What the hell is the term “sparkling eyes” even referring to? The widening of one’s eyelids? The dilation of the pupils? Or maybe it’s meant to be ambiguous to fully credit the effect of the magical phrase. But when she looked at me her eyes didn't sparkle. They darkened. And the way she looked at me, with her eyes filled with danger sent my soul in spirals, for I could feel an unbearable amount of unrest within my blood. And at that very moment I found myself walking towards her. I walked, blinded by her dark eyes, towards the oblivion until I asked her name, “Sara,” she hollered. Of course she hollered. It was very unusual, just like her entire persona.

I will miss you at college, I really will.
I won’t miss the wrinkled brows, at my too-heavy-eyeliner wearing face.
But i’ll probably come home make up free
with a head full of purple hair.
I know i’ll walk through the door sometime and you’ll be horrified.
And maybe you won’t want to sit in Starbucks with me.

And when your friends are bragging about their daughters,
saying mine got a full ride to Notre Dame,
or mine was recently proposed to,
you’re going to say,
“mine is happy.”
And maybe that will be enough.

Timelessness.
An infinite amount
of ticking
on the clock.
As it does not matter
the numbers passes,
as metaphors
are timeless.
-k.d.

There is an overwhelming amount of danger in his eyes. And there is something not quite right about the whistle around his neck. Lifeguards are meant to save lives. To care for those who cannot care for themselves because we all need a little help sometimes.  But he never took the help, and to this day he will kiss you so hard your childhood memories will surface to the top of the ocean inside you.  
Because his song is algae growing at the bottom of the ocean and you must drown just to listen to it. And as your screaming surfaces, no one hears your struggle because he is the only lifeguard. With that whistle around his neck.
It’s almost as hollow as he is.
But when I came to Rose Mary in the fall I didn’t know that. Maybe I would have in the summer, but as the seasons remind me I must keep changing, he always stayed behind. The lifeguard that spent all day under the sweltering sun remained cool as ice. Maybe even cooler.
But this isn’t about him. It isn’t about me. This is about the people who are as hollow as the bottles we drink. Because we don’t ask each other how our hearts are anymore.  And I have to sleep with a nightlight on because the darkness reminds me too much of the bottom of the pool in Rose Mary that resembles the outside corners of his dangerous eyes.

I never paid much attention to abandon buildings until I became one.
It was after I heard the words,
I heard you say the words,
"She's gone."
Two words that can make a fifty year old veteran feel empty inside the pit of his stomach that was just fed.
After all, no matter how many meals,
no matter how much liquor he drank,
It was never enough to make him feel full.
And no one ever tells you being so empty can be so ******* heavy.
And no one ever tells you a stranger's soft hands cannot hold you back together.
Because the truth is you can't always turn your sadness into a poem and sometimes it just sits in your chest and drains the life from you.
And you can run away,
as you will try,
but you can only go so far until noticing the sidewalks are only cracked to commiserate the broken hearts that have stood on them.
This is not about me.
This is about the human spirit.
The resilience we have installed within us to feel
Everything.
And when my best friend broke up with her boyfriend,
she told me he was OCD,
always doing everything in threes.
But he only said goodbye once,
And I don't think she realizes that it is killing him,
as much as it's killing her.
As humans,
we have the ability to create,
and destroy.
Love letters and suicide notes are just different combinations of the same 26 letters
remember that.
But love is a beautiful thing,
Our love was a beautiful thing,
A fragile thing,
A glass castle,
And we were both sledgehammers.
We created and destroyed and we did it beautifully.
Mr. Lunn said some people are already dead.
Walking around the halls in their own high school,
Waking up for work every single day at nine o clock only to start driving back home at five,
these people are already dead.
And it didn't hit me that he was right until I was lying with a friend,
his head on my chest,
admiring my heart beat in a way confirming he did not have his own to admire.
I asked him if he believed in God, if he believed in the universe, if he believed in the stars staring back at us, if he believed in the connection when you can look at another human being and feel
Thankful to all of those things,
thankful to every god in the world,
for the mere pleasure of knowing them.
And he said he just didn't know and I still don't know what moment was more alarming.
I wondered if he payed attention to abandoned buildings.
I didn't either,
Until I became one.

I never could remember your birthday.

but silly things like the actual date of your birthday never mattered

when I got you presents all year round.

You always knew the exact date of my birthday.

And i think that was the only thing you ever really knew about me.

You were never much to look at.
Unless it was up close, heavy breathing eyelash kissing goosebumps kind of pretty.
And you laughed at me and i hated your loud laugh and everything else about you that was so loud.
You lived loudly you were loud; but being loud doesn't mean **** if being loud isn't being honest.
And if being loud is being the kind of loud people like to hear then its not being loud its just adding to everyone else’s ******* noise.
I'm talking about beauty, living with beauty and beauty flowing through your hair and your eyes as they looked into mine but then the beauty stopped the second you ran into me accidentally in a crowded hallway and pretended you didn't mean to get that close.
The beauty you might have had if you hadn't have been so ******* noisy.
The up close heavy breathing eyelash kissing goosebumps kind of beauty that you had with me, you could have shown the world in a loud kinda way this beauty, a goose bump chills kind of beauty.
But you said no and all you’ll ever do from now on is add to everyone else’s ******* noise.

Don’t you dare look at me as if you know me when I can’t even put my own finger on who I am or what I want.  And don’t you ever call yourself my friend until I’ve showed you the scars buried under my skin.  You can’t call yourself a lover until you’ve touched more than that very thing. And as I touch my body today it hurts, the bruises underneath my skin, they hurt. Pains that most people will never see. And I’m not talking some ******* metaphor it literally ******* hurts and I don’t understand what I did to deserve this, as I only banged my arm against the kitchen sink and everything else I could find three times. Exactly one, two, three times, each. And as I sit here in front of this old computer I look across the room at a once lovers best friend laughing as there probably isn’t a care in his wonderland he refuses to leave.
And when I think of you I remember your sad eyes always looking inward, pointed towards yourself, were strangely fixated on me and your soft lips were as flushed as your cheeks. You were looking at me not in some romantic way that you maybe wanted to kiss me; no I was pretty sure you were plotting our escape. I don’t know why you ever wanted to take me with you but you had that strange idea wrapped around your delusional little mind, going a little mad the only place I ran was towards you.  And as I wandered around in your house I got a little lost and I don’t think I ever was brave enough to leave you and come back home.

As I count 1,2,3 in history I try to process that Napoleon left France kind of like how you left me. Because in a moment I felt my skin wrap a little tighter around me and it became a little harder to breathe. And as I hear the teacher talking about some ******* concepts of Metternich’s conservatism, I wonder why we need to label our beliefs. Because if you feel something there that is rare enough in a world starved for empathy and emotions drowning in a numb, blank state that we are have been swimming in for the majority of our lives after childhood.

Because we are no longer children. And we grow, we are supposed to blossom but I guess God forget to water me because I am just a mess. And the truth is that you can't always turn your sadness into a poem and sometimes it just sits in your chest and drains the life from you. So stop calling me beautiful because I am tired of being lied to. I am tired of feeling sad and you claiming that its beautiful, I am tired of feeling empty and you trying to make it romantic, I am tired of you lying to my face when you say that you love me and I am tired of re reading my old poetry after our break up, knowing that whenever you said I love you it was a lie that I held onto for dear life- a lie I breathed in and wanted to live inside of because maybe it’s not beautiful to be a mess but you always called me at four in the morning like you were on top of the world despite your insomnia.

-k.d.

Hollow out my bones
And fill them with my aspirations.
With stars from the night sky, ocean water, pieces of the earth-
Take it all out.
I don’t want it haunting my insides, as my dreams have kept me a prisoner since I was a child.
No, I want to be free.
From everything grounding me to this earth; you see I need to go.
The sun is calling.
I need to get out:  away from these people, away from this place, away from my body,
Away from you.
Because I loved you and love is destructive
And you can’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you differently.
For love with play with your heart like it’s a ******* battlefield,
Until your ice cream you eat at exactly seven o’clock every night
Begins to taste like heart ache.
And the pieces you once admired inside your bones begin to weight your body down,
gravitating your dreams towards the person you once thought it was so great to love.
So get me out of this body.
Hollow out my bones
And let me fill them
With my own
Aspirations.
-k.d.

As humans, we strive.
we strive, were alive, we abide, and we survive
For happiness, love, joy, and whatever other ******* ideas we live for.
And if you’re desperate like housewives
watching days of our lives,
you can’t cope without hope
and that’s not on a soap.
If you’re looking to Oprah or Dr. Phil
you can shop nonstop or pop a pill.
But the void won’t fill and the pain won’t ****
till you become what you want,
not stagnant or still.

We just want to make it.
Want to know that we when close our heavy dark eyes
filled with tears reflecting
broken promises
we won’t be terrified
of what turns out to be
our own reflections.
You can be a heavy hitter
Wheel of Fortune winner,
a Fox News news spin spinner
or a flat out sinner.
as we label ourselves in desperate attempts to find peace within society
But were losing our comradery.

Because as i think
and blink
connections linked
i think
we can’t control
whats in our veins
and all the lanes
were driving through
and diving
Riding
sliding through.
and everything but guided through
its all so new to me and you
and that's why I'm so confused
weather or not cause we cant lose,
but I'm still holding onto to you
its what I'm like
its what we do
So stop and remember
You have already made it.
Because the way your blonde hair falls perfectly around your shoulders
is like an angel wrapping his arms around your neck.
And the way
the angel holds you
is the way everyone else looks at you.
I am not a religious person,
but you make me want to believe.

There are some things that science cannot explain
some things cannot be wrapped around the cerebrum
and as it unfolds
we see the earth is 13.8 billion years old.
Thrace down my 100,000 miles of blood before you tell me who I am or what I'm made of.
And although we can see
that Mercury is 799 degrees,
that doesn't help with all the physicistry.
My doctor asks me to stick out my tongue.
I ask if he can see all the pain choked in my throat,
he laughs as if I'm telling a joke,
I'm not.

And although we can produce a light
a million times brighter than the sun
we have problems saying words like please and thank you and love.

I tell my psychiatrist about the sadness that shakes all 206 of my bones
as my cerebellum pulses with ten billion neurons and flashbacks and blood cells and "Post Traumatic Symptom Disorder," because everything has to have a name in science.

So the doctor prescribes Zoloft, and Prozac, and Ability, and Paxil to numb the passion,
But she contradicts with the words,
"Life isn't supposed to make you feel good or bad,
for it is just supposed to make you feel."

Because when my hand is on my chest I feel something there,
A force pumping 100,000 miles of blood across my limbs
filled with broken iambic pentameters, and stars of lust, with music, and sleeping pills, and roses of wonder-
for there are just some things within me that science cannot explain.

And although it can explain my heart bleeding,
It can't define the meaning,
or prescribe what we are needing,
here were assigned ******* seating,
and the teacher explains my uneasy breathing,
but in my head i can't stop the screaming,
and the sciences seems to be fleeting
as they can't explain us meeting,
our minds and eyes so gleaming,
its just the feeling,
when even science can't tell if you're drowning or dreaming,
because these brain cells are fleeting
as there are just some things
science
cannot explain.

There are just some things you never forget
like the first time I twisted my fingers through your hair
And the first time you pulled mine
A little too hard.
But this is not a love poem.
I remember the first time I held you.
Terrified I would do it wrong.
And how you reminded me I couldn't because as I looked down I saw God’s reflection
Of everything beautiful in the world in my arms.
But this is not a love poem.
I remember how sweet you tasted, when you would bite my blue lips.
And how sweet the bullet I took for you felt until I saw your pretty face
behind the trigger.
But this is not a love poem.
Because if all is fair in love and war then I don’t want to play.

Today someone told me
"You're so loved.
and those are not
Just words."
And I didn't know
what to say.
Would my response be
"just words"?
Or would it mean something.
Because words are all we have.
Between
lyrics, poetry, novels, and raps,
words are how
Mommy communicates
with little Benny
in the back seat.
And how Michael
tells Colleen
how much he loves her
from the army base
over seas.
So when you speak
remember
words are powerful.
Nothing you say
contains "just words."

I know what it's like to love with every single vein in your body
and i know what its like to lose it.
And when i say lose it,
I don't just mean the love.
Because you mind your mind will go with it.
And the next thing you know,
you have spent the last three weeks eating ice cream for dinner at six o'clock at night,
going to bed at nine,
because you would rather be asleep
that consciously reminded that she's gone.
Two words that can make a fifty year old supposedly heartless veteran feel empty in the pit of his stomach that was just fed.
After all, no matter how many meals
no matter how much liquor he drank,
it was never enough to make him feel full.
But she will make you feel full.
She will make you feel filled to the rim,
brimming with beauty and excitement.
Smiling wider than the crescent moon
for teeth on the Cheshire Cat,
for she made me feel like I belonged in wonderland.
And she will do the same to you.
She will also fool your flaws,
to think that they're lovely,
And she will trick you,
into thinking you are too.
And you will stay up all night talking on the phone
for months,
(i would recommend napping),
because who wants to sleep anyways,
when you're in love?
And you will fall hard.
Until the phone calls get shorter.
And the hair pulling gets softer.
And every ******* thing you began to love about yourself
becomes the reasons that she left.
And you will wait until someone from your fifth period chemistry class who was always secretly jealous of her feelings for you whispers across the room, "She's gone."
Two words.
They hit me like a bullet too.

"But darling," he whispered, at 12:34 "you are dangerously beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love." And as his words flooded through my mind I looked into his eyes and read that there was no reason to be lost as the clock ticked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times. I laughed and he looked at me like I was crazy. Most my lovers do. And that's partially why they love me and party why they leave.
Because I will sing you a song, if you scream it back at me.
But this is not a love poem.
And he was beautifully unforgiving, becoming the 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 bars that once restrained his youthful soul, for he was never free after that.
Chains consisting of metal melted from every punch thrown behind scared eyes of boys and girls with cigarettes dangling from their mouths and he hit me faster than a runaway train with eyes carrying more than they should, and as 2, 3, 4 hours passed I took another hit saying “here’s to the conclusions we can’t escape.” His hand left a mark darker than my eyeliner across my face as we spent the night painting away our sadness by splashing bright colors across our souls.

We are the people
and these are the times.
These are hurtles;
not definers.
So stay strong.
You are not alone.
-k.d.

As she whispers the words
"I love you"
in between gritted teeth,
I think,
What do you know
about love?
Because the way you look
at each other
doesn't seem like love.
And the way you speak of him,
doesn't sound like love.
And the way he looks at her,
doesn't look much like love at all.
But then again,
what do I know,
about your love?