You answered just a little too fast.
It surprised me.
I haven't seen you in about a year,
And I am realizing I've missed you.
It surprised me.
The last time I saw you,
And the time before that,
You were intoxicated.
It surprised me.
I haven't seen you in about a year,
And I am realizing what you are to me.
It surprised me.
You are a dress without hems or seams.
I hardly know you but you are beautiful.
You are the bullet in the rotating cylinder of the gun to my head.
You dig through my skull and explode my amygdala.
And force me to love you.
You are the jam in the barrel as I pull the trigger.
I fell to the ground in realization:
You both killed me and saved me.
It surprised me.

I do not like this phase of a heart break.

When you purposely avoid love songs,
Or sometimes you play them just to make yourself feel like your hearts still pounding.

When the person you loved and hid from every waking soul is brought into a conversation.
Or when he isn't.

When you see other lovers who have made it years without the cruel hand of fate ripping their love from them.
Or when you see they haven't.

When you notice him writing you smaller, casual messages when they use to be breathtaking and beautiful.
Or when he doesn't write at all.

When I ask you if I am pushing you away and you say no.

"Alright, happy birthday! Text me later tonight?"

"Will do"

When every hidden goodbye ends with those two words. And my broken, belittled heart.

(i. r.)

"I wish I had a cigarette."
The man as he looked down
at his half empty glass of whiskey
at the bar in Paisley Town

Little did he know what that dear
cigarette was bound to be
In the form of a strawberry blonde
no older than twenty-three

- J.S.

If you don't love me the stars will no longer be flickering fairy dust
just dots of light that I can't comprehend.
If you don't love me the ocean will not play it's violin sing-song for me.
Just the tide sigh as she follows the endless whims of the moon.
If you don't love me the city won't be cradling me in kind looks and baskets woven from the crisscrossing of streets, the city will burn me with it's cold dirt floor and endless vacant eyes.
If you don't love me the song on the radio won't be winking at us as it croons our story, just a song on the radio for some other lovers. If you don't love me, I'll just turn the dial.
If you don't love me my fingers will still tap, words will still spill, the paper will burst but the content just vague ghosts of conversations we used to have, prepositions and verbs.
If you don't love me wine will not paint faint blush on my cheeks, make me clever and coy, twirl my hair round it's stem. She'll be wicked and horrid as she whispers the truth to my heart. That you don't love me.
If you don't love me my feet will keep up their silly game of one before the other. If you don't love me my heart will keep instructing the band inside how to move, to beat, to flow.
If you don't love me my eyes will blink from the dust of the road that you left on.
If you don't love me I will  wake up with you on my mind,
If you don't love me I will still wake.
If you don't love me I will.
If you don't love me there will be no more reading poetry to a firefly audience, if you don't love me the sounds of the crickets won't whisper, "kiss her. kiss her".
If you don't love me and the hollow of my shoulders,
and the yellow light of my eyes, sway of my walk, and the cut of my jeans and the hue of my hair and my skin against yours.
If you don't love my eyes that flirt and my sleeping tossing form, if you don't love me, then don't.
If you don't love me. Don't, then.

Sahn 3/24/14

Your laugh
Isn't a windchime
It's
    The
         Whole
                   *******
                               Symphony
Your smile
Lines up the notes
Oh
    So
       Perf
             ect
                  ly

Remember,
Those beautiful eyes aren't looking at you,
**They're looking at her.

I don't hate you,
I hate the fact
I can't have you anymore
and I hate
that I still remember
how good you smelled
and how perfectly
our hands fit together
I hate the fact
that I can't have
the only thing that made me happy.