your clothing fills the space on my floor
with such defined intention
like that of a form cast onto an abstract canvas
perfectly articulating and punctuating
wordless conversations from the night before

before her
fall in love with the feeling of
your own skin
marvel at the light hitting each contour of
yourself, inside and out
her name on your lips
cannot, will not mend you until
you learn to adore
the color of your own eyes
and the feeling of your own hands intertwined

did his lips taste different
last night than they did in january?
did the flavor I left on your lips
three hours before mix well
with the bitterness of his tongue in your mouth?
are his hands stronger than mine baby?
did they hold you better than mine could?

We talk about our sweaty palms,
Cautious, careful to avoid
The slightest touch.
Knees gently bump beneath tables,
I flinch back as a flame,
One I want so badly,
Begins to lick at my heels,
Consuming me.
Memories flood my racing thoughts
As I slip your shirt over my head,
Hair messy from fearful fingers
I have no choice but to keep busy,
Because if I don't,
They might find their way to yours.

I lie here tracing my own skin
Drawing invisible lines between
My freckles so meticulously placed
Because who will marvel at
The contour of my wrists
And the sharp edges of my hips
If not me?

we wrote more poetry
in the wrinkles of your sheets
in one night than
I have written in the pages
of my journal all year

It should take more to bring me to tears.
I shouldn’t quiver at the sight of the moon’s light peeking through a cracked window onto your bare chest,
wrapping your bare breast in a blue glow
like it does the crest of the mountain, a convenient twenty minute drive away.
Yet here I am, placed perfectly parallel on a disheveled mattress,
Skillfully settled between your naked body and a clothing adorned floor,
hiding from your view my wet cheeks and misty eyes so that I won’t have to explain why the sight of you
does to me what lightning does to trees.

Wrote your name on another bridge today,
the second one since I left a month ago.
In another world, maybe,
I keep doing this until I die.
In another world, perhaps,
you do the same with mine.

you say you don't want me if
the only time you can have me
is a quarter past twelve at the top
of an empty parking garage.
and I understand.
I wouldn't want a boy
who's mind is half a thousand miles away,
searching for answers at the hands of
the same people who left him
with far too many questions
either.

I can sit in the woods all morning
talking the ears off the birds
while squirrels laugh at me, or
I can sit silently, reverently and listen,
and I think I'll learn something important
either way

Something isn't right
We're in the back of my car and she slides my hand up her shirt.
Her skin feels strange and unfamiliar
beneath my fingertips and her breath feels dangerous against my bruised neck.
Her hair feels foreign tangled in my hands.
Her lips feel wrong pressed against mine.
She says my name, but it sounds nothing like the way that you used to say it.
She isn't you.
She can never be you.

it's just a t-shirt but
there's something comforting
about how it carries
the smell of your worn out sheets

Just because I'm a man
Does not mean I don't possess
Every ounce of beauty that the
Flowers growing at my feet do.
Just because I'm a wave ever
growing
changing
flowing
Does not mean I am not a mountain
Strong and steady
Demanding the attention I know that
I deserve
Not because I am a man
But because I am human

why do we rely
on mere sparks to fuel us
when the sun herself
is on her knees
begging to fill us

If you have to switch between
Loving her and loving yourself
If you cannot do both at once
If she isn't obsessed with the way
You trace you own skin
With the gentlest of hands
Just as she adores the touch
Of your fingers on her cheek
Is it really the kind of love
You want to feel?

I am not clean.
I am torn up nail beds.
I am bruised knuckles.
I am smoke curling around bleeding fingers.
I am tired eyes that lost their shine.
I am cracked lips forming disappointed smiles.
I am the loose tobacco at the bottom of the pack.
I am dried up old pens.
I am all the words I’ve left unsaid.
I am shaky knees.
I am the discomfort in your chest.
I am trying my best, I promise.
I am hastily scribbled words you’ll never read.
I am not the stability that I need.
I am not what anyone needs,
And it is not beautiful.

there is nothing beautiful about the way
I smell a little too much
like stale cigarettes and day old coffee
and not enough like the flowers
I am trying to grow in those
barren parts of me that I
refuse to let them see

I'm trying to take care of myself
The same way I take care of
The plants on my windowsill
With patience
With a gentle hand
And the idea that nothing grows over night

we distance ourselves
not because we want to
but because we know
what comes next.
and what comes next
we want far more
than either of us
will ever be desperate enough
to admit.

I'm learning to love
My words not only
As I am breaking
But also as I am
Finally blooming

Shaky hands, bleeding nail beds
Walls begin to close
Heavy breathing, erratic pulse
Hide behind a hood so they won't know.
A name is called, one I know all too well
One I hate as much as I hate its owner.
They don't understand.
My voice cracks,
The words don't look like they should,
Unfamiliar, robotic as they leave
My cracked lips, that I want nothing more
Than to shut, silent, unmoving.
"Don't be nervous"
My heart rate increases,
And the only thing I can think about
Is disappearing within the pages
Of these stupid ******* textbooks
That no one ******* opens.

the trees tell each other
about a girl they've seen
the conversation dancing up their vines
whispers of her shared between their leaves
"I've seen her too"
says one to another
now even the birds listen in
using freshly bloomed ferns for cover
"I've seen what she does to rivers
what she does to seas
how she cracks the dawn
and brings the sky to his knees"

Some days
I am so very full of hope
I have moments where all I can do
Is smile and let the tears come
Because I know that it can’t be this way forever.
The pain rips and the memories tear,
I’m learning not to care,
About if they care or not.
Because Jesus Christ, I love so deeply and feel so fully,
For better or worse.
And that is all I can ask for.

You ruined so much for me,
But I'll be ****** the day I let you in again.
After winter comes spring,
And your touch on me will fade with the snow.
I will shed the skin you touched and become something different.
Someone never hurt by you.
Someone you never knew.

The scent of your hair isn't the one I want
Clinging to my fingertips as I lie in bed
The fog on all six windows is there because of
Your heart and my hands,
But the rest of me is missing.
I left it with someone else, somewhere else
Barely visible walls and a low off white ceiling.
I'd like to say I'm thinking with my head
And not my heart,
But neither is true when it comes to you.
It's that one part of me,
Selfish and cruel,
That I never wanted to be
That I want no one to see

She's got these mossy green eyes,
The same color as the grass
All those days we used to spend laughing about nothing.
And no one asked, but I can't help but share.
She's got this curly, reddish-brown hair,
And I'll never forget the feeling
Of it tangled in my hands
All those nights we used to spend laughing about everything.
She's got these two freckles
On the right side of her back,
She doesn't know, but she has
******* constellations traced onto her skin,
Imbedded in the deepest parts of herself.
She's got this mind, this labyrinth.
I can't find my way out,
But I don't think I want to.

it's been nearly a year
and I'm lying on the same floor
staring at that same spot on the ceiling
listening to that same song
thinking about the same ******* person
knowing I never even cross their mind

february was a siren
each day—a breath
each hour—a heartbeat
each moment—the tick of a clock
the wind is not the wind no the wind
was a whisper, a call a beckoning
to both the cold of january and
the wetness of march april may
each of them a lover themself
she doesn't know and the moon
won't tell her what she is
not a siren, a nymph
the breeze—her kiss
the sky—her soft cheek
the trees are her dance and
the night is only her shadow

my hands are not
the same ones
you once grasped
my heart not
the same one
you once held

I got drunk one night
and told you your eyes
look like dirt.
What I wasn't sober enough
to say was that your eyes
actually remind me of the Earth.

I got drunk one night
and told you that your hair
smells like rain water.
What I wasn't sober enough
to say was that you smell
like an early April morning
with wet pavement and
dew covered grass.

I decided not to drink one night
and didn't tell you how much
I like you.
What I was sober enough
to say was how much
I love you.

I want to hold your stupid hand ✔
I want to lay in bed and listen to you talk about space ✔
I want to watch you make all the beautiful things you do ✔
I want to lay in the grass and watch the stars with you ✔
I want to kiss you somewhere with a view ✔
I want to play with your hair whenever I can because it's perfect ✔
I want to wake up next to you ✔
I want to discover new music with you ✔
I want us to do every dumb, cheesy, cliche thing I can think of ✔
I want to fall in love with you one day ✔

the frustration of having
so many thoughts but
no words
has me turning myself
inside out
searching for the only medicine
I've ever found effective

There are holes in my old socks
From all the cigarettes
I’m either too tired
Or too sad to finish

I can't even look at the passenger seat of my car
While I'm driving because
All I see
Is how you're not in it

you were a slight warmth
dancing at the edge of the cold

There's a strange comfort in the backseat
Watching sheets of water slide
Down the windshield,
Casting shadows on the skin
You already fear is too dark.
The music is gone, faded and
I'm glad you can hear the
Hitch of my breath as your
Hands find their way to my hair.
None of the windows are covered in fog,
Everything is in view.
Hands and words and mouths
Melting together like
Spring green mixing with rain,
And all I can feel and
All I can see is that
This is how it's supposed to be.

there are as many
thoughts in my head
and
weights on my heart
as there are
shades of green
on the trees in spring

You turned me into an instrument
Why was I surprised
By what you did next?

            -played

I'm ready
I'm ready to fall in love with the smell of the grass
And the sun peaking through the leaves.
I'm ready to feel the same growth as the daisies in spring.
I'm ready to feel the weight of the Earth moving beneath me,
Slowing time.
I'm ready to feel the burn of the sun and smile
Because I know
I've taken so much worse.
I'm ready to feel the cool cement on my back.
I'm ready to fall in love with those old songs
And the passing of time.
I'm ready to appreciate moving on the same way that
Birds appreciate the wind that carries them forward.
So I suppose it's fitting
Being born amongst change, mid-May.
I'm designed to evolve.

you were a red light
and I was going far too fast

what do we do with



the vast sea of silence



between the small spaces of sound

I will write a thousand words for you
And none of them will quite capture
The way your smile
Climbs up the side of your cheek like
The sun climbs the side of a mountain
Cracking me open like
The sky cracks the dawn

I am a person tragically unfit for solitude
Yet I can’t get the feeling out of my chest that
That is precisely what I am designed for

shadows dancing on my wrist
and wind licking at my fingertips
light moving back and forth
past the greyish-blue eyes I always hated
but never knew why
everything is new
and nothing is the same
but then again
I've never craved consistency

the clouds effortlessly part for the sun
so she can get a short glimpse
of the girl the moon keeps talking about

on that last drive home
down that same crowded road I'd driven a million times
I prayed for red lights
and cursed the new hotel
that dared to alter the skyline
I'd been staring at for ten years
and wondered what else would be different
when I came back
I wondered if I would come back

it's cold in my room, a quarter till 2am
your fingers draw circles
on my bare back
tracing, retracing
leaving the truest shade of blue
on every inch of the skin
I so hesitantly show.  
it hits 2am but you would never know
you're too busy
taking my breath away
making me forget there was
ever air in my lungs
to begin with

the sky began pushing out the june air like it was
a visitor who had long outworn his welcome
and pushed us along with it.

and so with grace she parted with us
and welcomed july like a lost lover.

it's like she knew that whatever we would grow
would never fit comfortably in the heat of mid summer
and was better suited for the dew drowned mornings of september.
like she had a premonition that the shape of us
would quickly outgrow the box we spent two months apart building.

and so with a slight breath
she introduced us to a late summer wind
carrying both a silence and a secret that neither of us
yet had the ears to hear.

I am learning to adore
And not despise
That which came before me
I am starting to understand
That this is not my home
I am just a visitor
And visitors do not disrespect
Their host

I love flowers but
I feel it cruel to rip them
From their roots, their home,
Simply so I can look at them longer.

Kind of like how I feel it cruel
To take away pieces of someone
Just so you don't miss out
On their beauty,
Simply so you can feel it longer.