I've always been careless.
About everything.
It's why I can't help the things that come out of my mouth.
How I broke the coffee maker
(again)
while I wasn't even using it.
Careless mistakes are the ones
I'll always regret the most.
Last night when I should've said stop
but I never think
Think, Erin, Think
unless it's too late.
On the drive home as I whispered
too soon too soon too soon too soon
I didn't see the other car
because I'm so ******* careless
every time.
Still, I never see it coming.

Life went on in the background
like white noise
but I was too hung up on your words
to hear it.

You were never the type of guy
who would call me at the first flash of lightning
just to say "I wish I could hold you
every time it rained"
or better yet stand outside my window
getting drenched and demand I
join you;
in fact you weren't the type of guy
to call me at all,
and I should've known that.
I always did prefer the way
you laughed when it was clouded
with the haze of a dream
instead of the daze of your
fourth beer.
What can you say about a boy
who consumes your thoughts
but never your life?
That he's just like
everyone else.

3 missed calls

Sunday, August 3rd 9:07 am
Last night I was tossing and turning
in the middle of the night
with thoughts of you
clamoring around my mind.
The corners of your mouth
populated my vision while
my eyes were closed
and I could feel your warm breath
stirring my imagination.
When I finally fell asleep
I dreamt of raspberry green tea
and your tangled blue sheets.

Sunday, September 23rd 5:43 pm

I'm sorry.
I know I should've said it when it still mattered but I'm sorry.
Sometimes I can't distinguish between my feelings
when I'm too scared to admit that I'm in love
and I did something I regret.
He wasn't anything like you.
He wasn't you.
I'm sorry.

Sunday, October 7th 11:32 pm

I still think about you.
I miss you.

It's been so long I can't remember
the last time I felt so vivid,
like with you I'm no longer
watching from the windows
and it scares the hell out of me
because everyday I fear your
goodbye will be the last.
I shouldn't need you so much
so soon
to keep from dragging my feet
through the white-washed weeks,
and maybe I should stay away from you
but the low bass of your voice
might as well be hooked into
my every joint and ligament,
drawing me closer
with every note
(it sounds so much
like heartbreak)
When you whisper to me
in the middle of the night,
when you trace my silhouette
with the desire in your eyes,
could you tell me there's no one else?
I don't want to know.
I just don't know.

I've never been a sentimental person
but too soon did the
smell of salty air,
the sound of waves gaining
and receding
endlessly, reliably
become dear to me.
My memory betrays me
long enough to drag up the
sound of your laugh
(the unintentionally honest kind
that still raises goosebumps
on my skin)
along with the feeling of
Normandy sand beneath my toes.
No matter how much I want to let go,
I'll keep the jar of sand
on my dresser
and the image of you
with your arm around me,
our hair and our hearts wild,
in my mind forever.

I've been drinking
melancholy
and chasing it down
with disappointment.

Last night we climbed onto your roof
to watch the stars
but mainly to tell secrets where
they'd be wrapped in the mask of night.
I told you I was afraid of abandoned buildings
and collapsed walls
because I thought I might become one.
You told me you thought I was beautiful,
but then you always did love sad things.
My blood jumped when your fingers
traced my pulse points and
I cried when I thought I would laugh.
You kissed me anyway.
Life seemed too far away to be real
and that's the way I prefer it.

I've been thinking a lot lately about death
and how I used to think it was lonely
but maybe it's more of a returning
than a leaving
and immortality would be the loneliest of all.
I've been thinking a lot lately about life
and how things aren't really supposed to turn out right
but we let hope get the better of us anyway.
I've been thinking a lot lately about you
and that look you gave me last November
when you told me this crumbling world
still had a promise of light
(and that's all I really needed to hear)
how you contain so much life
and I want to hold on to that a little while longer.

Strangers huddle together in the station,
caught at a common place for assorted purposes;
dozens of faces looking worn and tired,
souls being tied into knots, or
coming undone.
Some with hope still alive in their dreams,
some returning home after theirs has
dulled, or broken.
A woman traces the ring around her finger, smiling
while the man across the aisle just lost his wife,
(as he's reminded with every breath)
but maybe that's just how the world works.
And the twenty-something who hasn't forgiven herself,
what she did for a love that never gave her
anything in return.
Guilt peeks out of her pockets
waiting to be released by the man in the next chair over,
if he asks about it.
He knows how much easier it is to
expose your exponential faults to strangers,
to make yourself the martyr, if only to
ease your own mind.
But he doesn't ask and she carries her burdens
on her back, slowly splitting her spine.

My fingers shake as I grip my coffee mug
and your face comes to mind-
yesterday you told me you loved me
but I couldn't say anything.
My heart beat too fast and
words caught in my throat and
all I knew was that I had to get out of there.
I didn't used to have these sky high walls
around my heart,
but maybe that's why I do now.
And I'm sorry that I strive to keep myself
so closed-off,
that my veins show more color than my words.
I know you're infinitely frustrated with
how fiercely my eyes guard the secrets of my mind
because I'm frustrated too with
how afraid I am to put my mending heart
in someone else's hands.
You don't deserve to love a girl
whose stomach turns at the
thought of something permanent.
But I promise I'm trying
I'm trying
I'm trying
to say I love y-

She's a natural disaster and a work of art.
Rain rushes in and out of her mind
while wind gusts through her heart.
Drifting from a tsunami to an
earthquake and everything in between-
on a good day the sun shines through her veins
as she walks on flower petals and
free spirits
but on a bad day her footsteps sound like thunder
and her words throw flames until her
misfortunate surroundings are reduced to ash.
Some days clouds pass over her eyes
and birds go still
and she doesn't say anything at all...
But stars always populate her thoughts
even on the darkest of nights
and the rings of Saturn are often mistaken
for the hypnotizing gold rings around
her irises.
She's as lovely as the first green day
of spring
but as lonely as the last red day
of autumn
and she has never once noticed
that while she was wishing on shooting stars,
everyone else had been wishing
on her.

You're out on your porch smoking a cigarette
while I'm at home trying to forget
the ghostly dent you left
on the right side of my bed.
When did we become like this?
We used to be interwoven threads
holding together each other's seams,
and I never thought you would be the first
to come undone.
When you kissed me and whispered
for the first time against my lips
I Love You
over and over, I thought it would last forever.
I had never believed in love or forever
until that night.
Your eyes used to make my blood pump
three times faster but now they only
skim over me like the hole in your jeans
where the seams are frayed,
like us.
These days you don't feel me;
I'm just another picture in the magazines
you tuck under your mattress,
but I'm sure you still find
my tears on your sheets.
I know it's ****** up
but I still care too much
and you, well,
you never loved anything.

Note to self:

Be gentle, to yourself and others.
The world already beats you with everything it's got and sends a tidal wave to pull you under, you don't need it from yourself, too. You want to believe you can handle anything but you're only human and you're still fragile. Hold your heart in mittened hands; not everyone will. Remember, the pain you feel today could be the pain someone else felt yesterday, or will feel tomorrow, and no one deserves it.

She passes like a whisper and is just as hard to catch
but never quite unnoticed.
She won't look you in the eye for long
and has trouble saying three short words
that contain too much meaning,
too much pain.
The trembling of her hair against her breath
is enough to stop men in their tracks
and if they're lucky they might get to keep her for the night.
In the dark she'll be anyone you want;
in the morning she'll be gone.
An escape artist in the bedroom,
some wake up unsure that she wasn't a dream.
At home she just discards her underwear in the closet
like another skeleton
and washes the foreign scent from her skin.
She stares in the mirror at a reflection that yields nothing,
but she would rather feel empty
than be hurt again.

Life is shown in black and white-
like a still-life photograph
or ink on a sheet.
At least through the lens
of a camera you can't see
broken promises or
invisible tragedy.
So next time you see me
keep your eye on the window
and I'll try to move in time
to your shutter speed.
I'll scribble you a poem
on the bottom of the creek
of a love I've never felt
and people only in my dreams.
The wind can carry my words
away with the stream-
after all,
they never did mean anything
to me.

I used to sing at the top of my lungs
and only think of colorful air
passing over my tongue
but ever since you left
every time I sing, I think of you.
You were taken from me too soon
without a chance to say a last
I-Love-You.
Sometimes it's a dull ache
but sometimes I'm doubled-over in pain
and it hits just when I think
I can finally see the sun.
Because how can the sun still shine
when its rays can't find you?
You'll never flounce through the
screen door again
on the way to your favorite
wooden bench
but you still
float in and out of my dreams
and it's such a bittersweet pleasure
to see you there.

I hate love poems
but I don't know any other way
to tell you that you're the only person
who can coax an unguarded laugh
from the lowest pits of my abdomen.
I hate love poems
but when you let me store
my kisses in the crook of your neck
I feel like maybe I could
stay there with them.
I hate love poems
but I've spent too many nights
thinking of how flowers
turn their heads to listen
every time you laugh.
I hate love poems
but I can't stop listening to
the kind of music you like, the kind
that paints life as it really is
and doesn't always rhyme-
or flow.
I hate love poems
but when the sun skims its
fingers through your hair
I find it hard to breathe steady.
I hate love poems
but you know everything about me
and you haven't left yet
and I'm awfully close to getting attached.

I hate love poems
because you're not unlike anyone else,
you just fit a little better
in the contours of my heart,
and you're not the reason I live,
you just make it a little easier
to stay above water.

I hate love poems.
But I still write them about you.

There's always that moment in a movie
when the hero finally triumphs;
when someone seemingly ordinary
does something exceedingly extraordinary
and the audience has a simultaneous thought,
"Maybe that could be me"
but the world is not a romantic,
we find we are not truly fearless.
We realize we don't all throw ourselves
in the way of the barrel of a gun,
don't run into the fire
instead of out.
Some of us only drop out of school
to support our family,
take off work every Wednesday
to visit a parent who doesn't remember us,
become a full time mother
to our child with Down syndrome.

Does that mean we're unheroic?

Things are never easy for anyone,
and I know you've had more than
you're fair share of misfortune
but I've never heard you complain.
If everyone got what they deserved,
you would've grown up with
blue sky in your eyes
instead of dark clouds in your heart.
You didn't ask for your life
to be filled with death and desertion
but the universe isn't prone to
granting requests anyway.
I've never known anyone who
didn't run away from their problems
but you're still in that sorry old house
so maybe you're the first.
You may not let me in anymore
but you still have your own personal
doormat at the gates to the
back of my mind.
I wonder if you still compare yourself
to the peeling wallpaper or the
rusty hinges on the laundry room door.
I used to think you were crazy
for not being able to see the glint
in your eye that the world tried so hard
to beat out.
Whenever I see you around
I try to make sure it's still there.

Darling I hope you understand
when I say you're as beautiful
and dark as the night
I mean you have stars in your eyes
and freedom in your heart.
I mean you hold the deepest secrets
and only speak the truth.
You embrace the lonely who
wander the streets of your soul
and show love to those
shut out by everyone else.
Even the broken bottles
in the corner of your mind
reflect the glow of the moon
to show someone the light.
There are those who revel
in the bright of day
but there are also those
who only find solace
in the black of night.

Blue mountains rise on the horizon
looking like wistful wishes
and disregarded dreams-
If the purple peaks can
scrape the sun,
then surely so can I.

The white wallpaper
and laced curtains
smell like childhood
and pleasant memories,
and when the sun streams
through open windows
I close my eyes,
breathe in high hopes,
and exhale every worry
from the past six months.

In the valleys I gather
the love I left last summer
and tuck it away in my suitcase.
I'll pull it out on a
dreary Kansas day
to remind myself there's a place
that doesn't leave scars.

In my dreams I'm
running my fingers through
the mountain's trees
and in reality
I'm doing the same.

I think I'm getting bad again
I'm thinking all or nothing again
I think my control is slipping again
I think I might not be able to heal again
I think I might do it all this time
So I can finally feel *nothing

long nights
distract me with haunting thoughts
while panicked tears gather
in the folds of the sheet

(innocence has lost its luster-
been whittled down to the bone.
too soon after it's left
we want it back most of all)

the boy across the street
smokes a bowl to stop his screams
and the girl who lived down the road
took pills to make her breathing slow
and slow
to a residual stop.

there used to be a time
when we all ran to the park
in the middle of the night
before stars started scowling
and playgrounds told our secrets

now what once were children
have become broken hearts
and broken minds,
burnt cigarettes
and burnt fingertips,
fractured bones
and fractured people,
shattered glass
and
shattered souls.

You are the manifestation of perfection.
There's not a flaw you possess that doesn't outshine the stars,
there's not a word you utter that doesn't create its own alphabet,
and there's not an action you take that doesn't inspire a revolution.
While the rest of the universe is black and white,
you reflect prismatic waves in the eyes of everyone you pass.
The flowers in your hand couldn't compare to the fingers holding them,
the same ones that brought me back to life when they tucked my hair behind my ear
like tucking the sun into your pocket.
And maybe you mistook the sun for another old jelly bean
because every time you smile I see it shine through your teeth.
Your teeth are jagged like a mountain range
and every word you whisper is another flake of snow gently gracing the summit.
When you move an orchestra performs,
muscles and trumpets, ligaments and cellos all flow in pure harmony.
Sometimes I think music was written simply to accompany your body.
Looking at your body I could believe the world really is a safe place;
from the curve of your shoulder to the round of your heel,
everything is smooth and peaceful.
I'm not afraid that once you're gone your presence will be lost
because everything you touch is left with a phosphorescent glow,
a constant reminder that perfection does not only exist in myths
but in everything.

A starless sky blinds me
in an empty ocean
drowning
The night is too cold
for warm hearts
or warm thoughts
Stagnant wind cuts through me
raw skin and cracked bones
uncovered
The perfect terrain for
feeling       vacant
                               lifeless
                                           *frozen

I would never try to paint your face
because I love it precisely for the way it changes.
The endless night that is your eyes
could never be illustrated,
the millisecond it takes for you to smile
cannot be shown on paper,
and the rough texture of unshaven cheeks
can't be felt on a canvas.
I would never try to paint your face
but if I did I would paint it on velvet.
Flakes of gold would pepper your nose
like the sun kissed freckles I've memorized,
sheets of ivory could be inlaid
to mimic the pigment of your skin,
and only diamonds could shine as bright
as the artful glint in your squinting eyes.
I would never try to paint your face
because it's impossible to depict
something so close
to divine.

No one's supposed to know
that I feel so completely alone.
It doesn't matter if I feel like a shell
empty of life, shipped off to hell.
I can hide behind softer eyes and
lips that curl toward a constant grey sky.
I've gotten used to the hollow,
the desolation and sorrow.
No stars come out at night and I think,
that's me: not one, but none.
Because a soul so forgotten
isn't a soul at all.

I don't love you
because I don't know you.
I don't know what you think,
I don't know what you do,
I don't know how your
voice sounds when I'm
the only one there to hear.
I only know the low and
husky tones I imagine when
I'm alone.
I don't know the lines
of your palms,
I don't know the exact color
of your eyes,
I don't know what your skin
feels like against mine,
though the sense has been
given some thought.
I can't love you
because you've become a stranger.
I can't love you
because you love someone else.
I can't love you-
but I can love the idea of you
that I hang on to
more than I'd like to admit.
And I shouldn't love you-
but sometimes I still think I do.

when I'm
with you
I hear music
that's never
been made
and see colors
that don't
exist

A girl walks
along the beach
looking out longingly
at the horizon.
She lays herself down
and wraps around in sand,
falling asleep thinking
of the sea.
The waves lap over her toes,
Over her knees.
She dreams of worlds
made of water
and skies shimmering green.
The tide covers her palms-
open and welcoming.
When the water tickles her chin,
she says one thing:
Please.
Salt burns her nose
when she tries to breathe,
but she could not imagine
anything more lovely.
Her last wish was granted-
she became the sea.