The secret to happiness
is not minding some secrets staying hidden.

It's allowing an unexpected blush to sweep across your face
and not asking why.

It's forgetting to shut the double wide door
from the patio to your heart
and not asking your guests how they got there.

It's getting lost down city streets and accepting where you land
is where you were going all along.

It's dripping ink on cotton sheets through blown out veins
because you couldn't get the words out fast enough.

Happiness is vulnerability.

let me make a list of things I hate
number one, feelings
number two, feelings
number three, feelings
number four...
have you noticed a pattern yet?

have you noticed that I hate these emotions
that flood through my body
when I see your face?

waves of emotions
hit me like a ton of bricks
when I even so much as think of you.
believe me,
I wish it would go away,
you won't get out of my head.
you drill yourself into the small crevices in my brain,
attaching yourself with tiny hooks
and no matter how hard I try to pull you out,
you're stuck to me.

I didn't ask for this.
why would I put myself
through this kind of pain?
why would I allow myself
to think of you in such a way?

but,
feelings are feelings
and they hit you when you least expect them,
when you don't want them.

let me remake that list of things I hate:
number one, you
number two, you
number three, me
number four, I think we both get the point now.

1. forever is not a promise, it is a choice.
2. it never stops hurting.
3. his smile may feel like home, but if his eyes look through you; he is not your home.
4. find the goodness in each day.
5. your body is a temple. life is about learning to worship your own self.
6. make a list of kind acts you witness, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. this list could save you.
7. do not let your fear control you.
8. you are not your mistakes or your pain.
9. depression is a mental illness, something you cannot help.
10. emptiness is a mindset.
11. you are loved.
12. you have the right to feel things that are not exactly good.
13. your worth is immeasurable.
14. you are not a burden to the people who truly love you.
15. there is always hope.
16. productivity is a form of happiness.
17. protect your heart, but do not hide it.
18. everyone deserves to be loved, you are one of those people. embrace that.
19. go the extra mile, it builds self-esteem.
20. people think differently than you. not everyone has other people's interests at heart.
21. always do what makes YOU happy.
22. do not give up on something that you want.
23. it pays to be kind, eventually.

Why are we all so afraid of listlessness? Making the pin ***** but afraid of to bleed. Aimlessly wandering when we are not assigned to something. Always asking "what do I do now? Where Should I go?"
We are money hungry, complaining of lack of money when we do not act upon trying to make money. Complaining of dead end jobs when we could quite possibly do anything we desire. We are afraid to waste our time on dire things such as education and intelligence, welfare of others, and finding ourselves so we succumb to an ordinary life of living as others.
We are afraid to jump off the buildings, open the doors of perception, to be alive and breathe and bleed.
Afraid to come in touch with daily emotions, such as love (if that exists) and hate. Over analyzing of emotions break us down, to believe our own minds are corrupt. Being wide eyed and curious is now shunned and put down.
The cuts and bruises and scars we bear are to be covered, overbearing the experiences and emotion we feel.
We are no longer enlightened and instead put in the dark.
But not me. I am myself, I am a soul, a spiritual being, made of earth and stardust and filled with holy particles.
I am myself and my mind is not corrupted.
Like

Since the first day I met you
I've compiled a list of ten things that I wish I could tell you.
ONE: I wish I could wipe that stupid grin off your face whenever you mention your ex-girlfriend because if she's your past, I'm your present and to be honest I don't know what's coming up next, but God knows that I will fight for you. That somehow, some way, although God managed to create the sun and the stars in seven days, you gave me a life's worth of love in the first two seconds I met you. Arms outstretched, eyes not quite reaching mine, your stride as you passed me in the hall was brisk, you looked as though she ****** my name from your lips,
you looked at me,
you smiled and said 'hey'.  You see, there are moments in your life you know you will remember as your mind grows old and fades into nothing, and that was one of them. You said a three letter word in my general vicinity and until today I crave the three worded sentence that will validate everything I wish I could say in the three years that I have wanted to know what you sound like at 7 in the morning.
TWO: I want to **** the name of your ex-girlfriend from your lips because it's just another reminder of everything I'm not.
THREE: I'm sorry I'm not her.
FOUR: Let me backtrack, I'm sorry you can't have her.
FIVE: I love you.
SIX: I don't think I could stop if I tried
loving you. But I can trace my name into you as many times necessary for it to make an impression, indentation on you.
SEVEN: and I will choose you every time she didn't. I will choose you at 2 in the morning and you can't sleep. I will choose you when you are drunk and everything that I'm not falls out of you. I will choose you and hold onto you as though it is the one thing in this life I am meant to do.
I will choose you until the sun doesn't rise and ice freezes over the world because there is no way possible that I could get cold feet when I am with you. Wrap your arms around me, smile, and wake me up in a way words can't, until I am singing with the birds, "good morning". I will choose you, I will choose you, I will choose you. I will choose you when you can no longer remember my name and all that remains is her.
EIGHT: Don't text me at 3 in the morning. Call me, or better yet, come visit me so my dreams don't have to be dreams, they can become a reality. Dreams are great and all, but I'm not about the material, fictional, idea of you. I want you like how I want my tea; pure and without all these little filters. You see, love to me isn't always about the physical. Teach me how to paint and I will paint your name onto every part of me that doesn't remember your touch. Teach me to see the stars and don't stop until I can speak in angel.
NINE: All my poems are about you. The way you are set in an irreversible state of gratitude and how God must have spent two years longer on you just so he could paint each mole on your body in hopes that I would be there to connect them. Or how you never try to stretch too high  so your belly doesn't peak out of your shirt, and wear sweaters in the middle of summer when it is 30 degrees. If you see him, you'll know it's him. He's probably wearing his favourite outfit; heart-shaped sleeves and stars for eyes.
TEN: I wish I could tell you that I see your face in rain clouds and write you into every poem, hoping that you'd somehow find a way to become closer to me. I wish I could tell you that I'm not much of a poet, but you are my favourite poem. You give me writer's block, reminding me that you have to work for what you love, and that if your really, really, really love something, you can't will it into being.
That love is harder than you think it will be, and sometimes it will be messy, and will feel like it's impossible to write again. But all those poems were just practice, helping you get to a new level you never imagined you could get to. You see, in every poem I write I hope to find a better understanding of how you have the audacity to love when everything in your past tells you otherwise. Why your lips are like the composers to my melody, we make the best music. I wish I could tell you that it feel like my heart plays jump rope whenever the ground splits in two and my name slips passed you lips, just before slapping you across the face because not even God could have made my knees fall to the floor and beg for mercy. I wish I could tell you that I am horrible at math because there isn't a number large enough to quantify love. But if I really, really needed a number for the things I wish I could say,
it would be
one:
I love you.

"I think this is a poem you wrote on my phone (or it is something I wrote). I can't remember. It is from a time period when we were in the desert and both had working phones." - Sarah

Martin's musings
If you thought you had met the love of your life- what would you do? The heat is up our chills up and down, and the faces the old women make in drug-induced ticks, heavy noisome smells mixed with the best greatest sweetest smelling true love you've ever known.

And five times a day now you spend hours and hours entwined and touching and being touched by the greatest and softest skin cells your skin has ever been against

And with perfervid excitednees, a cold chest, but tepid limbs, you avoid blinking to extend the lifespans of us both.

1) I dreamt about you today. You didn't say a word but I remember that I kept trying to find ways for you to fall in love with me again. I woke up empty, with our song stuck in my head the entire day. (20/5)

2) The moon is round and bright tonight. I wonder if you still look for the moon and stars and think of me. (23/5)

3) I dreamt of you. I couldn't go back to sleep afterwards. (21/6)

You make a list in your head of what you want in a lover:
Brown hair.
Beautiful eyes.
A sharp mind.
A soft heart.
You want someone with a sense of humor.
One that actually makes you laugh like you mean it.
This and that.
It's all *******.
Because.
People.
Aren't.
List.
And I have always wanted to be the person,
who made someone realize that.
I want to come across someone with a list in their head,
that is nothing like the person I am,
And I want to show them what they didn't even know they were looking for.
People who think they know what they want are fooling themselves.
Nobody really knows what they want.
Not until it is right in front of them.

Stuck in the maw
You put yourself in
All this pain you have
Is self inflicted
Stop abusing yourself so much
You're wincing out the Dutch
And being the opposite of clutch
Pain shouldnt constantly be by slapping yourself emotionally and physically
Its the last thing you want from your bucket list