i think she likes me.
im just
not sure.
because that controlling
**** of a boyfriend
she has
is stopping me 
from ever really knowing.

she acts a way with him,
that makes it seem like
she's folding in
on herself.
he's homphobic,
agressive,
cold,
fifteen,
but already trying
to shrink the world
she lives in.

he checks her phone,
accesses her
social media via
her password
and getting mad
when she talks to
me.
what did i ever do?
she's allowed to
have friends.

but i think she likes me.
last night,
we flirted.
soft, small things --
but they felt
like secrets.
ones that if he knew,
he'd flip.
she'd say it was a friendly bunch
of compliments --
that meant nothing.
but her smile,
her eyes --
they told
a different story.

My stomach churns
And my fingers ache
My brain screams
My heart shakes
I am deeply sick
In anxious anticipation
Of all the worlds I will write

I wish I could project the past,
Play every scene and frame it fast,
A channel made of memory’s hue,
So all I love could see it too

They’d see the tremble in my hand,
The way my breath would barely stand,
The way a glance could make me break,
The way all of me was more than fake

Poetry mimics what hearts convey,
It paints with words that we can’t say
Though poetry holds pain and grace,
It cannot write a warm embrace

I’ve got stories to tell, whole worlds in my head,
But the ink runs dry when I’m close to the thread
Some things are sacred, too real to share,
Moments too fragile for open air

No one lives on the black sand shore,
Not a soul makes home there anymore.
For there is no peace,
In the land of coal dust.
Evil seeps even into the ocean,
Where 'Purity' once harbored.
What still stands,
Is the gastral rocks gutting through the banks,
Constructing spires to hide,
A skeleton ship parked in ruins of the beachside.
The old SS Purity,
Sent to save those on lonely shores,
From the devil and his kin.
Though now it's the Devil's flag, that hangs half mast,
On the poles of purity.
Don't come too close my boy,
They say it draws you in with soulless cries,

Once you're in the belly of the beast,
There's no hope of escape,
Don't repeat my old sailor's fate

Actually
Aching
Endlessly
Making
Stories up
Maybe
I'm a sick..baby

In one split moment, my mother had sliced open grief right in front of me, an afternoon snack she called it. She sprinkled it with salt and pepper, plating it beside the apples that were going bad. We sat on the couch, the plate between us. Someday you’ll remember me, someday you will remember the taste of peculiar things. Like the burn of the pepper when it’s paired with something sweet and ****, and you will sit in that feeling, she warned, as I am today. I ask her to tell me something interesting, to which she would laugh and say, you’re the one who leaves every day, you must have something better to share than I do. All I had was something about walking the lines of the world, with my head down. I don’t have much to fill our silences with, except that I take her soft hands, and in them are stories, many pasts, many feelings, and I hold them. Someday you’ll remember me, and on that day, you’ll split open grief, pour it into your glass of half empty and half full, burning through the day, with the taste of pepper on your tongue.

Stories nestled in my bones
are not silent storms.
My heart is haunted
by their primordial groans.
Yet so many scattered thoughts
go unknown.
Like the frantic way
autumn leaves are blown.
What decays becomes wisdom
for another day.
Skeletal stories now, the flesh of us
is gone.
Even though we loved from the core
of our jagged bones.
Human life seems just an agonized attempt
to be heard.

Seashells hold echos
Of life beneath waves
Hold one to your ear;
Listen, can you hear their story?