Darling, I am not here to write about your eyes and the stars in them. I tried to count too many times and I got too lost in the dreams imbedded in your corneas. I'm not here to talk about how the sun only rises because you give it a reason to, because it still sets every evening so it doesn't have to hear your steady breathing while you sleep. I'm here to tell you about how you have words that cut me like a saw cuts bone and how my ribs are held together with cheap twine and my spine is duct taped together. Here to say that you make my heart race at a pace that my body cannot keep up with. I didn't come to tell you that the tides are kissing the shore every time you laugh, because that's not what your laugh is like. No, if the rusting of iron made a sound, it would be your laugh. There are no flowers woven in your hair - instead, there are hornets and their nests lay settled in your throat and your intention is to sting me every time you open your mouth to say something that isn't my name. This isn't about poetry I've read about the moon and the sun and the cosmic loneliness of every star despite the presence trillions of them in the same sky. This is about how some stars find your presence so alluring that they begin to tumble from the sky and this is what we wish upon. This is about bruised lips mumbling words carved into coffee tables and ****** fingers tracing the rim of your favorite coffee cup. This isn't about love. This is about you.

I shook hands with the monster under my bed tonight, correction: I dragged the monster out by his ankles and I introduced myself and I shook his hand. It was cold, and it felt like you. It was cold, and I wanted to hold it forever, I really did. Maybe it would make up for lost time and all those chances I never took with your fingertips when I had the opportunity.  The truth is, I didn't meet a monster. I met a childhood fear and some dust bunnies and a little bit of my own self; the truth is, monsters don't live under your bed because they lay beside you, under your sheets, at times on top of you, maybe they are spilling lies in your mouth and whispering secrets to your teeth, maybe monsters live in your mirrors, calling you names, maybe monsters touch you in your sleep, maybe monsters have big hands that feel like home but then you remember you're a runaway.

It should be noted that girls don't always come from Venus, that some boys might be a little deader than they were before they claimed you took their breath away. Some girls have barbed wire around their hearts, and others have white flags. Some boys have touched more cigarettes than thighs, more blades in the bathroom sink than the ones in her shoulders. The city might whisper the name of one boy and tremble at the thought of another; a girl have a hit list with only one name on it — her own. Some boys will **** just to say they lost their virginity and some boys will spend the rest of their lives making love as though they could gain it back; some girls have lost their tears and sweat in the upholstery of the same car that might belong to one of these boys — and some of those same boys are sweaty handprints on the backseat windows while others are fingerprints on your throat (no matter how you look at it, he will always leave his mark, won't he?)
  It should be noted that some girls will miss you like Hiroshima playgrounds miss the laughter of young children, but others will miss you like an 11:30 flight at 11:31, and I bet you never knew that some boys will never tell you that they miss their father just as much as some girls calling everyone else Daddy except for the one they truly need; you'd never believe me if I said that some girls look at the night sky where they used to see their reelection in the stars, but now only see another broken mirror.
  It should be noted, that not all boys are from Mars.

CARNATION: Every frill in her dress is another piece of your heart broken. She withers in the winter but heaven forbid you see her at her loveliest in the spring.

VIOLET: Her voice sounds like steel cutting through velvet. You squeeze her tightly until she blooms in petals of blue and purple.

DAFFODIL: She's a field to run across but be careful that doesn't take you by surprise and lull you into daydreaming for the next 200 years.

SWEET PEA: By the time you lean close to her an inhale her scent, the sky will have already begun falling; she will have already transformed into vapor and taken refuge in your lungs.

LILY OF THE VALLEY: You'd expect to see her floating around in twos and threes, but she'd rather be hidden behind tangles of ivy, where you'd never find her.

ROSE: Be careful that when your hands are grazing her hips that you don't cut yourself because a woman hides her most important weapons under a layer of secrets and maybe there's more to the waistband of her skirt than you'd like to believe.

WATER LILY: A siren of the sea, she is lilting, singing a sad song and hypnotizing you, but you don't know any better and you want to see if she floats in your hands like she does in the water.

POPPY: Kiss her softly and when she collapses into pieces at your feet, scatter her in your bathwater and pull the drain plug and forget about her forget about her forget about her forget

MORNING GLORY: She stretches in the morning and sunlight rushes to touch her and the stripes of rays on her skin make you remember all the reasons why you woke up everyday for a reason other than habit.

MARIGOLD: Beware of the girl who covers her mouth when she smiles. Sometimes, it's because she doesn't want you to see that her heart is in her throat, but other times she's just trying to hide the fangs.

CHRYSANTHEMUM: Her clothes fall like petals in the depths of secrecy, but if you plucked them off the ground one by one, you'd still never know whether she loves you or loves you not.

NARCISSUS: You only love her because you see your reflection in her eyes and all she ever wanted to do was drown you gently.