it is sort of ironic maybe. that summer did not melt away with the taste of maple syrup and orange juice in my mouth but instead ended with the taste of iron like i swallowed the change out of everyone’s back pockets. i feel the way winter is slowly starting to bloom and usually this is all boxes of cigarettes and blankets that never cover my feet but the air is like an arrow right to my lungs and i’m tired of not letting them expand like i know they should. maybe the truth is, i don’t know how to be okay without him and i don’t think that anyone else could love my crooked bones and the way i put too much into everything too soon. but most of all, i think that with the cold winds is coming something better, something bigger. i am enough. i am enough. i am enough. i’m not afraid to say it anymore and i’m being brave and realizing how okay and beautiful it really is to stand on my own with my chin up towards the sky.


 I never know what I'm doing.
I just pretend I do.


i was important somewhere, once. i was the sun on your back, baking your shoulders and rubbing them until they bloomed red under my palms. and i was the way your brown eyes lit like the cities we said we’d see when the night silently exploded into the skies. i was important somewhere, once. i was the lullaby underneath your feet when the staircase groaned and whined at your patient steps. my fingers could reach up and pluck the stars for you, and sometimes i would bring them down and tell you to look closely but i knew, i knew. i shined brighter for you. i was the sea, i was too inviting and you had to dip your feet at least once but i was also too big to swim though and your limbs grew tried much too fast to keep up with all of the waves. my mother did say, “the sea is always unforgiving”. maybe she was right and maybe you left me and my salted lips to dry up into the ocean floor but i still sway and i still wait. i was important somewhere, once—do you remember? i want to shake myself out of winter and it’s cold teeth and write things to you, tell you that i never needed you to hold the ships and boats afloat. that i am important now, here, too. even without you.




it’s the worst when i have almost, but not quite, forgotten. when your voice nestles into the corners of my head and i am able to feel my lungs expand against my chest. and then it rushes back and bleeds like the ocean into everything i do. all of it coming towards me like a wave and i am alone, closing my eyes so tight i see the stars, bracing myself. i am the shoreline.


you shook the clouds, loosened up the raindrops like teeth and it hasn’t stopped raining here since. i would wake up with your voice in my ears, stuck in the bends and creases of my spine but it has since quieted. only leaving the soft echos that howl throughout my organs like a scream that was not heard in time. my bones are melting while the sun sleeps and they are finally settling into the corpses that lay underneath the earth and all the homes we have built over them. and i’ve been hoping that maybe they will shine for you one more time but you have already forgotten.








i’m made of glass, you see. i only shine when the sun catches me and when you tilt me the right way. lately i suppose the waves were too high and they must have came crashing down into the shoreline with the sun in it’s throat because i don’t shine anymore. only glow with fleeting hopes i’ve kept inside tightly clenched fists and quiet promises that have made homes inside our chests from being said again and again. my lungs have grown tired and the wind outside howls like hungry wolves. do you hear the fireworks crackling against my aching ribs? how they soar before exploding? and sometimes they make me glow blue and yellow but i don’t shine. not in your eyes. not where it matters.


the whispers that lingered behind us melted into the avoided conversations and words unsaid. things we left under our tongue until they dissolved like smoke inside our lungs and the frost when spring comes creeping through the trees like the ghosts that jumped out at us when our eyelids were heavy with dream dust. i told you that your limbs could brighten the skies, like the miles of fire made of the cities we swore we would never remember but couldn’t shake from our palm lines. the sea always bowed when you were near like it knew your eyes were the bluest. it could never win. it was sometime in the morning and the light came in, smooth over my eyes and it was tinted blue and i always think maybe it’s you but the bed was too still and i know that it holds my bones and my bones alone. i can’t sleep knowing you don’t want my skin between your teeth.






and if we breathe for one another, they will never suffocate us.






If it can be dreamed, it can be done.







He is the most adorable person you'll NEVER meet.

















































It’s hard to know that you still care






You are made of sugar, of salt, of things that never last too long. You took my hands and built icebergs so you could turn them back into the sea where I swim behind you endlessly. Where my hands are tied with fishing lines and there are no hooks at the end. You are tight knots and creases, not even patient hands can smooth over and undo. I know because I’ve tried.


The sun has been eating everything, blooming and unfolding until our shoulders are baked and our backs are peeling back the layers we thought we could hide. I’ve got pink skies in my spine like foxgloves and my fingernails miss the way spring would curl up into the tips of my fingers and down into my knuckles, turning them into the hottest star. We had salted skin and sea limbs and you squeezed my hands so hard, it left me a small trail of reminders and glimpses that looked like the moon when it was winking or the uncertainty of a cowardly smile. They taste like fall and feel like the sharp and stubborn bones in your body and sometimes you come in quiet colors when my eyes are closed, dancing behind shades of gold when you only wore silver. Like maybe you never left and the scars never healed and like how your lips always found my hips in the dark.






Nobody knows you the way you know you. But I think I do. But I thought I knew.

so I wait for you like a lonely house, till you will see me again and live in me. till then my windows ache.”

and suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness i haven’t felt since childhood. the kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. when the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green.

the earth is a cold place.

I have been picking up the broken pieces of myself, arms and legs, lost eyelashes. I have been letting myself get burned through the wreckage just to save the things I said I would keep safe. Things you said you would help keep alive but they seemed to have settled into your hands like dead stars and memories that aren’t worth stringing around anymore. I want to sticky lips, lips that taste like vodka and wine, like the night air hangs off the edge of my tongue and the perfume bottle was replaced with a glass of whiskey. It’s the worst here, when the sun has been burning against our eyes and it wants to hide behind horizons. When the moon stretches it’s limbs and feels like glowing again, like making fireworks that stand still. When my eyes flutter shut just to see the fire reds and pale golds of your face in black corners. Even my softest spots miss your sharp edges, blunt corners that leave pink scars down my spine like I have comets soaring across on my back. In the mornings when it smells like apples and cinnamon, I can still feel parts of you there. Pieces of yourself floating inside my organs like fishes in the atlantic: an arm or a leg maybe, eyelashes you thought you had lost.

THE TRUTH HURTS, BUT IT DOESN’T KILL. LIES MAY PLEASE, BUT THEY DON’T HEAL.

NOTHING GOOD LASTS. PEOPLE DIE, NIGHTS END, YOUR HEART BREAKS. BUT EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW THAT ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END, WE SHOULDN’T GIVE THOSE THINGS UP. WE SHOULD FIGHT TO KEEP THEM, EVEN IF WE KNOW WE’LL LOSE.