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 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.

My
gut
aches
with
times
past

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

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.

If I had a nickle
for every time you
looked at her
I would have
seven dollars and fifty-five cents

If I had a dime
for every time you
turned away from me
I would have
fifteen dollars and ten cents

If I had a quarter
for every time you
laughed at something
I didn't say
I would have
thirty seven dollars and seventy-five cents

If I had a dollar
for every day
I have loved you
I would have
one hundred and fifty one dollars

If I had a dollar
for every time you
thought of me
when there were
ten minutes left
in class
and your mind
refused to be tethered
to irregular verbs
I would have
to get
a job.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

don't leave
if you can't
mean it

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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

"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 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

live
in exaltation
of your
divinity

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

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

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

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

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.

I try to elucidate your gaze
from across the room
What do you think?
What do you see?
What events replay in your
memories?

I want to explicate your movements
as you shift in your seat
A worried bite of your lip?
A sigh of fatigue?
How would you act
if you thought of me?

I steer my thoughts back to something
more germane to the subject
The Union loss at
Antietam Creek
But then you open
your mouth to speak-

And I think of orchestras
the instruments and sounds
moving, flowing
together

I think of night
thousands of stars flooding
the sky

I think of poems
that I can't begin to understand
but all so lovely

I think of wolves howling
flowers blooming
waves receding

I think of the wind blowing
between my fingers
while my hand rests outside
the window of
your truck

And I think of you.
I always think of
you.

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 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