i was okay being marked ‘damaged goods’
because i was yours and you let me believe
that you could possibly be mine.
you found me beautiful, remarkable,
understood me in ways that no one else could.
i thought with you i found meaning -
i was made whole in your embrace,
my name never sounded sweeter than on you lips.
'no one will ever know you the way i do’.
i was unknowable the way most broken things are
the pieces were all there but in no discernible way.
no way anyone but you could look at my jagged edges
and find beauty and strength and love.
love.
it’s so strange how the first time the words left my lips
and pressed themselves into your skin 'love, love, i love you
i’m in love with you’
yours only grew silent.
i could pick apart the ways you twisted my love
made it something perverse and ruinous.
'you don’t know how to love someone’
and maybe i don’t but i thought with you i could try,
that i could learn be someone worth loving.
i was never one for fervent prayer
but i got my knees and i prayed to God.
i prayed for guidance and assistance.
i prayed for patience and wisdom.
i prayed to be absolved of the sin of loving you.
we were great, beautiful, and terrible things.
and i wonder if you ever truly loved me
the way i thought i loved you.

trying not to
**** myself like
gratitude journals
and internalizing every
word on drake's new album
trying to understand
why you want to **** me
in the middle of
12 am twitter dms
wearing your words
like a straight jacket
that once made me feel
free
tiny desk concerts like
a hard life lesson
with lukewarm thoughts
of you on the hottest
of days

I used to write
My secrets in the sand,
Knowing they would never stay
Long enough to be told.

I used to just swim,
pulled my hair up and never
Really tasted the salt that foamed
After the crash.

I've ran in the sand,
Sure, but never have I
Ever let it smooth my
Skin into what it could be.

Before today, I've never
Let the current take me
Under and feel what it's like
To always come back to something.

I guess
I'll go back to poetry
now that
the real thing is ending

It's hard to lose touch
when you finally found it
hard to imagine
being content
staring at computer eyes
and typing can never
replace her flesh and blood hand

yet the reality is we must part after meeting
so brief the moment
so unsweet the parting
I may write a poem full of tears
I may tear this **** keyboard apart

trying to make it all real once more
her feel her heart her love for me.

I check the weather
you wonder why I feel this way
it's not that I'm unhappy but more that I'm empty
like a vanilla pod scraped clean