The boys only love me when my clothes fall off,
I've long forgotten how to stay stop
Fingerprint bruises cover my hips
And the taste of morning afters fill my mouth
I reach for him, but he's already dressed and out the door
Leaving the bed just as cold and empty as before
Trembling thighs and aching bones
Pillows full of breathless moans
This is nothing like the movies,
There's no love here. Not anymore.

I think I loved you most the winter your heating was broken
And we’d stay inside all morning
Pretending to complain that we couldn’t get out of bed
Our clothes becoming little islands on the floor,
Ones that we could not quite find the courage to visit

Your hand stayed glued to my hip,
Your breath warming my shoulder
Like a long drag of whiskey
That kind that had a home so far away,
In a glass bottle on top of your refrigerator.
The one that would not be opened
Until that fateful day in February,
When everything went wrong

And on that unbearable night
When you joked that you’d freeze to death if I left you
There was a long silence
Like it might be true.

Now it’s warm enough
That I show too much skin when sitting in bars
And you avoid me like the plague,
Whispering in any girl’s ear that’s near to you
Every time you see me watching out of the corner of your eye

We should have stayed inside when the ice began to melt
Because I think
When those doors opened and we finally ventured outside
The world had changed,
And so had you and I.

There's a silence stretching across my finger tips
Reaches between us,
Sewing up my lips
So many pointless things I could say
All of these easy ways to pass the day away

I got one foot out,
And the other halfway in
Not sure if I should turn back now
Or is it just too late
I don't know if I'd rather make that same mistake
I'm lost inside this maze
Searching for a better place
I think maybe I'd like to stay
If you say that's okay

Could we just sit here,
would you mind the view
If we just sang songs
Cause we got nothing else to do
Could we strum some notes
Make up some tunes
Take back these mistakes
Just forgetting all we knew.

Cold fronts are rolling in
I'll wrap you around my skin.
You light up the room
With your full moon eyes
And your body turns into
A sleepy, night sky.
I imagine us
On the cusp of brilliance
Over looking a sea
Surrounded by forestry
And sunsets.
You told me you loved me
Maybe you meant it
I'll still believe it
I'll still remember it
That was the day
We took a swim in
Heaven and all
Its little horizons.

You have demons
And so do I
But you became yours
And I fought off mine.
I loved you,
because you turned my scars into constellations.
My constellations on your body
You traced them
Connected them
And I told you
"If you need a place
to keep your darkness
or a place to hide from it
my heart's an empty room
for you to fill"
The darkness in you is
engulfing my whole soul
like an old friend.

You were the kind of person that
listened to the blues as you sipped
hard liquor out of wine glasses
and chased it down
with all your pent-up nostalgia.
Tonight, your demons told you something intriguing and horrifying.
They said,
"You don't get rid of us.
We get rid of you."
Now you're happy and disturbed.
Elated by your own rage
and consumed in your darkness.
I thought
Maybe
I could control your darkness.
Turn your sadness into hatred and your hatred into sick smiles.
But hell is in you
and
It wants out to play.

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

Days where I'm okay
Drift apart like the glaciers,
Melting can't be fixed.

Someone once said,
"Apologies do not make good bandages"
But it's hard to unlearn seventeen years worth of "I'm sorry"
I'm the type of person to apologize for everything
Even when nothing is my fault.
Maybe it's because I was raised to tread lightly over eggshells and broken glass
Maybe it's because the little pink plus sign signaling my arrival was like a banshee's wail to a young woman
Maybe it's because seventeen years have taught me
Apologies soften the punches but often leave deeper bruises.
Maybe I just want someone to hurt like me.