Weightless In The End

I hold the weight of those cards you gave me,
running the paper through my shaking hands;
running my fingers across markings of a shaking pen.
“I can never explain how much you mean to me,” you’d lied.
Isn’t it so heart-achingly funny:
how words are really weightless in the end?

No Return Address Listed

I wanted a love with you
that you could build a home with.
That you could settle down & grow with.
It wasn’t until I was standing
barefoot
on bare floors,
staring at bare walls,
that I stood with the unbearable truth:
All along you were moving out your boxes
on this life together.
To me, our love was always a home.
For you, it was a house
you were slowly moving out of.

You Are Terrifying

Maybe you’re terrifying.
Maybe you look like someone that could hurt them;
Someone that could sink their teeth into them
& rip them apart:
limb by trusting limb,
when they’ve already spent so long sowing themselves up,
limb by aching limb.
Maybe you’re terrifying.
Maybe you look like someone that leaves a storm in their wake;
Someone that’s impossible to recover from.
Someone you drown in.
Maybe you’re terrifying.
Maybe you look like someone who promises a breath of fresh air
just when they need it most.
And when their lungs ache & open for you,
to breathe your life into them,
you kiss them dead.
Maybe you are terrifying.
You just need to find someone with a death wish.
Someone who thinks it an honor:
To be ripped apart for you.
To drown for you.
To sink for you.
To suffocate for you.
Someone who thinks it an honor
to be terrifyingly heartbroken by you.

Second Chances Are For The Foolish

I loved you once
& it nearly killed me.
I’d be stupid not to take my life,
in my empty hands,
& run with it.

Scrape You Clean

I wish that I could tell you it gets easier.
That you’ve struggled enough
& now you’re finally free.
But I can’t.
And for that, I’m endlessly sorry.
Because sometimes life just sucks the life out of you.
It takes & it takes
until you have nothing left to give.
And even then,
it scrapes the sides of you clean.

I Am Not The Girl

I was a girl
who was left behind,
after two years,
by someone
I thought I would spend forever
looking forward to.
But I am not that girl.
I am not what happened to me.
I am not my tragedies.
I am not the girl
you burned to the ground.
I am not the girl
whose embers you danced in.
I am not the girl
who was left,
after two years,
by a man with fire in his heart.
I am the woman
who rose from the ashes.

X Marks The Spot

And its the honest truth:
no matter the walls we build,
the demons we run from,
the defenses we wrap ourselves in
in hopes that this is how we survive each other,
humans are incredibly fragile things;
the most intricate, shattered road-maps of the journeys we’ve traveled
of the love we’ve lost
of the lives we’ve found.
& most of the time we are just willing ourselves not to fall apart.

The Finality of Moments

Its a moment of weakness;
when I let myself forget
for a moment
that you’re not worth missing,
I make myself remember
for a moment longer
the cold, hollow certainty of the words you spoke:
“I just don’t care anymore”.
rolling off a liar’s tongue
between the smooth, stone planes of an impassive face.
An endless loop of paper-thin moments
strung up along the crumbling walls of my mind;
in picture frames inside a love burning to the ground.
& suddenly I find strength in the finality of ashes.

Lost Before It’s Found

Romance me.
Offer me the world.
Whisk me off my tired feet.
Because I promise you,
that if you don’t,
someone else will.
And I would hate for us
to lose our chance at love
before we ever even found it.

Guide Your Soul Home

I hope your life is,
as mine,
a series of folding
in every direction,
until you can finally unfold for me.
And we will be a road map for each other;
we will guide our souls home.