nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when we talked about going to seattle?
you said you liked the rain
and the fact that no one there would know you,
i just wanted to be wherever you were.
i was never afraid of the dark
when you talked about yours.
i still don't have words for what i felt
when you told me the only other number
you had saved in your phone apart from your mother's was mine.
i keep telling myself you're not allowed
to just exit and re-enter my life as you please,
but i leave the door unlocked,
so what does that make me?
the last "i love you" from the last time we spoke,
is still stuck to the roof of my mouth.
other lovers have tried to pry it out of me,
but the memory of you is like lockjaw.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember the lizard you caught last summer?
you let me name him forrest.
if life is a box of chocolates,
there are pieces missing,
and whatever is left has gone stale.
i can't smoke cigarettes in my backyard anymore
without wondering where you are
or if you're smoking too.
i hope you're not drinking,
i know you hate what it does to you.
your secrets are still tucked between my ribs,
i will hold them safe and repeat them back to you
if you ever lose your way home.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when you told me
about the person you were afraid of becoming,
i said i wasn't scared,
and i told you i was proud of you?
i'm still proud of you.
i hope you're in school or at least keeping busy.
i hope you still make yourself laugh.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember what movie we were watching
the night you got arrested?
i still can't finish it.
i am holding the place.
can we pick up where we left off?
can we stand up and wipe the dust off?
i never got to tell you why i only write in pen,
or why i can't sleep with socks on,
or about the day i caught god with his hands in a public fountain
fishing for change.
i'm not mad at you for disappearing, but i'm lonely.
the only reason i haven't called
is because i'm afraid of being sent straight to voicemail,
but if i ever find myself in indiana again,
you'll be the first to know.

- m.f.

I guess this is as real as it gets.
I stared at this blank page for a while trying to figure out how I wanted to express myself to you.
The easiest way to get my thoughts flowing was playing that Hedley song you once sang to me while we layed together on the black couch in my living room.
That couch isnt there anymore. Neither are you.
But it's that moment sits in my mind as though someone etched it there permanently and I can time travel back to that moment as soon as I hear the piano playing.
I remember how funny it was that you couldn't sing. But at the same time it was amazing that you remembered every lyric to that song and looked me in the eyes as if you meant every single word.
Ironic isn't it how it had to do with not letting me go.
Ironic that even if it sounded crazy, you were gone 2 months later.
I guess I should of seen your lose grip on my hands as a warning sign that you weren't staying,
I wasn't enough to make you stay and I guess that's why 6 months later I still lay in bed blaming myself.
They say if you love someone let them go and that seems like the most rediculous thing to me because I loved you more than I've ever loved anyone and watching you leave was just as hard as standing unarmed in the middle of a shooting range.
As pathetic as it is, I just want you to know. I want you to know how much I hate you for hurting me the way you did.
I hate you for consuming my thoughts everyday. I hate you for thinking its okay to make me fall so deeply and just leave as though I was nothing; as though we were nothing.
Ending a poem is probably the hardest part. I don't know how I want to leave you feeling.
I'll just say this; if love is what we had, then I want nothing to do with it because someone that loves you shouldn't be able to leave you feeling torn in the middle of the night, they shouldn't leave you wondering what they did wrong in order to not be enough for you. I shouldn't feel like love is something that isn't meant for me, and that's how I feel every ******* day.

Stay.
I begged. I've never been too good at begging, but I fell onto my knees as though the floor was the only one listening and I shouted. Stay. The vibrations of your feet walking across the room to the door I always kept unlocked for anyone who wanted to step into this empty space, where memories of us hang on walls as though they're clutching to not hit rock bottom as I have. You always told me that I was enough, that I was the chain holding you onto me. That I was the abandoned swing set in the backyard that you never wanted to leave, but that was too damaged for you to love anymore. So you stare, as if nobody's there to get your eyes away. Maybe at the end of the day the arms of gravity loosened their pull and let you go but let me tell you, that was the day I realized there's nothing good in "goodbye" and there's nothing more that makes me cry than your back turned away from me; that's if we're not counting the promise of no return. Ever since that day the mirror reflects a melting puddle  of "wait for me, you're going too fast", it was a cry from the past of everyone who's stepped out and never acknowledged what they were leaving behind. The problem with goodbye is it's as real as the promise to love till goodbye isn't an option. It's the promise to drip morphine into your veins so the doctors don't have to tell me its time to let go, we're in this together. Till the last breath isn't the breath of you or me; but of us. Because what's it worth to live a forever without the person who gave you hope on forever in the first place? And what's the point in walking away on somebody who's still got your finger prints on the sides of their face? There are always stories that will go untold, but for now I'm re reading the the volumes of your chiseled frame and protruding lips like they were abandoned in the attic. They sat with first kisses and locked fingers for so long they need to be dusted off by the same hands years later. Yours are alive, and cut and rough. Mine are tired, and fragile and soft. To this day, they still fit perfectly into each other. I don't know why I wore out so early, why I no longer found the will in me to do the things we did as young lovers. I don't know why I'd spend my evenings on dusty couches while you'd beg me to come out with you and watch the sun like we did. I don't know why I stopped trying, I couldn't stop the constant crying caused by a fear of time running out. I don't know why I ever feared time in the first place. It always went so fast when I was with you but as long as I was with you everything was okay. Everything was rolling like the days the tide was pulled higher by the tugging moon. Our picnics on the sand always ended too soon but that was never a problem because we could run home in drenched clothes, have the fun of tearing them off each other and collapse naked into the warmth of clean sheets. All these memories I keep reminiscing. All the younger days I keep missing, the clocks keep ticking and I have lost the one I want to waste away the minutes with. I guess as an abandoned swing set its hard to say goodbye to the growing child. And as the melting puddle in the mirror its hard to look as yourself and smile. But nothings as hard as being the only lover in the hospital bed with none of your morphine in my veins, and no hands to hold onto. No final breath for both of us. Only the realization that the only good in this goodbye, is that I won't leave me with memories of us. It'll leave you with the memory of me, clutching onto the walls so they don't hit rock bottom as I have.

My mom once told me, I should talk to you about God.
because maybe I could help you get away from the clutches of evil.
She could smell the cigarettes off your jacket from miles away,
as well as the liquor on your breath the days you showed up late.
Do you remember the time she brought us to church?
I held your hand in the pews and you never let "amen" escape your mouth.
You never bowed your head or closed your eyes.
I remember you told me that you've never felt more out of place, and that the preachers voice stung your ears.
I guess I should of realized that you can't save someone that basques in their own misery.
Until one day I walked out to find you on the porch with a cigarette between your fingers, begging him to take the pain away.
You always prayed to him, I never noticed it.
You told me that you don't find God on your knees Sunday mornings,
but he's the voice you hear calling out your name when you're intoxicated Saturday nights.
Do you remember when I asked you what you prayed for?
and as you blew up the smoke from your chapped lips you whispered "Change".
It was never the kind you found at the bottom of a wishing well, but rather the one that you haven't seen since the day your mom left.
You never looked me in the eyes when we talked about what makes you cry at night, or the reason you keep going back home when its the last place you want to be.
The tremble of your voice when you confided that "God doesn't help people like me" has never crawled out the seams of my mind.
I still remember one year later, finding your name in the obituaries.
I still cry every night that God couldn't find a way to ease away your suffering.
I still thank you for hanging on for so long.
I'm sorry I never know what to say when people ask what I loved about you, other than "everything he hated about himself"

The pitter-patter of rain sends a shiver of realization down my spine,

When it rains the voice of mankind radiates stronger inside dwellings,

Humans focus on menial tasks, laugh, and love,

They sit around trading stories back and forth,

shuffling their feet and twiddling their thumbs.


As humans sit in a room on a rainy day,

they realize truths about the world that are mind-blowing,

As I sit in this library only an observer,

mankind flourishes as a wonderful species of mammals,

leaving me breathless like the rain.

I woke up to the sound of a train and it was raining. I might be dreaming.
My mom has always loved
the sound of a train and here I am in someone else’s bed thinking
about how much I love the taste of blood and the smell of sweat.
My plant has a pulse but my eyes might
be playing tricks on me, I have a way of forgetting to separate my dreams
from reality. Sometimes
I share too much of myself with people too soon. I told
him that my grandma had green eyes
and that’s where I got mine and that I’ve got nightmares that test
my patience night after night
with grotesque new realities on display before my eyes
and that my nails are stained from pomegranate and that
I got straight As and I told him to bite me because
I like it
but I shouldn’t have said it all so soon.
When I’m hurtling home in my metal death trap
powered by explosions I take pictures of the sky to show myself that
I’m alive and beauty is only here now and a deer
could leap or someone could swerve and ****
me or the airbag could rip off my jaw and I’ll
spend my life bearing my ******* way that I didn’t intend. I’m the writer
with no jaw that everyone reads out of pity and to get a glance
in the windows of a ******’s life.
When I wake up my jaw is still there
but I’ve been clenching it again.
No adderall, no *******, no caffeine, just the pressure
I put on myself and the weight of life knotting up the muscles in my back
until my ribs start to tighten and constrict my breathing so I pull at the ribbons
laced up and down my sternum
but it is too late and the bone corset pulls me in,
pulling pulling pulling until
my organs burst out of my skin.
He tells me,
“You’re hard to read, you know.” I giggle
but I find it tough to explain the rich cascade of emotions that are tied
to the lunar tides and make me crave coffee at midnight in terms
that don’t make me sound completely crazy.
Well, tonight I am eating dinner and attempting to read while the television
babbles at me from another room
about something I don’t need to hear but I hear
a cracking sound and my teeth are sharp and jagged and crumbling
as I run my tongue across them. I wake up sweating.
When it was sunny I bought socks from the little girl section and I drenched myself in perfume. Later on we were drinking chai tea
and getting *****, so I **** on your fingers
while you choke me and in the morning you make pancakes
and I eat it
but I’m afraid of the flour and the substance because it rises up
under my skin and collects in unwanted pools on my body.
I shouldn’t have drank any beer but
I had three
and I spilled my secrets the second I felt the warmth of trust.
God ******* ****.
I drive in silence.
The poster’s eyes have been following me
all night and I don’t know if it is a matter of perspective
or some delusion convincing me that I’m not alone
word vomiting on notebooks and textbooks and gushing
piles of words onto my comforter. I pictured
growing a human being inside of me and my heart
started trying to run from my chest
I scared myself into an anxiety attack
picturing years flashing before me. Before I told him
that I’m not like most girls
he kissed my forearms
and then he kissed my neck. Maybe I’m crazy for believing in astrology but
last night I was hearing your moans
as roars like the lion you are purring, nuzzling me
until you fell asleep and I remembered
being five and wishing I was Belle, marrying the beast. I don’t know.
I don’t know if I’m crazy.
I kept losing my earring in your bed like I secretly wanted to leave something more tangible than my scent or stray blonde hairs for
you to find and remember me by. I think you like me too much and I’m
afraid of what you’ll find when you get in my mind and see the battlefield
that rages inside of a pretty head.
I used to see the world with the eyes of a child but today I feel like I’m senile and looking at the world from the future and dissecting the past
because I lost track of time again and no one knew where I was for seven hours. I might have been wandering but I think I was asking
a fruit fly for directions when she flew into my pupil and laid eggs on my optic nerve causing the light to fraction
and my thoughts to be projected onto the wall ahead.
People passing by could see it all streaming out of me,
every emotion, every desire, every fear and every image,
even the smoking **** on the cement
from when he left got stuck on my screen
and the dream I had the night before
about a man with gigantic hands
and a woman shielded her eyes
as I thought about the way you use your tongue on me. When I finally
stumbled home the projection had stopped
but the maggots had started and I stared at the mirror
and branded myself with the word ugly.
The pill is folded in the dollar and I whack it with a lighter,
the white shards scatter out and I lay the bill flat and crush crush crush
until the powder is free of chunks. One two three
making ten perfect lines, five on each side and my nostrils are on fire.
I **** smoke from a pipe and get so high that my entire face feels like melting
off and I’m so determined to sleep that I can’t
and I anticipate
gritty dreams but I never drift off.
Three glasses of white wine later I drive to his house and I can hear the train hitting the breaks while we throw empty beer bottles at the moving cars
from the roof of a crooked house. And then, the willow tree
draped over the train tracks
grabs the wind with her branches and she summons
sheets of rain that come blasting down.
I’m afraid of heights and I’m not sure why but I think falling
from the apple tree at age thirteen was the first time I realized that
bones break and they never heal the same way and my hands are shaking but

I stay on the wet roof with you and I let myself melt into this
momentary reality.