Corpse and wood

You swore you could see right through my coffee cup littered floorboard

Had worn that aesthetic before you got bored

And you bet its so petty

Like being spanked as a child

Go on "its a flawed system of justified abuse"

When you have a child, you know what youll do

While i think i should be less sensitive

Before i leave in a tangent

Say more than i should on the subject

It is always more of me than i should have shared

Fuck the boys who are loose with their words and crowned sensitive

While i am better off dismissive

I had never spoken up to you or anyone with such confidence

Yet It still came out as whimpering, helpless softness

But you let me finish

When I should have just steeped in the air of injustice 

Spared the awkward silence 

But "i grew up from a humble background"

And my parents owned a home on a street with grass that buried my feet

Shame by the time i was 9

I had felt the bloody nose of defeat

you are lying too

As you are prying through

Some feigned idea of understanding

Guessing childhood traumas

Like its a game you're landing

It is digging up graves for the haunted

So i can reface everything i was told you wanted

Your rootless, divine ignorance makes me jealous

When you say such beautiful things

I disregard

you are exaggerating me

And grasping at strings

To make me blush

Everything you guess is a flush

And everything you said you wanted when you were getting to know me

Caught me up and made me weak

Only for this honesty to change what you think

april-14

i am itching my skin
peeling off the sunburn of my decisions
it is just as agitating as knowing you are not who you said you would be
that you are closer now to a crutch named "happy"
because im still too young to be your drinking buddy
instead i watch you etch my brother into a carbon copy

so i wonder if im burning holes in my brain
just trying to relate
when she said you were different
i knew, that means more than youd ever been
lost the light in your eyes
yours were duller than mine this time

remembered skipping stones, playing hopscotch
while you preach to me that there is no god
and it all made too much sense
coming from someone i trusted
who had seen more than i can now glorify
i hate that you still make me cry sometimes
wonder what a father who loved god could have been like

we played monopoly on a sunday night
and now im glad you won
that you took advantage before anyone
recite that the shitty things that make me weak
will make me stronger
just give it a week

so i gave it two years
and now i am just as confident that you would remember my name
as much as i could recognize your face
ashamed to say i cried water under the bridge for a minute
before i remind myself the thinning alcohol does to blood
pissed now my crutch cant be Noah's flood
id jump the boat sooner
than you can regurgitate your habit
you can numb your mouth
and mine as i watch
sickly comforted to know
it wont be long
that my friends dont watch for articles
about being dead and unknown

C.C.

i spent a rainy sunday morning
evening the tone of my voice
while you danced around from room to room
Claiming you felt a change
reimagined yourself after meditation or feng shui
you always swear you feel different
Though nothing has happened yet

i get tired of following you
as im sure people often do
So i offer to rearrange your records
by new or old pressing
whatever that means
always lacking the prowess to fill any social scene
and i think about making promises i often wouldnt by choice
then feeling insecure under the noise
i preoccupy myself

you run around with some shameless need for eccentric perfection
hang art the way i hang nooses
as i drink more coffee than you can stomach
and thumb through your collection of poetry lazily
compare myself to everything
come up short of what i really need
i am more hungry for admiration than honesty

so i have been your lover longer than i have been your friend
because i know its easier than anything we could have actually wanted
you hold your paintings up and i cannot imagine you as a separate being
and do not wish to
only hold you at a distance
the timeline is a maze of reckless attention
some cynical phase of passive intentions

west coast or not my home

you only say youre sorry

after youve invaded my borders

and before questioning my comfort zone

i know youre laying beside me

but ive never felt more alone

i only ever feel raw and unprotected

when your fingers graze down my spine

or arm wraps around me tight

before i can say thats not something i can like

a quick reminder men take what they can have

and a little bit of me every time i feel it flashing back

and it pisses me off that you packed a tie

a complete misdirection of where i was headed

when you are nothing of what i know ive wanted

a bit too eager to praise the audience

when i bury my bones in the backyard

for reckless boys like you to harvest

so you remind me of everything i know i cant handle
staying up too late to hatch my escape or over-think
the way i feel suffocated and incapable to speak
too often, tripping over memories that make me sink

i try to preoccupy myself with more important things

people back home practicing knots for nooses out of shoestrings

or breaking their back to not change anything

i am not like any of them

my heart breaks to convince that there is anything redeeming

when we know more of damaging feelings

paint or pen

just fuck this when i am filled with a forest fire

and you cant feel anything you deem worth while

you said for the first few weeks i swept you off your feet

but the attention exposed where you were chaffed from the previous

some other girl rubbed you raw

in a way that made you feel cold like metal and red like rust

and i know my pen is more delicate

than the way you make a name for yourself

but i have met where you are sensitive

and have never felt more connected

and i have a feeling that some unexpected things are more permanent

you are fresh in that you are in a new beginning

my heartache is fresh and consistent

because when i look in the mirror, i still have my father's curly ringlets

and the heart that goes along with resenting the resemblance

i recognize i torture myself with the same longing for connection

respond by drowning myself in some sort of a depressant

anything to alter my stagnant vision

when i wasnt surprised anymore after the age of seven
i learned to be more comfortable naked
because my skin was bruised from too much attention

then you didnt kiss me until four dates in
and promised all this bullshit
that i actually believed
or i dont know, maybe i just wanted to...
i fell harder even as i was leaving
when you told me not to do anything that doesnt make me happy again

i dont know how to open up until the last moment

or expect my poetry to mean more than i show it

???

2 weeks in/drunk off 1 beer/friday spins

I would have said i love you
A long time ago
If i didnt know any better
My emotions are entrapment
And I dont want to be a heavy head on your pillow
Or a heavy heart on your weighted chest
When we're already pulled down by our past

I cant hate you for being honest
I can only resent her more for tearing apart your best
And dissapoint myself by moving too fast
Fuck i Only fall more in love before you can promise
But im trying not to make it a habit
To give you all of me before you can handle it
But you were more than i expected

Whispering words i should say definitively
But your presence means more to me
And im too tied up in what we were supposed to be
While you discourage the idea that this is enough for me

I dont know if it is
I dont really care at this point
Ill grip until callouses turn my hands rough
Run them over skin i have touched
for only barely two weeks
And im sure its enough
To feel like i have known you too well to make my stupid voice weak
I would tell you everything if i wasnt afraid
I would hear myself cracking
Breaking open to trace the lines on my limbs and what they all meant
We would deal with heartbreak in the same way
If i hadnt found a safer place

And im not talking about hiding or sulking or even burrying it deep
But coming to terms with damaging things
I was told were a problem for me
And i dont know if you have thought the same things
But i just really want you to share everything with me
Because i have never felt attached to someone so lovely

basement songs

I have always felt more comfortable naked
But my head feels nice on your soft chest
When i lay down to wrap around
I know that i can rest

I have always resented that i can take off my clothes but leave my make up
Smeared on pillowcases in sheets i have not felt safe in
But i feel your breath on my cheek
And do not hide from sunrays brushing my face where your hand runs to move my hair that covers my eyes
You say that im beautiful like that and inside

I have never mustered up the courage to compromise with a past i am unnecessarily embarrassed with
But i felt so intensely connected
Then you made me feel delicate
As if everything i have been through does not weigh me down
And though i still hate it
I no longer wrestle with the negativity that dulled me out or stole my crown

I had previously felt relegated to a loneliness due to lack of understanding
But i have never felt so sure of myself
Standing not stupidly too soon to be bare flesh
But confidently with my heart so honest

I have yet to have felt like i needed to compromise with myself in order to please you
And my heart flutters every time i know i can say what im thinking
without worrying we will rub against each other with friction
Or leave red, raw, cutting myself for lack of attention

Instead i press my lips against your skin
After i climb out of a hole i consistently hide in
Terrified the dirt under my fingertips
Displays more than my fear of attachment
When i know that everyone i love learns how to bury me in the end
Ill try harder to get past it
In hopes that my openness doesnt destroy me when i let you in