She felt like fire,
leaving scorch marks across
the inside of my chest

It burned everything I was
and I was left like residue
from a catalyst used wrong

I felt like ice
running from her flames
melting under her smoldering skin
I felt fluid and chill
but I was burning up too fast and


I feel like air.
Quiet.

2 am and I can't sleep
With you racing through my mind
How could I?
Leaving tracks and bitterness on my insides
The scent of flowers and putrid feelings linger on
Permeating the air around my soul
You left your imprints, you ******
They burned through and left a hole
I can't shake you out
I breathed you in too deeply
Poisoned my very being
Now I feel so ******* lonely

It was 5 in the afternoon
We hid from the world behind a closed door
The smell of flowers stuck under our noses
Your pale lips shook me to my core

Fire in my veins, blood in my mouth
Her mind was shattered, while mine travelled south
Did he cut himself on your pieces? Or did you learn to put yourself back together?
I hope you grew out of finding beauty in sadness, that you understood the possibility of happiness without depression.
I hope you learned never to fall in love with a broken mirror.

Stubborn as all hell, I am
When you say you just want to be friends
But what happens when I kiss someone else
And want you on the receiving end?

As I pull off her dress,
Wishing it was us making a mess
Feel fire rolling off her tongue, in full heat
But my heart still plays your beat

She shudders and moans the way you used to,
But still
Still she’s not you

hello barbie
r u there?
It's been 4 years and 57 girls
But i dreamt of you two nights in a row
And this is why i tweak most nights
If i can't dream it's easier to believe that i'm doing just fine
Do people have somewhere to go when they're alone?
I feel like all i can do is roam and roam and roam
I'm privy to the big secret
That nothing really matters
And we ascribe as much importance to where we deem it most fitting
And i cannot for the life of me figure out after everything
Why it still stings

i tried to shoot for the moon
But gravity reared its head
my dreams just couldn't escape orbit
now my dreams are dead

they say you lose the voice first
the way she sounds, the way her laugh makes your toes curl
i think you lose everything in a night
when you stay up late wondering how the two of you died

my dreams have been wanting, as of late
it's a shame you cannot wake up dead
i dream of the shiny hook in my throat
of blue skin and bodies that just won't bloat

are we fishing for words here?
or do we want them to disappear?

my mouth is a graveyard, filled with everything I could never say. the musings, the ravings, they lose sense as soon as daylight graces them and they unravel and unravel and unravel into a giant headache, the kind only opiates can help with and even then


even then the yelling does not subside

Must've known you in a previous life
You were the sun, and I was grass worshipping the sky
Must've known you in a previous life
You were the sea, and I was a cliff worn away by your tide
Must've known you in a previous life
You were a flower, and I was a bee heartbroken by your side

Would've known you in our current lives
Intertwined like vines but never really seeing eye-to eye

you tell me about
love, and say I know nothing. But I know enough.

you tell me love is your parents grown
old, together, both
each other's pillar.

you tell me love is your man
walking you home and
leaving you giddy on the doorstep

but i know love.

love is my father yelling YOU ******* ***** when my mother tries to sneak in
in the dead of night

love is me, sitting outside the cold apartment, waiting for her to come visit her four children

love is my mother's boyfriend, and his clothes hangers on my
back, from being too noisy playing
Wheel of Fortune on the old white computer

love is me, smoking my weight in
chemicals

love is me, hiding my noose in the corner
of my cupboard, worried what my siblings would think

That is love.

do you know this dream? tied
to a fence, barking. the mailman comes, afraid -
he confuses your overeager friendliness with ill feeling. do you
know this dream? the sun never goes away - your cratered imperfection never shows his face. do
you know this dream? on her sleeve worn, you wear away.
the wind never blows you straight - do you know
this dream?

I have written enough to fill libraries about you.
I have painted enough to fill a museum or two.
I tried capturing worlds with words and universes with brushstrokes and everything in-between.
Did you know there are over a million words in the English language? And only 10 million shades can the human eye see.
I didn’t. It took your presence to realize there were so few words to describe your eyes,
And your absence made me notice every shade of gray caught in the damp morning light.
Flowers will grow from the dirt beneath my ribs and the world will die a million times over before I forget to write about you.
I hope you don’t stay forever, but I pray my words do.

"Write about me," she said.

No. How could I?
I felt nothing.
I was nothing.
Putty in her hands,
just another boy in her bed.
Another notch on her bedpost
Another night she wanted head.

With all honesty, I was only
here because I wanted the same:
to dive in quick and after,
still feel sane.

"Stop writing about me," you said.

No.

maybe i read more into it than i should have.

i doubted it most nights, but every once in a while you’d look at me that way and smile -

and all i ever wanted was someone to look at me that way, and smile.

i will ruin myself before others do

is the body not a temple?

to desecrate. mar it beyond recognition

is our entirety our physicality?

i would tear it all down

So out of it - it’s a shame you had to learn to write their names down on skin, because paper was left for better things, for obituaries and weddings
way past using, we’ve regressed into abusive but you don’t believe me when i say
**** helps, sober i overthink the bigger picture, sober i don’t stop to smell the flowers

I felt like a thief, undeserving of the air around me
Every breath stolen from the lungs of someone less unworthy
Even then I couldn't stop breaking hearts
Despoiling souls, taking them apart
It filled me with completion
Causing another's destruction
Reducing them to shattered nerves,
Trembling hands and ****** curves
It made me feel significant, that I existed
Just only with the toll of self-hate

I ***** stanzas -
I spew literary clutter
My poetry is aimless
The words all muddled

I write unsharpened
The point pressed pointless
A fire smoldering with no tinder
The universe questions its existence

I remember when we sat on a park bench at night, and your head lay nestled in the hollow of my shoulder.
My arm circled around your waist, reaching to meet its twin’s wrist.
I looked at you, and you blushed, and told me that staring was rude.
I spelled ‘M-I-N-E’ in the space between your collarbones and your brow with kisses, and breathed words I never dared to speak.
You were flowers in May, the sea spray in July, and the cold wind of November.
I was obsessed, and I knew I would never be good enough.
Two days later, we broke up.
Every kiss since then has left me lonelier.