I am the typewriter and you were
backspacing backspacing backspa
all my words as if I had never said them.
You knew I meant
every letter I slammed down
furiously into the keyboard
writing about you
about your lack of making time
closing me off last minute
ignoring any plans we made at all.
I don't get why you had to leave my
thoughts as if they were not validated.
If someone cared for you as much as I do,
I sure hope you don't backspace on them
before they can get a word out.

this is where i was supposed to tell you
(what I was going to say)

i guess you know now that I didn't
because if I had told you these last few lines would have rhymed
would have been details into the synonyms my heart has ascribed to your name

this is where i was supposed to give in and admit
what all my little footnotes of blushes really mean
that i really wouldn't mind it if you kissed me


this is where i was supposed to tell the truth
but all i can write are lies

because this is where i'm terrified
terrified that somehow you'll read this and know
even though i didn't say anything at all

this is where i beg myself to let myself say just one little thing
just one little anecdote, just one little truth, please?

this is where i was supposed to open my own file
and read what my subconscious wrote

this is where I stay in stasis
this is where i erase this

backspace.

there were a few (fairly) successful techniques i used

to erase you.

one day

she may leave,

so

let me share a few.



unfortunately,

the whole ordeal wasn't as easy as sending you to my recycle bin

or backspacing your name out of my chest.

i couldn't paint over the dark alleys in my heart that you had

graffitied with your naked body,

nor could i sell any of the useless crap you left inside me on ebay.

what idiot wants to buy someone else's used compliments or broken promises??

whatever,

online shopping is overrated anyways.



so,

back to heart break...

let's begin with the

obvious.

i deleted you on

facebook,

how could we be "friends"

when seeing your name

was like force-feeding myself

a fresh slice of pain?

i erased your number.

i refuse to be the pathetic drunk

who sexts at three am,

reminiscing on all the good times

i thought we had.

"babeee, rememb er thast one

timse, when we madske love

underf the stasrs..."

so not my style,

must always remain classy,

even when the tornado

seems to heading straight for

your heart,

and the flying **** never seems to stop.

yes, the world may be falling apart,

but you always have the power to

smile.

remember that after the storm,

everything will be rebuilt

stronger.



i burned all of the 1,000 letters you never wrote

and all of the "I love yous" i never read (but in my head)

until

the ash of yesterday

became flames that could

guide me into tomorrow

unscathed.

in less poetic terms,

i stopped thinking about every *******

sweet thing you had ever said to me

and started focusing on other people's

words, namely my own.

6 months later, I am able to

hear the sound of your voice

without cringing.

180 days of un-remembering you,

and i finally am free to be me,

the girl/woman who is sitting here

realizing that you are going to learn

from me learning from you.

it's a crazy, beautiful, weird, ****** up process,

right?

this circle of life...





and finally,

i forced myself to

see you.

similar to the

way in which a diabetic child

gazes longingly through the

window of the neighborhood bakery,

all transparency and overly indulgent imagination,

i looked through you enough times

to convince myself you were the perfect

creation,

sweet but not sickeningly so,

**** but not too sour,

a hint of spiciness to aliven the equation and

a little bitterness to sharpen the sensation.

only problem is,

i forgot i was the chef.

seeing you now through clean eyes,

testing your flavor with a mouth sobered by truth,

your taste is still sweet

but a little fake,

Splenda instead of brown sugar.

I detect the artificiality,

is that why she is leaving you?



no matter the cause,

no matter the outcome of this

most painful breakup,

know that one day, you will love again.

you will meet that one person who will

wake you up from the dream

you didn't realize you were living,

that one who will bring breath

to parts of your body you didn't

know existed.

on the blackest of nights, you will walk around

a corner on some random street

in the middle of no where,

and there she will

be,

standing under a street lamp,

smiling up at the midnight sun.

her body will beckon you,

invite you to dance,

and

you must accept the call.

even if you are  scared,

even if your heart is still broken,

even if you think you still belong to the one who

left you,

you must answer to love,

and in return life

will answer to you.

once you allow yourself to fall again,

the hurt will mend,

and your wings will spread,

wider and more ready than ever.



always remember,

you are the only one

holding yourself prisoner.

Too often, when I begin my poems- I turn on the caps lock key. I want the letters to be big and tower above my body so maybe I’ll be able to believe they actually mean something. What I am still learning, is you cannot always start out screaming. You can not always begin with ripping your hair out and spitting out your own tongue, you cannot always start with passion. Sometimes you need to work up to it as if you are riding the gondola just to see the sunset meet the waves. For so long, I believed poetry wasn’t real unless it was uninterrupted. It didn’t truly matter unless it all come out at once, unless you are imagining and rewriting the next line before you even finish the first. Is it even art if you stop halfway to think about what word sounds best?

Well, who’s to say its not?

Art exists for two reasons, to make your audience feel something, and to calm down the rapids within your own veins. Sometimes we choke or we spit or we throw it all up but no matter how it flies out of our paper matte lips, it still fills our lungs the same. You are like the ash I flick off of the burning skyline my cigarette is. I always compared you to an ocean, because I could drown in your eyes, but you are not quite so vast. You are not as important as I make you out to be. (Or at least that’s what I’d like to believe.)

Maybe you are everything, maybe you are the shooting star that rolls by my window just slow enough for me to spot it in the sky. Maybe you are that crack in the sidewalk where the weeds and dandilions took out their latest mortgage. Maybe you are all the things I told myself I would detatch from your name.

I cannot keep these promises to myself no matter how hard I try, two years later and you’re still my biggest influence. There has been a block in my bloodstream since I lifted my fingers from the keyboard, since I let the lightning stop starting fires.
There has been a hold up but if we are putting it all out in the open, I still try to swallow my feelings for you because you liked me best when the fibers of my sweater were caught in my zipper. You liked me best when I had too much cotton in my mouth for me to even breathe.

I’ve been spitting and coughing up poetry since I could speak, I have been substituing and backspacing until I found perfection in my own words, especially considering I couldn’t find anything else about myself even remotely close to perfect.
You are the only thing in this world that’s truly left me speechless.

But the words I never got the chance to say, are growing stale on my tongue.
I call this; rocket ship poetry.
It is like the day after the night of drinking. Of stomach bile and bread eating and promising to a god that only exists once in a while that you will never, ever, drink again.
It is the way you remember an angry middle aged man banging on the door before he burst in, fuming mad that you forgot to turn the lights off.
It is real and it happens so quick sometimes you don’t even see it coming. It is the pink ***** on your window sill from that party where you didn’t even feel drunk.
The time where silver smiles painted your skin to match the depth of your veins. All the flowers you picked out of the ground from their roots.
There is no stopping it when it’s arrived, there is no way to unravel it.
It is a rocket ship because you count down the seconds until take off and before you know it the stars are in your ears and you hit the caps lock key, and it isn’t because you want the letters to mean something, it’s because they mean so much already that you need to raise your voice.
You need to stop using periods and start using commas because after awhile you get tired of being interrupted. You get tired of taking two trips and saying what you want to scream. You just get tired. There is broken glass rattling around inside of you, and sometimes it’ll slash you open from the inside but you are going to be okay.
Sometimes you will get too close to the flame,
but it’s better to get burnt,
then to burn out.

I love it when you type letters
with your fingertips
on my skin
backspacing my faults
and joining my freckles
letter by letter
until you’ve created a new word.
Sometimes,
you discover a new universe in the obscure abyss
and mark that with an asterisk.
In the morning,
you would press kisses
between the parenthesis of my smile
and bite ellipsis
on the crook of my neck
so that I would wake with your watermark.
I still remember that day
when you assured me
you are just a space bar away and
I am a story you will never finish writing.

"I promise,darling
that you will be filled with caesuras but no period.”

The time we spend on
Blank pages and paper
Is like throwing money
Into empty spaces.
Minds racing and clocks ticking
Pen on paper
Fingers on home row keys.
Scrolling and spacebars
Ink and led.
FOCUSED....
The next thought
Is the next word
Pronouns, adjectives, verbs
Periods, commas, question marks.
Proofreading and backspacing
Fiction or fact
Intensity and excitement
Intelligence kicking in.
All day long phrase catching
All night long remembering
I can do this,  I can do this
I will finish what I started.
Brainstorming vs distractions
Silence vs noises
FOCUSED.....
Speaking without talking
The passion of your work
A thousand pages
A million words
Pen down
Typing ends.
Time to rest
The body and mind,
It's done....but
More on the way.
Results, two thumbs up
We think
We work
We spend time
We fill up pages
We....WE ARE WRITERS

held up legitimate excuses
fully executing unfocused choices
returning, backspacing this type
same sentences, of looking back
from rough drafts, rewriting
keeping words behind images
spoken actions restricted glances

still looking to find my essence
as repeated waves came tides
contrived to dissolve so to solve
all secured within tiers of a castle,
granulations formed from memory

write so to form, a type of sand
tangible untangled tactility
measured through these hands
we can only grasp these times

texts I've written but never sent:

let me start off by saying over a million times I've gone to text you those three sacred words but I've long realized they mean nothing to you coming from me.

I have so many times typed out a long and thorough text including everything good and bad about my day to you because you're the person I share everything with- expect, I'm not allowed to do that anymore so I spend 5 minutes backspacing my story.

referring to my previous dilemma, I've often wanted to ask you every detail about your day. every single time I've had the guts to type out a simple how are you, I've also had the guts to refrain from texting you.

there's so many questions I've spent a life time wanting to ask you, specifically. questions about the universe, love, life, death. questions that secretly beg you to come back. why did you leave? silly questions. stupid questions. but I've never been stupid enough to send them.

**** her. *******. loud, screaming, angry, texts. texts that go into great detail how you've hurt and betrayed me. explanations on how I know you've never loved me. angry and mean, out of the pain my heart was going through, words that I could never stomach to say to you.

I don't want to live without you. but I could never allow myself to guilt you into my life.

come back come back COME BACK. I think I've screamed come back into my phone so many times that, to this day, my phone even flinches when I say those words. those texts were always so pointless to send I didn't want to put myself through that pain.

along with the phrase come back, I've screamed/typed/cried the word why in my messages so many times I think it automatically capitalizes itself to show the emotional damage. I just always knew I'd never get a real answer.  

for some reason I have tried to say I'm sorry to you more times than I'm proud of. I'm not sure what I have to apologize for but I think I wanted to try to see if it would make anything better. I don't think I ever found a good enough reason to say it though.

I need you. the three words that probably helped ruin whatever we had in
the first place. I've been so low in the past year so many times that all I needed was you in some way, shape, or form. the many panic attacks, lows, and break downs I've typed this phrase out during, I never once sent it because I knew you wouldn't be there, anyways.

I think I'll always miss your voice. but like the words I need you, your voice is something I many of times wanted to beg for because of the affect it has on me. I was always too afraid to ask this of you, for the fear that I would start sobbing at the sound.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I was so ******* scared of never hearing it back.

I keep a little notepad in my car to ensure writers safety
Because words spontaneously throw themselves around in my mind
Without a conscious thought to
But I still lose a few lines every now and then
And I can't help but wonder
Where do the lost words go?
The beautiful lines we'd love to recollect
Our own thoughts
Ones that will never be told to anyone
Or read anywhere
I wonder if they come back without us knowing
I wonder if they make up the lines that don't exactly fit anywhere else
The ones that we want to backspace
And erase
Backspace
And erase
Until they're gone again
I wonder if some things
Are not supposed to exist
Until they do
If some things just do not fit

So I write in pen
And I undo all the backspacing, too
Because I also wonder
If maybe everything has a place
And we just have to make them fit

Why is it the deepest, most real feelings are the hardest to write?

Why do I keep backspacing over the truth?

Even though we view film through digital waves
And seldom we listen to sounds from our phones
Not because of origins lost, nor are they a
preference
but convenience is certain.

     The artwork on a hardback, the crave and feel and smell and print of words on an actual page. All combine a vehicle to drive a paper filled book.

     That circular rotation after the needle drops and scratches the vinyl. How the air wisks on a linear circumferential spin, and the volume on zero still has an audio track with an ear on top.

      Feeling the wooden pencil in the grip of our hands as each word is thought and erased and the faint smear of the leads dismissal or scribbled out, leaving proof of another thought made better or changed and not eradicated from existence as it would backspacing an android tablet device.

These are what make us and glue us and keep us similar and drawn to each other. Not the former first two. But the latter 3 that make us and define us, you and I. Analog people.

I keep
Writing and erasing.
Typing and backspacing
All of the things you will never get to hear me say.

If my words were like a gun
There would be smoke coming off my tongue
I don't think about life during a sunrise,
During a sunset or a star showered night.
I think about life eating a plate of nachos,
Drinking too much coffee with my wife.
I know in a big picture, I don't make the portrait
But when they torch these walls, I'll help restore them.
I can keep calm with a poker face like you,
But truth is, I'd rather be a joker getting wild with the twos.
I'm one of the few honest liars left
And we don't rattle. We don't rattle.

It's an odd feeling knowing the words,
That keep me up at night,
Won't matter once they're out, still unheard
Only said as the emotion lingering in my head.
I lie in bed putting my thoughts to rest
Sliding my finger to turn the page
Back to the real world behind the stage
Of a notepad and metophorical pen
Because a digital thought looks neat,
If only you saw the backspacing eraser
Scribbling out all my waste you'll never meet.
But we don't rattle. We don't rattle.

How incapacitated can I get
Before the thought of You
Isn't You but just you

Lungs coughing up truths
Instead of smoke
Backspacing lines
Instead of snorting them
Tears fill my glasses
While top shelf stays top shelf

More people more souls
I'll consume all that I see
Anything to keep You from Me

how is it that you are
so inferior in so many ways, and yet you were the
best
of
them all? you did the bare minimum
only sometimes.
it’s not hard to be on time to things, you know. MOST PEOPLE are capable of getting somewhere when they said they would arrive, and not four hours late.
just so you know.

you stroked my hair and rubbed my back and you called me sweetie, and you
paid for dinner and you let me sleep in as late as I wanted and you always smelled nice.
but you
were not
the god I thought you to be.
you were imperfect
and not in the way that is
desirable.

you were ignorant and stubborn and loud and you never
*******.
cared.
what I wanted. you really didn’t.
and now i’ve struck a chord within myself
i’ve hit too close to home and the tears are falling onto my hands as i type furiously through blurring eyes
backspacing to fix my typos
even though you did these things that partners and lovers should do it wasn’t enough because you didn’t
hear me when i called for you

you were never mine
though i would have been yours

and that scares me because i am infinite
i am the light that radiates from the universe and
you
are so small you
are a speck on the surface of the sun.

i nearly lost myself to a speck

the day is young
the night is lonely

my dear, i know it's still too early
but never to know that i want this

"had too many close calls tonight"
but 1 missed call from me

"gave me no compasses
gave me no signs"

is it true?
it's me and you?
can i come out of this blue? . . .

i don't want to be your summer girl
i want to be your forever girl

is this going to be a repeat?
tell me now so i can just back out...

before it's too late,
should have looked for the signs
before i took the bait

"i miss you", i type
but find myself backspacing

heart skipping
mind racing
breath-chasing
legs pacing

i don't want to bother you
i don't want to bore you

i know you're busy
but darling, he was "busy" too . . .

i don't want to be your summer girl
i want to be your forever girl

is this going to be a repeat?
tell me now so i can just back out . . .

before it's too late,
should have looked for the signs
before i took the bait