So We Meet Again

i saw your face in a tree stump–
large and pale, with exaggerated
sorrow sliding off the
corners of your canoe eyes.
and again on the body of
a girl with your strawberry hair.
i am strengthening myself
in nightmares so that reality
won’t seem so bad.

I Am (Nothing Without) Poetry

I am nothing
besides a collection of poems waiting
to be experienced, waiting
to be written.
I am an urn of emotions, a vessel for verse,
an undulating piece waiting to be
completed.

Losing you is something I was born to do.

it doesn’t make it hurt any less, but i know it had to be this way.

You’re Where They Were All Born

If all my other loves were the twinkling city skylines
of my heart, then you,
my dear, are the capital.

If everything I’ve ever felt before
burned with the intensity of a star,
you, my love, are
a nebula.

I Don’t Miss Your Hands

The sky was so
incredibly clear tonight.
It was one of those nights where you would have whispered:
the stars look so close you can touch them.

Tonight, for the first time
I don’t miss seeing your hands reach up to the sky.

It’s hard to settle for bits and pieces of someone you used to swallow whole.

how am i supposed to be okay with small talk when you used to live inside me?

Paralyzed

I could see the words
in her eyes
long before she wrote them–
long before she read them
on that stage.

I could feel her pain in the way
her spine curled into me at night–
long before the melancholy weighed
upon her lips (her cherry smile).

I knew she was breaking long
before she shattered, but
all I could do
was watch.

Words can be vague enough to mean nothing to someone, but mean everything to another.

the beauty of poetry is how it is interpreted

Thoughts

silence slows them down,
stretches them out
like taffy
until they are ringing in slow motion
inside my head.

Rehab

I’d shoot you up,
swallow you whole with
a glass of orange juice
in the morning—
inhale you
during my lunch breaks.

I thought that I needed you.

Now my sheets are drenched
in all the words you’ve ever said and
my eyes roll back to replay
your smile until it distorts
into a sneer.
And I can smell your sweat.
I can taste your lips.
I can taste the milk going sour.

You are leaking out of
the bullet holes—out of
all of my pores—but
I know this
is part of getting clean.