I want to ride with the van doors open.
I want you and you, and you, and you and you and you and you and you in there.
I want the wind to storm its way through the doors, and make it hard for us to breathe.
I want us to sing and laugh so loud, we can't seem to hear each other.
I want the ***** soles of your shoes against my shin, my hair in your open mouth and your shoulder molding painfully into my arm.
I want to see your shirt ride up your belly; I want to see the scars there before I eat you alive.
I want your neck on my tongue and my heart in your hands;
I want to pool in between your fingers so you'd have to skin yourself alive just to scrape me off.

I want to fall out of a moving car and be on the news.
I want my flesh to grate the asphalt so hard, you could look for me in between the cracks.
I want to slip off in a blur and taste the colors in the air;
I want you to know what my blood is like on your teeth and what my eyes look like on the pavement.
I want you to have my soul in your hands and to own me like I can't be robbed of my grave.
I want to be tattooed into the back of your eyes and see me in the darkness there.
I want to own what's been yours for so long.

I want you to wear my shirt when you go to sleep.
I want people to mourn then ask you what it was like to know me.
I want you to tell them I haunt you. That you love me. Despise me.
That they locked the casket cause they never found me.
That the truth is, I'm inside of you, every moment, awake and alive, breathing and not.
Buried where I'd never be found—that if they'd have to pay respects, they'd go to you instead.

I want to be rotting next to you so you're never alone.
Keeping you awake if you dare try to leave the thought of me.
Be the weight that pulls you back to bed; the curse that forces you into mourning.

I want you to ride up and down the road at night, so we can both be alone.
Lie down where you could find me, outlined and marked up from:

Marker 1, marker 2, and marker 3: past the corner, down the blind turn, scattered across a corn field.

You'd remember what shoes I had on.

You'd be wearing the necklace I always kept.

You'd know I smiled too much. Way too often.

You'd look at the ground in contempt before lying there, hoping I'd die. Just one more time. Praying that you could hate me.

Leave me there.

But you'd be laying in a field where our friend's van no longer returns.

You'd get up, dusting your jeans, sour-mouthed and empty. Shirt ***** from the muck, the asphalt glittering with me inside of it.

I want you to walk down the middle of the road where they placed lights to guide you. There can never be another me down that road again.  They hope not.

And you hope not too.

I want you to think of your soul left behind with me, where I lay scattered on the field.

I want you to know, even in pieces, we're happy.

That the world is willing to forget, and move on.

And you're trying. Always trying.

And I want that.

I want you to join me, because it wasn't  really me who died.

We're just paintings
on a plaster wall,
where chips fall
to the linoleum floor,

where we sweep aside
the love and the loss,
our prayers that we cuss
when we have nothing more.

Our exhibit is open
to the ****** and the wicked
and all the good and the naked;
those who blindly trust.

Our love chips off
but we are fine with that
for we never look back
pretending to say, "we must."

In years, maybe
when we're fading and old;
ripped off the frame,fold,
when we're hastily stashed away —

If we were humans,
who could move, love, kneel
kiss and frame, and steal,
please ask me: "would you stay?"

And, yes.
Yes, I would, anyway.

I cried again, at the thought of her
in between all the drifting stars.
I cried again, at the thought of her
in between my throbbing scars.

I asked my papa, when it'd leave
when my pain would finally stop,
but he shook his head in reprieve,
and from his mouth came a cough,

"It never leaves, only dulls,
never hardens, but never is the same;
you're my daughter, my only daughter,
you and I, we share a pain."

Mama, I cried, at the thought of her,
especially on the day when I left;
I came back into your loving arms,
and from my mouth, I finally wept.

Sometimes, I wish I've never known you;
where you've come from, where you've been.
I wish you were just a void,
with no knowledge to love,
and with no knowledge to hate.

But because of you,
I have a name to adore,
and a person to despise.
Because of you, there are places to which I want to return to,
and there are places to which I am reluctant to arrive.

Your words have always been writhing thorns,
on a beautiful wreath of roses, and I love them -
for what they are, for what they mean;
for how they make me look and feel,
but the knowledge of them hurts me.
The knowledge of them breaks me.

By the gods, I love you, but I hate you on me.

And when I look at you, I wish to kiss you from a distance.
When I look at you, I am torn - disembodied between
my love and the fractured memories.
When I look at you - you give me a name to
agonize over, when the days are empty,
and my heart seems full.

When I look at you, there are reasons why I hate to love you.

And god, do I miss you. When the words blend
into the grains of the wall,
and your face becomes the back of my eyelids,
I can't help but let my heart bleed dry.

God knows how I hate loving you.