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 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.

*******
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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

don't leave
if you can't
mean 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.

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

My
gut
aches
with
times
past

I wish I could capture the moment
of you leaning in closer
to whisper in my ear
"You are everything to me"
and replay it over and over
until the words lose meaning
and all that's left
is the feeling they give me
so I could always feel
just like
the sun

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

breaking
your
heart
broke
me

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.

live
in exaltation
of your
divinity

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

Sometimes I feel like
I'll never
get out of here.
And maybe I'll never
find what makes me happy.