As a little girl, my mother and father would drive around while smoking in the car, with the window rolled down, as I would roll up the ends of my sleeves clenching them towards my nose to be rid of the smell I have never liked.

I believed that when my parents would smoke around me, I was a smoker too. I had had the scent of a smoker too. But when I was with you, it was different.

That night, not caring how much I hated those sticks of paper as a child, I would watch you put it in your mouth and on your lips, inhaling it until you couldn't any further.  I silently sat in the backseat admiring how you would slowly inhale and exhale the toxic fumes it gave off.

That night, I went home.
I walked in through my back door.
I slid my shoes off and tiptoed toward my bedroom.
I passed my parents' room, witnessing them sound asleep next to each other, peacefully.
I took off my old grey sweatshirt and inhaled slowly, the smell of your secondhand smoke, and smiled.
Because it was yours.

I hated those sticks of paper full of toxic fumes.
I hated the smell of those sticks of paper full of toxic fumes.
Now, myself, I am one of those sticks of paper full of toxic fumes.
We both have touched your pink, chapped lips, got used, and are now thrown away.

I have a hard time stringing together the correct words to form art but I'm going to try my best because
you make me feel like singing from the tallest building and
somehow there is a light in my eyes and it's not jusg the reflection of your words on the screen but rather the way you make me feel
fills me up to the brim of my eyes and I don't know how to handle that
you make the voices hush and sometimes they even join in the song with me and I have to admit that  has never occurred before
it's like you help me like myself and I never even dreamed of knowing how it feels to be okay with myself
you help me fill this vacant void in my soul and I don't know how to correctly put how much id like to thank you into words
the only time I don't completely hate myself is when I'm talking to you and oh my god it feels amazing
I have never found myself looking forward to a conversation that I count down until the person is out of work but my days drag when your messages aren't lighting my screen
and I can honestly say I could get used to waking up to your messy morning hair and the way I wake up with my eyes lit

There is a place where the birds go
When the air grows heavy
And it is not South


It is here that I will find you
When the dust has settled


You say you want to sing my bones electric
You want to whistle from the rafters of rainclouds
Become the weight of the rain
The kind that only comes
After the locusts have gone
And we are all waiting for something new
To keep us inside


This century was the moment
In your late-night lunch break
When you got so close to the end of your cigarette
That you wish you’d left the filter on


We are one race with seven billion shotguns signaling GO


Still we spin
Like tornadoes in plastic bottles
Cursing hands and the landfills we all fall into
Eventually
We might stumble into sanity
And mistake it for a honeybee sting


Resurrection
Is breaking past the parasitic anchors
In your skin
Propaganda over-fishing
Sinking 5th dimension realities
Into yesterday’s tomorrow


I will dig you out of this town until my fingernails are black from trying to touch every color at once


Hold me steady like September
The birds do not need compasses
But I do


You asked to leave the lights on
That night on the forest floor
The canopy rising and falling in the rhythmic breath of night
Tracing a circuit on the inside of my spine
The curve that proves that
We do not belong in boxes
With straight edges


Learning to breathe does not become easier the second time around


Catch my breath in a butterfly net
Send it back priority


In some other city
You spend the night with my footsteps
I spend the night folding swans out of your conscience
Jimeny-cricket style


There is a place where the birds go
When the air grows heavy
And it is not South


It is here that I will find you
When restlessness tempts you to fade


See you in my sleep
See you breathlessly awake
And shaking at the pearly gates
Because excuses were the birds
That flew from your chest
when you put regret to rest

she'll walk off
and you'll walk behind,
you feel like a man
and see everything in soft focus exposure
and her walking ahead, timid and feeling triumphant.
this was your first kiss
and not your last kiss
but your most important kiss;
the foundation kiss,
the scaffold kiss,
cathedral columns holding up the whispering gallery of this kiss.

or did you walk off
and she walked behind,
did she feel like a woman,
soft, warm, and kind seeing everything is a hard focus exposure?
that was her second kiss,
not her last kiss
and not her most important kiss;
it was a mill stone kiss,
a grist lipped ground-down-again kiss,
a motel-hotel-roadside chapel of cheap kisses kiss.

I wouldn't call this poetry
I wouldn't call this poetry because there is nothing beautiful about wanting to die. There is nothing lovely about hurting yourself, nothing symbolic about deaths kiss that I wish would kiss my entire soul.
I wouldn't call this poetry because it isn't.
I think really living is a lot like knowing there's demons lurking inside your head but checking anyways.
I think it's like getting home late and pulling back the shower curtain checking murders
even though all you have to so is pull back your own eyelids and see the very thing that's killing you
I did not sleep last night because I was contemplating ways to die while also telling myself not to do it
I think I'm in a paradox.
I wouldn't call this poetry because there is nothing moving about this.I long for safety like a deaf person longs to hear.
But how can you long for something you've never felt?
I've been applying bandaids to my heart except it's words and the adhesive they provided just doesn't stick in my mind anymore
Everyone wants to knock down my walls but I'm missing the safety the cemented in bricks provide and I promise you
Oh god I promise you
You don't want to come through my walls

this day was not like any other.
hot air from her lungs
swirled steam in the death
of November.

I felt trust for the first time.
I trusted her to leave.

I crack a corny joke out of sheer anxiety,
I say: "Well, it is the fall."

She doesn't smile, or speak, of course.

She does the talking with her eyes,
and all I hear is goodbye.

Somebody once told a mendacity
that all humans are linked by an invisible thread
and I'd like to think you and I are meant to be
but I'm a maladroit when it comes to these things.
I just wish I could taste your lips,
the lips that I've dreamt of
upon nights of no end.
This unrequited sensation is unlimited.
And when you look at me and smile
I melt into water,
slipping further into cracks
so you can't see the green and blue monsters that harbor in my soul like the sea,
they crash and bang for
you.
Like the way you play your drums,
beating lust into my brain.
I feel no doubt,
I don't even want to get closer to you.
You will rip me apart time and time again,
just like every other god among men.

The air-con overhead
drowns out, not enough,
the couple on a date
next to me. His jeans have gathered fluff,
dried in a dryer, crinkled and in-a-rush.
Her shoes are clean though under the table
he doesn’t, and will not, notice,
the closest he’ll come to seeing them is
maybe on a bedroom floor in a month
or maybe two, maybe more if this coffee
date goes askew,
but for time being they gaze, stare
at one another whilst talking:
his plan is to set up an online outreach program,
take the money and run,
hers, to stay in education, an MA
in Creation Research, read and wait,
sit for Judgement Day.