My skin longs for your touch
A phenomenon so easily taken for granted
Given but a few minutes of your time daily
I will never forget how perfect your body felt against mine
The sun hides so sweetly here in the Arctic
Each day my body walks my skin
Searching for the horizon
That has this star tucked behind it

The moon spoke heavily in the sky
Drifting within time itself
Creating a comma upon gods plans
A pause of the hurry to get to the future
Hearts beating in unison
Gravity let go
Just long enough for
The world to freeze
To absorb the phenomenon
We call life

I've always been one to talk about change as if I was immune to it and it would never happen to me, but looking back on it I realized that not only has it happened, but I feel so alienated from what I used to be that old pictures seem to be a stranger staring from the frame into my own eyes from a fog of the past that I can't seem to recollect

I have to learn to make it on my own out there in a world full of people that can tear me down more than pick me up and it's going to be a process not easily overcome and impossible to avoid but for some reason the fear inside me is starting to melt away at the thought that these worn out eyes can finally breath in the sunshine, or lack thereof, of another country

There was a question that asked how I feel I've changed since my Freshman year and all I could say was that my eyes have become ones that back then were not capable of seeing the reality I was living in everyday, but now they can see, and they take note, and they see those looks that you give them and they write down in their memory carved with the scraps of past ones that I should be invisible

I realized in two weeks that I mourn by not mourning, because I avoid crying now that it's all drained out of me, and with the death of a best friend, I haven't shed a true tear that was not under the influence of the fluids they were pumping in me through an IV system, and I don't know what's the matter with me, but I just focus on the happy happy happy because if I don't the world knows that will be the end of me

I'm sitting in the room I've been sitting in for over seven years writing about change. I never thought the day would come when it would be about myself, but it is, and here I am, and I have changed. I over think things, I question, I observe, I'm careless and careful and confused and lost and searching somewhere inside of me for where I'm going and who I'm going to be but the answers haven't come yet so I'm forced to be patient and wait for them as long as I need to because without a sense of self, I am no one.

We are critical.

We find flaws in
everything we see
because nobody
wants to write
about perfection,
even though sometimes
we wish we could just stay
staring into that
unblemished surface.

2. We are never satisfied.

We live our lives upon
mountains of
scrunched up
bits of refill and
ideas we gave up
trying to
express.

3. We never forget.

We write words about
eye contact made
three months ago
that we replay over
and over in our minds
even though it
stopped
being relevant.

4. We are fickle.**

Our emotions flash
from one
to the other
like strobe lighting that
disorientates us
until we feel as if
the world
will never be still.

5. We are exposed.

We don't know how
to keep our feelings
to ourselves so
we'll write them
down for
you to find
'accidentally'.

6. We are vulnerable.

We wear our
hearts on our sleeves
and won't lift a
muscle to fight back
if somebody tries
to break it
because we thrive
from the pain.

7. We will never stop.

We will never stop
feeling and
we will never stop
hurting,
we will never stop
breaking and
bleeding and
loving
even though the cycle
is endless
and we know what's
coming next.


We are addicted
to agony,
but we agonise
for the art.

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies,
costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science,
work, forms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating,
drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself;
None but have found you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you;
None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent
to subordinate you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond
what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all;
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of
gold-color’d light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams,
effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are—you have slumber’d upon yourself
all your life;
Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries,
what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine,
if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you
from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others,
they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death,
all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you;
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs
of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;
These immense meadows—these interminable rivers—you are immense
and interminable as they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution—
you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are
promulges itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
    oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
    themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
    neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer
    of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
    hid—I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and
    prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who
    shall be ****’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
    laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out
    upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
  I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
  Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
  Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the side of the sea.

let me tell you something about regret

let me tell you something about being saturated with your thoughts, about being completely above your thresh hold of absorption and trying to desperately figure out how you can get out of it

it's a delicate game between i hope he gets it and he never does, a fine line between texting him at 1am trying to apologize for what you've been doing wrong and realizing he's just a boy and he can't handle that

we cling unflinchingly to the memories of our past until eventually we are tunnel visioned by them, unable to move forward because they are the quicksand in our mind forcing us to stay

and let me tell you about trying to do texts at midnight drunk on the absence of sleep telling them that they surely understand, trying to get closure to the fact that no you are not the only one who feels like this, he feels it too, but it will always be about someone else  

and i could give you countless essays on replaying images of their tears, on wishing that you were never in a ******* hotel corridor spilling your heart out to stain your dress with red memories, red red dark red memories that will always stay there

or the time, perhaps, when you were not freezing because he was there next to you to heat you, because the sound that escaped his speakers were melodies that comforted the both of you through the tidal waves of something larger than you and something able to engulf you with a single blow

but let me tell you how it all ends, how you think you can never go back to the feeling of mistakes when you aren't making any, when you're stuck alone in this big world without talking to anyone because it only causes trouble doesn't it? but it always swings back around and there isn't a cure for it

i could write a million and one essays explaining how i have felt the past two years of my life, how from the moment my thighs were frailer than my wrists to the moment i couldn't fit back into my favourite pair of pants, from the time i first saw all of their brown eyes to the time i last saw them, from the awkward moments in the hall that are filled with void and anger and tension to the moments when i would beg to see them again for just a little bit more, but i have realized that i can never make you get it

the only way to get it is to experience it, and for those of you who understand what i'm talking about, try to get some sleep tonight, try to keep the memories out of your dreams