Won't Hurt Her

Words are building a dormant bomb
deep inside my chest

I stumble across the detonator that I was never supposed to see.

My skin could peel away, smoking
and the butterflies I have kept
hidden in my ribcage would
flutter to freedom in emancipated excitement. 
They'd slip past my fingers, even as I reach for them
and their escape would leave me hollow. 

I choose not to be explosive.
Instead I count the butterflies carefully
and put up a wall of shatterproof glass
to keep them where they are trapped.

I swallow them deeper
to keep them inside
where they are safe
and no one can see
what mama doesn't know.

All my words are scribbles on scraps

When I was young, I used to write.

Later I turned to music
but writing came back.

Now I want to learn sign language
but writing
is always there

creeping up on me
loitering in the back of my mind
tempting me

but if I reach for it
it becomes shy and
runs away

Dateless

A violent sun crash-lands on the
horizon
and falls out of view

but not before it has bled
all over
the sky,

staining it red
like a heart on fire
Every song is burning tonight.

The sun's brilliant wipeout
leaves everything behind it
dark and dull

I want to reach up to the
few timid emerging stars
and take hold of them
like a wet towel
and wring the colors out like water
twist them and strangle them and choke them
until their vivid hues drip across the darkness

connecting in electrical lines of green
white yellow purple
red and blue

like veins
like nerves
raw and powerful

overwhelming until there is no chance
of a reclaiming darkness.

I want to make the stars burn so brightly
and light up the night sky so brilliantly
that the sun will try to overcompensate
in the morning
embarrassed by its flaming fall.

smile on your own

I have a foolish fairytale idea of love.

I was told that I deserved someone who would make me happy.
Who would treat me better than I had previously been treated.
Who wouldn't cheat or lie, but would take care of me.

I've yet to meet him. 

the truth is, everything only exists as it is perceived.

This also means that everything is your fault.

If you feel alone, if you feel unloved, if you feel you can’t do something, if you feel scared or if you feel you’ve been done some wrong – it’s not that any of those things are true. It’s that you’re allowing yourself to feel that way.

If you are still haunted by a horror of your past – it’s not that the horror was so bad. It’s that you allow yourself to be haunted.

If you are in pain,

it is your fault.

No one has hurt you.
People merely do things
and you have foolishly allowed yourself to be hurt.

Why don’t you make yourself smile?
Maybe it will be true eventually.

Some things that I have learned about love:

It is not fiery.
It is not impassioned. 
It does not change everything about your life. It may not change anything at all. 
It does not make your heart pound 
or your mind race 
or make everything brighter, like some overrated hallucinogen.  
Love is not nearly as glamorous or full of desire and flames as it may seem in the beginning.

 It may burn brightly at first, but fades over time to a stubborn glow.

The truth about love is that everyone imagines it differently.
Everyone means something different when they utter the words “I love you”.

I wrote a piece in March of this year called “The Best Thing About Soulmates is That It Happened To Us.”
it might have been a beautiful piece
if it was still true. 

If two people are meant to be together,
two halves of a whole heart,
soulmates, if you will,
shouldn’t their idea of love be the same?
isn’t that what makes them soulmates?

Apparently not.

They’re just holding on like the rest of us.
Hoping it will last.

Love is not simple, but it is not complex. Love can be difficult. It can be wearisome. Love is not always enough. It lasts because it must, because it is habit. Because it is comfortable. 

Love can very easily change a person. And if the one you love were to leave, you’re not sure who you would be. You would have lost yourself. The process of healing is to either remember who you once were, or to discover on your own who you’ve become.

To lose love might hurts, because you’re losing a part of yourself, the same way it would hurt if a toe or a finger or some other small part of you were cut off. You will never be the same after its removal, because it will not grow back. You will, however, be forced to adapt to a new lifestyle without it.

Remember, it only truly hurts if you allow it to.

I used to think that the point of love, the point of any emotion, was to let it affect you however it might. 
You would know you were in love because you could not deny its power over you.
You would wake up in the morning and understand that what you're feeling is love. 
You would be overwhelmed with it. Flooded with it. Smothered with it. It would occupy your every waking thought. Breathe in love, breathe out happiness.

I thought love was something you would fight to the death for 
because once you found it, you could not live without it.

It would not betray you, dismay you, or enslave you.

I realize now that it does all of those things.
When you least expect it.

If we can control everything, then the aspect of chance is removed.
And life becomes that much more monotonous.

Love is not necessarily the reason you get up in the morning, its just something to come home to at the end of the day.
Not something you think about regularly,
just a shadow on the corner of your thoughts.
There for you to remember sometimes,
but to ignore most of the time.
It can make you happy -
but then again, you could make yourself happy. You have that control. You don’t need love. 

What if I need someone to talk to?

I have words in my head but no paper, I have to get them out.

You have sacrificed for her.
you'd go through hell for he.
you love her now.
But you don't know if you always will. You've already given up your past to be with her. Now is more important than before or after.

Some important things happened to her when she was a child, some good important things and some bad important things, that give reason to everything she is now. There is a reason she can use words well and there is a reason why she prefers the company of one, or of herself, above the company of friends and relations. There is a reason she rarely believes she is good enough to do everything. A reason she lacks faith in herself. And there is a reason she needs to think and prepare herself for the future.
Parts of her past torture her sometimes and when they do, she needs to know the future will be better. She needs to feel she can control it because of things that happened to her in the past that she couldn't control.

She is preparing to remake her entire future around someone else.
This is the hardest thing she can ask herself to do.

You gave up her past for her because she loved you in the present.
She is giving up her future in order to make a new one with you,
but she has to know you will love her in it.

She has to know this is not a mistake.

one day we'll be inseparable

nothing is hidden
                          from you.

the girl
stands
her feet in a puddle
with the green nail polish chipping off
clouds rumble sourly
and she's drenched in acid rain.

she knows what she knows,
she is what she is.
bare
exposed
open wide,
view her as she exists.
nothing is hidden from you.

she isn't pretty
but she is perfect.

because this is who she is.

who she is.

take it or leave it.

When you're alone, do you think of me?

The keening sound of the violin. A boy sits as close as he can to the window, because though the room is cold, the glass is warm with sunlight. Shadows move all throughout this place, criss-crossing and chattering inanely;

shadows of lives wasted, thrown away and regretted, lives being spent and lives sitting still, afraid to move forward or waiting forever.

A pair of warm brown eyes, so commonplace here. Light brown hair falls in a sweep as pages turn. Watches tick, reminding us how little we matter; phones vibrate, trying to convince us of the opposite. The colors are artificial, everything is loud.
This is what I see.
The violin is in my head.