rings9945

do you know that feeling the one where everything just sort of stops and you're left alone in front of the mirror and it's not the same person you woke up to but instead they're just this delicate porcelain statue will shatter with one touch into more pieces than there are stars in the sky and the scorpions scuttling up your throat keep stinging and burning with a fire that you can't swallow back down into the storm that's churning at the very bottom of your stomach and the wolf in your chest is howling and threatening to gnaw its way through your bones before it suffocates beneath the desert stretched across every inch of your skin and your

the funny thing about humans is that we think we are invincible and immortal gods. no— we're all roadkill, living in a tainted world where cars drive too damn fast. and me, well, i just try to get by without being hit more than once.

one.     When she cries herself to sleep     six out of seven nights a week you must     say nothing. You must simply take     her in your arms and kiss her gaunt,     pale cheeks and wait for her to     slumber at the sound of your heart. two.     On the days where she wishes she     were part of the stars, tell her     no. Tell her that there are too many     lights in the sky and that just one     would be forgotten the moment you looked     away from it. Tell her that she is perfect     the way she is: completely human. three.      Don't let her think about the scars      that no one but her can see. If she      says

i know you. in your every motion, each expression, you betray your citizenship; that of my own strange state- a bad place to be, brimming with heavy eyed absentees, plodding down these convoluted streets only half full, trying to seem overflowing. a bang to fill the silence. we have our own language of pauses and twitchy fingers. i see us everywhere: the woman staring out the window on the bus gripping her purse a little too tightly, the boy who won't look me in the eyes. i see us. i see you. we are all walking and it feels like the loneliest road but the truth is we are legion with our demons. and this thing, this nation, this community

When my heart searches for home, You are whom I long for.

i am still in love with the idea of you; with happy endings, or no endings, and the curve of your belly pressed to me when the days are not as soft as your skin. i'm still in love with the idea of you standing in a bow tie with crinkling eyes, watching me twirl in a white dress, fingers ringed, cake had and eaten too. i'm still in love with the way you brush your hands over your guitar, trying to learn a new song, or singing me the oldest song you know. (the oldest song i know has no words; just the rhythm of my blood as we melt together, becoming between covers something other than ourselves- something better.) i am still in love with the i