My scars are footprints
pressed in the smooth sand, fading,
salted by the tears of the ocean,
but persistent against the tide.

My map has been drawn
by leaves in the wind, blowing,
following the path of the broken,
but offering no place to hide.

My heart plays a song
with a slow tempo, beating,
calling to the strong souls still hoping,
but unheard by the ones who died.

Follow the footprints if you trace my skin.
Use my map as a guide if I can't let you in.
Listen to my song if words aren't my friend.
And I will love you,
With all that I have left.

They never tell you how your mouth never tastes the same

They never tell you how the smell of their body clings to your skin

They never tell you how their face gets tattooed into the pathways in your brain

They never tell you how every nerve in your body sets on fire

Or how the butterflies in your stomach start calling out his name

They never give you a map, or show you the way.

I never learned how to love you

Please, don't run away

Insecurity:
You'd never believe me.
I fear much:
And that includes losing touch.
Insecurity-
What is wrong with me?
I can't bear this fear,
Of being left here-
To fend for myself-
To save myself-
To be myself,
But I've lost that-
Me.
I'm so lost that my map is lost.
Of course you're my map, so that would make sense that I would be lost when you leave me.

Her skin looks just like a map to me,
but not to be conquered, no,
one that makes my eyes gleam with curiosity
to explore the furthest corners of her world,
the slums of her cities,
the forests of her soul.

A map that is meant to mean something,
to find a place that feels like home;
a place to shelter from the storm,
a place I no longer feel alone.

For now I know that home to me,
where I have always belonged,
is bound of merely skin and bones,
the deepest eyes,
and the cutest toes.

He cranes tiredly over folds of parchment
As sunlight falls across his ashen features
And the restless night becomes lost
Within a sea of fading maps and broken compasses.

Worn pencils collect on hardwood like dust,
And discarded errors in calculation fall into the corners.
He stumbles weakly between varying levels of consciousness,
And exhaustion claims an inch more of his body
With each exasperated flutter of his eyelids.

He spins the globe to his right with a lazy hand
And catches Africa with his finger
Wishing that he could’ve been anywhere but here
Because it is immeasurably heartbreaking
To have the entire world at your fingertips
And to have never seen any of it.

j.s.

I write
to create a creased parchment of a map that I only can read.

Co-ordinates of where my fingertips, inner skin of my right wrist and ink have traced upon paper pages.

My first thoughts, a sweet whisper snuggled into blank edges of words amongst one dangerous idea- a f l i c k e r of a flame, soon to become an inferno.

Word strung together more carelessly than a six year making a beaded necklace. Yet they could not be more meticulously choreographed to spell out answers.
Only then I can remember the kind of places I go to when my sight is dimmed by something my chest and knees cannot quite take.

This poem is called Boys are Curious.
Because that's what you told me that day.
And if boys are curious,
My body is a treasure map.

I was an atlas for trespassers.
I had a horizon of hope in these eyes,
And my forest hid lust & mystery like it wanted to be found.
My acreage was pure and undiscovered.

If I hadn't scared you away yet,
I've heard that there was passion locked somewhere.

But because boys are curious,
My edges are creased and torn.
The sun has left me shaking in the cold.
I have been sought by the hands of greed enough times,
I've forgotten where I've hidden my treasure.

So, boys are curious.
He left me a field landmines.

Early minds turn to the sunrise
Wandering souls turn to the map
And the downhearted turn to the knife

Everything I hear is a blurred whisper
And everything I see is so distinct