Since the first night I met her, she’s been nothing less than all that’s kept me together. I’d reconstructed the inside of my mouth so that I could make room for the poetry she exalted from the ruins of my throat. Since that night we kissed against her car after I traveled 1,400 some miles to see her, I could taste the braille on her tongue and still find traces of it during the nights I rest my palms to her hips and claim her as mine, mine— oh, I’m a terrible lover that only knows how to make messes of hearts, since that’s all that’s ever been done to my own, but she does something else to me and it’s made me believe in the fits of magic I let go of a long time ago. I’ve made tornadoes sweep through the hallways of her forearms, but I’m always there with my wind-kissed lips to suck the thunder out that pounds inside of her chest. I may not know of beautiful things and I, I may still give myself up in fits to let go of the howls that burrow inside of my lungs, but she’s all that I know, she’s all that I am, and I haven’t the intention of ever letting her go.

Let’s live. We’ve been on repeat for way too damn long and there’s this hollow ache inside of my bellybutton for you. I’ve got a sweet tooth for danger and you’re all that will satisfy it, so give me your Hershey’s kisses while we jump off the Eiffel tower and catch each other while we’re falling, falling down and falling in love and falling in and around one another. Let’s unwind our DNA and wrap it back together around one another’s wrists so we can play tug-o-war with all that composes us; I’ve been dancing around the idea of asking you if you’d like to run somewhere, anywhere, so—

won’t you run with me? We’ve forgotten how to move our legs for so long that we’ve been snapping vowels in our ribcages to replace the ghosts of our limbs. And I barely even know your name, I haven’t any idea of what grows inside of you like wildfires, but I know that I’d rather it be me. Whatever it is that’s inside of you, let me take its place; I’m half-made of Miracle Gro and I have what it takes to wind myself inside your nervous system and call you home and, really, isn’t that all that any of us are looking for?

Look for me. I’ve been leaving you hints here and there beyond the horizon, so look up once in a while instead of at the cracks in the sidewalk. We can be enamored with the clouds and we’ll build forts with lightening bolts. I haven’t the income to take care of you indispensably, so we’ll probably be poor and we may end up living in a cardboard box in the bottom of a freeway, but we can live as Simba and eat beetles and worms and cockroaches— well, nevermind, that doesn’t sound so romantic anymore, but you know what I mean.

I don’t always have the words, baby, and I’m not as eloquent as all these synapses of letters leave me out to be and it’s a shame I sometimes don’t have the spine to back up my voice, but I’ve been carrying the world on my shoulders just so that I can give you a little more than my rugged hands. I’ve been stitching my lifelines out of my palms to give you the cursive lineage of where I’ve come from and where I’m going to go.

There’s a whole world out there, that’s all I’m saying. I’ve got a thirst for adventure that can hardly be satiated, but give me your hand and your lips and maybe we can shoot ourselves out of the atmosphere to somewhere war isn’t the answer to peace. I don’t want to live on a planet like this with someone as beautiful as you, but I swear if you give me a chance I’ll try to make it a fraction as gorgeous as you. There aren’t many things I know how to do, but loving you is one of them and I’ve gotten damn good at it while you haven’t been looking, so let me prove to you that life doesn’t have to end in heartbreak and all the horror you’ve seen is just an improvisation of God not knowing how to say sorry.

I’ve got four chambers in this heart of mine and it only takes one to keep you in, so let the other three fold in on themselves and wrap you in a hug. I don’t know any other way to say I love you, I love you, so let me show you while we’re on the road. Stop thinking and don’t give me that look with your coffee-brewed eyes, just get in the passenger side and let me drive until the sun melts into the horizon and we meet the dark side of the moon.

Confirmed: Interview for Starbucks tomorrow. :)

“He [Atman] is myself within the heart, smaller than a grain of rice or a barley corn, or a grain of millet: this is myself within my heart, greater than the earth, greater than the atmosphere, greater than the sky, greater than all these worlds.”

Chandogya Upanishad Bk III, 14:3-5

It’s all confidential, just scrutiny tied in ribbon bows spewing from the cardboard of my hands and these veins are sharpie, haven’t you heard that God is playing favorites with his pieces of art? Isn’t that shameless, righteous, to be of the same hand that birthed the earth— I would give anything, anything to believe in that magic, that fairytale, that everything that composes all of what’s inside of me, but, instead, I believe in more real things, things that twist your insides out and wring you out to dry above volcanoes and I’ve got danger written in cursive along the curvature of my vulture spine, but that hasn’t seemed to be enough from keeping women from handling themselves inside my gaping chest. 

She kissed me today. That should be a wonderful thing. That should be a thing that shakes my soul and leaves me new and makes me birth myself at her feet. That should be a thing that sucks me through her mouth into an adventure down her throat, into her stomach, wandering in the caves of her abdomen and thighs, lighting the way with lanterns dangling in my eyes and oh, it should make me feel magical.

Haven’t I been writing to you since I was born? It seems as though I have grown to know nothing more than reiterating these same words to you and I know they must not be heard, because my voice has slowly been eliminated to nothing more than a whisper and it’s a shame. It is. I once had the voice of a lion and I could dictate entire countries and I could stand on the top of the world without making a wrecking ball of it all and I, I had potential somewhere inside the clouds of my muscles and my eyes were lit with an impenetrable flame.

Now I am this, this, and you are that, whatever that is, something I can’t get a hold of, always just out of my reach and I’ve been combing the forests for you, looking everywhere, but you must be somewhere in the atmosphere, yes, that must be it. You’re somewhere in the atmosphere, because last time you left me you clipped the wings from my shoulderblades to make sure I couldn’t follow you and don’t you even feel a little sorry about that? Can’t you apologize for the ache you’ve instilled upon my chest? Can’t you tell me that you awake in a hazardous frenzy of panic in the middle of the night when you realize I’m no longer beside you and doesn’t any of this, doesn’t any of this make you feel anything?

She’s been committing awful crimes against my heart and gotten away without so much as a shackle on her ankle or a glimpse of regret in her smoldering eyes. I’ve spent nights attempting to compose a defense I could present to some grand juror of how she robs me of my senses and has left me previously, gasping for air right beneathe her feet, only to ground her heels into the honey of my hair to keep me down longer.

I have lost my ability to write of fantastic things, things like a chest full of sunshine and wandering hands and shouldn’t I be able to remember what it’s like to not have to doubt a kiss? Her lips take mine as prisoners and I’ve no chance against something like that, I really haven’t, not with the way she pounds in my veins; I cannot let go of her, not at the cost of my entire body unraveling at the seams and I know, I know I shouldn’t have given her all of that in the first place, but she’s just so damn pretty and her soul, her soul. I can’t say no to that soul.

ever since the night she abandoned me mid-
sentence with a lop-sided heart and not enough
syllables to release all that had welled inside me, i

gave all that i had previously been (it hadn’t been much, just a
few limbs and whatever beats were left in my organ of a heart;
no soul, no soul) to the coroner who’s eyes gleamed at such a
pleasant site of a once-whole woman torn apart. i tried to tell
myself of what a shame it must be to return to the universe the
way i had been brought in— this blackness does not suit my
mouth well, these mariana trench lungs had been buried with
remnants of consonants still forming, with vowels pushing the
boundaries of my veins just to get past my cold, blue lips—

even while suffering the consequences of no longer being in this
fickle world, she could still stir parts of me that were not known to
exist in the first place and if that is a tragedy, you have not been
in love.

I’ve been writing you in the oddest of places. I keep the idea of parchment in my pocket at all times so that when words start fumbling out of my clumsy mouth I have somewhere to dispel it all. It seems to always be unfinished thoughts and so I’ve been theorizing that maybe that’s all we are: an unfinished thought in an unfinished world, with unfinished business attending to our wreck of a heart. I meant to decide whether or not this was a thing to be sorrowful of, but I keep getting lost in the supermarket of your ribs and how am I to compose coherent thoughts when all I can think of are the ways in which you leave me breathless? You have been struggling with loving me and there’s nothing tangible I can find to blame it on, so I just toss these words out into the air and hope they get caught somewhere you can find them, somewhere they settle into your bones and make you realize all these things I’ve been leaving on the pillow beside your head when I get up in the morning to wash last night off of my sordid body.

is it that i touch your
manhood in just the right way, that my
mouth is a refugee of pleasure you can’t get
enough of, that my hands are holy in the
aftermath of your explosion, that my
cunt needs to be claimed and owned and
is it that no other woman proclaims her
desire of you better than i, is that why you
feel the need to destroy me every night in the
wake of a restless moon, with your
firecracker lips and your smoldering
eyes; is that why you terrorize me

there are ways in which i have been loving you,
terribly(without consequence), imaginary and
lost in shades of black and blue like the
bruises that blossomed on my rose-struck mouth when you
kissed me that night you first put your
hands on me(third, fourth time and i lose count; the clock
always strikes me before you get the chance). give me
every part of you as consolation for the wakeless nights i
convince myself i am real; i have been losing
ounces of myself at your grounded feet and fear the
reconstruction of my soul is near if i do not
collect the pieces of me strewn about your bedroom floor.
what a tragedy it would be to forget myself in the
face of such a star-struck affair when we are so close to
refiling the stars in our name and oh, oh, darling i am just
waiting for you to love me as i love you and that is what
saddens me most.