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.

She keeps asking to read my journal.
I keep saying no.
Because what would happen if she knew
That all I ever ******* write about is you?

the idea of not kissing you again
shouldn't make me sick but god ******
the thought of it
is like drinking bleach

I’m trying to erase the marks you left all over me,
But every time I get those three words down to just smudges,
You come in, pen in hand,
Tracing over old songs and phrases,
Smothering me so I can no longer stand.
You hand me my eraser, whispering three words,
But never again
The ones I want to hear.
“Get to work”, you say, and walk away.
I look down, eraser in hand, prepared for nothing but
The absolute worst.

three different beds
and
not one is home

Does it mean anything
that the trees still had most
of their leaves when she arrived—
we spent the day tangled
watching them fall—
I introduced her to the larks, the wren,
the ever-busy squirrels.

And does it mean anything
that the next morning nearly
all the leaves were gone,
that I and the squirrels both
took a bit longer to wake,
to leave the warmth of our beds.

I wonder what it was that they were missing.

I wonder how no one else stops to look
at the perfect, untouchable vertebrae of the clouds,
the illuminated flies and gnats and mosquitos
hovering like snow above the grass.

How no one cares to talk about october breezes
between their toes, in the curve of their ears.

How no one hears how earnestly the squirrels
run across cool pavement and up oak trees
where they'll spend the next four, maybe five months.

I hope I'm not the only one
who notices these little magics.

when winter comes and you're not here to warm me
I'll go find the patient
and gracious sun, waiting,
like always, to kiss the parts of me,
hands,
eyelids,
forehead,
that miss you most

It’s not that
You don’t deserve poetry
I daresay that you deserve more poetry
Than could fill an entire book
It’s just that I have ignored
The rest of the world
For so long and
I owe Her
An absolutely gorgeous apology

her eyes were so warm
I swear they could melt steel

Make sure to hug her a lot;
She needs it even if she won't admit it.
Don't you dare yell at her when you're angry;
She's had enough of that and doesn't need it from you.
Tell her how much you love all of her freckles;
She doesn't like them and I'll never understand why.
Support her love of art and writing;
She's going to go far with it.
Do whatever you can to make her laugh;
Even if it's embarrassing, I promise it will be worth it.
Don't force her to talk;
She'll come to you when she's ready.
Write about her constantly;
She deserves it.
Never ever take her for granted;
You'll regret it.

There's a bird that sings
at 5 o'clock on any given evening
where the sun happens to be out.
He sits in the crepe myrtle out front,
so excited and boisterously
announcing yet another sunset—thank goodness.
I wish I knew just how to thank him.
I do not think that he'd appreciate a poem
as much as I would.
Then again, I could be wrong—
I usually am.

you plucked at my heart strings
like those of a harp
and pulled music out of me
when I was so sure
I had been bent
permanently out of tune

the cuts on my hands
have now become white scars
and I think that says a lot
about how I'm doing

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

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

during the last week of september
the grass wore a thin layer of frost
that I could have sworn was jewelry

I'll lie to whoever comes next
"I don't like being called baby," I'll say but
what I'll mean is that
it will never sound as good in her mouth
as it did in yours

I've always loved mismatched people and things
But the way you wear your makeup
A shade or two lighter than you should
Makes me wonder
Why would you want to trade
The soil in your cells that I adore
For the faded tone you feel so many prefer

I spend five minutes trying to catch
a mosquito between my palms
I forget all about my book,
about whatever I'm writing,
just to avoid a bite
as if a bite would be too much to handle
as if I didn't already wake up
without you this morning

the morning after
I turned the shower on
as hot as it would go
I threw my shampoo bottle
across the tub because
it still wasn't hot enough
to burn you out of me

I’m going to need you
To speak for the both of us
Because darling
You leave me utterly
Speechless

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.

You look at me with disappointment and ask if I’m hurting myself again.
For a second your grasp on my cigarette burnt wrist turns into
Her hands pinning me down with the most loving and gentle hold imaginable
Before I’m brought back to the reality where she doesn’t love me and
She never ******* did.
Yeah, I hurt myself.
But these burns spelling out her name are nothing compared to the tears
And gashes and scrapes her absence left me with.
How is it fair that someone can destroy me in my entirety,
But as soon as I try to make my body match the rest,
I’m labeled a danger to myself?
Nothing is more dangerous than
Loving someone who doesn’t give a **** about you.

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

stars shine so bright that
we can see them from
millions of miles away
so someone please
tell me how I didn't see you coming

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.

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

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

I don't want to hear about
what my tongue does in the dark
no, tell me
how the words I write in my sleep
for no one but you to see
hit you like a hammer to the chest

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

first you began to love me
slowly, ever so slightly
and then
suddenly, violently
like a wave that has been waiting
centuries to crash

It’s a quarter past eight in the morning
The birds are singing, they’re getting better at their harmonies
As the weeks pass
I count four different songs, mingling together, pouring in
Through the window we left open all night
It’s finally warm enough to let the breeze
Carry through my small over priced apartment
There are new leaves on the trees, my favorite color green
You leave new fingerprints everywhere
Like I’m your favorite book and you’re rereading me
For the third time
The curve of your smile compliments
The arc of your lips,
The curve of your hips, eclipsing the morning light peaking through
My ***** window
You say you could stay like this forever

for the first time
my heart is
breaking and
the tears are abundant
but the words won't come

a birch tree flirts with a pine
his branches caressing
the ivy crawling up her spine
complimenting the way
the 5pm sunlight
sets her branches on fire

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

Inhale
It can't be real, can it?
It's not meant for me.
Tired eyes dart back and forth, nothing makes sense.
The room spins, not from any over used, over priced medication,
Confused, in a love-induced haze,
I remember.
Exhale.
Has it been days? Weeks?
No, mere minutes since I saw you.
Mere moments since the conversations
We cherish so much,
Before the complications.
Uncertain, questioning,
One more time,
Inhale.
It's meant for me.
Exhale.

you wonder why
I get so frustrated
when I try to draw
it's because my hands
will never know you
as well as my eyes do

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

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

have the snails,
the owls,
the quiet and sleepy groundhogs
ever once complained
about something as wonderful
as the rain

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

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 like the way my father talks about trees. Introducing me to the one across the street from the new house—"This one's a sycamore, and I'd say it's doing a **** good job at it." It'd be a cliché to say he thinks of them as his friends, which he doesn't. But it wouldn't be overdone to say that he knows them as if they were, which he does.

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

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.

My father scours the yard with
sweet, intentional steps
He picks a red leaf from the field maple out front,
a yellow one from the tulip poplar in the back,
says thank you to no one in particular.
Later I sit at my mother’s desk writing, again.
I notice two leaves,
one red and one a soft yellow
placed gently on top of her daily planner.

I spent at least two hours
chasing a blurry moon through
a ***** windshield
trying to figure out how
you could forget the face
of something, someone
you once wanted so badly
that you took it
without bothering to ask
whether I wanted to share it or not

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

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