I remember red walls,
Kansas and Arkansas,
my father’s voice
with a southern drawl
as he told me
he was moving on.

I remember
kicking autumn leaves
down empty streets,
back when
falling in love
came as easily
as breathing.
Another boy,
another state,
never knowing
I wouldn’t stay.

I count the years in
broken hearts and
old apartments,
break-ups
breakdowns
breaking promises
with myself.

They were all just
growing pains,
leaving stretch marks
of memories.
I trace them each
across my skin and
know I’d do it all
over again.

live
in exaltation
of your
divinity

I could write poetry about your body;
how it moves so fluently,
so adept in navigating this physical world,
in exploring my own body.
I could write poetry about your love.
I had the chance to feel its depth
and watched you share it readily,
in the ways that you know how.
I could write poetry about us
dancing in your living room, about us
walking through neighborhood streets
with espressos in hand, about us
wrestling on the couch until we’re both
on the floor in a heap of laughter.

But if I did
I’d have to write poetry about your frustration
when you feel as if you’ve been
giving and giving and giving
only to have me pull away.
If I did, I’d have to write poetry about
my disappointment when I try to
go deeper into your pain, to burrow myself
in your trauma and infuse it with love,
with acceptance - only to be shut out.
I’d have to write poetry about our wounds
that stand between us like the Berlin Wall.
Too often they become ammunition;
your unconscious comments
infused with judgement and
my anxious retreat into myself
inflict more wounds, more grief.
I’d have to write about how you make me feel
beautiful
invalidated
comfortable
shameful
supported
misunderstood
difficult
wrong
selfish
hard to love

You make me feel hard to love
and I can’t live that way.

"I'm sorry"
he says
"I can't stop thinking of you"
he says

believing him is a form of self-destruction

he puts his hands on your body
but you don't feel loved
you don't feel anything

he doesn't touch you afterwards
he doesn't kiss you
he doesn't care
if you stay or go

you go
you get in your car and
you cry into your hands

you know this isn’t love,
but then what is?

it's okay
if you fall back into old habits,
they helped serve you
once.

one day you'll wake up
with the sun
and the birds
and the trees,
take a breath in.
this is all you need.

replace the past with love.

forgive forgive forgive
again and again,
as many times
as it takes.

what does it feel like to be held
not by another body
not by a set of limbs, a chest, a chin
but
by another soul

what does it feel like
to see truth in another pair of eyes
instead of hidden intentions
instead of absence

what does it feel like
to hear a familiar heartbeat
resounding next to your own
reaching through skin
through bone
two rhythms
indistinguishable

what does it feel like
to write poems about
a love that exists

you
a matrix of energies
residing in a physical vessel

an eternal soul
bound
to this manifestation
of the universe

your entire being
is revolutionary

have you been broken
yet?

are you empty now?
has time come by to
dig the dreams clean
out of you with endless
reaching fingers,
taking
taking

what are you left with?
is it enough?

i needed to lose you to realize
i never needed you at all

I don't want this
but I came here this late
I don't want this
but I let him think I would
I don't want this
but I'm already undressed
I don't want this
but I don't want to argue
I don't want this
but it will be over soon

I didn't want that
I didn't want that
I didn't want that
but I didn't say no

it's 10 at night and I'm out
with the familiar ache in my gut
craving to be anywhere(anyone) else

it's 12 in the morning
and I want to be high
so I won't care that
he only calls me when
it's 12 in the morning

it's 1:30 now
he's inside me
I don't think
I've ever felt
so *******
alone

40 bucks and my self respect

because when you call a month later
after shutting me out
to get high and **** somebody else
I still pick up and I lie to myself

I won’t go  back
ok, but I won’t do a line
ok, but I won’t get in bed
ok, but I won’t have ***

ok but, I will
ok but, I do

he told me I was a "på-person"
loosely translated to an on-person,
I was alive. And I could prove it.
yes, I'll leave this coffee shop to
go halfway across town for sushi
with the Danish boy I just met.
yes, I'll let you take me home
after and yes I'll ******* on
the first date.
yes, I'll spend the night instead of
studying for my final and yes I'll
go to class in last night's clothes.
yes, I'll chase you from club to club
in the middle of your ******
so we can ride the city bikes at 4am.
yes, I'll jump naked into the harbor
even though the water is frigid
and the sun is already rising.
yes yes yes

but no
I won't forget

when you left you stole
a part of me i had been
growing writing creating
for years
for my life

i was unabashedly alive
i could be fierce
hopelessly free
i was so much more

how can i replace that

being beautiful got me to his bed
to the couch in his basement
to the old **** carpet that
had never been replaced.

being beautiful made me feel wanted
alive again

until another girl was more beautiful
on her back
on her knees.

being beautiful got me unanswered calls.
collapsing to the shower floor with a
hand over my mouth
his name in my mouth.

he taught me that i was beautiful,
he taught me that it meant nothing

i open up
they walk away

it's ok to decide
you don't want me.
i won't keep tugging on
your sleeve to try to
make you love me.
but after all i have given,
after all we have shared,
i deserve to know
why.

don't leave
if you can't
mean it

do you remember the changing light
outside your basement windows?
the sound of my shallow breaths
as I lay beneath you glowing incandescent
with my back arched and arms outstretched?

do you remember our bodies entwined?
vulnerable
and eternal

was it only me who felt doused
in the radiance of the sunset?
who felt comforted in the
company of summer night?
who fell in love?

do you remember?
I can't forget,
I can't forget you.

this is your least favorite part

two weeks later we put our clothes back on

two weeks later i'm not in love
because i don't know love but i'm
enamored with you.
i think it will be hard to forget a boy who
filled me with fluorescent light,
someone so electric
so alive.

two weeks later you're on a plane to chicago
and i'm laying in bed listening to the empty
sounds of my body without you.
i never even got to see you drunk or see your hair
in the morning still matted
from sleep.

two weeks later i ache from the absence of you

this is my least favorite part

i tried floating once
i tried dripping honey and blooming flowers
i tried being as light as the wind
caressing softly, then leaving
like they want me to

i couldn't float
i taste like salt and soil
my body is turbulent, volatile
i am heavy and sink into the earth
but i am alive
that is good enough for me

living like young gods in the city
your average broken kids
collecting sins
and memories

i don't remember
what it feels like
to feel like
myself

i heard my heart break
when i first saw your face

i knew those hungry eyes
didn't line up with
that sticky sweet smile

i couldn't look away

breaking
your
heart
broke
me

once i made my mother cry
and it broke my heart
but it was nowhere near as hard as
watching you fall apart
desperately and fully
from the passenger seat of your car
knowing i had just done the worst
thing you could imagine

I know I like to act like I'm too good for that country ****
and I still refuse to wear cowboy boots or say "y'all",
but I had the time of my life with you in a town of
roughly 600 where the whole yard is a driveway
and dogs roam free.
The rides at the city fair may have been held
together with duct tape but they fulfilled all my
secret childhood dreams of going to a carnival
with the prettiest boy in town. You ate funnel cake
and I had a corn dog and I felt so in love.
At night we sat on the porch swing with our hands
barely touching. We listened to the crickets and cicadas
and watched your dog watch the light and shadows
alternate through the window.
In the morning we went to the river and I swung
on a rope swing for the first time. Your head bobbing
in the perfect blue-green water is something I'll never forget.
We followed your younger cousins behind the waterfall and
when they left we kissed and kissed and kissed.
I fell so much more in love with you.
I am so in love with you.
Now there are miles between us again but you're never far
from my mind, and know that I'll always remember that small town called Miller.

a summer with you.
a summer,
not nearly enough.
but will 235 miles
be too much?

I was so ready to leave this place
I only realized I loved after I'd
decided to go
but then you stared at me
like there was nothing you'd rather see
then you held me like you meant it,
like no one in my life had been honest
until that moment when you wrapped
your arms around me and I felt safe
for once
for once calm, content
then you wrestled me to the ground
and blew on my stomach like a kid
and I kicked and screamed and
laughed like I was
like I am
then you kissed me
and kissed me
and kissed me

now I don't know
if I can let go

everything I've always wanted
too late, pray
wait for me.
I'll be waiting
for you

she walks lonely in the night
through the constant
waves of streetlight
(more
and then less)
lights a cigarette-
inhales.

and lets out a breath.

the darkness fills the gaps
she never could by herself.
her eyes are soft and weary
searching the swirls
in the atmosphere,
faintly she whispers
"what are you looking for?"

what are you
looking for?

when you lean down your eyes toward me
I can hear the whisperings of the universe
and when you swing down your arms toward me
I'm lifted into the wilderness
because your lips are wild
and they ravage
me
you found me fishing for ligaments
or maybe something to join my soul to my body
like another supplement
to feed my psyche

secretly
I'm waiting for day break
and the day you take
me

staring at the shattered glass
of my mom's wine
I dropped on the kitchen floor
thinking that deep red
looks good on white tile
and thinking maybe I deserve this,
in fact maybe I deserve to
lay on the scattered shards,
one piece of glass in the back
for lying to someone I love,
one in the thigh where he
kissed me while she was gone
for the night...
thinking I'm being eaten
inside out and it's only a matter
of time before something comes out
      about it.
twenty minutes later there's
wine on my socks and
the front of my shirt is wet,
with tears I guess,
but all I'm thinking is
guilty
guilty
guilty
I don't think
I can fix this.

I can feel myself slipping
slipping
slipping
and I don't want to
think about how I feel
(like glass in the bottom
of a kaleidoscope being
mixed up and up and up)
and I don't want to
think about you
(even though I still
wear your shirt when
it's late and the night
seems a little too long)
I just want to drink
until the bottle is as
empty as I am
and I want boys who
don't love me
and I don't have to pretend
that I love them
too.

when I first saw you
I thought maybe
you were an angel
and the way you looked at me
gave me my own set of wings...
well you never showed me
gates of white
but lines of ******* did
look almost heavenly.
what's the harm in sin
if we'll just be forgiven again?
like I forgave you
again and again and again
(your lies went down as
smooth as the pills)
how was I to know
the space between you
and your sheets
wasn't the palace
I had been waiting for?
you left open your
closet door-
white feathers, broken
and mangled, strewn on the floor,
a hundred other angels who
had been here before.
angels don't cry
angels don't cry
but if you were ever an angel
you fell before I met you
and maybe now
I've fallen
too.

I can be content
with daydreams
because I love
the longing and
I'm addicted
to the distance,
suspense,
I prefer your
touch when your
fingers are ghosts and
your lips hold
whatever secrets
I want to be told

I can be content
with the
anticipation,
hallucination,
existent only in my
imagination

I can be content
because
this way it
never has
to end.

sometimes I only feel at home
on empty streets

sometimes I pick up the phone
just to listen to the dial tone
(it sounds like the absence of you)

sometimes I fall asleep
hoping I wake up
and sometimes
hoping
that I don't

I don't recognize
the face in the mirror
Something in me
is lost,
something vital
familiar
And I think it left
when you did

A girl of only seventeen,
who knew you could make
so many mistakes.
Was it that long ago?
Your dress was always white
and you could sleep without
worrying or waking yourself
from muttering "no, no, no,
I don't know this person
I've become."
What have you done?
You crashed your car for the second time,
careless/stupid/thoughtless/daft.
When's the last time you didn't make
your mother mad?
You loved too many boys
you didn't know
because falling into bed
is easier than getting up again.
You smoke like a new bad habit
and your best friend's a
soon-to-be addict;
you said you knew you had sinned
and yet you still refused to repent.
The verdict is in: it seems
the world would be a better place if
you weren't in it.

We used to be one and the same,
saw the world through
one set of eyes;
where my thoughts left off
yours picked up
before they even
left my mouth.
We would get high
on autumn nights
and laugh until we
blacked out,
our hair braiding together
on the pillow
until it was impossible
to tell yours from mine.
But as hard as we could laugh
harder we could fight;
we threw words
like they were knives
hoping to find home
buried between the
other's shoulder blades.
Now harsh intentions
run through our veins
and my blood churns
at the sight of your
face.
We traded matching smiles
for matching scars
and when you finally
shut the door
there was a pool
of blood
left on the floor.
It was impossible
to tell yours from mine.

*******
for playing games and
throwing knives at my back
like there was a painted-on target
and you were trying to hit the center-
for changing who you were
every time the need arose,
like you could hide behind
excuses and artificial apologies-
and for pretending you were more
than just an empty vessel
consuming those around you
until they weren't useful anymore.
******* for
lying
betraying
hiding.
but mostly ******* for
all the memories that are ruined,
all the people you've tied
into your web,
all places and things that turned
black the instant you did,
and
all the wasted moments
I'll never get back.

I like to paint in my mind
and you're my subject of choice,
I take every piece of you
(from the freckles resting under
your eyes that see for miles in
and out of time to the
dips and curves of your back
that last forever)
and I make you the entire world
because that's what you are
to me.

Flash your light
through the window
that faces mine,
let's unfold in
morse code.
Tell me to meet
you at midnight
by the train tracks
that have been overgrown
with weeds
(pick them like flowers
and give them to me
anyway.)
Let's follow them
through the woods
to where they end in water
and while we dip our feet
throw me in
(I'll pretend to be surprised)
but only if you dive in
after me.
Kiss me in the water
with our clothes weighing
our bodies down like stones
but never sinking
our souls.
Love me
fully
passionately
purely

before I have
to go.

I feel like
I'm suffocating
more often
than I should.
I never knew
breathing was so
labor intensive
until I knew
life without
you.

I can be okay
when I don't think about it,
when I put a block in my mind
and push away any thought of you.
But more often than not
when I'm sitting on the couch
or in line at the grocery store
or any time I'm breathing,
I'm back with you
sitting on the roof of your shed
or standing outside your car
after our first kiss.
And when I watch everything
(people cars life)
go by, I only see you
running your fingers through your hair
looking at me from the corner of your eye
like it doesn't make my breath hitch
and my heart stop beating-
I've tried running,
I'll run and run and run
but somehow I always end up
running back to your hands
around my waist
my fingers balled up in your shirt
the taste of you in my mouth
your smell clouding my mind,
Until I stop and truth hits
like the freezing wind slicing my skin;
it's over.
I'll never have you again.

So I don't think.
I can be okay.