"Just because you didn’t mean it doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt."

"That’s the funny thing about love: you can love them more than anything in the world and do everything for them. But that doesn’t mean they have to love you back."

"I was made to love you. But you were made for things far greater than loving me back."

"I’ll love you forever.
But that doesn’t mean we belong together.
"

— Sometimes Love is Not Enough (

"It’s ironic because I left you so that you couldn’t leave me, but that hurt me more than it hurt you."

"I didn’t fall in love with you so that you would love me back. For a while, it was enough. But I’m a person. I am a whole entire being, and I deserve to be loved. And if you can’t do it, somebody better will."

"Don’t choose me because I love you. Choose me because you love me."

— It’s Not the Same Thing 

"You’re so fucking done that you don’t see
What’s dead in you
Is alive in me."

— Just Because You’re Over It Doesn’t Mean I Am

"I hate that I still fucking taste you when it’s someone else’s spit in my mouth."

"It was hard to stop loving you, even if I felt lonelier with you than I ever did alone."

"And sure, you liked to hurt me. But maybe I liked to let you."

In my dreams,
we fuck in a bed
on a hot, sticky
summer night.

You feel like home
and this just feels like love
and my heart feels like it’s beating
at the same time as yours
and I swear to god,
I can feel you kissing my neck
soft
like the ocean
kisses the sand
every chance it can get
and we hold each other so close,
so close that even when we’re naked
and pressed up against each other,

we still pull ourselves closer

and suddenly I am awake
and I think about your eyes,
your hard mouth,
the sand on your skin

and I wonder
if you still
dream about me
too.

SOMETIMES I WONDER IF HER HEART’S STILL BEATING
IF HER BREATH IS STILL THE WIND THROUGH THE FUCKING TREES

I WONDER IF SHE GETS LONELY
FEELING US AGAINST HER SKIN
BUT NOBODY’S TALKING TO HER

SHE’S SITTING ALONE ON A CROWDED BUS
SHE STARES AT HER SHOES
SHE LOOKS OUT THE WINDOW
SHE STILL DREAMS ABOUT THE STARS

WHY DOES NO ONE LOVE HER ENOUGH
WHY DO PEOPLE STOP LOOKING
WHY DOES NO ONE TALK TO HER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHEN SHE NEEDS SOMEBODY
WHY DOES SHE SLEEP ON A MATTRESS AND STARE AT THE WALL WAITING FOR THE TIRED TO HOLD HER
WHY WILL NO ONE ELSE DO IT

WHY DO WE KEEP STANDING HER UP
WHY DOES SHE HAVE TO FEEL SO DAMN LONELY
WISHING TO BE THE MOON SURROUNDED BY
A HALO OF LIGHT

Maybe I’m just greedy.
Maybe it was the sex.
Maybe it’s because I was young once.
I’m hungry.
I just need to be touched more often.
I just want to feel skin between my teeth.
I want to fuck harder than the sound of my heart slamming against my chest.
I moan his name in my head sometimes.
I still dream about flowers underneath his tongue.
Maybe we are moments.
Maybe this is how we drift.
Hugging him at the beach made my heart flutter.
Kissing you feels meaningless sometimes and I don’t know how to make that feeling stop.
How do I keep saying “I love you” without feeling numb, without feeling like my words are as empty as a bowl or cupped palms?
I fucked someone through Facebook once.
I made him cum.
He called me “baby” and I didn’t feel shy.
Is this what getting comfortable is like?
Is this the sound of forget?
I think about feeling wanted by somebody else a lot.

I know you do too.

I know you’re still in love with your ex and I don’t know why.

It hurts to think about, baby.

I just don’t know what to say to you anymore.

And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language.

sext: Wish you were here. Wish I could kiss you. Wish you could see the sunset today, how the sky looks like it’s on fire. Wish things didn’t have to turn out like this. Wish I didn’t have to be sorry. God, I am so sorry. Wish you were with me. Wish you were the summer breeze. Wish you were here, love. It’s such a beautiful evening.

sext: We love in the dark where everything is simple. Touch me. Kiss me with your ashen mouth. It’s easier to love you if I can’t see your eyes, if I can’t see your devils. Hold me. Press yourself against me. Push me against the sand so that the only thing I can feel is your hands, your hot breath, your good promise. Make me believe this. Tell me about romance, about how you’ll say my name in the morning, as you push your fingers in. This is real and simple and I don’t have to see your eyes or know your name or anything else about you except the sound of your voice. It’s so much simpler to make love to a shadow than to fill in the rest, to know the color of my eyes or how deep the wound went you bit my lip and I didn’t say a word.

sext: Because loving you is like a sunrise in Arizona. Because you are a paint chipped mirror in the bathroom and a glitter stain that will never come out of the carpet. You are kissing a lot of wrong people and a rainy day where the windows fog up. You are a scar on my middle finger. You are a tree in the front yard and a sidewalk that only knows of bruises. You are a hole in my heart the shape of a fist. You are soap bubbles and rope burns, cracked glass and dust dancing through sunlight. You are a sunset at the beach. Loving you is like falling into bed after a long day, like finally coming home. 

sext: Today, it’s raining and all I can think about is the color of your eyes.

sext: I wish I were that little piece of smoke you hold in the back of your throat when you’re smoking outside in the dead of winter, when you’re looking up at all those stars. God, I wish you’d just hold me a little bit closer.

sext: Even if I saw you again, I wouldn’t know what to say. Time has turned us into such strangers.

sext: Hey, sweetheart. I haven’t talked to you in awhile, but I just wanted to let you know that I still think about you sometimes. And I know that that’s unfair. I know I’m going to sleep in the arms of another man tonight and that I’ve never even held your face in my palms or kissed you or heard your voice over anything other than the phone, but it’s true. There’s always going to be a piece of me that loves you. Right now, it’s 1 AM where you are. I hope you’re looking at the stars.

this is not poetry. Flowers die when you try to keep them. Birds in cages spend their lives looking for the sky. What if I’m trapping you? What if you’re meant for better things?

. Today, I walked through a field of flowers. Today, I kissed someone so deep. Today, I felt the sun in my hair and I guess what I’m trying to say is that everything takes time to become something better

 You tell me that you’ve never seen so many stars.

Even if I never saw you again
for the rest of my life,
I’d still see your eyes
in the depths of any crowd.

II. For the past year and a half,
I wrote about your cigarettes,
about the bruises, the scuffed up knees,
the hand around my throat,
your teeth.

III. Sometimes we get so lonely that we’ll let anyone in.

IV. I still think about you sometimes.

VI. We smoked menthols in the desert.

You kissed softer than the wind.

One of the most peaceful places
I’ve ever been to was that mountain
covered in aspen trees.

VII. This is love.

This is white walls
and Christmas lights,
counting ribs,
kissing slow.

You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I don’t even know what I’d do without you.

It starts with your eyes.
Your lips.
The way you looked naked
in the dark that night
you fucked me from behind
and pushed my face into your
jacket.

Your voice.
Your skin.
Those awful hand drawn tattoos.
The cigarettes on your breath.
Every single one of your middle names.

Your hair.
Your teeth.
Your hands cupped around my throat.
The pregnancy tests.
The shirt.
The lost pair of earrings.

Your kiss.
Your “Hold me.”
Your “Visit me if you ever come to Santa Barbara.”
That “I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted you.”
The “Can we just stay here a little bit longer?”

My dear,

forgetting you
is a slow unravel.

The only thing
I have left of you
is an ache
that is finally ready
to heal.

This morning I woke up to the sound of your heartbeat. In this tiny apartment, your heart sounds like the most perfect pulse, like rain falling on a rooftop. I’m in love with you, Diego. Every time I look at you, I have all these little thoughts that never quite make it out. You know the tune already, but you don’t know the words that go along with it. Once we spent three days telling each other our secrets. We held one another so close. In this tiny apartment, your heart sounds like a river. Naked and pressed up against you every morning and every night is paradise. I know we fight. I know that sometimes we get so close to falling apart, but you always stay. Every time. When I look in your eyes, everything goes quiet. This world becomes still. In this tiny apartment, you are the sun. Your heart sounds like a thousand flapping wings. Every kiss is divine. Every moment shared with you is heavenly. I love you more than the sky loves the sea. I love you more than the moon loves the dark. I love you more than you will ever, ever know.

I tried to write something today,
but all I could think
about was how closely
you hold me every night,
how in those quiet moments
before sleep, I can feel the soft
kiss from your heartbeat
to my back.

The cold cuts me to the bone
and I miss you.

Every night,
I dream about the way our hips
used to kiss so hard that they’d
bruise.

I dream about my bottom lip between your teeth,
how you once held me so close.

The word “miscarriage”
becomes a lump in my throat,
an endless sense of loss.

"I practice kissing other boys and do not tell you.
I do not wash my hair sometimes for three or four days.
You are probably so tired of all the cigarette smoke,
the mugs full of tea setting cold on the counter,
my inability to put my clothes away after wearing them,
how I am so heavy-footed that you can’t make cakes
when I am home. If you asked me I would tell you
that yes, I am faking it, but you never do so we continue
living as we live. Dancing around each other
but never close enough to touch. We are a fire-hazard,
the little pieces that come with toy sets, not for swallowing.
My hands do not smell like my own. I try on wedding dresses
and then cry in the changing room. The truth is I love you.
What I am trying to say is that I never want to see you again."

Every time I think of you,
I dream of drowning.

There is a dead moth
on my windowsill
the color of your eyes.

I think its time
I finally let you go.

A life without wound,
without anger
or bite,
a life without pain,
without ache,
without sorrow
or nights spent staring at the moon,
wishing for somebody to hold me close.

The day they pulled out my teeth,
it was like they pulled out all the
pain I had ever felt before.

When they closed off the sockets,
it was like they were sewing you into my mouth
so that I could taste your name
instead.

They call these “love teeth”
because they ache as much my heart did
before I knew you,
before I felt your kiss
or learned about your birthmarks
or even felt your name slide to the tip of my tongue.

God, I can’t even remember anything before you.

We wear our past lovers
like scars.

Deeply.

Sometimes to the bone.

The mark
just light enough
so that you can remember.

Always there
so that you’ll never forget.

sext: I can’t help but look for your face in crowds.

sext: Every time he kisses me, I remember how much softer your lips were. Today I am missing you when I shouldn’t be.