May the branches of your cherry tree
Blossom fruitful and ripen beneath a kind,
Soft sun.
May the sky remind you it's okay to cry
Even if there is gold upon the loom
And green in the field.
May your mind be full of skepticism
Never criticism.
May you remain pure and strive to
Avoid ignorance.
Bliss is achieved upon crossing troubled water
Aim to avoid the security of a bridge.
Ignore cold shoulders:
Bathe in the sun.
Remember wind pulls petals from the strongest flowers.
Weeping willows sway in the wind like waves.
May it swallow your spine
Permeate vertebrae
And pull you deeper into blue until lungs beg to brake.
Emma,
I will sleep beside you until the rain comes.

We were galaxies

Bursting in
                   Bursting out

Time after
Time again

     History was repeating
   but we were missing out

I'm sorry I corrupted your immortal soul

Sometimes you gotta
     tease the darkness out darling

Sometimes when you're standing
     On the edge of everything
     You're free to feel anything

It's only when we're standing
     At the edge of death,
     We've never felt more alive

Like the rush that we get
     When we destroy fine art
     With our minds

We never felt more avant-garde
     Until we set the world on fire
     Just to watch it burn

i taste
like smoke
like the seven hours i’ve spent
lying on my living room floor
awake
listening to traffic.

i smell
like smoke
like a pack a day in the heat and rain
inhaling something
intangible.

you are
fresh air
breathing hope into my lungs
lifting me off of the rental home brown
carpet

1.  don’t be afraid of getting hurt
because in life there are times
when we need to be vulnerable
an unmatchable brilliance is radiated
when you bare your soul to another
and are privileged enough to be shown
the deepest parts of their spirit in return

2.  write often
no one has to see it, you can scribble
on napkins and throw them away
but please, allow yourself to know
the freedom of letting words seep
from your heart and relieving
the heavy strain of carrying
so many smothering thoughts

3.   never promise forever
because not once have i met
a person whose forever lasted
and i can’t say
i remember a time
when my forever has lasted, either

One.

When I first saw you I forgot you the next second. The next time I saw you I forgot you after a minute. Then after that when I saw you, I never forgot you.

Two.

When I first talked to you I didn't give a **** who you were. The next time I talked to you I thought your eyes were beautiful. Then after that, I was never able to gather enough courage to tell you.

Three.

You remind me of someone whom I loved in my past life, when I was young and stupid and had no idea what love was. You remind me of heartbreak. Of my pathetic attempts to stitch myself back together after being broken in half, of the stars I always wished I was part of. You remind me of cold nights and cold days, when no amount of heat could penetrate the chilling draft enclosing this empty shell. You remind me of waking up in the middle of the night and feeling incomprehensibly lonely and miserable, seeing how big the bed suddenly was.

Four.

I want to be away from you. I want to be somewhere, everywhere, anywhere, as long as I can't see you, as long as I can't feel my skin prickling with awareness telling me, "He's right here." I want to abandon everything I've built here because I don't want to see you anymore, I don't want to hear your voice, I don't want to feel its rich depth resonating in my chest, I'm sorry, I just don't want to be near you.

Five.

I write about you. I write poems, songs, stories about you, and when silence is screaming in my ears each one of those words sing a melody to me, carving my flesh out, gorging empty spaces inside me. When the rest of the world is talking so loudly all I can hear is my mind yelling, my heart squeaking, each one of the letters I wrote weave in and out of my mind's eye, and each wasted ink, each drained pen, taunts me. Why am I writing about you?

Six.

I am not the kind of girl who normally says things like this. I don't want to say this. What I want is to burn these papers and all the dancing strokes of all these wasted ink, to watch this inanimate funeral pyre send its smoke spiraling towards heaven, to scatter the ashes into the vast ocean so I can never see this again, so I will never remember you, so I will forget I wrote anything for you. And maybe if I tried hard enough I can pretend I never met you. Maybe I can pretend you never meant anything to me.

Seven.

I hate you.

Eight.

I hope you burn in hell.

Nine.

I hope I'm not in love with you.

Ten.

She's a lot better than I am. Eleven. I will never be as beautiful as she is. Twelve. Don't worry you won't have to make a choice, because I will never be able to say this to your face. Thirteen. If you ever realize I'm talking about you, don't speak to me again, because I'd rather disappear, I'd rather run away than face you. Fourteen. I'm sorry I'm an idiot because--

Fifteen.

I'm in love with you.

soon i will f a d e
like a photograph
left upon the windowsill,
and you will wipe away
my name from your lips

my laughter will become
a faintly familiar echo
in the hollows of your memory,
and unlike your thriving soul,
i will be fixed in a state of affliction
by the absence of your tenderness

yes, the fire in your heart
that once burned brightly for me
is growing dimmer by the hour,
however, you shall remain with me
e v e r m o r e