Concert

We locked eyes

And mouthed “I love you”

With the excuse of a song

Playing in the arena around us.

You were wearing jeans and heavy boots;

I remember because they thudded loudly

On my carpet later that night

When the right people made the wrong decisions.

We touched noses and I held you there,

The gentle slopes of our faces

Crashing down with waves of dopamine

That lit the world with a feigned fire of forged emotion.

The butterfly kisses were my favorite;

My wings were too short and yours tickled.

Sometimes we’d make them fly to each other,

And our lips would barely brush but that was enough.

“You’re a strange, strange girl,” you said,

and I breathed in deep to save every last molecule of you.

It was the only way you knew how to say “I love you”

When the music stopped and there was nothing to fill the silence.

Sunnyside

Her bare breasts spread flat onto her chest like two forgotten puddles of spilt ink, rising and falling with the steady tempo of her lazy heart. Gentle orange from the streetlights below soiled her face with the warmth she did not want to feel. Couldn’t feel. The accidental boy with the blue eyes and sneaky smile who stayed two nights too many circled the palm of her hand with an unsuspecting finger. Even in the sea of sheets against his fiery chest she felt herself shiver. Round and round he went, tracing the same spiral she tripped down last summer when Frankie fell off a cliff somewhere in the forests of Washington state, and then again in the fall when Angela was diagnosed with cancer. Fucking cancer. He nuzzled his stubbled chin into the neck he just met, dribbling with sweat and perfume, now covered with love bruises and the kinds he will never be able to see: the bruises that formed the mornings after the screams clawed their way out of her narrow throat, making their desperate escape into the black night. He painted pictures with dirty words of empty rooms where they could be alone, and half-whispered promises of eggs in the morning. She turned on her side and felt the depleting universe inside of her pool in the socket of her right shoulder. He weaved his fingers into the spaces between hers and she let him, her calloused hands unmoving. Little did he know that she did not need strangers’ beds to be alone, and that it’s been a long time since she’s felt the sunny side of anything. 

i wonder

i wonder, how often do you think of me?

is it every time you breathe and my mouth is not there to inhale a small sliver of your soul?

or is it every time you look up and your gaze is not met with my eyelashes brushing gently against your cheek?

or maybe it is every time your lips curl up into a smile and there is no one there to laugh at your crooked teeth.

or perhaps it is every time you furrow your brow in frustration and i am not there to smoothen your forehead with a kiss.

i wonder, do you even notice that i am no longer there?

or if when you breathe now, your lungs flutter with sighs of relief.

or if when you look up, all you see is clarity where mist once clouded your judgment -- your every thought.

or if when every time you smile, it is of release and of the realization that this is what you've always wanted -- to be alone.

or if when you furrow your brow, it is in genuine confusion as to why it took you so long to get here.

i wonder, how often do you regret the life i so terribly miss?

Replies of Chloride

It makes me wonder

With every bitter word you say to me now

If the love I poured into your soul

Still burns on your tongue

With the pungent aftertaste 

Of defeat and loss and deliberate departure

And if

With every word I say back to you

Snide remarks made of useless blades

Dulled by the numbing pain of goodbye

The hairs still stand on the back of your neck

Like the first time I ever told you I loved you

Or if we’ve gotten rid of it all

and bleached each other out

stains of Love on our white satin solitude

Immune to the harshness of our voices

Raw with anger and the unspoken truth

That this wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

76 Framed

I look through the photographs of you and me

And my soul aches for that time

When I was yours and you were mine

But not for the reasons that you may think

I ache for a time where belief was alive

and Love rang through the air

a poignant blanket draped across the city

tucking our troubles away into a lullaby

warming our chilled hearts with the hum of forever

I ache for a time where all I could grieve

was the thought that we were not doing enough

with the magic that radiated in the spaces between our fingers

meandering through our bloodstreams

nestling its way gently between the tiny gaps of

I 

Love 

You

I ache for when I could see an entire lifetime in your eyes

and every crinkle and grayness was a sign

of strength and the pillars of our everlasting love

Stood tall with certainty and ambition

I ache for the nights where you would hold me

and the darkness would swallow us whole 

summersaulting with passion... and faith.. and trust

and the silences pulled us closer in a solemn hymn of eternity

I look through the photographs of you and me

and I fear that I will never be able to feel that deeply ever again

that I have grown numb to the mysteries of Love

and willingly turn a blind eye to all She has to offer

My soul aches for a time that is trapped in pictures

A time that cannot be replicated with lovers whose hearts are housed in the future

A depth that puts the endless secrets of the oceans to shame

A bountifulness that makes Eve wish she had not fall victim to that moment of fate

There have been fables

and there have been tales
told by our ancestors
and homeless men on the street

warning us not to fall

not to surrender

and feel it all

Because nothing will ever prepare you
for the self destruction

and the pity

and the pain that comes along

with knowing that something 

so overwhelmingly brilliant

can be yours

only to be felt once

and suddenly,
never at all.

It's All Fun and Games

Your NFL team won tonight, and I couldn’t help but smile and congratulate you in my head. Smile about your adamant belief that if you wear their jersey five minutes before the end of the game, you’ll help them win. Smile about how hard you kissed me when they did. Smile about how when I asked you why you root for them when you’ve never even been to Colorado, you replied that as a little kid, you liked the colors of their uniforms: a vibrant orange and a navy blue. And it just stuck. Now you’re theirs forever.

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m jealous of them.

Because somehow, falling asleep in each other’s arms every Sunday night turned out to be a ritual far too difficult and complicated to follow. Somehow, kissing me with other eyes watching became too strange. Somehow, even though you swore that the color of my boring brown eyes is your favorite, you’ve decided that you’re tired of looking into them. Somehow, it’s easier to commit to a bunch of burly men who have no idea you exist than to a girl who has forgotten what it’s like to exist without you.

Remember When?

Booze, buzz, and sticky floors

You love me but I love you more

Dressed up like the adults we pretend to be,

But we’re just children, you and me.

Darkened room and tortured heat

The last thing I want is to admit defeat 

You say you can’t, so I say I will

That’s what you do for love, yourself you kill

Tiny buttons and silver doors

Who would’ve known what was in store?
I loved you most, that I know

Because it were you, you wouldn’t have let me go.

We had so much more of us ahead,

At least the next four is what you said.

But then you realized that we weren’t that strong,

That a love like this couldn’t last that long

We built a life we thought we’d live together

Silly us, to even think of believing in forever

Now we know to take a closer look

Reality: It never happens like it does in the books.

You were my prince, I thought you knew

But even that was never good enough for you.

You never stopped to think or even second guess

What would become of such a mess.

I thought I lost my lifelong friend,

But you were just a lesson to be learned—a generous lend

And now I’m just left to pretend 

That you are more than just a “Remember when?”

2:30 AM Thoughts

Someday, when all your dreams have come true and you've gotten everything you've ever wanted out of this life, I hope you remember that there was one you left behind, deliberately abandoned in the back alleyways of your mind, like an unfinished sentence or a half-eaten slice of bread. I hope you dig deep within the sandpits of your soul and uncover the entire existence we made together, like opening up a box of distance memories filled with half-ripped, faded photographs. I hope you remember everything we thought we'd be and the life we so naively built together when we were eighteen and didn't know any better. I hope your eyes fill with the same tears I cried every night for months on end, and your lungs cave in from the weight of the regret you've been trying so hard not to feel every day since that crisp November morning when you so wrongly decided which dreams were worth turning into reality.