Give her your affection and she'd give you the freckle on the inside of her hip
She was that kind of girl.

Green apple ***** with bruises under her shirt
The kind of girl who's smile broke your heart before you even realized your heart was hers

The kind of girl who made you wish you'd learned to paint so you could keep her morning eyes always
Hanging on your walls in distant shades of grey

The kind of girl who made you wish you'd learned to write music instead of learning to paint
Because her laugh was bells and whistles
And the saddest thing you'd ever heard

Give her ten minutes of your time and she'd give you anything you asked for
And you'd never know what to ask for because you'd never imagined you'd have a girl like her

A fear of the dark, torn cuticles, and an inability to stay within the lines of time
One morning you would wake up to an empty closet

You'd realize she was everything and you were a tally on a bedpost
She was that kind of girl

You keep me in the breast pocket of a heavy winter coat
Tucked away with crumbled receipts
For shaving gel, condoms, and sleeping medication
Hidden close to your heart

You keep me in the pocket of the jeans you keep discarded on the floor
Under collared shirts and a sweatshirt you got from a club you never joined
Damp with the scent of my sweat and poorly made Chinese food
Because playing with you is like playing house, playing me in the kitchen, you in the office
Us in linen sheets

We're harmless
We're impossible (That's what you told me)
We're just a house that's not real, really
And an imagination that I've let run away from me

We're locked away in a box I keep on my desk
On the torn out corner of a note you passed to me from the pocket of your winter coat
We're crammed between ticket stubs and a cherry stem your tongue laced into a knot
In your sloppy cursive, coated with time in my sloppy optimism:
"I love you"

Little dandelions poked their heads out of the graveyard in my chest
And proclaimed to the permafrost and broken branches
That they weren't afraid of death

So my ribcage shook, the structure burst, the foundation crumbled in
And the dandelions laid flat, made foolish
Never to be seen again

You looked at me with the world on the edge of your tongue and didn't say a word to me
But I guess that's just how things are between us
How they've always been

We traverse the silence between the people around us
In the crawl space that nobody notices hiding behind
The sound of their own voice
That's where you pulled me into you and breathed in my scent

That's where I breathed in you
Olives, oranges, and sadness
You'd break the glass of any bottle they kept you in

I promise I'll never keep you

Could you love me with city lights in my hair
Threatening to go over the edge of our high rise affair
Toes on the railing, sights on something better
Somewhere beyond this eternally empty city

Could you love me with a skyline out in front of you
That's doused in purple and orange, and won't have to sneak out in the morning
To go to a meeting to schedule the meetings that are important
So that I can be prepared to die

Will you love me when I'm just lights in the night sky
Something you'll lose sight of a second time
In the burn of a city that makes you feel
Like you're floating while I'm sinking

Will you ever remember if you loved me
On the streets of a city that can't remember
If I was ever here at all

You're naked in my bed and I'm moving through my own veins
Feeling things that you're unaware my body has forgotten how to feel
Things that tucked themselves in the corners of my childhood bedroom
And hid behind a wall of blue-eyed insecure snapshots, hung by string
And laced so tightly it's been suffocating the air of out my heart

I'm so sorry that my whole life seizes when your hands are on me
And that my heart breaks when they're on someone else
Because we have made a mess out of the stickiness of my love
And you have made a mess out of me
Now scattered across these ivory sheets like little grains of sand that scratch my skin at night
Like legs sprawled across yours, and mouths that don't deserve the taste of each other

Your fingers are tracing out words, I can feel it
But I just can't feel what they are
If they're promises, apologies, endearments
Or option
D) All of the above

So I'll just let you watch me and imagine your teeth on my collarbones
While my innocence takes the trust fall into the openness of your sad eyes
And part of me will pity you because you're naked on my bed and I'm miles away
Searching for my naivety in between words I can't make out
Sitting on the tip of your tongue and holding me
Because you're naked
And I think I love you

I built myself a house with a door that never unlocked
And a welcome matt that said come in
I guess you could say I'm a tease at heart
If you could ever reach my heart that is

There were no blinds on the windows, but there was no way past the bars
You could look in from in between their iron teeth
You just couldn't get past their reach

I laid out teacups in a perfect line, and hung pictures of us on the wall
You could see throw pillows on the couch
And you could see my bedroom door

I built myself a door without a doorknob
And a room without a light

So when you sat on the sidewalk and said you loved the living room
And you love what I've done with the place
I could fall asleep in the darkness of a heart you couldn't touch
Where there's nothing beautiful to see