your skin is not animated as I would have   imagined, a little
freckled, bespeckled with blemishes but I don't
mind those -- only the way your mouth is so pink after kissing me,
only how your tongue blooms from the back of your throat.

you don't     differ from
any lover in any specific way, just
the after, and how I don't feel
cold. no, just
calm.

I hear no thunder, see no storm slow approaching,
but rain hits the pavement I stand on, which in it's solidity
impresses upon me the urge to run  -   but I won't just yet

the desk was filled with empty coffee cups
they were almost as empty as his promises
the light on your desk was brighter than the light that led you down your path to misery
it seemed dark but you knew exactly where you were headed
you try to forget by drowning yourself in alcohol but your lungs are already filled with the smell of his breath after  he kissed you goodnight
you stay up late because you know you'll dream of the way he used to hold you and tell you he loved you
but when you're awake you can't help to fantasize about the way he used to look at you
and when someone brushes next to you in the hallway you think about how his hands used to hold your hips and the feel of his weight on top of you
you find yourself convinced of your own lies and the things you make up in your head seem more real than the things you actually felt and smelled and saw
you don't know if you hate him or love him for hurting you
because maybe he made you a better person but why would you break the heart of someone you love
though i'm not sure if breaking my heart is worse than telling me you love me when maybe you didn't at all

i want to tell you about lost poems.
about how the scars on my neck
used to tell stories of an angel
singing into my skin and every
time they burn i feel myself dying
in her arms all over again.
i want to tell you about the
endless pages and colored notes
and backs of cigarette packs i
wrote her name on, and how each one of them
ended up in my bruised fingertips
clutching her waist.
i want to tell you about the time
she set my lungs on fire with her
snow cold skin; how she blew
stardust into my nostrils and i
spiraled into dark addiction.
i want to tell you how i craved her
beauty like a dead man craved the oxygen that
once flowed through his veins-
i'll tell you how i crave her still.
i want to tell you about lost
poems, how they never really
come back to you. how all you
can do is sit on the floor and write about them
until there's nothing left but
dried ink and a hollow ache in the
parts she kissed you most.
she is my lost poem.

It's 1pm, she's smiling. I've closed my eyes too many times just from the times she's hurt me--
she never said it'd be alright and now my mind still worries.
She's like another twisting hurricane that I should've known better than to get into,
but now the roads are blocked and the sirens stopped and I'm standing inside the walls I built inside my heart.
She's somewhere on the outside, knocking just to hear one more "I'm sorry,"
trying to get inside or just disarm me.

I spent my days through endless nights just trying to strengthen these walls of mine--
from enemy, from predator, from girl. But as her voice echoes through my veins,
I forget all the things she always says.
I forget myself, my sense, my name.

My walls have cracked - my defense falls -
what looked like stone was another glass house surrounding my pulse
as it beats through every break, every trial and last mistake,
she says she loves me but makes me wait - I'll never feel this way again.
-aprilxcv

I look at you and I see half-finished poems and words that don’t exist, your eyes are like indigo oceans I keep drowning in but somehow I don’t mind not being able to breathe.  I wish I knew more about why you are the way you are, what terrifies you the most about yourself, and why I find it difficult to catch my breath when you look at me as if I am a stolen daydream. You make up for a lot of things, really, like going through fourth period half asleep because last night it took me three hours to stop thinking about you. You make up for that, and everything else. You are made of electricity and good intentions stitched together with a voice that could shatter a million hearts, and I am just a lost soul wondering why I trust you with mine. And I do, I do, I trust you with my stupid old heart, and I want to memorize every single corner of yours like the back of my hand. I want to know how a heart like yours could love such a wounded one like mine, but maybe that’s what love is, sacrificing perfection for something tragically real. I look at you and I see fluctuating potential, like the morning sun peeking out behind tired gray clouds, and how sometimes that has to be enough. Ever since I met you, my heart has remembered how to beat, my hands have remembered how to hold, and you love me enough to make me forget how much I don’t love myself. Maybe you are temporary and maybe you’re an illusion, but I still cling to the hope that maybe, this is why I held on until now.