You should know,
She has the most amazing brown eyes.
Look into them as often as she will let you.
They look like the surface of another planet.
Swim deep in them.
Climb their mountains.
Explore their caverns.
If you look too long she gets uncomfortable.
I did it anyway.
Frequently.
I’ve read that
You won’t understand brown eyes until you fall in love with someone
Who has them.
I’m living proof that this is true.

Don’t play with her head.
It’s cruel and it will damage her more than you know.
Don’t forget to learn her.
It takes time and patience, and you will never be finished.
Don’t lay a harsh hand on her,
Or I will find you.
Don’t break her heart.
Because if you do, I’m afraid I might be too far away to pick up the pieces.
But most of all:
Show her love.
Show her more than I could.
Show her all that she deserves.

Lastly,
Even though I hate when my brain reminds me
You now sleep on my side of the bed,
I feel the need to thank you
For taking my place.
If she can’t live her best life with me,
I sure as hell hope she gets to do it alongside someone else.

we're laying in my bed
different from before
and once you turn out the light,
I go from 0 to 60 real fast.
why is it so much harder not to feel
when you're lost in the dark?
"Are you happy I came?" you say
with your back turned to me.
in an instant
I'm rocking
          reaching
               grasping
                     gasping for air.
and suddenly we're laying in the bottom of a boat
and we are sinking
because my tears are filling up the vessel.
but you turn
and you hold me
in a way you never have before.
my head to your chest,
the ultimate safety.
and your tears merge with mine
like some liquid bond
not strong enough to hold us together,
but too strong to ignore.

the returning of you is done in a haze.
you, a misty ghost by my side,
returned because you don't quite fit
like you did when I tried you on in the store.
but it's hard to let go
and I don't even want store credit
because you cannot be replaced.

when I come back
your hairs are stuck to my pillow
but I don't mind,
for it is a reminder you were really here
and it all truly happened.
all 3 years of it.
somehow in those hairs
a reminder of you I have held close before
but for such different reasons.

I have known real torture.
Not inflicted by weapons or machines;
Not a drop of blood drawn.
Real torture is when you tell me
From a thousand miles away
That your nose is in my hair
That your arms and legs are intertwined with mine
And that your lips press my shoulders in the dark.

But in turn
I have also known great happiness.
And fullness.
And warmth.

Because I have truly experienced you.

Dear stepmom,
You should know that I wanted to talk to you.
I had it all planned out in my head -
How I was going to ask about the baby's birthday
And try to start one of those things called conversations.

But instead we sat
And didn't breathe a single syllable to each other.
And how am I supposed to open up, when
I part my lips and nothing comes out?
When the words in my brain are trampled
By the thoughts that tell me I'm going to do it wrong?

A heaving anxiety governs my mind's playground.
There's a fence around it with high walls.
On some days
They are stronger than others.
I have trouble talking with a lot of people,
But you're a special case.

Dear stepmom,
You should know that I not only love you,
But I also like you.
Don't worry about winning me
Because you've already won.
You won years ago,
When you stuck around,
When you talked with me about Twilight
And when you never tried to parent,
Because you knew it wasn't your place.

Dear stepmom,
I have a strange sort of social anxiety
That creeps up when we're alone.
I cannot tell you why
Or how to fix it
But I'll try to try harder
Because I think
(Just maybe)
You have some too.

But until then,
We might sit and suffer
In a thick, murky silence
Every once in a while.

Kissing upside-down.*
At first it seems like a fun idea.
(If spiderman can, we can, right?)
But ultimately, it's clumsy
And awkward.
They say opposites attract
But when my top lip
And your bottom lip
Try to match up together,
There's no denying,
It doesn't quite fit.
A crash-collision.
With him it was like kissing upside-down:
Cool for a while
But the top and bottom just don't match
Quite like they do right-side up,
And it lost its novelty at a steady pace.
Two different halves don't always make a whole.
Sometimes it's two of the same.
Kissing her is like kissing regular.
I don't mean regular-regular.
I mean over the moon,
Past the stars,
Around the universe and back again regular.
I mean running so fast you think your legs
Might fall out from under you
And  you might learn to fly regular.
I mean spinning in circles
On an old tire swing
Until you reach that moment when you forget where you are
And feel the rotation of your organs
So you stop to watch the world swirl before you
Putting everything out of perspective regular.
As unique as 'normal' could possibly exist.
I guess
For me,
Him and her
Just didn't seem to fit
The same way
She and her
Does.
And I don't think I'll be kissing anyone
Upside-down again
For a while.

Kissing is not boring.
Something I had never known.
2. ***** are just *****, but you like mine because they're mine.
3. You are a camel.
You drink water in large and spread-out doses
Just like you drink in my affection
Stocking up on love because you're not sure when you'll get your next fix.
4. I'm happy to give and give so that you never forget how it feels.
5. You can never be too close to someone.
Eyes flitting back and forth
Fingers tracing
Bodies crushing in a stedfast attempt to defy the laws of physics
And melt into one.
6. Sing-alongs do not have to be on-key to be entertaining.
7. Kissing is not boring.
Something I had never known.
Never understood how one person could
Spend hours with another's lips.
8. You called me a *****
And
I might be good at something I'd never done before.
9. Secrets can be magical and torturous.
10. Hand-holding can become an addiction
And "too comfortable" an understatement.
11. Love is, in fact, blind to distance.
Terminals and metal detectors
Are water off Love's wings
And
Baggage claim can be an utterly thrilling place.
12. You don't know what loneliness is until someone leaves you
Exposed
In the middle of a bed made for two
For a bathroom break.
13. Kissing is not boring.
Something I had never known.
Never understood how one person could
Spend hours with another's lips
Tongue-tied in the dim light,
Until I had it all to myself;
Until you were there to prove it to me.

(A friend once told me)
That the stars in the cosmos
Must have been aligned when the two of us came newly into this world.
The astrology up in the atmosphere
On the 28th of April
Saw you coming
And three years later
On the very same day
It said, We must make her a match.
Someone to fill the in-betweens of her fingers
And the empty spaces on the inside,
To brighten up her eyes
And the shine of her smile.
They won't find each other right away
But the magnetic pull of the universe
Will bring them together
Without a doubt.
And I was crafted from stardust and a celestial glow
And beamed down to earth
Fated to wander its surface
Until you came to stand in my path
And point me in a new direction
Hand safe in hand
And heart tethered to heart.

sometimes
there are rocks in my hands
and only tight clenched fists
can keep them from smashing
the mirror world below
into delicate shards of broken promises.
i long to float among the clouds -
one with the stratosphere -
but the rocks weigh me down
so that i cannot touch them.
reaching
but never reached.

people in glass houses
aren't supposed to throw stones.
so i am sure to keep locked
my loaded palms
hiding in plain sight.

only your lips
with homemade ice-cream touches
can coerce my stagnant fingers
to melt back into warm flesh.
skin bones knuckles joints.
i release the stones over a waterfall cliff -
rushing rolling rambling -
and they ripple in the water
and sink to the soil of the riverbed
making a home for fragile fish
in search of shelter.

Lovers are fools.
Words like "forever" and "always"
Dance across their lips
Hidden scribbles on notebook pages.
Lovers are fools.
Candles and rose petals
Cloud a room full
Of expectation and uncertainty.
Lovers are fools.
Blind, deaf, mute
And shrouded in moonbeams,
Unable to face the reality of the world.

Foolish lovers,
Open your eyes
For you will  f a l l  if you do not watch where you leap.
Foolish lovers,
How can you stop the time tables,
Step off the life-carousel -
Racing horses frozen in mid-air
And twinkle-light music driven to utter silence?
Foolish lovers,
Teach me how to use my fragile love
As an indestructible armor
Against the lightening bolts and ice storms,
Apocalypse and crop circle fears.

Lovers are fools.
She loves me all up,
So if being one with her means
Being a **fool…

I say,
                      *Bring it on.

I want to throw a tantrum.
Scream and shout
And kick things that don't need to be kicked.
The bones of my knuckles and hips poke out
A little     m  o  r  e
Than they did before.
My finger rings and hip-hugging jeans slip,
Not quite fitting the same way they had.
My skeleton creeping its way ever so slightly
Closer to the surface
Like it wants to get out
And   r u n    to    h e r.

Self-diagnosis: Lovesick.
Before, we were a storybook fairytale
But now our make-believe has something to latch onto.
Like a parasite.
More real
And more torturous
Than the existence of my past self.
I can't crave food the same way I can crave her touch.
My stomach shipwreck still feels the memories
Like they were yesterday's meal.
Has it really been a month?
My emotions ebb and flow
Along the shoreline of my consciousness.
Lovesickness courses through my veins
And through the vessel in my chest
Until I fall into a slumber
And in my dreams I have her once again
*If only for a moment.

Why do the worms fiercely dig their way to the surface
During rainstorms
As though they're afraid to miss the spectacle?
Don't they know they will end up drowning
In pools of chilled sky-tears
And get stomped by careless and hurried feet?
Strewn across drenched brick and concrete walkways,
Thousands,
Yet each somehow alone in his own conquest.
Drawn
Like the moth to the flame
And my eye to the sun.

My lips miss yours.
So much so that I can feel them
Growing arms and hands so that
They can write thoughtful letters to yours
About how if they had eyes,
They would see nothing but yours;
Blind to any other love.
They write about how
If they had feet,
They would take any number of steps
Just to reach yours;
Just to touch
Even for a moment,
To hold their old friends close
In a warm embrace.
They write about how
If they had wings
They would let the wind whisk them
Halfway around the world
As long as yours were waiting on the other side.
They write about how
If they had a heart,
Every beat would sing for yours.
I sit in silence and watch;
An act of pure passion.

My dear,
I've just had the most terrifying thought.
One that sends shivers down my spine,
And not the good kind of shivers.
The ones that jab at you in the dark.
The ones that come from boogie men
And monsters under the bed.
This thought,
This fear,
It hits me like a swift kick to the chest
For just a split second.
And then I hear it running away from behind me,
Fleeting footsteps echoing into the distance.
Still partially audible.
This thought,
This fear,
Flees like a mischievous child.
After shouting directly into my ear cavity:
What if you never found her?
The thought nearly stops me in my tracks.
I am the person I am because of her place in my life.
What if I never even met her?
I can barely imagine the idea of this bliss
Somehow not existing.
Maybe another me in some parallel universe
Is truly alone.
I feel sad for her,
That she will never know this
Swirling,
          Terrifying,
                  Mystifying,
                            Incredible feeling,
Something that everyone deserves to feel.
Free will spins a complicated spider web.
Every decision you make
Affects you and the others around you,
Either holding them up or pulling them down.
What if I'd made a different choice,
Just one minuscule detail.
What if I'd turned right instead of left,
Or used pencil instead of pen,
Or carried paper instead of plastic?
One wrong move could have led me off the path to you.
The thought makes me want to drop down to my knees
And thank God
That I decided to lift the branches and find this hidden walkway
Into an unknown territory
That so quickly became
Familiar.
Home.

I'm tired but my bed is empty.
Lying here is like
Lying in a hole in the ground,
Surrounded by earthworms
Mistaking me for a corpse.
I am at the bottom of a bottomless pit.
Trapped in a large crater formed by the meteor
That crashed through my atmosphere
Leaving the Empty.
You took with you a piece of me which I do not ever expect to get back.
So I'm trying to live without.

It starts like an earthquake underneath my head.
        Three quick shakes,
              A pause,
                      Then three more.
        Air bursts from her pouted lips
And I run a comforting palm up and down her side.
       "Shhh," I whisper into the skin of her neck
                               So she knows
                               That I know
              That her tears speak for us both.

The day after I had to let you go,
It was windier than I've ever seen before.
It was as if Mother Nature thought
If she blew hard enough,
Your windy city and mine might just collide
So that you and I could be one
Once again.

24 hours without.
Strip off the clothes that enveloped you
And have been my armor for the past day.
I try to convince myself I'm not washing you away.
That I'm not sending the sensations
Of your soft skin on mine
Down the drain.
I turn the water temperature up high,
Because maybe the heat will burn through a layer of my storm cloud,
And I wait a while before stepping under the flow,
Hugging my arms tightly around my aching frame.
A song comes on and then another and another
And my tears intermingle with the warmth surrounding me.
It's hard to always be on the verge.
Makes it difficult to speak.
So I close my mouth
And I lock up my heart.
You once whispered to me:
"It's hard to feel this sad and this happy
At the same time."
What a paradoxical feeling.
When the water runs free of shampoo and bubbles,
And I fear you've gone,
I curl up into a towel
Which is soaked in the scent
Of fresh lilies.
My darling.
Guess there's no way I can get rid of you that easily.

"I miss you so much."
"Run away with me."
"You're my girl 3/23/14."
"Ali was here."
"Big kiss!"
Hidden notes.
The pleasure of finding new pieces of you.
Wanting, yet not wanting to search
Because meeting the last one
Seems like it might mean
There is nothing left to discover.
You are here but you are gone.
You were my safety, but now
You are my cell phone.
You are my computer.
You are a lived-in T and sweater
Which I suffocate myself with
In order to feign sleep without your touch.
You are a used facecloth
And an unwashed pillowcase.
You are the crumbs in my carpet.
You are the strands of hair that cling to my scarf and brush
That did not come from the scalp I wear.
You are the blooming lilies left behind.
You are a faint aroma in the air
And
You are the steady thump of a heartbeat against an ear
Deeply rooted in my memory.
All these I know.
But the one blue sticky note that still evades me…
It is mystery.
It is you, *unlearned.
It is my motivation.
It is my vice.
It is the sweet symphony
That keeps me afloat in the dark water.
Ocean waves.
Blue squares.
Where?

Today
I found half a potato chip
Underneath my bed.
My blankets and pillows are askew.

Plastic bottles are piling up
On the surface of my desk.
And wilty flowers
Will stay visible as long as possible.

I even love
The messes
You left behind.

You said,
"It's hard to feel this much from so far away."
Hard as a ******* wall of concrete.
What if it's not everything we wanted?
But then again,
What if it is?
I know we like to romanticize.
Your two eyes.
I've never seen them up close,
But when I close my own,
In the darkness, there they are.
When we meet, be cautious
Because I think fireworks might explode from my cranium.
Or perhaps expel straight from my chest.
Red, yellow, blue and white.
Sparkling strings of coiled light shooting outward
Until they erupt into a waterfall of crackled illumination.
Fireworks are dangerous
When handled without care.
But in the right hands
They give birth to a mesmerizing presentation,
Making people stop,
Put life on pause.
Raise their eyes.
Lose themselves.
I think maybe it'll be like that.
When you shine I'll stop and stare.
What if it's not everything we wanted?
But then again,
What if it is?
I recently learned that
"Your faith has got to be greater than your fear."
And I'm trying to believe it.
I want to carve the words into my skin
So I never can forget them.

She said, verbatim,
"I really want to kiss you.
    Is that okay?"
     And the fact that she asked that
       Makes it so okay it's frightening.

Tiny wrists.
Tiny rivers of blue.
Translucent.
I'm thinking about making myself a home
Beneath your pale skin.
I'd float along your lazy blue river
Until I make my way to your ghost chest
And burrow myself a tunnel
Deep inside your heart.
Light myself a campfire,
And pitch a tent.
Looks like I'm gonna be here for a while.
I am rocked to sleep with each beat:
Onetwo. Onetwo. Onetwo.
And my heart-house dreams
Intermingle with yours.
Maybe if we dream hard enough,
We can create a world of our own.
Where red blood cells sing like angels
Housed in four chapel-chambers,
And each artery stretches up far
Like a rainforest canopy
Riddled with exotic capillary-flowers.
Can we be safe here?
The heart has tender walls
But it is a soldier.
Though it may be kicked down,
It forges on
And picks itself right back up again.
Always beating,
Always winning.
Your heart is a soldier.
A fighter.
A protector.
I think I feel safe,
For the first time in a long time,
Within the home I've made for myself
Inside of who you are.

When you leave
I fear I will pluck each strand of hair
From my entire head
And produce so many tears
That I dry up like desert sand
And blow away in the arid breeze.
I am nothing.
Until you come back,
And take the time
To braid the hairs together,
And collect each grain of sand.
Nutella-sticky fingers glue me all into one piece
With squeezey hugs and blanket fort cuddles.
And I'll forget you ever even left.

I feel like a toddler
Teetering and tottering as I take my first brave steps
Into the unknown.
We often fear what we do not understand,
But I think that instead we should try
And color our skin with hues that cannot be seen
In the standard visible spectrum.
We're making a rainbow connection,
You and I.
Can't you see the bright bridge we've built across the sky?
My shining *** of gold at the other end
Is filled to the brim with your laughter,
And I cannot wait until I can dive inside
And swim.

I am a spirit locked up inside a human skin,
Scaling each wall
And roaming each corridor
To find my way out.

Inside my brain
There is a tornado
Spinning to infinity and beyond.
God only knows how fast.
My shoulders ache and my feet cramp.
My wrists click
And my eyes go damp.
Inside my brain instead is a monsoon:
A tumultuous storm that rages on.
Waves froth and smash,
Beating against the backs of my eyeballs.
Sometimes they find their way
Down my soft spotted cheeks.
My lashes float to the earth
One by one by one by one.
Would you collect them for me
Like discarded flower petals
Down the aisle of my soul's chapel
And press them into a scrapbook
Full of twisted memories?
Inside my brain is an H2O tornado
Like reckless rainstorm pirouettes.
My swirling view is blurred,
But every so often
I catch a clear picture
Of the glowing whites of your eyes
And I remember to fill my lungs,
Head above the water,
And breathe.
Twirl, twist.
Wind, mist.
But don't panic,
Because every so often
I catch a clear picture
Of you.

*******.
******* for being so far away
******* for making me want you
I can say it certainly is not fair,
What is this, the ******* teacup ride?
I always hated the fair.
Fishing for plastic ducks and shooting impossible targets
Seems like a setup for failure to me.
******* for making me take a look at myself in the mirror
And for making me ask questions
For making me lie
And for making me tell the truth.
Why can't things be easy?
Oh yeah, that's just not how it works around here.
******* for making my imagination run wild.
For casting yourself in the movies my brain constantly films
And ******* for getting the cinematography just right.
I can't look away.
******* because all I have is my imagination.
I can make you whomever I want you to be.
******* for curling your hair and for having those lips
And for being comfortable with yourself around me
**** your small wrists and your quirky characteristics
Your eyeliner and your fingernails
**** your sparkling smile and your hips
And ******* for making me want you so bad.

**** me.
**** me for yearning.
**** me for learning
That it's not that simple,
That nothing is set in stone,
That people are confusing as hell.
**** me for taking the time to write this poem
**** how angry it's making me
And **** the fact that I'm writing it because of you.

Sitting here
Waiting, wishing, wanting,
I can't even focus.
The distraction of you pervades my mind's eye.
Write it down, the eye tells me
As if it were the messenger perched upon my shoulder.
Each breath that crawls in and out of my lungs feels heavy;
Saturated with wishful thoughts and flickering candle light
Like shards of glass
Shining and reflecting the unseen.
The wind blows cold here.
Can you feel it too?
When I was young, the teachers said I had a vivid imagination.
They deemed me "creative"
Because I liked to play pretend.
That 8-letter C word hasn't left me since.
I still like to play pretend, so
Let's make believe we can touch.
Put that scene on repeat please.
Ever since I was young I've had this vivid imagination.
The night I cried a monsoon for lack of you,
Somewhere between each breath lost
I found a realization of epic proportions.
I sat with myself in the dim light,
My arms wrapped around me,
White knuckles,
Cradling this vessel that felt hollow as a canoe,
Pretending the arms weren't mine, but yours.
Wanting.
In bed with the blankets tucked around my silhouette
And your thoughts in words cradled in my hands,
I can imagine your front against my back
And your warm breath on my neck.
I can almost feel… a rush of blood to my heart.
Name that song.
Sorry I have to plagiarize that thought but it comes so easily.
A rush of blood straight to the core.
Pumping, pulsing
Sometimes I just sit alone with my heart.
Close my eyes and listen to what it has to say.
It seems to tell me, hey I'm keeping your engine running, but you have to do the rest.
And I say a prayer for that motor inside my chest that keeps everything flowing
But I know that it won't do it all for me.
Isn't it miraculous to be alive?
Earlier today I thought: my God, do I have trust issues.
I'm confused about what's real and about how to believe.
I've been told plenty of things that aren't true
Like how pluto is a planet...
Just kidding it's only a moon.
But who's to say it's only a moon?
My moon is your moon and that seems pretty swell to me.
People say it's a comfort to look up
And know you see the same moon as someone far away.
Maybe I'll take that for truth.
Might as well.
What've I got to lose?
On second thought I might want to avoid that question.
What have I got to lose?
My head, my heart, my sanity...
It's a question for another day.
But for now I'm sitting here
Wishing, waiting, wanting
For my make-believe to get real already
And for all my distraction fantasy to spring to life.

You won't be a doctor
Because of those paper face masks.
You wont touch your fingertips together
But maybe you'll touch my fingertips -
Touch your fingertips to my aching edges.
Nose knuckles knees and elbows.
I promise my skin is not made of velvet
Or paper towels,
Just wishes and deep pores
Filled up like swimming pools of wonder.
They say curiosity was what killed the cat,
But I know the animal doctors pumped
Drugs into my feline until she slowly slipped away
And I know how long and hard I cried over losing a lifelong pet,
Never having known that type of loss until then.
Didn't matter how cat-elderly she was.
But I know you won't be a doctor because of those paper face masks.
You
With your heart of alabaster plaster,
Paint splatter,
Striped hoodies and rainbows,
Scribble faster.
You're teaching me how to be.
And each day I silently thank you
From my brows down to my feet, down to the soles.
Our souls have shaken hands and enjoyed the fit they found.
Tick tock.
Why wait when the time is now?
I think we know what we think we know.
Don't you know?
Know how you slay me with compliments -
Cut me straight down the middle so my left and right have to find each other again
Before I even have the time to blush.
I asked you your favorite flower
Even though I was pretty sure you had told me already.
I wanted to make sure.
Lilies.
And because of that movie I know the lily means "I dare you to love me"
And I have to wonder
Is it really your favorite or are you sending me a message?
Our world is enveloped in messages
Of the Tumblr Facebook Skype and text varieties
If I sent a carrier pigeon, would it make its way to you?
The past has a funny way of repeating itself
And I've never seen a carrier pigeon
But who knows,
I could put those babies back in business.
Tick tock.
You said ***** the what ifs.
Let's hold dear our future plans.
If it makes you happy, why do anything else?
It feels like I'm on the operating table
Awaiting something too big to comprehend
I think of your hands and the curve of your being fitting with mine
Eyes closed. Chapstick whispers.
Soft lashes that stay where they belong.
The operating table doesn't seem so cold
And I question everything I thought I knew.
But one thing I know for sure
Is that you'll never be a doctor.
Because of those paper face masks.
And that's fine by me
Because I don't think I need an operation
To be me
*For you.