031416 1939

I rewrite my definition of love

Every day.

Every day is a new struggle 

Or a different fight.

You have taught me

To be humble,

And that is the greatest accomplishment 

I can think of.

I may revisit old flames, and

Wonder at the wax collected at the bottom

And collect lessons as I am taught by you

(My greatest teacher.)

What love is and what love can be.

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I fucked up

And I built a home in my heart for us

No walls, no fences, just a pretty little home

A little replica I can go into when I am sad

I have relied on the width of your shoulders

And the warmth of your arms so heavily

It's all I want when work or life has me on my knees. 

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Let's take a break between 

Breaks in between sentences and let's get all this out in the open 

Because it's hard for me to physically pull these words from their hiding places between my ribs 

They cling so tightly that sometimes I get so caught up in trying to pull them out, and my words stop cooperating too.

And it's much easier for me to coax them out when they aren't first row seats to the front and center spotlight on your beautiful eyes. 

When I met you the nights were longer and I got so much more sleep. I was somewhere in between a thick fog and a sunny day and I think I was more perpetually stuck on a groggy fall morning... To be honest, maybe it would be easier to say I was forever stuck on August 20th, at 7 am. Not because the date means anything, just because that feels like a day that's somewhere between sweltering hot and beautiful cool, but the mornings are ugly and sometimes kinda damp in August, so it fits. 

The first time I saw you I thought to myself, "who still wears flannels?" And then immediately decided I still loved it when guys wear flannels. I saw the stubble on your chin and jawline and immediately decided I was, in-fact, jumping on the beard train. Not because when I saw you I wanted to change myself or my desires, but because you awakened desires in me that I had long since given up on. I saw you a few times a week, but gave you a respectful distance since you were always sitting next to a pretty girl who had a personality I can only compare to a butterfly perpetually coming out of her cocoon. The colors always more vivid than they should be, almost unreal in Texas, where colors tend to gravitate towards their "burnt" brothers... You know, the way the grass is never really grass green but more of an olive or even a "burnt sienna", and how the leaves on the trees are more often seen as a "burnt orange" than oak green. 

So I chalked you up as unattainable until one day our butterfly flew away and I asked you where she had been. You said you thought I was more of a butterfly scientist and I think I smiled despite it being a kind of serious conversation. 

I think, honestly, I already knew you weren't together. But it made more sense in my mind to place you with a pretty girl like her instead of allowing my mind to run rampant.

And so it began. The fog was now farther down towards the horizon than it was before, and I was starting to hear the wind tickle the leaves and I knew something was changing. I started to unshackle myself from what I knew and I think my prison guard kind of started to freak out but I'd been there so long I also think he didn't care too much anymore. Maybe he wanted me to escape too.

So I started grasping for the ladder that would get me out and I was halfway up before I realized I was missing prongs and that it would take me a while before I was completely out. 

But I couldn't help but encourage my friends to find things in common with you so you'd come closer and I would be able to strike up conversation. Then one day, after embarrassing myself a few times, you invited me downtown for art and tea and music and I somehow pulled some of those ladder prongs out of my ass because I was fucking OUT of there. 

It wasn't that it would have been hard to get out in the first place, I just don't think prison shackles are that flattering on me, especially not on a first date.

So we went out on the first Friday in November, which was November 7th in 2014. We got lost because I wanted to show you something too, and while I spent most of the beginning of the night flushed and embarrassed, we still had a great time. We ended the night listening to Riff Raff in my car for hours and after I went inside I cried myself to sleep because I was scared to open myself up to someone again, but every time I looked at you I felt myself open up regardless.

After that, I had invited you to Jim's for coffee because you tried to leave and I wasn't ready to say goodbye. This became routine, coffee from 11 pm to sometimes 3 in the morning. A little while later, we drank shitty lemonade and water for 6 hours outside a taco cabana, and my nose was runny because I was sick so I tried to hide me wiping it off on my sleeve because that's disgusting. Driving home that day was dangerous but I think the sun being so bright was indicative of the dawn of a new time for me. 

So, on a day when everyone wants turkey so bad we fight over them in grocery marts, I downed a whole bottle of wine and made friends with your roommate and played house washing dishes. You asked me for a ride home and before you finished asking I said yes. I stayed at your house until 11 in the morning and I honestly don't remember how I felt afterwards. I was very tired and a little hungover. I went into work in the same clothes as the night before and gushed to the johns for hours.

Somewhere in between turkey day and December 8th, I came over to your house to hang out with you and your friends. Your friends left and you asked me to stay, and we watched school of rock but we didn't really watch it. I pretended to fall asleep because I was scared to kiss you. When I pretended to wake up you tangled your mouth into mine and sucked on my lips and my tongue and I felt so small in your arms. You woke up parts of me that had been asleep and I kissed you back like I had been missing you for years. Because I had. You combed your fingers through my hair until they got caught and when I felt my hair pull away from my scalp a fire awoke in me that I hadn't felt in a long time. We pulled away gasping and you held me in a way I needed to be held. Once again I had to hold back tears because I had no idea what I was doing. In the back of my mind I remembered how men had a great way of tangling themselves between both sets of a woman's lips and never really holding their hands.

We went to first Friday again and you got mad that I wouldn't stroke your hand with my fingers. I threw a temper tantrum like a five year old and I had to explain that I had to relearn how to be affectionate... I relearned quickly.

December 8th, 2014. After a few chamoy shots I wore the freezer jacket that you hated and I buried myself in you when my best friend said you were a real man. I found happiness tangled in the hairs on your chest and I think I felt for the first time, a great love for you. Not crazily- I didn't love you. Not yet. But there was a fondness deep in my chest for you. I slept at your house that night and I woke up skin to skin with you. I woke up as your partner. December 8th, 2014. There were a lot of Facebook likes.

I wrote this not because I feel like anyone really wants to know every detail of how I got where I am. I wrote it because I never want to forget, even if it ever becomes painful to remember. I need something to look back on physically, so I can nod and shed a graceful tear and say, "This was a great beginning to a great love".

71715 0113

i am drowning in inadequacy.
to be wrapped in sweet nothings and...
and then to have it taken away
stripped of the progress...
i allowed myself to think we had made
i have walked so many extra miles
doubling back on myself time and time again
it feels like all at once
i am beginning to feel
the toll of it all
i don't understand what lesson
the stars are trying to teach me tonight
but i'm tired of being torn apart
right as the glue
from the last time
has finished drying.

sleep is supposed to
speed up the healing process.
but i haven't been able to sleep in days.

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the warmth of your hands
makes me yearn for cold nights
and wool blankets
and how it felt to sit in your car and
talk to you for 5 hours about
next to everything.
if, two years ago,
someone had told me it was possible
to fall for someone so deeply
and still have that feeling every day,
even months later,
i would have shaken my head
and explained that love is work-
that the christmas morning type feeling
goes away after two weeks,
maybe two months if you are lucky
but here we are 7 months later
and i still feel the same,
and even more.
maybe it's easy for me to jump to this
so early because i have never had someone
as supportive and independent,
have never loved someone so reasonable
so personable and outgoing,
with such solid morals,
without imposing any of these onto me.
you hold me with open hands
instead of clenching you lift me up
i know i am not tethered to you,
i know i am free to fly
and because of this i still come back.

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sometimes when i wake up

it is like the first step out of bed is

onto broken glass and gravel.

i must remember to fight.

i can choose to wear shoes

or i can wait until the soles of my feel

are tough and calloused and accustomed. 

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i was told so long ago

that one day,

i would be able to go weeks

without you crossing my mind.

i had shaken my head at the time,

said it was not possible to forget

fires in the middle of the night

ladybugs on white walls

sleeping in cots in strange houses

but now i find it so hard to recall

the first time you made me cry and

how your voice sounded when

you tried to coax me into your bedroom

and the look in your eyes when i said no.

2240 021515

my shadows wrote for me
they wrote endless monotonous books
who's spines were stiff and uncreased.
i try to tuck flowers in the pages,
so when i stumble across them again
the grey and white will be but a background
for beautiful color and a reminder that
even after life goes on
there is still beauty
there is still inspiration
that one day maybe someone will stumble across
a book and fan the pages in thoughtlessness and
catch a glimpse of a less-saturated me.
my shadows have always shown me
more beauty than i could ever hope for
we must remember that it is the sun that casts shadows
that even with light we must experience dark.
a reminder that we are here.

050115 0116

I hope that when you are
prattling on about
the women you have conquered,
that you do not consider me among them

i am a mountain
unconquerable by
a man as weak as you

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I wake up drowning in you
Wrapped in the way you smell
Like hotel rooms on the coast
I wake up drowning in all the ways
You held me the night before
The way your hands held my heart up
When it grew heavy.
I knew it when I put my head down last night,
that I can live in a world without
knowing the feeling of your arms
wrapped around me,
But I hope I never have to go back
Because the way you hold me
Is within itself a simple at of selflessness,
You do not understand but
You also do not attempt to crack my ribs open.
You have become the extra light in color,
Saturating my life in a way that
I cannot gracefully put into words.
But I know the way you comfort me with gentle hands
quiets my thoughts and soothes my lungs
while everyone else was setting me on fire.

032815 2253

you drown my demons
with the color of your eyes
and the creases of your smile.
you quiet their incessant groaning
with the soft resonance of your voice
when you whisper good morning
and
the warmth of your hands
reminds me to breathe again
and brushes the dust
from between my ribs.
this is for you
this is for you
this is for you

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God, if I could put into words
How badly sometimes
I need my skin between your teeth
and under your nails
Of course I enjoy gentle fingertips
and soft lips just as much
but sometimes I need to be reminded
that we are human
and that I can trust you.
Just as sometimes I remind you,
with hands on your throat
or fingers wrapped in your hair.
Hand on face, finger in mouth.
To be blind to your actions,
to be mute despite your touch.
It is as necessary to me
as loving touch is.
I'm so glad we share this.

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your chest on my cheek and

your legs under mine,

curled around me

hands warm on my back

like your lips

soft and hot on my own.

you awaken a field of flowers

in my stomach

blossoming all at once

and you tug at something in my chest

things i am no longer used to.

it has taken a while to trust that your teeth

won't break through skin

when you know i'm already close to shattering on you.

the colors that seep through

my skin the next day make me feel 

like your canvas

and i can only hope you will continue to 

give me your art and i will continue to inspire

because the way your hands feel on my neck

and my hips

and the way it feels to come undone on top of

or under

or beside you

is the most beautiful medium of art

i have ever been blessed enough to experience.
second only to the way you hold me afterwards.

032415 1250

It is so nice to
curl into my bed
and look at new beginnings
beautiful apartments with balconies
imagining waking up
and curling up with the morning
I am so excited.

031415 2325

is it loneliness that
buries itself within you and
causes you to latch on to
the first person to extend their hand to you?

031215 0403

you pleaded
with hot breath into
my neck
stamping your proclamations behind
my eardrums.
now that you've gotten it
what will you do with it?

031215 0402

it is very much
like the way the
ocean always fills the
void, leaving me breathless and
envious of those living on the shore
you leave me the same way.
overcome and waiting...
undone.

sometimes we must look past
the glassy surface of the water.

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I had forgotten that your face
was once familiar...
even memorized.
It comes as a shock
but nothing more
and that is even more
of a shock, that
that is all there is.

030815 0010

Even when I'm folded into 

layers of frustration

I will still cling to you 

in my sleep

like a ripened fruit, 

ready to fall

why would i want that bruise?

030415 0951

the hollow rings of ice cracking on a thawing lake

the tinkling of ice washing up and onto shore

calming, added to an already soothing song

the thunder of glacier giving birth

the anger of nature in complete silence 

the roar of fire caught by wind

crackling as it cleans

these are the sounds nestled behind my eardrums 

when i think of you

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You calm my waters
when you are near
and when you're gone
my ocean is angry
and dark

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You hold me in the way
I've always begged to be held.
No more yearning for intimacy,
I have it right here
In my arms.

021815 0321

i wish i could fold the way i love
the colors painted across the sky during a sunset
into a paragraph
into neat words and complete sentences
instead i have to be content with
saying that it is the way the clouds
settle over the horizon,
heavy and lazy and warm,
the way the city gets busy
trying to get home so it can relax.
i have to be okay with struggling to describe
the way the birds,
who i love dearly,
fall silent and how that silence tends to engulf.
i could try to explain how
watching the sun say goodbye
both breaks my heart and
mends it at the same time
but i don't know if i have the energy to
dance through that would-be paragraph.
instead i must be content with
saying that even though i know
it will be back tomorrow
nothing hurts more than watching
it go down.

im trying these out lets see how they look on the blog yepp

021715 0028

it is seasonal and terrifying
shadows that slither from underneath cars
and settle on my porch at dusk
leaking into the cracks of this old house
and coming to sit on my chest
i don't want to frighten you
with the way i will clutch to anything
that brightens my day
when i'm fighting darkness and much worse
when the sun kisses this city goodnight
throwing pinks and purples onto the horizon
... it is something that usually soothes
but for now leaves me anxious to face the silence.
i will need to be held a little more,
reminded a little more that
i am okay?

021715 0024

i love the way your mouth smells
when it is on mine.

021715 0020

I like the way you curl into my arms
like you feel as though I can protect you.
you fold into me as if
I am made of titanium,
as if I am a brick wall unbroken.
You give me hope,
that I am indeed whole.
You make me feel strong,
as if I can hold my own and
hold you at the same time.
No one has made me feel that way before.

013015 0206

I long to bury myself in your arms
where I can listen to what your heart
will whisper to me
when your lips are shut

012315 0240

my heart feels raw

012115 0200

it is so easy to crumble
with self doubt
at 2
when silence is thick like fog