The rain pours down onto the roof of the car, its music so intense I can't hear my own songs coming through the speakers. Yet, it doesn't seem to matter. I don't start the engine right away. Instead, I stare through the droplets crafting intricate patterns on my windshield at a sky full of stars. I can't see them through the clouds, but I know they're there. I finally drive away, vision hindered by darkness and a rain slowly turning to hail. In the passenger seat, he is silent as we pass relics of my past, and breath fails me. I grip the wheel a little tighter and pull off to the curb as memories hit me with the force of a hurricane. He reaches over and takes my shaking hand, steadying me as he murmurs meaningless but necessary platitudes. And I feel my heart slow. And the seconds tick past as if they are waiting, for what I don't know. And the world stops turning. Just the two of us sheltered from the storm.

I've been wanting to do more on the topic of intimacy.

More on the frailty of a birds heart and the flutter of tiny wings.

There is something fascinating about your eyelashes against your cheek bones and I wonder why I can fall asleep around you. 

I wonder if its because I'm so comfortable that you lull me into dreams,

But maybe its because Ive been deprived of oxygen for so long. I come up to breath in your eyes and I only smoke cigarettes  when you're not around to exhale smoke into my lungs.

And yes the drugs might kill me but at least they'll never break my heart.

At least I won't need to cry anymore and I don't know whats going on with me.

But I know the sound of your heart well enough to pick it out of a crowd,

And I'm convinced that maybe we came from the same solar system.

I know I need to leave this bed soon but darling,

Will you let me stay in your head?

All I want to do I nestle behind your eyelids so maybe I can see myself the way you do.

I want all the freedom that comes from running but I don't want to let go of your hand.

I want to apologize to the universe. I have found out its secrets about love.

Nothing is mysterious any more.

Ive been told that love might ruin me,

But I feel safe between your arms.

Tell me again how you'll never get tired of the sound of my breathing.

You say you don't want me to be lonely and then you leave me alone on my worst nights.

The nights where even my own sobs have left me and all I can pull from my lips are small strangled gasps.

They have left to seek someone who puts up a better fight that I can, who has the strength to claw themselves off of their couches and scream. They don't want weaklings, only victims who can fight them back.

I am not a victim except for when I paint myself into one. I play hide and go seek with my own anger and count the harmful things in my house. I make lists on the bad nights.

I don't need a knight to fight for me I just need someone to hold my hands away from my face on nights like these. I need someone to hold me when I can not stop shaking and everything feels cold.

Why did you leave me alone, when the walls are closing in.

Its the same story every time,

I have stars on my skin that I want to put out, 

My eyes have been dry for too long.

My mind is trying to drown me

and I'm letting it.

Its the same story every time.

Its me in my room, staring at my ceiling and imagining how it would feel to be happy all the time.

To not feel like every breath in is painful.

Why can’t I be happy with the stars on my skin,

I want to drown them.

Forgive me body.

I am a poet who uses the word 'love' to frequently.

I put it in as a synonym for feel and admiration and pain.

I stick it like a post it over my poetry and call myself a hopeless romantic.

Forgive me body I fall too hard.

I launch myself at the ground like it is arms that I can disappear into,

Forgive me body.

For I know the bruises on my knees don't fade for weeks but I don't stop falling because I love scars.

I feel scars, I admire them and they bring me pain but I do not love them.

I use 'love' too often for a girl who is scared of being seen.

I use 'love' too often instead of just saying what I mean.

So I guess what I mean is that I'm feeling.

I'm feeling the floor hurtling up towards me and I'm admiring the stars from my position on the concrete.

So forgive me body.

I do use 'love' too often but thats because its keeping me floating.

The word is becoming a life vest that stops me from falling to the floor and I would rather you be scared than broken 

So forgive me body. 

Forgive me body because I say 'love' too often but that doesn't mean I don't comprehend it.

It doesn't mean I don't love

Like I'm falling.

I fell in love with words

“you have no shame”

I see it now coming down the line 

He had the sky in his eyes

Patience is not a virtue it's a curse

We are creatures of darkness

creativity came, slapped me in the face with reality and left me in shambles

death has invited me into her home too many times to count

She makes me cough up words which I have never said before

more than the times the ocean kisses the shore

she has bloomed

I am not good

I will look for the public positive

Just when it seems I've run out of words to say; I vomit up more than I have ever thought of

i got a rainbow of colors everyday

I can't write anymore

i thought i was stronger

no, i am just too passionate

am I a prison

he was Icarus

he reminds me he's there for months

the only word I can choke out after what you've done to me

statistically impossible

mantra of a liar

forgotten

Familiarity breeds comfort

But I cannot speak

your skin is a mixture of billions of years of hardships 

You are not less

shriek till your head aches

You keep playing until one kills you

And you thank them

It's a little off beat, rant like and repetitive... but it's for a reason. 

In all honestly; he ruined her.

He didn't ruin her life, though he did come close.

But he ruined her down to the very core of who she was.

He took a fifteen year old girl and lied about it being his first time.

He took no, no, no as just push a little harder and she'll cave; she's going to say yes.

She did.

In all her innocence she was weak willed and he knew it.

Men like him always knew it.

Verbal abuse breeds sorrow and apologies.

But it's a vicious cycle you see; she didn't see though.

Day by day, event to event, and as one year turned to two; he stole her identity.

Congratulations! You took a strong willed young lady and drove her to suicide.

You broke her in ways a teenager such as herself shouldn't have been broken.

You took a section of her soul that can never be regained.

You helped start the process to bring a child into this world and laughed when that piece of you died too.

"You would be a terrible mother anyways" Echos five years later.

But in those five years without you, she grew up.

Gone was the seventeen year old girl you threatened.

She was gone, you stole her and she was never coming back.

Because of you, she changed everything about herself.

To be clear; i hate you.

To be honest... hate isn't a strong enough word

Not to describe what you did to me when you rejoiced in a miscarriage after threatening to rip my child from my arms when born.

But because of you i know what pain is.

I know what it's like to be in love with someone who didn't care about me at all.

You shook me, you stole my innocence but i guess it had to go sometimes.

To be clear; i will never not hate you.

But i had to appreciate what you did for my life.

You showed me what it was like to lose a baby.

You cried to manipulate me and then boasted about how you were the victim.

You showed me what it was like to have nothing.

To be isolated form my friends and family.

You showed me what rock bottom was and from that... I learned to survive.

I mourn my child every January and I think little of you.

Because of what you did to me i know what it's like to have you... and i know the difference between manipulation and love.

At seventeen years old i learned valuable lessons about myself which most people wouldn't learn until a few years later.

Because of you i grounded myself and grew up.

I didn't dwell on the petty immaturity because i didn't have effort for it.

I didn't have to go into the world and have my world shaken as a right of passage into adulthood.

To be clear; you are the worst person in the world to me.

But because you broke me, I learned to put myself back together without patchwork from other men.

Because you ruined me i had to rebuild myself.

And after nearing six years i have become the person i never knew i wanted to be.

Without you i don't know where i would be in life. Maybe I would have gone to college and chosen a separate career path. Maybe not.

To be clear, i hate you but i valued the torment you put me through.

I had to build myself back up after you. It took years but i did it and i was shown my strength. Because of you i have a lower tolerance for bullshit.

Because of you i am who i am.

Because of what you did i found myself in the broken pieces and am proud of where i am.

Your opinion of me means nothing to me, i feel nothing positive in my life for you. But i am grateful.

You were an experience and i learned early that not all of them would be positive.

Because of those two and a half years, i have these wonderful things in my life.

After years of effort i set myself free from you. You can hurt me anymore, i know who i am and it's all because you ruined me.

But that's okay.

I can look myself in the mirror and know that while i may have been a little unstable, i never broke you as retaliation.

And that is the greatest accomplishment that i look back on.

You ruined me, but you didn't ruin my life.

To be clear; i hate you.

But i don't care enough about you to let you ruin me now.

I've grown and that is the greatest feeling and best revenge.

So have your petty little drug addicted life and know that you may have awful lies to say about me, but i'm the one that dodged a bullet.

Thank you for breaking me.

Because after repairing myself i'm just who i want to be. 

I write in free verse. 

I write in the blood on the tip of my tongue, your heart between my teeth, your eyes staring into mine. 

I write to feel whole. 

To feel a little less like I don’t belong, am not complete. 

To feel a little more worthy. 

As if every word on my paper is a gift to this world for bringing me into it but I’ve never been good at writing thank you cards. 

I write to preserve you. 

I write to preserve me. 

Because I have seen too many people fall of the map like a forgotten puzzle piece and I don’t want that. 

I want to be that piece of the puzzle that you find first. 

Like a corner or an eye. 

But I also want to disappear. 

So I write to find balance between the two. 

To hover on the edge of a cliff without actually jumping. 

To touch the barrel of the gun to my head and only smile. 

I write to help someone. 

I want my words to bring a smile to someone’s face as other people have brought one to mine. 

My medium is you. 

And my god that sounds stupid and I really do hate cliches but it’s true. 

I write in the shape of your lips and your inhales of breath. 

I write for no other reason than to exist. 

So that for just one minute I can be greater than me.