grey picture frames and slivers

years of science class, and i'm just now realizing it's only light for half the day. i'm exhausted from trying to lock cheap drapes.


i haven't been sleeping well at all.

the light at three a.m.

i'm sitting where i'll sit when you leave, by a tree you've never noticed on grass you may have set foot on, but not with me (so it shouldn't have anything to do with you but it does.) and i guess this is some sort of pathetic prequel to Absence instead of the cheered toast it ought to be, and normally i'm at my least selfish around you but that hasn't mattered much lately.

i've been thinking a lot about what it even means to move on and how maybe that's best.

but i have things with you i don't have with any other person, and ever since you read my words i only want to give you more.

something about flowers:

daisies where we met, daffodils for kisses. roses for december, peonies for fall. (peonies die in the summer.) sometimes i'm sorry weeds choke out sunflowers, but lies spring up like morning glory and priorities change like dandelions, and your blown wishes haven't worked since you turned ten.

weeds have been weaving themselves into my hair and our story for days, and sometimes i think they're too deeply rooted to pull. i've been plucking petals and leaves in a half-hearted attempt to stay clean, i've been hosing off my muddy fingers and polishing my ring all week, and it feels almost sad to see my skin so clear.

everything gets messier with heat, but i'll still gently tug at the weeds. i'll still sprinkle water on my face and call it baptism, and i'll always wash my hands of the roots. because the last thing i need is   m a s o c h i s t   tracked in mud on my forehead.

welcome.

i've been making a list of things i'll never get over and it's getting long because i'm bad at erasing. i cleaned out my room last weekend and i feel empty in a good way, but also i got rid of my comforter and i don't know why i did that, because my room is so cold my toes are ACTUALLY numb in here. i used a small curling iron for prom and that was a good decision but all the sickness at that dance made it almost not worth it (almost -- don't worry, you make everything worth it). i'm in love with sunday nights because new blogs to read. i somehow missed the essential skill of painting nails smoothly and that's embarrassing as i'm 18 years old. i miss my old friend even though i see him every day and i hope he's doing good things. and i can't every stop singing. like seriously ever. graduation requirements give me headaches, all this easter candy gives me toothaches, and looking at your darn cute face gives me heartaches, because i'll forever know i don't deserve you, and i'll keep saying you're biased when you keep saying i'm pretty. but really what does it matter because we're all leaving thank heavens except i don't know how i'm going to live without you for two whole years and WHAT IF I GET MARRIED oh i'll be so mad at myself and then i guess i could add that to the list of things i'll never get over.

for my moon, again

your words, somehow so warm, and your mouth, somehow so sweet,

my knuckles, white on the wheel --

i'm sure you don't know i cried on that 26 second drive home, just like i've never told you about the words i say after pressing end. but i have told you about my old bird, and the ink on my one nail, and my favorite scent of candle, and i think those things are more important even if you don't remember them.

my scratching fingertips still carve your name in my sleep and i hope you know the reason i can't speak back is because you sometimes tangle my heartstrings in my throat.

and even though you are as far-off as always.

even though your love is as stone-cold smokey as ever.

you are still my moon.

i think you may always be. 

\\\\\\\\\

i have so many words twisting in my brain and they're all the same even though they feel so different and the words are about chapstick and wounds and you, always you, and Looming Things and maybe one day i'll figure it all out even though mymap says i "have it figured out" whatever "it" even is and maybe i'll get pretty or skinny enough to deserve you even though i know you're better than that and maybe one day i'll stay up late enough to write the Beautiful Words but i think i'm in love with sleep so i'm writing at 10 a.m. (and i think there's something to that psychology principle of once you get paid you stop liking what you love) and i'm so sorry, i'm so sorry they just won't come out right now

inky skies and midnight divulgences

my moon. 

my lovely moon. 

i dreamed you called me shooting star, and thought you meant i glow across your black night. i dreamed you called me unearthly, and heard the word heaven. you told me you'd hold me, and i dreamt of your arms. 

i didn't realize you called me shooting star because the sparkle you saw on me would fizzle out. and unearthly meant different. dreams meant fantasy. and love meant nothing. 

and when you spoke of holding me, i didn't understand you meant with a cruel, unrelenting gravity. 

the sun gently tugged me away from earth, it wasn't exactly falling in love, and everything stopped being numb and took on a golden sheen. i barely splashed as i left the freezing current in ascent, and for a while i still felt the phantom current wrapped around my ankles. the current relinquished slowly, and my frozen eyelashes started dripping. and every other part of me appreciated the word "cozy" a little more.

i broke orbit long ago, i just didn't realize that a shooting star has to keep moving. and i know now the moon's austere and distant glint may never compare to breathing in bits of sun until every inch of you shines.

but the marble moon still gleams, and sometimes on my darkest nights i stare through the window panes, letting it's stone-cold love drift through my ribs like smoke.   

and i think that's okay, as long as i wake up searching for sun. 

to: my moon and my clouds, but mostly my sun

my cold wet hair can't chill me
neither can my open window.
my blankets are on the floor.

i don't need them anymore.

i gave my mom my space heater
and haven't worn gloves in months.
i leave my thick socks in my drawer.

i don't need them anymore.

because i was shivering for so many months,
maybe so many years, and i loved a far away moon
for all that time,
and i thought that moonbeams were bright enough
to keep my heart from going numb,
of course i was wrong,
and the sun rose eventually
and dew disappeared
and even the clouds i didn't see for so much of my life
clapped as they watched me
learn how to breathe
remember how to love
live in the sun
and heal.

lyrical and i'm aching for you

the dull throb again, that's new. (re-newed) my hipbones and teeth. i could stop sleeping to understand, start crying, start staring, stop playing, stop eating, anything to understand. but i still wont. (i already tried it once and what a mess)

i need to stop thinking. and now i remember that thinking equals feeling and i didnt want to feel so i tried to stop thinking and look how that turned out, and now you're the mess but only inside and in your hair, when i really look i can see it and i ignored it for 

but stop. 

you're thinking again.  

shut it off because it's not worth it right?

and to think i always thought you were being figurative and poetic. 

from june

hello, you.

can you be quiet for a minute, so i can look at your eyes and gauge if you're whole? yes, i've seen them in pictures (a lot) but i can't tell through a screen. smile for me now, the smile that comes in the corner of your couch when it's kind of dark. next, show me your veins, please say they're untouched. i'm so glad to see those freckles glide down your bone.

now i hope you know you made me burn. all the way down to ashes. black and gray, it only made sense. i hope you know you made me red (literally) (well you certainly didn't help). i want you to understand that you emptied my tank of gas and filled my head with plans. those plans are still here, broken remnants of the storm you leave in your wake.

i'm glad you came and smashed those windows, that's when i finally jumped. then i realized clouds aren't actually soft, just pretty, and at least concrete is honest. that's when love leaked onto the street and you sat down with me to watch.

you're when blood became beautiful, and i became broken.







don't worry, i healed without you

yeah, love.

i'm always looking for you. that slight strawberry shines in any crowd, and you're stuck in the corner of my eye. even at night, in my bed, i see you in yours, and pretend they are one. i fall asleep with a smile on my lips, because in you i've found home.

you're not an apartment with white walls and a cheap fern. you're where i drink tea and read a book, where kids learn to play the piano, where the boys watch the game, where you write in your journal, where nails secure my pictures, where wednesday is laundry day, where we bake cookies and play scrabble on winter nights. 

i always wanted the apartment with white walls. with a coffee maker and one mug. everything tidy and well-lit, with pale wooden tabletops. but that's not a kitchen where soup simmers all day or deep, late-night talks occur. that's not a kitchen i can put bowls of fruit on the counters or red on the walls. these things i had no idea i wanted until i found home. 

and ever since i really found home, i've never wanted to leave. 

i got figurative glasses

 everything is framed, and even though i can see everything better, i can mostly see my own hands a little more clearly. and tree branches. that's what's really getting me.

but my glasses unearth everything i am now and i didn't think all that fear lived in my bones, growing, feeding. fear that i'm going to snap under the fall's weight, fear i didn't deserve what i got, fear that i don't actually have the capacity to be a good person, fear my parents are on the stairs, it goes on. (i'm afraid of my bones not containing those sleepy sighs from that mouth)
so i go to my room. and it gets real when i take them off before bed. i'm alone, there's no music or humans to fog up my glasses, but i still take them off. because when i'm laying alone in bed, i'm not trying to see long distances anymore. it's just that moment, it's just me. well, in actuality, it's just you. you. all for you.  
.... but it's me.

because you don't know that you've lived here, in this room, on this bed, in this mind,  for as long as i have. that you are the old mascara tube i haven't thrown away and you're the stash of gum behind my basket and you're the implicitly bleeding pages of every piece of paper and you're the corner of my down pillow. you're the mirror hanging on my wall, but i keep thinking of the down pillow. you're mostly that; i like having you around when i shut my eyes.

not having your echoes,opinions,dreams,eyes,laughs,mind linked with mine already feels like pain, and i can't wait to wear leather and have an exposed brick wall and ride the subway as a necessity but some days you break that dream and do you know i would give it all away? 
don't you dare insist i keep it