Love and lust;
So easily confused,
Yet, so rarely combined.

I want to slip out of my skin and into something more comfortable.
I’ve never been so aware of every part of my being.
I’m so afraid to just be the person I’ve always been.
You make everything in my life so many shades brighter.
You make ever sound so much louder
And you make every kiss so much sweeter.

I’m suddenly so aware of every movement I make and how you will feel.
When I’m lying next to you in the moonlight I hold you as tight as I can
My fingers lingering in all the curves I find along the way.
I want you always and the feeling has not died down after months of lying next to you.
I still lose my breath when I watch you dress in the morning
I still smile as your heavy breathing turns into light snores.

I still cherish each night I get to spend next to you,
I keep thinking one day I’m going to wake up and realize perfection such as yours is only my imagination.
I don’t ever want to fall asleep and miss a moment of your sleepy laughter
And miss out on the fact that you hold me tighter as the night goes on.
And this is the life I want to share with you.
I want to bathe in your beauty and remember every contour of your body as I love it relentlessly.
I want to fill you with soft sweet kisses and stand beside you as we face the
world.
I want to love you freely and without mistakes
I want to be the best you’ll ever have.

I’ve never been so enthralled by another human being
I memorize the way you sound in laughter and happiness.
And I endure all of your pain and sadness as though your suffering has become my own.
Your smile has become the source of my smile.
And your laughter sparks the same response in me.

I remember every detail of your face as though it’s the first and last thing I have ever seen.
Every part of you is beautiful
And every part of you is sacred.
And when I touch you and your body fills with sweat
My own breathing becomes jagged
Because everything you feel is everything I want to feel.

It remains a mystery to me why you laugh at all my jokes
And why you always lean in for a kiss before we part
Your hands and mouth caress my body in ways I’ve never felt before.
I am profoundly aware that you are the classic example of the perfect woman
From the dimple on your cheek to your long locks, I feel for you in ways that scare me.
I need to cherish every second we have together.
I need to feel every beat my heart takes next to you
And I need to commit each breath to memory.
You make me the luckiest woman in the world.

Love and Lust,
So far from confusion,
We’ve all but combined.

In my life story you'd be the heroine.
You'd have chapters devoted to your hip bones,
And verses about your scent.
I'd write run-on sentences about the musical notes of your laughter
And paragraph after paragraph about the way you looked first thing in the morning.
I'd invent new poetic devices to describe the feel of your skin against mine.

In your life story I'm a sentence, the bare minimum.

Bro  ken  Po     ems
a re of  ten  dif   fi cult
to  co   mpr e h en  d


B    ut ..... .... .. .
So ar e
b  ro  k  enh  e  ar  ts
bro ke np r o  mi se s
            a n d
b r ok   end   re am s

Your lips tasted like smoke
From the buildings you watched burn
While standing dead center

Our bodies are practiced in the art of
Collapsing

If these walls could talk
They’d be livid from your laughter
And semi-suicidal for paint thinner
To cause just enough wither so the broken glass can finally fall out

I will gladly buckle at the backbone
Bulging out my belly to
Reveal all that beauty inside

If it means you’ll forgive me
You can take it

Because I am sorry seven ways to Sunday
Just seven days till Sunday
Seven chances not to **** up before
I have to beg for your forgiveness again

This is the church of falling apart

The church constructed of the things
Tempers make
I am one baseball bat bash away from being broken and saved

You might’ve told me you were trouble
I should’ve noticed
After I saw you smash a
Cinderblock through a car window
Just to take a pack of smokes from the dash

And you could have called my bluff
After I ****** your best friend behind your back
For the fifteenth time

Lemme catch your deer in headlights again
Because our last conversation wasn’t ****** enough
Lemme bend willingly into your bed
And fall into whatever mess we forgot to clean up the night before

Stop quaking my fault lines with your fingertips
I know laughter when I hear it
I can see your sneers in the dark

And I can light a match
Light a cigarette
Burn a house down

This is the church of falling apart

No one ever asked forgiveness while standing

The church where the shape of prayer is a ball
Hands clasped behind neck
Head between knees
And morse code  shivers

Signaling

I don’t really know why you hate me so much
But Please
Forgive me