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"

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.

Who would have known that
My smile would find its shine
By the gaze of two crystal eyes
At the hands of one nervously scribbled line

have you heard the way that girl speaks
her voice cracks skies in half and splits seas in two

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.

I don’t know if I’ll ever tell anyone
About how we fell asleep
Together for the first time in
Two months how
Even after I turned over on my side and
You turned onto your stomach
Because it’s just more comfortable
That way, we kept our feet
Tangled my toes beneath yours

And we may have stayed like that all night
But I’ll never know
I slept far too soundly

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 write love letters
in a language I don't understand
delicately etched into the leaves
outside your bedroom window
traced into the sheets of a bed
I haven't been in for months
The sentences, the stanzas sound stranger written
than they do when you speak them
mixed and matched
my pen tripping like my tongue over
words and sounds I've never been able to speak

I put so much **** into my bath that night,
Hoping it would sink into my pores, anything to get you off my skin and out of my veins.
I sat in that bath until it was as cold as your pool on that one spring night.
The only difference is that this time you weren’t there holding me.
But oh, you were there.
In my watery eyes and erratic pulse,
In my slightly wet hair and torn up fingernails.
I wasn’t sobbing hysterically.
Just the occasional tear trailing down my face past my vacant expression.
Watching them hit the water, I remembered when it used to be blood
That would spread in reddish brown clouds all around me.
I don’t hurt myself anymore.
I just let you do it for me.

How devastating the quiet was
Without your paws pawing
Beneath my door

So excited to hear me snoring
So thrilled to belong to me
And I to you, friend.

So very quiet.

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

your eyes flicker open
only slightly and
the dawn holds its breath
waiting for you to rise

I try to write poems in my head
with your lips against mine but
you take the words from my mouth and
make me forget how
to speak in a language that
those who haven't been in love
can understand

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?

it rains every time I'm in your city
you say that it's a bad omen but
I think it's just because
the universe is trying her hardest
to grow flowers out of stones

I'm sitting here
falling for you and
you're there
falling into his bed
his arms

you say you can't move your hips
the way that boys want you to
but no one brings me to my knees
the way that you do
when your lips erase and retrace
beautiful words on my skin
that I never thought were
meant for people like me

the way your skin
matches the earth
makes me fall in love
with both
just a little more

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

It’s 2:12am
My red eyes scan every detail of my ceiling,
Trying to find any sense of consistency in the bland drywall.
Rain gently taps against my open window.
The smell of cedar fills the empty space.
A space she hasn’t occupied in nearly six months.
The lights are too bright,
Magnified by my misty eyes.
Wisps of smoke curl around my chapped lips,
Filling in the bleeding cracks.
Our album plays on a loop
Until the storm takes out the power.
I read the scribbled words that she so obviously left for me.
A best friend, an ex lover, an enemy, she calls me.
And I don’t know which of these ideas I hate the most.

you've got my heart
turned inside out
just like your sweater
on the floor in the corner
of my bedroom

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

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.

the first sun of December
accompanied by a chilled wind
and frosted leaves, decorated rooftops
came with a soft "hello"
and a gentle "good morning"

what good is it
to be a writer
who never writes

-I'll never call myself a writer again

We made a game out of it
clapping mosquitos between our palms
while we sat on a blanket
in the middle of, honestly,
their house, covered in grass and dew.
And we quoted, I'm sure a very smart scientist
who said that they could be eradicated—
all of them
those tiny things with
black and white striped legs
and long thirsty throats—
without any significant damage done.
If that is the standard
for whether a thing should exist
or whether it shouldn't,
I pray no big and great thing
notices us, melting entire continents and
setting entire countries on fire.