1.
The moon looks iridescently illuminated from within,
light searing through every little crack of it’s hard exterior.
I want you to know that when I look at the moon
all I see is your skin.

2.
I try to tell you that when you hold me
it feels like the whole entire world is surrounding my body all at once
but an unfamiliar silence seeps off my tongue
and has nothing to do but to spill onto your lips.

3.
The first night we pressed our bare chests together
we woke up melted into each other.
I try to claw and scratch you out but
I taste you and understand hunger.

4.
You’re inside of me
I think I see you in my veins.

5.
You remind me of finally seeing snow
after thinking it would be another green Christmas.
You’re fire near cold hands and a beautiful quiet.

I think we had been waiting for each other in that coffee shop.
My hands were icy and my cheeks were red
I avoided eye contact for fear of memorizing your face too soon.

The next summer, we both contemplated different ways to hurt ourselves.
Mine was staying with a boy who was always ****** when he called
and yours was driving your pretty blue pickup truck off a bridge.

You slowly turned me into a God that you’d worship every night
a shining beacon of light that you had claimed never to have seen before.
You got down on your knees and frantically begged for forgiveness
each time you weren’t gentle and said the wrong thing.
You did that a lot.

I’d feel your lips graze my ear, sending shivers down my spine.
All I wanted was for you to climb it
but you tried to break it in half every night.
Hand over my mouth and fingernails pressed too hard into my back
I tried to remember what my skin looked like unmarked.

Do you remember cupping my face in your hands and saying you’ll love me forever?
You always said that I’d be the one who left you.
I guess you were right.

I thought you’d appreciate the honesty
when I told you that I can’t see the future.
I didn’t know if I would taste your words
as a sugary and syrupy substance next year
or whether there will be a time when I question the words
‘I love you’ coming from my mouth.

I swallow down selfish words
Because you love me more when I pretend to moan your name.
You grab my face with your big hands and I look up at you.
Remember when I said I’d do anything for you?
I didn’t know it had to be self sacrificing.
A sadistic smile grows and covers your body
and ruins the bed
and bruises my skin
each time you hear me express pain.
I swallow down the word ‘stop’
Because you love me more when I pretend to moan your name.

I can disguise myself quite well
Throw a type of layer over my personality
Paint a type of layer atop my face.

Layer by layer the barrier builds up
"It's gotten stronger" I hear.
It's stronger on the surface
The material no longer sheer.

My layers get heavy sometimes
But they're crucial and my protection
They've learned to grow like flowers
Sprouting rom my skin
They're pretty but their roots are very *****.

Sometimes when I need them, my layers disappear
They leave me cold and naked
My soul's not use to being bare.

So I'll grab these flowers by their roots
And chop off all their heads
And I'll wait for the layers to grow back
Again.

I have subconsciously taught my hands to shake
When I hear certain noises
I have memorized the sinking heart feeling
And dropping to a million pieces
In a split second
Rush of adrenaline; Straight to my brain.
Thoughts squeezing themselves up
Thoughts that make my head spin

I have tortured myself with "What if's"
Too many times at 3 in the morning
At the drop of a pin, the only thing to settle it
Is the sound of your soft snoring.
Peaceful like I know your head isn't.
Dreaming like I know you try and refrain from doing

And I will blame the world for ruining you
Because I'm desperately searching for an excuse
I will hate although it's unfamiliar to me
I will cry because I've been taught this feeling
You don't deserve these feelings
You don't deserve to know I've gotten used to
My hands shaking at night
How I've memorized the sound of your silent room
So I know when something is out of place

I told myself to toughen up
I have to toughen up
I have to learn to fight
Because you need me to
I have to learn that this won't just go away
My hands ill still shake through tonight
My heart will still drop when I don't hear you breathing
And those torturous "What if's" will keep me up again tonight.

I spent my summer learning French.
How I should drop the end of words
Pretend they don't exist
How I should memorize the verbs
Or I'll be motionless.

I spent my summer learning French.
I learned how the combinations of a few letters
Can turn pretty
And the imagery
Is smooth on the tip of your rolling tongue
Sliding off your lips.

I spent my summer learning French.
I've learned that language possesses beauty
But how come
When I had seen your hopeful and smiling face
I could only muster out harsh sounds
Hard letters
Ugly words
And an "It feels different."

Why are these words not smooth
Like the ones my lips had memorized
Traced like constellations we had followed with our eyes
I know how to sound beautiful
So why do my words make me want to cry?

I spent my summer learning French
And I'm sorry I slowly forgot your face.

I'll hold your hand
I will promise those tears
To seep through my paper skin
Although I know yours is combined
Of cardboard and pieces of glass.

I'll use these fragments and these letters
Because I know they're stronger than
The fist you're so fond of using.
I'll make these mysteries
Less of a complexity for you
Because of this vital fluid
Surrounds us, keeps us together.

Please don't close your hand into a fist
For I've spent mountains and skies
Trying to change your mind
And please don't let other people decide
Where your brain is
Because you know it's only biology.

I'll hold your hand
And I'll lie to your pretty face
Say "It's meant to be this way"

And I will cry
Every night
because our blood has soaked through my paper skin.

Under moonlight but half full
Above the place to meet silken tranquility
Hearts are swollen
Mind in heaven
Focus the gaze

Under the clock hand half over
Above the dream-seeing destination
Devious poetic words and subtle intrigue shed
I miss you a lot tonight, my mind is locked on yours.
I wish it was my lips.

Sitting on his bed
Lusting over each other for about an hour
He looks at me and says “you’re beautiful”
He really means it.
Sounds so sure of himself.
It’s hard not to believe him.

He touches my hair with his fingertips and pulls out a curl, laughing.
“What are you laughing at?”
He pulls my curl, and lets it go
Only so it can wind itself back up into its previous bouncy formation.

“That’s so adorable, I'm melting.”
“Wow, I love you so much”

One
I wrote you a love letter
Hid it in your binder at recess
And prayed you'd never know it was from me.
It hurt when you called it silly.

Two
You're behind bars because of me
I don't feel guilty
Because you tried to take my innocence.

Three
You were the one I'd spend eternity with
When I was in 8th grade.

Four
I never thought I'd love a girl
You had soft hair and lips
But I always confused envy and lust.

Five
You didn't understand my metaphors
Or the things that interested me.
I just didn't understand why you did so many drugs.

Six
Please tell me you'd like to see me again
I had a beautiful night with you
And I'm a sucker for boys who write and play guitar.

Seven
You are so handsome and you are so dull.

Eight
I'll always want you
But the butterflies that used to flutter in my heart
Are now eating it apart.

I am in love with a boy who I hardly know.
He has dark eyes and dark hair
I romanticize that his features are metaphorical
For his black and lonely life.

He's an enigma
He's bad and I'm intrigued.
He's untouchable
Completely out of reach.

I'm in a romance with a boy
A one-sided love
Wondering
Or curiosity

I was born, raised and cultivated by my favourite books.
As my eyes rolled along paper and ink
My mind traced each curve of each letter
Fingers move to turn the page
Seeing who I will become next.

I am nothing but these words I've read.
I am a collage of paper trees and paper dolls
Photocopies of human beings
Who are photocopies of other human beings.

I am nothing but what the commercials want me to be.
I can't think outside of this television-shaped box
Suffocating ideologies of powerful men in business suits
I crave their orders in order to get by.

I was born, raised and cultivated by my favourite books
And I wonder if this is how I am supposed to be.

Do you remember the letters you wrote me?
Messy handwriting scribbling out love onto the paper
Crinkled in spots where your tears had fell
Because we'd cry when we were happy.

Do you remember the rocky dock near the water?
We'd been there two times for the same reason
The start and the end of our relationship
You shaking out of anger
Towards whoever would dare to hurt me.

Do you remember our love?
Me running up to the car each day
Almost as if I hadn't seen you the last.
Driving until we couldn't see anything except
Those high-beams you'd complain about.

Do I still haunt you?
Run into my ghost everywhere in this small town
Make you regret slamming the door in my face
Hiding behind walls with the next thing that showed you compassion

Did your pillows still smell like my hair even after she left?
Tell her stories but they're a carbon copy
She's impressed by your vocabulary
Finally found someone smart


Do you kiss her harder to forget my name?
Forget that I'm the reason her lips are pressed onto yours
Forget that you told me it was the hardest thing you ever had to do
Saying goodbye before you got on that plane
Without kissing my face

There he was- the object of my affection.
He said each word as if it was carefully picked
Eloquently placed into a beautiful handwritten love letter.  

He had come from a past era, it was evident in the way he moved.
Each physical characteristic was beautiful and shocking
It’s hard to move away from this magnetic being.

I try to be pretty and feminine because that’s what boys like him would want
Every stitch, carefully picked out and examined
Every disproportionate feeling, hidden with my idea of perfect contentment
Every hopeful glance from another leaving my eyes greener than I had originally thought.

I didn’t know him well in the summer
I only knew of the charm and the grace that he had given
Our truck rides and the faded Polaroid colours

He didn’t look at me like teenage boys look at their teenage girlfriends.
With a soft gaze and slightly parted lips
He was silently telling me that he’d do anything for me
That I was dream and that he was a dreamer
And that my happiness was completely his.
He silently told me that we were in love
And I believed him.