I wrote a poem that perfectly
captures the essence of being
in love with you,
and I'll never put pen to paper again
for fear of dirtying
everything pure and holy
you bestowed on that page.

Saturday morning
is an unseen sunrise
usurping my sleep; pain splayed
just behind my temple.
It’s
the dreaded goodbye
whispered by weekdays
filtering through the fabric of my shirt collar
like teardrops
and landing along with my gaze
on your nicest shoes.
As my eyes rise, my mind’s eye
is frantically memorizing all your lovely edges
duct-taping images of you to
every surface of my memory.
Saturday morning
hides in purple shadows circling my kneecaps
and hints at the giant, painful subtlety
of the unknown, sewn between my future and
yours.
Saturday morning
is clung like grass and dew,
early me and you
so spitefully aware
of every ticking second tacked on
to our ages.
And in the end,
Saturday morning
dies bittersweet on the tips
of our tongues; a
wordless assurance of
Sunday.

Year eleven
English class, you’d sit in front of
me, unaware I could hear
your pencil, scribbling
throughts you scrapped
when we all wrote poems.
The back of your neck would
flush angry red
as you tried to cram rhymes
against their will, into
stunted couplets.
You hated free verse (well,
most poetry, at that).
“It should have rules,”
you’d argue with
the teacher, trying to
derive the lexical formula
through some slip of her tongue,
convinced she was
safeguarding the key
to composition, or at least to
the coveted A.
I sat behind you,
sadly, seeing unborn poems
slip between your fingers,
trickle down the legs of your desk
and settle with resignation in the wastebasket.
I said nothing;
I sighed, and penned
a poem you’d hate
about all the ones you threw away.

I slept with your silhouette stapled
to my eyelids again,
and woke up without you
again.
I cry thinking of
how the morning light would
skitter and fragment colors across your prismic skin.
Next to me on the couch,
you fracture my thoughts before
they reach my lips -
"I love you-"
All that escapes.
It's time to go, you tell me.
Wait, please - I try to say -
but instead
"I love you-"
again
and you go,
leave only your imprint on the pillow
again.

Darkness grins on the horizon
it looms and drags and coughs
I shudder and shutter my windows,
I board and splinter and nail and bruise and seal
and lock.
It's not quiet inside,
it storms in here too
it's acid rain,
it's sandstorm and blizzard
I'm igloo,
I'm fire,
I'm puddle
you echo and echo and echo
Won't you leave?
Why didn't you stay?
you echo and echo and echo
I scream and spill and slam and still -
in sudden silence
darkness seeps through
the gaps in the walls, then my pores
it's here, it's me
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine
you're gone and
so am I.

will you ever be able to clear
the clouds over your eyes
that cast shadows on your mirror?
it's so dark in here
and you've hidden the light switch
as if neither you nor i
are enough to see your true colors.
but i knew with my eyes closed
from the sound of your voice
and the touch of your skin
that it was always
and only ever you
who could be enough

You saw through me
that first day you stepped in that garage
your eyes sharp,
making their incisions,
finding things even I did not
know.
They call people like you
old souls,
your knifelike philosophy
they name intuition.
Sweetheart, I'm sorry
I couldn't save you from seeing all of me
I couldn't stop my tired feet from running
you couldn't save me from myself.
Yet you still came with me,
you rode the elevator down just to see
what I was hiding from
and you found her, Anna,
in all her glory, tumbling from the window.
You cut your foot on the broken wine glass,
just like I do every time.
She laughed at you like she laughed at me
and you ran from that cursed hotel
while I stood and let her rip my heart out
again.

and blood is shrieking in my cheeks
a concert of passion, ushering tears
the sudden pressure suffocates every
word trapped in my throat
and I desperately want to scream
at you
in hot pent-up pain
that if I didn't love you
with every ounce of myself,
I wouldn't care -
I wouldn't get angry
or speak before thinking
or cry into your shirtsleeves -
but I do care
enough that I can't hide
the mess you make of me.

I.
here we are again,
this lake and me
and the dazzling sky,
which is nice to look at
while I bloodlessly tread icy water.
A clear spring night here
leaves your cheeks sunkissed
and blazes like the sun itself
fractured
into a hundred million blinding particles.
So it’s to there I lift my eyes,
away from my blue-tinged limbs,
to pour illusions of warmth into the
empty space that formed
when the lake robbed the feeling from each nerve.

II.
now you press me to the edge
of the lake
you’ve flattened me, I’m
a shadow at your feet
kissing the ground you stand on.
You dangle my breath in front of me,
letting it crystalize under
your preternatural gaze
and the fragments cast rays
that scatter me and send me
skyward, to the stars.

It’s because I’m dehydrated, isn’t it?
That’s why my knuckles bruise fast dark blue
why I jump without looking
and love angry men.
It’s why my eyes blaze crimson
and I don’t cry,
why food scrapes my throat and
why I don’t have a job.
My body must crave water,
my soul must crave success and rightness -
because they must.
But I never wanted safety,
I want to be dizzy and sick and spinning,
I want to be bone shattered and love lost.
In the end it doesn’t matter to them
what I want -
“Drink more water, dear,
put some stone in that glass heart of yours.”

I want you
to be in my skin,
holding me as
my tears spoil my cup of coffee
outside the cafe.
I want you to be good
at comforting me,
I want you to tell
me what I need you to say
wrap me with your words
like a blanket when
I'm shivering in the snow
but you're not even in the
same city,
and you can't bring yourself
to understand why I'm cold.

she was a chrysanthemum,
disenchanted with the sun who stole the water from her roots
disillusioned with the rain who ripped the petals from her face
disaffected with the gardener's boot who crushed her stem
she cursed the wind as it mocked her,
flying light and lively above her head
she met a bee once
who would sit on her petals,
fluttering its wings and staring
as if the world were dry
and she were the last sip of water.
and for a moment she thought
just maybe she was,
but she was a chrysanthemum
in a garden of too many flowers,
and the bee was gone before
the sun had left her to the mercy of the moon.
then one day,
a pair of hands found her wilting.
they scooped her up
planted her in a ***
brought her to a window
and watered her just enough.
she took her first real breath and saw
in the reflection of the window
that her stem was straight again
and her petals were strong and full.
she thanked the hands and
they went on being friends;
they gave her water and love and
she gave them beauty.
now she looks out the window
at the sun
and the rain
and the owner of the boot
and loves them.

"Would you like cream and sugar?"
the barista
my lips pressed together
"Yes."
You,
speaking for me
I hate cream and sugar

When I was fourteen, I had
two feet of spectacularly boring *****
blond hair until
I cut off a foot and a half.
I used to reach for it
absentmindedly in the shower or
brushing my hair and
I cried today thinking
one day it will be your hand that I
reflexively reach for, only to
squeeze empty space.

nihilism is your Mecca;
apathy your temple
i abandoned religion to follow you.
i thought you were the north star
but as it turns out,
you were nothing but an airplane
bound to crash
with one passenger inside.
but death doesn't matter, does it?
nothing does, in the end.
i was the eye of your hurricane,
the ostensible object of your affection,
terrified to
venture beyond the tiny circumference
of peace.
you'd line your shoes with razors
just to prove you felt no pain.
you were untouchable, you told me;
you concerned yourself for nothing,
i worried for everything.
as it turns out,
your glass ceiling was fragile
and sent you tumbling to rock bottom
when it finally shattered.
you loved the thrill of the free fall,
but i was afraid of heights.
i wouldn't be there for your downfall
though you seemed to know you'd survive.
i was left with no faith
little hope
and more questions than i knew how to ask.
it's been years now,
and still i wonder
were you lying all along,
or just deluded?

I'll find her one day, years
from now
sketching wildflowers in a field
two states over from
where we met
and it will be the first
time that I realize I
truly lost her. I never knew her
to care about art, though I knew she would
paint houses with her generosity
until she’d given her whole world away.
She put everything she loved on
an altar and watched the smoke
swirling towards God
closed her eyes, inhaling
a promise that she would receive blessing
in return. So she did:
everything that happened
had to be divinely ordained
but me - I was not.
I was the earth she
was called to leave behind,
on her journey higher
and I watched her footsteps smudge
the lines drawn in the sand
and questioned how
you could ever tell someone they
weren't going to be happy
when every ounce of their being
believed they were.
The truth is,
I never found the answer
and I can still only
pray I'll ever
find her.

doesn't hurt, not
always. Sometimes
it heals the cracks in your
ribs and eases you gently into sleep
for the first time in weeks.
Truth
is curious and ugly and forever half-hidden,
cowering uncomfortably behind
partial lies, obscured like
the sun rising behind the mountains.
It's seemingly more beautiful
when cloaked,
if only you don't look it in the eye
and let the darkness help to scatter
all its fuchsias and violets across the horizon.

i discovered love
beneath wrapping paper,
presents crumbling in my fists
it was the rug ripped
from underneath my feet,
the taste of salt and metal
the chip in my tooth
so of course i fell for you,
your adrenaline and materialism
of course i can't forget you
how could skin forget its scars?
i don't care if you broke me
or if i was always broken, and
you just made me feel whole
for one perfect day.
i was blindly searching for love, but i
only saw you

i lay frozen
only able to move my eyes,
so they
remained fixed on you and
shed a tear
for the delineation of your beautiful silhouette
and their own shrouded myopia

you rise taller than my dreams,
grander than my hopes,
just short of reality
i don't know you, but i want you

the day after christmas i
took a walk in the woods at
dusk.
i felt a city of eyes
staring, none
of which i could see.
i walked among them,
an obstreperous visitor uninvited.
beneath the rustling wind in the trees,
i thought i heard the
pounding of drums.
perhaps it was the rhythm of nature.
it beckoned me to run,
so i
ran.
i ran not from death, but
toward life.
i did not plan to run,
but i
ran.
i ran until the end
of my path.
i watched the puffs of air
float languidly toward the
sky, and realized
this was not the end, simply
where the path stopped.

Slow chimes move
like silk waves across your breath
smile yearning upward,
lifting me with it
I sail lucid and pale
wondering where reason got off.
You're the last key on the piano,
ringing softly, haloed:
redemption calls like you.
I only meant that
you blaze
like seven raging stars
you illuminate fast and holy,
trickle down your depth and widen
until everything is you.
I won't complain,
I'd cut off my tongue if you liked,
say yes til I lost my voice
even before you asked.
No, this pledge is not dangerous,
my worship not idolatrous, for you
are only ever safety and heaven
(or so I hope).

Your mind is the bed
of an Elysian river
of thought
and when acid rain came, you
built dams to punish yourself
by keeping that toxic water
from ever
flowing out
to sea.
I may not know how
to break through your walls, but I’ll
sit on these banks
shedding a tear for each
polluted drop of rain
until, perhaps, one day my
Hope will
run your
waters pure.

they say perfection
is nonexistent, but
i have learned
it is relative.

mulberry street after dark
broken locks on the bridge
discarded heart-shaped locket
picnic blanket on the grass
you and i,
skipping rocks,
i think about how they
sink and settle,
destined to kiss
the murky lake's floor
you and i,
naming the stars
who are we
to think we know them?
to us, they are no farther than the moon
as finite as the glittering streetlights
less comforting, more enigmatic
we watch the sky ripple on the lake,
i wonder if we'll see a shooting star -
what are the odds?
maybe if there were a
meteor shower, we
could wish a hundred wishes
yet we'd never wish
for the same thing
soon the sun will rise, cloaking the stars,
you'll follow her, and
i'll follow the moon
perhaps i'll see you across the galaxy
and nod for rocks sleeping
'neath the lake at mulberry street

Dark magic
black lace and
red lips.
I'm enchanted -
what was your name?
It falls off
your tongue like
caramel or tar
I'll drink it either way.
Saccharine sapphire
pulling me underwater,
showing me how to breathe
kohl pencil
feathered around your eyes
a punch to my stomach
I feel it in my toes.
The passion of the sun
cloaked in the moon
dangerously beautiful,
and I'm a connoisseur of hazard.

when i was little, i never
dreamed of being a seamstress
but here i am, threading together
fragments of people in poems
stitching his skin on another's face
sewing puppets of everyone i long to erase
and nailing them to the walls of my house
i specialize in calcifying the past
amplifying the voices of my vices
i dabble in cosmetics,
beautifying villains
making their faces a little easier to forgive
and so much harder to forget
to those who have scarred me,
i give the most coveted gift:
to live forever
the secret to immortality?
eternal, indefatigable words

i took piano lessons when i was
five, until i was eight.
we moved states and
i just stopped.
but then a few years ago,
i met you and i
wished i remembered how to play
because you put a song in the back of my mind
and it's been playing ever since,
without your knowledge
or my consent.
sometimes it calms me
or animates my dreams,
and on occasions it's given me
headaches.
but it reminds me every day
of what i could have had,
what i long to pursue
and how
i wish i could play your song.

i was lost at sea,
dying of thirst
and you were the saltwater.

I've been circling the drain
for a while now,
screaming at you because
you look just like me.
when I get out I'll
try new things,
like papaya and cigarettes.
I won't like them but you
won't stop me anymore
I'll converse with the dead roses
on the vanity, ask them
if they knew they'd die,
from the moment they met your fingertips.
They won't say anything, because they're dead
and they're plants.
Maybe I'll become an anarchist;
I'll abandon that old idealism
of true joy and technology,
of solidarity and sovereignty
I'll try out lobotomy
and I won't wonder anymore
how you'd answer
those questions that rotted
in the back of my mind.
But before I do, I might
walk for a month,
day and night, all the way to
your house, only to find it inhabited
by someone new
and I'll be reminded that it might be time
for me to go,
and never come back.

i drank you up
like boiling water,
dribbling over
the corners of my mouth
you were everywhere at once,
heat spreading through
my every limb,
sparking my nerves
with your cheshire grin.
we did not know what love was
how could you teach me what you did not know?
how could you convince me
when you did not love your own mother
that you loved me?
you showed me what love was not:
love is not ownership
love is not adrenaline
love is not ***
i still don't know what love is.

i got a new pen for christmas
and i love it.
it glides over paper
like a cosmic match,
its perfectly pigmented partner.
but i have the same notebooks
and i write the same things
dreaming the same dreams
with a new pen in hand.
at least your name
will be just a little bit more beautiful
as i trace it once more,
tear out the paper,
crumple it up,
and start again.

How does that make me feel?
It's complicated.
or maybe it isn't –
maybe it's outrageously simple,
like the condensation that becomes rain that becomes
a raincloud again:
I am all three and dangerously unaware,
trapped in a comatose fever dream
wishing you would pinch me and
disappear.
If I knew how the game was played,
I'd be so unbearably bored.
I spare myself the tedious details:
whether you're real or not—
whether I could ever wake up—
whether I care enough to try—
ignorance is bliss, honey,
and imagination is only everything they say
reality isn't.
The narration is a little confusing, my editors said,
the perspective is a little jumpy,
my thoughts dissipate before they can be
properly understood.
They can't tell whether the story is supposed to be a
tragedy, or perhaps
dramatic irony,
I don't reply because—
well, I'm unconscious, of course.
And busy—
I've got appointments all day; being ignorant and blissful
is quite involving.

if love is a train,
i'm not getting on.
i'll lay in the tracks
eyes closed,
just to see if i'll die.
i know i'll wake
next to you,
so i don't really care
how i get there,
i just hope the train
is coming soon.

i was once the well-worn book at your
bedside,
and then i was the last chapter
of the book you were afraid to
finish.
now i am a dusty journal,
hidden away with lock and key.
you do not know what to do with me.
i hold your memories
your secrets
your fear and your desire
if you did not want me
printed on the back of your mind,
you should not have filled me with your words
or stained my pages
with your touch.
you wrote these words, darling,
in fountain pen;
i cannot be erased.
you will not throw me out
you will not burn me
you will not rip my pages
you will never forget me.

when there is no one to speak to
i
scream at the stars
they don't understand but
they listen

This is the story of smoke,
mirrors,
broken fourth walls,
and me.
I
used to play with fire and pretend
I was a goddess, like
I'd created it with my own
fingers.
I once set my carpet on fire
(that's not a metaphor),
and for one brilliant moment I
thought I might have
inadvertently burned down the house.
But I outgrew fire,
grew bored of ice,
and discovered the final frontier—
it was disappointingly tepid:
dull, a bit smoky
from ex-flames that scorched the carpet.
My once-raw lungs are now
jaded and fading.
What is left to grow tired of?
I don't care enough to find out.

it's so hard to forget
the curve of your mouth
the words that you spoke
the way they gently passed through your lips
it's harder than remembering
the words i wrote down
scribbling furiously
trying to make sense
of a world
that never stops talking
the roar is nothing short of deafening,
yet i can still pick out
your voice
as i copy down the words
i wish you had said
instead of the ones you did
after all,
that's what writing is for
recording dreams
alternate versions of
reality
reflecting something prettier
than the naked eye could see
the words i wanted
would have sounded much prettier
on those lips of yours
but i look up from my dreamy scribbles
and remember
i am still awake

oh, that i could picture
your lineaments, soft
curves and angles
that i could conjecture eloquent
words, to color you
as blood colors my veins
would that i could hold you
between my fingers, as
ribs hold my lungs
that i could know you
like a brother
and love you
like the sunflower loves the sun;
bathing in the beauty
of magnificent mystery.
yet you are illicit,
despite these afflicting affections you elicit
you are proscribed by some
cosmic law.
i chase after you still,
though the universe binds my
hands and feet.
one day i'll reach you, darling,
i'll know you and love you and hold you
and we'll be outlaws together.

limestone cherub
on the grass, by the
busy sidewalk
hiding her eyes
from the passersby
years ago, gentle eyes
wide with wonder
looked for a savior
in strangers rushing past
while summer brought her
the scorching sun
pavement sizzled at her tiny feet
she looked on, delivering her
silent invitation through the fall
while winter brought her
accusing tongues, spitting
frosty hatred
she shivered, longing for the arid days
wrapping her arms tight around her legs
learning to close her eyes,
so she would not hope
for a warm home
learning not to hope
that she could ever stop the
changing of the seasons

if hell is personal,
i will spend eternity
swimming in a burning lake
of missed opportunities
and souls i did not save

i thought
somewhere deep inside,
you were an artist
but the red paint on your hands
was always blood