next time
I'll even see your face
let alone
feel your body
between my legs

I can't sit here and write pretty poems
about losing you
because the truth is that there's no polite
way to write about this pain
about the complete lack of pride it takes
to try and pretend that this isn't happening
to lie here and pretend
that I can't feel you slipping through my fingers
sliding away from my heart and out
between my ribs
I can feel this pain in every part of my body.
this pain of losing you.
but I will lie here
and pretend
that it isn't even happening
at all.

every inch of her skin was hand carved by angels,
she was like coming up for air,
a handful of tiny miracles.
I was a cosmic mess unraveling at the seams,
a fatal storm destroying everything I touched,
turning everything that was beautiful into nothingness and dust.
and then I saw her,
the dip of her curves and her hands on her hips like she was invincible, unafraid of the walking disaster heading her way
and it had only been a couple of seconds
but already I was intent on kissing her
of discovering the secret land of her lips
lacing my fingers through the ocean of her hair and anchoring her body against my chest
pressed together like an unbreakable bond, a force to be reckoned with
we would be powerful
I could tell
but I walked towards her
my eyes like tornados and hers like the sun
I looked at her
and she looked at me
and instantly I felt myself dissolving into stardust
into nothing, into nothing like everything I'd ever touched or ever tried to love,
she looked at me
and I disappeared
she breathed me in
and we were one

one day a few years from now
you'll remember her and how
you loved each other genuinely,
passionately

the both of you were so crazy in love and a few years from now,
when you think you've forgotten about all of that -

about the way her fingers curled around your own without hesitation,
how when you told her jokes she erupted into a belly full of contagious laughter, her smile splitting her face in two like an equator,
how when you slept, she'd reach across the bed for you, mumble your name until you kissed her back to sleep,
how that day it rained so hard the streets flooded, she pulled you outside just to makeout on the grass, you both were soaked to the bone in seconds, thunder shaking the ground so hard you felt it roaring through your spine, electrifying.
how although she was absolutely insane,
she was gentle.

she was soft and small; strong; powerful. when the world upset her she shrank into a fraction of herself,
exposed, raw, vulnerable.

she was real, and what the two of you had was real; it was real and it mattered and it was important,
but years from now when you remember all of this,
it will be 4 A.M.

you happened, you loved that storm of a girl heavy and hard and it changed both of your worlds for the better, it won't ever be the same,
you'll find yourself looking for parts of her in everyone you meet -
subconsciously comparing the softness of her lips and the weight of her heart in your hands to every new girl that comes your way,
only to walk away feeling even emptier than before.

she is the tangible definition of irreplaceable. the fact of the matter is that the tree of her memory bears the branches of truth, and the truth is that none of this will matter.

years later, when you remember all of this,
it will already be too late.

it's june.
your ninety-six year old grandmother wraps her shaking fingers around your hand.
she's dying.
the doctors say she won't make it through the day.
you and your family gather around her bed like crows anxiously circling something from above.
waiting.
your grandmother reaches for your high school year book: ninth grade.
your stomach knots up, and you're not sure why.
silently she flips through the pages with her free hand,
the only sound being that from the oxygen flowing through her cannula.
suddenly she gasps,
and it scares you half to death because you know that she's already far more than halfway there herself,
her clammy fingers clench tighter around yours as she points to a picture on page 57.
everyone in the room looks down at the floor,
as if it is suddenly fascinating,
but you stare at her photo as your grandmother cries and says
"she was the one I was hoping you'd end up with"

it's july.
your grandmother has been gone for one month but you can't get the words she last spoke to you out of your mind.
ninth grade.
high school seems like an eternity ago -
homecoming and prom and then graduation -
you did all of these incredible things together.
but it wasn't enough for you.

it's august.
most people your age will soon be returning to school,
nearing the end of their masters by now.
you can't help but to picture her, smiling for her student ID photo and shuffling through the narrow aisles of an enormous school's book store,
piling her arms full of anything with a hardback and a spine that she can get her little hands on,
books, books, so many **** books -
who the hell's going to hold all of those **** books for her? -
she loved to read.
she loved to write.
you remember the day her first book was published, how she cried for hours and smiled for days,
enthralled with the knowledge that she was now an author.
you watched her sign books, you watched them sign checks,
but you knew she couldn't have cared less about their money. she didn't want it.
you remember all she wanted was for people to read her book. you remember her hunched over her laptop,
constantly updating the website that kept track of how many copies she'd sold.
you remember her signing your book.
all she wanted was for you to read it.
you remember that you never did.

it's september.
you never went back to college.
without her, it just wasn't right for you.
but still, you find yourself camped outside of the university you know she now attends,
looking at every face that exists the building and hoping to god that this one is her.
you wait for an hour,
picturing with giddy excitement the moment your eyes will meet. although there's a crowd of a hundred other bumbling college students you are positive
her eyes will instantly be drawn to yours.
you wait two hours.
and suddenly,
she's there, you see her,
god, after all this time you see her;
and she's still so **** beautiful it nearly blows your mind. you never knew one person could contain so much beauty.
just as you're about to sprint and sweep her off her feet,
you stop dead in your tracks.
the fellow who politely held the door open for the girl
who you realize is in fact no longer a girl
but a woman,
the woman who you used to love,
he takes the books from her hands and wraps his free arm tightly around her waist -
you remember her waist, her hips, her belly button, all the skin you touched and kissed a million times over,
he's touching her now as if
there was never anyone else
before.
you watch although it kills you
because it's simply impossible to turn and look away.
he pushes her bangs - had she always had bangs? - behind her ears and kisses her for what feels like a forever of its own,
and she smiles.
she never takes her eyes away from him.
she doesn't even see you standing there.

it's october.
you drink now, because it's the only way to forget.
you drive yourself near insane wondering how you ever let the love of your life slip right through your undeserving fingers.
you always knew you didn't deserve her.
you just never thought she would ever think the same.

it's november,
but the days seem to run together now.
weeks go by without any attention from you,
and this doesn't matter.
nothing matters.
you lost her.
you remember the first time you ever saw her,
you were fourteen years old.
it was january, but you were wearing shorts. the first thing she ever said to you was "why are you wearing shorts? don't you know it's winter?"
and suddenly, you didnt know.
you didn't know anything,
you didnt know it was winter or monday or 2:52 p.m,
you couldn't tell the sun from the moon or red from blue or anything that didn't have to do with her.
you stood there and you didn't say a word, because you didn't know how to do that either.
but she smiled, and she laughed,
and the sound was enough
to carry you all the way to this day
where you stand drunk,
alone,
without her.

how great it is to realize
that without you now,
there is nothing keeping me here
here in this town,
in this state,
with these people

how great it is to realize
that now I am alone
and free
free to find love and myself and
love within myself
away from you

how awful it is to realize
that these things aren't great at all
standing here without you now,
I can't help but feel so small
the world is big and our love was great,
but it was great and that was all.

how great it is to realize
that I can stand without you now
and that I will not fall.

perhaps many years from this day
I will stumble across you
not the actual you,
the you with eyes as brown as mine and
hands that reminded me how to feel

but some other form of you

a ticket stub from that one movie we saw
a couple of months ago
we sat in the back so that no one would know
we spent our time sharing kisses
instead of watching the movie
that we evidently paid eight dollars
and fifty cents each
to go see

or a password on the computer
I never bothered to change
our initials and the date
I couldn't forget if I tried
are still the only combination
of letters and numbers
that have ever completely made sense to me

perhaps many years from this day
I will stumble across you
yes, you, the actual you
with some other girl under your arm
gleaming up at your brown eyes
your hands laced together
as if it had only been her
all along

I will stumble across you
on a busy city street
you are with her
and I am alone

but I will stumble across you
and I will smile.

I guess now that all is momentarily calm
the war has stopped
and the dust has settled
it's easy to see
that after all there was to say has been said
and all there was to do has been done
I am still the only one
holding on

I have known no greater pain
than this
         this moment where you no longer
love me back

this life where I am alone and
without you
this world where you are not mine
this morning I woke up alone
and tonight
I will fall asleep alone
only to repeat this daunting new cycle
the next day
and the next

and I can't even put this into a context
in which I am familiar with
because this world where I am alone
and without you
has never before existed

I am sick with the constant thought of you;
of your contagious laughter and
our poisonous love
that I am painfully aware
we no longer share

and in this moment
I feel it everywhere

everywhere
everywhere
everywhere

I will not sit here in lies I cannot swallow,
I cannot wallow in this world of sorrow
without you
I cannot hold my head up and pretend as if
you never meant anything to me -

how can I pretend you never meant anything to me when
I cannot stand to breathe this hollowed air
without you,
live on this broken, godforsaken earth
without you,

and is it me or has time completely stopped
without you?
is it me
or has the earth reverted to spinning backwards on its axis
without you,
have the tides of the ocean ceased to kiss its beloved beach
without you,

or has it only been me?

has it only been me
who has spun backwards on my axis
and stood frozen in the empty sea

dear god,
has it only been me
all along?

maybe I should have expected this
all along
for him to stop while he was ahead
and cut his losses
by desperately searching for the hold button
two and a half weeks before our lives were supposed
to start changing

maybe I rushed this part
this part where we were supposed to grow together
as if we hadn't been doing just that
for the past three years of our lives

but I'd still close my eyes every afternoon
and snuggle into the cotton of your t shirt
the warm glow of the setting sun washing over your walls
feeling like the luckiest girl alive
just to be able to be sitting there
smelling the fabric softener of your bed sheets
lilacs and lavender
feeling like if it weren't for the weight of your hand on my chest
that maybe
I could float away from all of this

two and a half weeks before our lives were supposed to start changing
I realize that
all I really need
is now

Perhaps the most beautiful part
of it all was the fact that he
loved me regardless of my
many imperfections. I swear far
too much, I fail at moderation,
and I am quite possibly the most
emotionally inconsistent being
on this ******* earth. But in
his eyes, every day was a new day.
A new day to live and laugh and
love - if we were lucky, we did
these things together. In his eyes,
he was always lucky.
In mine, I still am.
I am lucky to have loved you.
*Gosh, I am lucky beyond
compare.

My body is a work of art, crafted equal parts by my parents and the stars and Jupiter. The blood that runs through my veins is golden. I am stitched together with ribbons of resilience and strength. I am unbreakable. Invincible. You cannot touch me.

I couldn't name the emptiness I felt
or identify exactly why the emotion
or lack thereof
was rearing its head into the cave of my chest
and making its presence known
but it was

I could no longer ignore the deafening volume of the world
and its constant reminders of my evolution into reclusion
from my father

I missed him in the deepest parts of my soul;
parts I was convinced were no longer capable
of feeling anything close to something this dangerous

missing you meant I had openly admitted defeat
in our lifelong war of silence
and surrendered to the weakness associated
with simply being human
unfortunately,
waving the white flag
just wasn't a risk either of us
were willing to take
for the sake of one another

the weight of it all was entirely too much to bear the night
I drove past the old video store we frequented
in my childhood
only to see it now,
after being abandoned for ten years,
reduced to rubble and ash
against the barren earth
where some of my fondest memories
were first formed

something unnamable was born in a part of my stomach
I hadn't previously known existed
as I realized with distinct distaste
that the world would continue to find new ways
to remind me
of the pain I thoughtlessly inflicted
upon you

*(I'm sorry, and I wish you knew.)

on your first date you learn she takes her coffee
cooler than the starless sky
and by the end of the night you learn
she likes her showers hotter than the seventh sun
stepping out from the tub with her skin scrubbed
a scarlet hue that demands to be kissed until
dusk turns to dawn before your sleepless eyes

you wonder why she sweeps her hair to the side
after she says goodbye in the morning
why she seems so ******* guarded
all of the time
but you never ask
because you are afraid she may answer

she says she's never been in an accident
and you incorrectly assume
she is referring to a car
you swear up and down that she ought to be by now
because of the fashion in which she drives
like a madman
she says she doesn't believe in speed limits
or limits of any kind for that matter
she likes to get to where she's going and
she likes to get there fast
she's the kind of girl who doesn't believe in
taking things slow
maybe because she doesn't know how
or maybe because she doesn't want to know

she told me she loved me three weeks
before we got together by means of
mediocre poetry and a smile that
at the time
I couldn't quite understand

she says she's never been in an accident
and you incorrectly assume
she isn't referring to
all of the time
she spent
away
from
you

I've been subconsciously stumbling over the memories for quite awhile now
the remembrances are few and far between
lacing across the insides of my eyelids in a near instantaneous fashion
the creases on your palms
the wrinkle in your shirt
your exhale on my neck
it isn't enough to make sense of it all
quite yet
to put the pieces of us back together
to fully comprehend
the vague recollection of your mass atop of me,
the kiss you plant behind my ear,
the words I speak but cannot hear
it's killing me
knotting my knuckles up with dry wall and
melting into the cotton of your old t-shirt
my bed sheets will whisper his name in the moments among dusk and dawn,
and my fingers still ache for hands that I know
are lifetimes too far gone

strangely
there's something somewhat comforting
about nobody appreciating
your poetry
and in knowing that not everyone will read
and no one will fully
understand
there's something promising about the void of silence
and its perpetually unending eternity of emptiness
and quiet
my mind is a maze that no one bothers to play with
and this bothers me greatly
yet not at all

tell me, brother bear,
what was it that made me so naïve?
what was it about you
that made me believe
you thought of me
as blood?
my mother always taught me
that blood runs thicker than water

but you were never water to me

I was fourteen when we
began mixing drinks for the first time
that night with you, I never knew
there would be a second time
the deja vu was nearly missed
but I felt it
I smelled it in your breath and felt it
as I tipped the bottle back

the second time around
I wasn't quite sure
who exactly I was drinking for
or who I was lying to more

we were never blood

the ***** flooded my veins in such a way that his name even began to taste
like yours
and I wasn't sure why the door
seemed like such an impossible feat
to reach

but it was

and so we drank
I drank until I couldn't see straight
and your face didn't look so much
like your face
you drank until you were drunk enough
to kiss me
and I was drunk enough to stumble up
the stairs
fall into my own bed
and never tell a soul

but let's be honest, brother bear,
our blood was never shared

they say our sense of smell
is by far the most powerful
in revoking tucked away memories
and I'm not quite sure who they are
or who gave them the right
to unveil these monstrous moments
stored away in my head

but I remember
your bed smelled like cigarettes
you said you didn't smoke in the house

maybe that was true

but the last time you told me
you loved me
was on a piece of loose leaf paper
taped to my television set
three years ago
and I bet they were up there
placing bets on when I would drive you back
to the point of madness that
my mother had once put you in

three years later
have felt like a nicotine free eternity
of their own

but you're back

back planting cigarette butts
in ***** flower pots
filling your lungs with cancer and your
blood with toxins that I can only imagine
are named after me

and everything we used to be

maybe it was when I saw my room for the first time in six months
bare walls
no bed
empty closet
almost as if
I had never slept there at all

or when I never got the invite
to Thanksgiving
because you already knew
that I wouldn't bother to show up
when I realized

that your life
her life
their lives

had all gone on without me
from the outside looking in
your glass castle had never known
I ever existed
I didn't anymore
my room was not my room
the tomb I spent my nights in
does not even begin
to remember me

luckily
I'm half way okay with this

because as much as I would love
to write about how
when push came to shove
I know
that I did this

to myself