We try to love what cannot be tamed. Wild horses,

vodka in shapely bottles, angry men and the things
they carry. We have done what we could. They say
anything they can to justify leaving. That we are
always sad. That we have let our hearts burn out
for petty things. That we are too fragile. That we are to selfless.

That we are too dependent.

They accuse us of being too sad to love. 

We’re not sure where we’ve learned
this, to want the things we know we can’t have. 

Chances are,
we are all the same, riding high on velvet blue nights.
Our weaknesses have names and phone numbers,
addresses we can send letters to,
describing our love and poetry. We are praying for sixteen again,
for clear skin and boys
who asked for permission before holding our hands. They say
they can find us by our cheekbones, that they are
small, miraculous sources of light. 

Sometimes we’re safe
but usually we’re not. 

The crime scene tape
should have been our first clue.

I don’t want to talk to him
but his voice is still the only thing that soothes me.
My body feels like a waiting room and I’ve already
tried pills, vodka and blades. Mascara piled on so thick
I can barely open my eyelids but the thing is,
I don’t want to see. You tried to love me once
and ended up calling me a damsel in distress.
I really miss you but I still haven’t
told my therapist. Sometimes it’s nice just to have
someone to talk to, you know? When I’m afraid
I sleep with the television on, volume high
so that the voices in my head won't bother me. Everything
is just static. I am okay. I. Am. Okay. I-am, okay.
I text people and tell them about all the fun I'm having but 

you're the first person I wanna talk to when I get a paper cut.
I sometimes compare my body to a junkyard
and I find bits of scrap metal beneath my bed
from people who break their promises. Maybe
love ruins you a little bit. Maybe we don’t care.
We are so young to hate everything so much.
We can recite the periodic table from memory
but still can’t quite believe it when they say
that they love us, too.

Even from far away

you could see it

they were drunk

but not from any type of beverage.

they were drunk off each other

the way they laughed

the way they kept sneaking glances

they way they curled into each other

with a nervousness behind

subtle excitement

even from far away

you could see it

they found each other

utterly intoxicating

It's not that I dont love, It's that I do...

"it’s not that i don’t love you.
it’s the sound i heard when i was 9 and my mom slammed the front door so hard behind her i swear to god it shook the whole house. for the rest of the years, i watched my father break his teeth on vodka bottles. i think he stopped breathing when she left. i think part of him died. i think she took his heart with her when she walked out. his chest is empty, just a shattered mess or cracked ribs and depression pills.
it’s not that i don’t love you. it’s all the blood in the sink.
it’s the night that my dad spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if i was going to be okay, after the boy i loved, didn’t love me anymore. it’s the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood. so much blood.
it’s not that i don’t love you. it’s the time that i had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her boyfriend fucked his ex. i swear to god she still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks.
i think when you love someone, it never really goes away. it’s not that i don’t love you. it’s the six weeks we had a substitute in english because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn’t handle getting out of bed. when she came back she was smiling. but her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. and sometimes when things break, you can’t fix them. nothing ever goes back to how it was. i got an a in english that year. i think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays.
it’s not that i don’t love you.
it’s that i do."

The Arctic Wind

He tells warm lies through lips as cold as frost,
while his eyes cast frigid glares.
His backhanded barbs, sharp as steel,
strike like ice crystals in your heart.
Infidelity coats upon him like a sheen of ice.
Beauty and slippery deceit, rolled into one.
And yet, you stand, as a woman made of snow,
not truly seeing, not speaking out.
You slowly die, waiting for him to thaw.
A snowball in the hands of Hades stands a better chance,
than you, to win his heart.
For within his veins runs soiled slush
and his soul is an Arctic wind.

Universe

She painted stars
On her fingertips
And waited
For someone
To hold on
Long enough
To discover
The universes
They held.