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I do not want to go home yet please stay here with me or don't this silence is an oxymoron quiet and filling soft and jagged breathless deep breaths This lonely is heavy drawn hotel curtains is permanent blue-grey winter twilight is days spent staring at the constellations of my ceiling 

I do not want to go home yet I know life is beautiful for some people sometimes just not today stay here with me leave me alone with you go away please don't, stay please don't stay with me here here we are only what we are not what we imagine I am tired of imagining I want to be real with you

I want                                                                                                                 

not to go home 

yet

please

don't make me

I would give up all my heartbreak poetry for you.

A Writer’s Paradox 

When She Tells You That She Loves You For The First Time

When she tells you she loves you, for the first time It will be over the phone You will hold your breath You have not misheard her, though you will wonder if you have You will wonder if she can hear your heartbeat over the line You will wonder, if your's quieted, if you would be able to hear hers You will wonder if she has hung up You will double check that the call is still running Just in case You will contemplate both running and hanging up Just in case Just in case she meant it, just in case she didn't When she tells you she loves you, for the first time   You will want to believe it, with everything you do not have left Believe it I promise you that she means it, with everything she does not have left When she tells you she loves you, for the first time This will not be the first time either of you have imagined her putting these words into the space between you But this is the first time she has given you a chance to catch them, to catch her And is that not love? Two people, using the words I love you like the salvation of echolocation Letting the sound out, waiting for it to hit the other person Waiting for the echo to return to realize how far or close something is to you The echo that will help you orientate yourself in this dark cave of a world where we have all gone blind When she tells you she loves you, for the first time It will be over the phone You will reply, you will wish she would have hung up, you will wish you would have run, but you will reply You will wish you hadn't, but you will reply You will either echo her words back to her and realize how close you two really are or You will echo her words back to her and realize how far you two really are or You will say something stupid and hang up... and call her back, and echo her words back When she tells you she loves you, for the first time Smile. Let the melody thrum in your veins and sing you to sleep Let it be what wakes you in the morning and keeps you awake

When she tells you she loves you, for the first time Smile. Let yourself believe she means it I promise you she thinks she does 

Blood Letting

*Cutting Trigger Warning*

I practice the ancient art of bloodletting I create an incision on my body and let my tainted blood run free in an attempt to cleanse myself of some unidentifiable disease, sickness, illness But I cannot outrun it Cannot seem to drain this contaminated blood before more unholy red liquid is pumped out and running rampant in my veins again I try and explain this to my doctor of modern medicine and she tells me that this is a dated, useless tactic That this is too dangerous a way to try and heal But is this not the point To watch the incisions heal and pretend like I too am healing When she asks me why I do it all I can think is 'red' Maybe I am addicted to the red Ozzing and dripping and flowing more freely than I ever could Red is the colour of love you know Maybe I am proving to myself that there is still love inside of me Maybe I am bleeding all over myself in an attempt to pretend I am loving myself Do you see? I am covered in it She asks me what I get out of it Beside red? Besides pain? Besides release? I suppose I receive the marks It is then that I realize that my favourite thing about my scars is that they are mine That they belong to me That they are the one thing that always will

Preformed at my city's first slam and came in second place...and met the mayor...and got a gift card to a book store...like-- could it get any better?

I broke a heart once

Twice

A few times

It is not what one might expect

Because most assume to break a heart

Means that you do not have one

That you have forgotten how to care for a delicate thing of that nature

But this is not true

To break a heart is to be reminded

That you do in fact have a heart

Feel it mirror each facture a thousand times over

And know that you caused this ache

I do not expect your pity

Nor your mercy

Do not ask you to forgive or forget the pain

But perhaps

Promise me you will try to be happy

In the way I could never make you

Promise me that you will not avoid eye contact in the halls

Smile like I am no one

That you will not change your seat on the bus

Sit next to me like I am stranger, far from perfect

Erase every trace of me

Every photo, email, sweater

Tell me that the light no longer refracts the shards of you that still cling to me

Tell me that you saw my blood sacrifice soaked sheets

That were a result of long sleepless nights being nicked by every last peice of your broken heart caught in my blankets

And threw them away

That you healed yourself and did not need me to do it

Tell me that you are happy

And I had nothing to do with it

But I suppose

I deserve no such redemption

And so I will sit here

With the ache of two people

Who never meant to break a heart

To be a writer

Is to watch

Ink splatter like blood

& People scatter like shrapnel

To know that

Pencils are prayers

Pens are promises

& that poetry books

Are filled

With dying flowers

& wilting words

Poetry

Is a good friend

She waits patiently

While I cry

& just when I think

I may drown in this sorrow

She reminds me

Of how to turn ruined mascara

& tears into ink

Holds me long after the inspiration has gone home

& kisses all the broken beautiful

Where Does Poetry Come From

Where does your poetry come from, you ask. And this. This is where it comes from. From questions like this. Feel the words turn to ink in your mouth. Coat your tongue and drip onto notebook paper. Watch the ink turn into black hole droplets, and poetry my love, comes from the universes encapsulated in that darkness.

Where does your poetry come from, you ask. And then you smile. And that. That is where it comes from. It is birthed from the way the sun reflects off your teeth and eyes onto lined paper perfectly. The shadowed letters begging to be penned. Claiming they are here from the heavens and it is impossible to think otherwise.

Where does your poetry come from, you ask. And that is where it comes from. From the way every word spoken by your voice possesses a lyric like quality. A melody that sings me to sleep and wakes me gently to the sunrise. A song I cannot quite remember the words to and so I try to recall them with pen and paper and the quiet background track of your laughter set on repeat to keep me company, and jog my memory.

If I asked you to kiss me

would you do it?

Do not pretend to be shocked because we both know you felt it too. Went through it all just like I did. Even if it all happened so quickly. Too quickly. The falling in love. The falling out of it.

If I asked you to kiss me, would you do it?

Rest your hand behind my ear, lean down a little farther than comfortable because youd have to. Just like I always imagined you would. Right in front of the door you met me at everyday. Without fail. To try. And try again. Where I would tell myself it was over until you showed. And i would find myself trying too. Because you made me want to.

If i asked you to kiss me, would you do it?

Call it...closure or whatever you need to be at peace with yourself when we touch but some part of me needs it. And i think you do too. Because why else can neither of us seem to ever let go? I think it is because the peices of the us that are still in love are rioting inside us. Refusing to die because they know knew we could have been something beautiful. And i know, that we do not have that kind of time anymore but

If I asked, would you kiss me?

For you. For me. For the us that was. For the us that is, still, in love, despite everything.

Would you kiss me?

Acknowledge everything we never had the chance to be?

Would you kiss me?

If I aksed?

Just because I asked?

And then you smile at me, and I remember that this, this is what I gave up all my good poetry for. Because when I am with you, heartbreak is over rated.

-why i cant write love poems

Throw back to about a year ago when we weren’t in quarantine and I was thriving kinda sorta <3

Preformed at my city’s first slam and came in second place…and met the mayor…and got a gift card to a book store…like– could it get any better?

I have not prayed for a while. But tonight I do.

Pray for repentance and Lives lost

For I am a murderer

A killer

A taker of life.

Today I plucked a bouquet of wild flowers. And claimed the slaughter was owed to a love of beautiful things and an appreciation of the simplistic intricacies of mother nature. Told myself I was leaving enough for the bumble bees and,

That this abundance

would not exist

if it did not want to be

Taken

From

And taken home. And have its withering corpse pressed flat and brittle and forgotten into the pages of a notebook. Plastered across photographs as though it's only job is to look pretty and not

to Bloom

and to live

And is that not so man of me

To be selfish enough to think that this beautiful and constantly perseveringly little miracle was meant for me and mine. And when she did not go peacefully, Refusing to yield to my hand and relinquish her place in the soil and attachment to her roots. I pulled her apart.

Snapped her in pieces.

Left the parts deemed unworthy severed in the dirt.

And carried her away. Broke a nail or 2 in the process and did nothing but chuckle at the fight she put up. And the resilience instilled in her.

As though that could stop me from taking what I wanted.

When I get home, I strip her, of her leaves. And cut her into palatable, Manageable pieces. Just the pretty parts. Lay her along a wire and tape her down alongside other already fading bodies not unlike her own.

Call it a Crown.

Where the statement on my head with pride without questioning what there is to be proud of. Celebrate the taming. Bask in the temporary beauty. Know that this thing is easily discardable when it finally disintegrates. Crush every bug and beetle and fly that crawls out of her wilting petals. Say:

it is not my fault.

They had the entire walk home to leave. They had an entire life to make somewhere else their home. They have invaded my home. I will protect it. I will kill you. And it will not be my fault.

Forget the fact that I displaced you. Forget the fact that I uprooted you. Forget the fact that you did nothing but exist where you always have. After all, Your flower made the same Mistake.

To exist.

On my path.

In the sunlight.

Practically begging to be seen.

To be Held.

To be plucked.

And I pray, Thinking of the corpses littering my living Room floor. Rotting away so far from home. Eternally trapped in the house of the one that slew them in their prime. Petals curling in on themselves. Wonder if I dare be the hypocrite who asks for mercy, When she awarded None. Pray if I crack open a window, Their souls may yet slip away and wander home.

But

even then,

Perhaps,

They ought to stay.

Perhaps,

I deserve the haunting.

It will not ache forever. Just long enough for you to learn that you can endure.

Another Fad

Always saying the same old shit that's been said before

Hard to live when inside there's a war

And outside there's a half baked revolution

Turned off and on like channels

Switching from mothers to fathers to vets

Who are we to think we know best?

Mr. President

Mr. President

Haven't you heard?

You're losing favor in the streets

Blockades with your faces on them

Bodies with your name on them

Government mercs just happy to get fed

Fed up by those that bleed orange not red

What can be said

About "Love thy neighbor"

When it's so hard to "love the self"

When we can't even afford things at the bottom shelf

Mr. President

Mr. President

Won't you feed us

Won't you hear what we have to discuss

Discussion to Discord

Look around at what you're in for

Nothing has changed

Nothing is new

Same in the 1880s as it is with you

White rich men control the world

It's hard to start a riot

When it's easy to be complacent

Because if you rebel you'll just be replaced, then

You will be ignored and beat

A fight for your life is just another fad

Who cares that there's another body

Another son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother lost

When the pigs at the top justify the cost

For your lives and your livelihoods

It's hard to give when you never get

The weight that pushes you down is always set

To be more than you can take

How much more can you take?