i often feel like hollow light. If you
were to touch me, there would be
nothing but a hand passing through
a few swirling luminescent particles—
i am a ghost pretending to be human.
i admit that this is hard for me to say–
writing without wrapping words
in warmth is unsafe, risk-laden; my
fingers freeze up, unmoving,
suddenly unknowing. there are
a few moments each day when i lose
all my speech, and five, ten, fifteen
years of learning how to hold myself
together with shaky hands vanish,
swallowed like lifeboats sinking. i
would like to tell the truths buried in
my stomach—like cutting open the sky
and watching all the stars fall through
torn fabric—but each time my
words fail me, and so I will never call
myself a poet. perhaps one of the
most difficult things is writing
without metaphors—i can’t make
fear or pain or the shaky breaths
that happen after you’ve cried for too
long sound soft or lovely or like deep
ocean tremors, and now i am no longer
an artist, i am just the raw, bare soul
of a person who never quite got the
hang of stability. still i am attempting
to decipher how all these people
keep their feet on the ground, so if
you find anything for me to saw the
wings growing from my ankles off with,
let me know.

I saw it in her eyes
She was going to leave
*But she didn’t know it yet

distance was no stranger to us
but months passed, almost a year
and i could still feel his lips on mine
the smell of his skin and the taste
of his mouth
distance and time didn't matter
his physical absence was recovered
by the memory in my touch

it's barely been five months
since i said the final goodbye
this was a new kind of distance
one bound with fear and freedom
now, at nights, i cannot feel him on me
i cannot see him when i close my eyes
my memory hazes over as i try to recall
what he tasted like, smelt like, felt like
there are echoes in my mind
of his laughter and his anger
there are echoes in my mind of what
it sounded like when he told me
everything was going to be okay
but everything really isn't okay
and i can barely remember what it
felt like to hold him and feel like
everything was going to be okay

memory is a *****;
you are its master
and i am its slave.

there's more to 'i need you' than meets the eye
the deep pangs, in waves, that crash inside
the emptiness and loneliness
my body begging to be touched
the late nights and the early mornings
the pain that stabs without warning
when i see a couple with fingers intertwined
i go back to the days when you were mine
good & bad
ugly & true
there was so much more
to me and you
it's all gone now and
'i need you' doesn't do justice
no words, no poems
can describe how much i miss us