My father told me
Not to talk to strangers,
So I haven't looked in the mirror
Since.

I want to describe the colour of your eyes
To someone who has only ever known
Black and white.

I like to call
The blood dripping from my mouth
Poetry,
But everyone can see
The scarlet drops
For what they truly are;
A death wish
And a drunken kiss.

You
Are the sum
Of your experiences,
And it's how you respond
To those experiences
That define you.
But boy,
You better be relentless with me
Because our desires do not define,
They confine.

I want to hold you,
Much like the way spring holds a flower,
And kiss your petals
In the same fashion that the rain
Kisses the ocean
While you bloom in my arms.

Poetry loses it's gravity
When you realize that there's nothing
You could possibly write
To make someone
Love you back.

Everyone says
That the world could not survive without art;
Then why is it
That the artist is struggling to survive in this world?

I am nothing but a carcass,
Gorgeously corroding,
A mind that slowly decays over time
And flesh that mimicks my insides.
And within a couple short centuries
I will be nothing but dust,
memories,
And a cracked headstone.

I want to break into your liquor cabinet
And write my name on the bottoms of all the bottles
So you can be reminded
Of why you're drinking in the first place.

Some people only live vicariously through danger;
Others, like us, are curious enough to participate.

When you are not looking
Someone will quietly step beside you
And the air will change
And your blood will course redder
And time
Will slowly
Stop.

When the world asks for a quiet place to sleep
I will tell it to travel to the time when I realized
You weren't coming back
And have it watch as I spit out all these broken silences
And call it poetry.

When you broke
The paramedics couldn't tell the difference
Between my hands
And the shattered glass I was clutching,
Because the rainbow shards
That made up my heart blended with yours
And they laughed at us for being foolish enough
To think that letting the light shine through
Our impure glass hearts
Was a good idea.

Due to the graphic nature of the universe, creative expression is advised.

People 'round here only leave town
To be buried somewhere quieter.
I hope you understand why I run from them.

One day my life became a book
Written in a language I couldn't understand
And I'm still learning how to decipher
The pages I keep finding sprewn about in the dark.

If I truly am made from hollowed out bottles
You will be able to see through me
In just the right light.

I like the way the light reflects from your shattered heart,
Kaleidoscoping without repeating ablaze
At the edge of luminescence.

The only memories I seem to have
Are of how perfect you are,
And how perfect your hands felt on my bare skin,
And how perfect the heart you drew on my chest was,
And how perfect I felt when you told me
That I was perfect
Despite the fact that we both knew
It was a lie.

I curse at the rain
And all the miles in between us
And the way the silence seems to swell
Without your heartbeat to fill it.
I used to never get angry
But since you've left
I've been unfurling rage from my mouth
Like an endless magic scarf.
What am I supposed to do
With all this love in my chest?
Where am I supposed to put
All these poems that I wrote you?
I know the rubble at my feet says otherwise,
But I swear I have the capacity to be gentle,
Let me prove it.
I have been so many different people in my life
But I keep trying in vain
To find the one that you loved momentarily.
I want to be the storm raging in your ribcage,
I want to be the secret you can't keep to yourself,
I want to be the only shape that you pray to,
And I want you to tell me to breathe
So maybe I can find the breath that you've knocked from my lungs
So many poems ago.
Wrap your hands around my throat
And claim sanctuary like you mean it
So that this hell can become home to me once again.

Did you know
That if your lover cracks your ribs
Just right,
You can almost hear God softly saying
That he's sorry?
The bruises on my torso
And the "Get Well Soon" cards
That are arranged on my mantel
Are proof.

One day
There is going to be someone
Who will crack your heart in half,
And I'm sorry if I'm the first
To warn you about it.

I just want to play with your hair
And kiss your forehead
And share in this silence that no one else can have
Because it's ours.

Rumor has it
That if you turn the moon upside down
And shake the change from its pockets
You'll almost have enough
To buy back the time that you lost.

I've been scrawling secrets on the undersides of stranger's welcome mats
And I've been running out of ways to tell you that I need you to come home.

I woke up with ****** knuckles again
And I think it's my body's way of saying
What my pride won't let me.

No matter what I write
Or how I write it,
Nothing will sound as beautiful to me
As the sounds you make
When I touch you.

You have skin made out of steel
But that's a good thing, I guess,
Considering how the pressure of your hand feels on my thigh
And how it holds the weight of the entire sea.

She leaves a lump of emotion in your throat,
A string of topaz around your neck,
And a sense of wonder in her wake.
She is a collection of faults,
Sweet imperfections,
A series of dents in a smooth surface.
She smokes her cigarettes as an apology
For breathing
And loves the feeling of holding hands,
But with a wine bottle.
Her blood has been replaced with whiskey
And bad decisions
And she'll touch you like poetry,
Sweetly, making you feel like
You're not alone.
She is drenched in honey and holy water
And you want to lick it off her,
Craving the taste with every fiber of your being.
She is violently beautiful,
That honey drenched dreamer.

The same day I was born,
God started writing you a long winded apology
For all the things I would do to you
That I would not have the guts to apologize for.

I feel nothing but a heartbeat in my head
When your hands are doors closing around my throat,
Trying to force your name from these lips.
Instead I bite my tongue and pretend to enjoy
The taste of the blood filling my mouth.
I much prefer the taste of it
To the lie you so desperately want me to feed you.
I'll keep my liquor lips from you,
I won't allow you to get drunk off of my kisses.
I won't allow the blood flowing through my teeth
To pass from my mouth to yours.
True love is biting your tongue
And pretending you don't mind the taste of blood.

If you make me beg for it
I will make sure
You will be begging me to stop.

Dissect me;
Rip me apart and examine my pieces.
Leave open the holes you cut,
Look at the gaps and claim you can only love me as a whole.
And if you ever miss me,
Look closely at the cracks in your lips,
The bottoms of your shoes,
Between your forefinger and thumb;
You'll find me right where you left me.

Generally speaking,
You're like the moon
Because you both just come and go
As you please,
Despite me begging you to stay.

You can get tattoos removed
And that in itself is proof
That things that you thought would last forever
May not be so.

Aren't you tired of painting yourself black and blue
Every time words fall short of the fire burning behind your eyes?

Isn't it ironic that
The feeling of abandonment
Doesn't know
How to leave you?

Whiskey keeps my heart alive,
But disintegrates my mind.
Its a fair trade, I guess.

Pressing my hands into the asphalt is the closest that I'll ever come
To holding your hand again,
And I'm still sorry for using your heart as an example
Of how some things
Can shatter noiselessly.

I wonder if she knows about the collection of hearts you keep inside your closet
And I wonder if she can tell mine apart from the rest.

I'll stop pretending
Like I know how to love something
Without making it bleed
If you stop pretending
That you don't practice leaving.

I made a god out of the way your hand fit to the small of my back.
My prayers were watching the sunlight dance on your bare skin as you slept.
My hymns were your short, heavy breaths and the way you sighed my name.
I tried in vain to be your church but your chest burned at the sound of every hallelujah.
I was a fool to think you would answer desperate prayers made on knees bent in dirt.

When I was younger, I longed to be beautiful. To have shiny hair, soft skin, collarbones poking through my flesh.
Now that I'm older, I want to burn hearts with intelligence and warm souls with compassion. I want to boil blood with wit and spark imaginations with creativity. I want to soak up the rays of sunny praise for my artwork and poetry rather than my eyes and lips.
I am not programmed with a self destruct button, but calling me beautiful for the wrong reasons is the second best thing.

Rumor has it that the light between your teeth still asks for me by name
But I am trying to let go of the things that have long since left me.

I never thought of you as an addiction
But then again,
I never thought cigarettes would be a problem for me either.