The words are locked inside me
always pouring out behind me,
you know how it is
trying to pick apart the pieces,
and put them together correctly
the psyche begs to be unraveled
thread by painstaking thread
days when the needle is dull,
and there are no words
and all there is
are words

It's like this
If you live in a world where people
have always kept their heads down,
they will tell you that the sky is made of asphalt
you will think that they are being pessimistic,
but they know nothing different.


I must get away from these people
This place has the kind of gravity that pulls
you into a disease
I seem to be the only one who's noticed

Does anyone else
want to sit outside until
the wind steals their soul?

I wonder if you feel beautiful in your skin
as I sit in the lamplight, covering mine
watching limbs of strangers and friends
and feeling insignificant,
yet too large for comfort,
too large to be looked at,
too large to be looked past,
please.
Inside this small talk, I am screaming
inside myself
pleading with the world for a chance to start over,
please
just a chance to be normal
just a chance to be beautiful
please,
I just want to be a person worth loving

My plea hits the front of my mouth,
I choke it down, let it coil and drop.
Leaden and heavy.

...

The night drags, laughter presses on my silent lips
Drunken song fills the air
and I'm weighted by my own sharpness

I hope tonight that the devil finds me in my sleep.
I need to think about things.

In all honesty, I've loved you since I first knew you.
I love you in the ways I don't know how to love
and in the places I don't know how to look for
I love you in the ways it hurts to communicate
and the places eyes are most powerful
and colors, the colors you paint behind you
and wings - I was searching, you showed me roots
and that growth stems from groundedness
and that circles are everywhere

I want to be in a circle with you
It's a sort of unformed dream, where I imagine
I might not need to be constantly moving

I love you just looking at you
eyes soft and
something hidden
we don't need to speak
I just want to kiss you

My wick is underneath the surface
trying to catch the flame

as the wall between me and the air shrinks,
the light glows deep
the sun penetrates me
the sea holds me here,
breath in my pocket,

and you are behind my eyes



I swear, I swear that I'm beautiful.
This time when I open myself
a thousand singing birds will
fly from me full force
I will be metal.
and rain.
and sea.
and storm.
and calm.
mostly, I will fall with the flowers
and be skin colored.

I will not need a kiss to be awakened
but I'm looking forward to our paths crossing,
wanderer
Your eyes eat the broken meadows
and glaze over, snow-dusted, in the mountains.

Fingers.
Of all things, I'm losing my fingers
One by one, skin patches struck by cold and beautiful music,
flaking off into the leaf piles
I want you to understand
If I had knees,
I'd be on them
Bent backwards and sideways
And that of all places,
I'd choose somewhere beautiful
that of all worlds to travel to the end of
And reach
today
where maybe the end  is around the corner, and
maybe everything has some deeper meaning,
And maybe underneath all the disagreements we're all just people looking for a home in each other -
I'd be here.
Fully.
I fought to be here.

Honey.
I want to call you terms of endearment.
Because the world is a child I want to hold and nurse to health.

I love with my chest - those things I bury inside myself, I want to transform into sunshine and spread outward. Cradle inside of me and let me hold you-
I love with my eyes if you'll look I won't look away. I'll try my best to see you wholly.
I love wholly. And I love
Delicately
With my fingers.

And I sing
And sprout wings in the spring
And grow, green
I'll pull you up with me.
Softly, I'll pull you in
With my sun-soaked fingers
To the sky.
Dry and rising
Higher than high-rises

For all the hate and spite and regret and everything that ever struck
the wrong chords and left dissonance reverberating behind it,
wherever the wave crested and crashed,
I will plant a flower.
Dig with my fingers into the earth,
I love you.