If I May Not Be Allowed The Gift Of Being Loved Softly,

If I may not be allowed the gift of being loved softly,

Tear my heart out and write love poems to me in my own blood.

Peel me open and plant promises under my skin.

Hold me fierce enough to leave palm prints on my bones.

Shove the world into my hands until planets are buried under my fingernails and denial is just your name on my lips over and over again.

Leave claw marks on all of my soft parts and refuse to stitch me closed before you leave.

Let me paint you scars in the shape of my longing and destroy universes screaming of you.

Demand I remember you. Refuse to let me forget.

Refuse to leave. Disintegrate into a hurricane on my living room floor when the mere suggestion emerges and shatter all my windows.

Love me until your existence against mine feels like waves crashing into each other trying to fracture molecules. Until every moment feels like drowning but oxygen burns too much.

Love me until our desire on your tongue feels like ripping stitches open from a still-healing wound.

Love me in the dark and to oblivion and back. Love me until we birth stars in our reckless passion.

Until we have no regard for past or forever, just for the sight of the momentary explosion in your iris when I call you mine.

Love me with your teeth bared and my fists in your hair. Love me sharp with no kind edges.

Love me until you have exorcized all the gentle things I prayed to the sky for and I am redeemed.

Love me into the end and to resurrection.

Love me until you cannot bear not to.

Love me until you are on your knees and begging for mercy I do not know how to give because you took forgiveness from me.

Until loving is synonymous with burning alive and I am a masochist.

Until I am ash in the crevices of your hands and you are a symphony blaring in my eardrums and we are undone completely.

Love me until you are the only hurt I will ever have to know.

~ I am sick of begging to be loved tenderly

atrophy

and icarus f

e

l

l

for the

sun

and who are we

to blame him?

for tell me

what you wouldn't do

to be held by the

l i g h t

even if just

for a single

burning

moment

I keep writing of love

But what an imposter I am

For what do I know of love?

Of being held?

Of being desired?

But I suppose I write

Of love

And it's unbecoming

Of ache

Of writhing in your own skin with longing

I suppose I write

Of love

And the ugly thing it becomes when night falls and you have nothing to hold but your own inadequate heart

And I think

I know a great deal

Of this

Or atleast

Enough

To write a poem

Or two

“you changed” yes, I realized my worth & fell in love with the stars.

s.s. (stephenstilwell)

My mother tells me it is not me she dosent trust out in the world but rather that she does not trust the world with me.

And I learn from a young age what a privilege it is to be endangered.

To be wanted into extinction.

To be desired into oblivion.

In this same way my grandmother tells me that sometimes honesty sounds alot like silence.

That sometimes the truth is quiet.

In this same way my sister teaches me that forgiveness comes when she is ready.

~

Most days there is only forgiveness.

Cupped in my palms

Trying to stop it from trickling through my fingers.

I sip it every morning

Which is to say I seek forgiveness

From myself

Everytime I dare show my face to the sky again.

With the knowledge that I will inevitably break promises I made to me

That I will inevitably transgress against the girl I could become

And every morning I ask for her mercy

But she cannot grant it to me

For I have not granted her existence yet

And in this way I live in sin

~

Self destruction dares to taste foreign on my lips

Like rotting cherries

But how much easier it is to relearn old habits the second time around

When the mouth still tastes like burning teeth

~

I flinch so violently at the sound of my name

daring to disturb the molecules of the ether with something so undeserved

Petals fall from grace

It is my fault

Always my fault

Oh rebellious bones

How my blood blisters my veins

I think this is the way

Love moves

~

and this is how it ends

the last notes of my blood composed of subpar symphonies finally slip out into the void

my radio static heartbeat fades to quiet

and this is how it ends

in my final moments

the universe sings me to sleep

with one last lesson

my mother never had the words to teach me

and the endless silence of the infinite

caresses me into oblivion.

i exhale one last shooting star

weightless at last

as i disintegrate into the galaxy

with the realization of what a beautiful mercy

it is

to be forgotten

~

poetry dump of random lines that mean nothing in particular unless you'd like them to