Strawberry blonde hair brushes against my shoulder of solitude as arms, strangers to the sun, envelop mine in comfort.

Heavy breathing, teeth chattering, muscles tensing: not as a result of intimacy, but anxiety.

And his warm fingers brush through my hair softly ensuring me that it'll be okay.

His freckles congregate into a circle on his rosy cheeks as he smiles and illuminates the world with his rare sparks of joy.

The hatred directed towards him that encourages his abandonment of will to exist, comes only from his monstrous mind, for he's the only one oblivious of his true worth.

Complaints flood from his peachy lips: all valid, yet all inducing guilt and reinforcing self-hatred, which never should have eased its way into his pure heart.

Making him smile and laugh turns every depressing day into a success, overpowering life's turmoils.

Listening to songs that inspire his contentment reveals his vulnerability

and beauty.

He doesn't use the word "love" truthfully, because it's a lie;

However, when it makes it's way through my teeth, they do not deceive their audience.

For my precious friend and comforter is loved by many, by all,

And by me.

you met me in a place where the

gates were barely open and nobody

was ever welcome.

a year ago, you had me whole

in the palm of your hands.

there i was beating,

all solid and determined and hope-

driven–all because you made

me. a year later, although in many

pieces, you still had me in the

palm of your hands. there i was still

beating, no longer all solid, yes–

i was invisible like gas,

untamable like liquid, but i was okay,

because i still mattered.

now i’ve lost track of the ago’s and

the later’s, but you still have

me in the palm of your hands.

here i am beating, still for you and

you alone.

i crumble almost every minute,

but i am okay. although broken, i feel

whole because i love you this

much. and although you met me in a

place where the gates were barely

open and nobody was ever welcome,

i was brave, because i was

in your hands, and i’ve never felt

that safe before.

It's coffee at midnight, in the only restaurant in town that never closes. It's the long rides on dark roads on nights when she's laughing and we are singing along to an old song. It's the earthy smokey smell on his jacket, that I've been wearing for far too long. It's the days we remember ladybugs and their stupid little song. It's good morning sunshine before the sun even comes out. It's good night for the fourth time at three am when she has to get up at four. It's mickey mouse pancakes, peanut butter cups dipped in whip cream, and heath bar cake. It's the fair on my birthday, and a night at home alone for her's. I sometimes wonder if I'll be like her. When I split pills and pour the powder down my throat because the sleep comes faster. When I had my first drink at 12 and my second not very long after. When I found that I fall for men older than me. She's done the impossible, double herself in a new body. Then there are things that are different. She had already graduated and aborted my brother by her 17th year. While I, have been held back by her fear. She told me to learn from her mistakes, that she showed me everything not to do. Often it feels like we are equals. She told me once that I had to be better than her. That I couldn't drown myself in men and drugs to make the world fade. I promised I wouldn't at the time, but I feel kindly cheated now. The younger me never knew how hard it would be. How easily I could just drift. One stranger then the next in my bed,  xanax clouding my head. No it was never meant to be easy. 

i plan on preforming this piece at a poetry reading very soon, but i don't like it yet. i think it has potential, but i don't know what to change. any criticism is welcome. (:

your obituary remains unwritten because i still don't have enough faith in this curse of a mentality to believe that you killed yourself in the first place. you are -- were -- so much more than beautiful. i told you that i always thought that stars looked handsomest when cars passed because the lights reflected their sparkle perfectly. this poem remains untold because i don't have enough faith in this curse of a talent to believe that i could steal a star's beauty straight out of the sky with these words; no one listens to pretty girls, anyway. but oh my god, those stars were so much more than beautiful. i don't know what it was about those stars in particular, but i swear, every single one reminded me of you. maybe it was because of how everyone noticed how alluring they were only when they were dying, only when everyone could see "what they were really made of." maybe it was how our cameras couldn't focus on them long enough to capture the wholeness of their magnificence. i don't know what it was about you, always smelling like burnt wood and beauty, but i could find poems in your fingertips. i still don't know how to write your forever after. i've been in love with you since the day before i learned your name. i learned your name 16 1/2 days before we formally met; it wasn't on purpose. i found it hiding in between the drops of rain falling on the playground. your father had been searching for it in the sandbox. ever since you were little, you had always wanted to be an escape artist; maybe that's why your dad said that loosing you felt like drowning. upside down. you always had room breathe between the raindrops, but he didn't know that. hell, he didn't even know to look for you instead of your name, 16 1/2 days before we met. did you know that the sharpness of his sobbing when he saw your mangled body could cut souls like shards of glass? your last words to me were, "when i die, turn me into a metaphor." you were never supposed to turn into, "learning experience," but you know i was always too busy looking at you to pay attention in history class. what kind of cautionary tale do you think this is? why would you expect death to be fair to you when life never was? in ninth grade, you ripped flowers from their homes for me. i was selfish enough to refuse them because that was the closest i had gotten to gentrification by white boy. i told you that we shouldn't kill things that we think are beautiful, but now that i'm writing this unwritten poem of an obituary, i believe that maybe you confused your reflection for a star; you saw beauty all around you, but never thought to look in the mirror. maybe you allowed that car to shatter 27 bones in your body because you knew that i thought stars always looked handsomest when lit by a car's brights. now that i'm getting around to this unwritten obituary, the only thing i can think of is the last words from your lips. i should have known something was wrong when you told me that you have always been scared to death of living. the news of your suicide carved itself into my bones; it chiselled away at my soul like an arizona landscape: beautiful, until you notice that everything is just shades of the same colour. phoenix can't rise without wings. home is where the heart is, but my heart is stuck in this obituary of a poem, so don't be surprised if i start living in my notebook. come time to your funeral, i filler a vase with faux flowers and sand. i placed it in between the rain drops on your shiny black casket, next to the certificate of the star i named after you. the star i named, "escape artist". i still don't know how to write your forever after.

this is for everyone who had the guts but not the breath to love out loud, whose lion hearts were led to hope like sheep to slaughter, who woke each morning in fear for their lives but found their pride in a safe haven in the midst of hell; this is for everyone who's out, love is love and hate is hate and whether or not the world chooses to believe it, this is what it's about; this is for everyone who simultaneously discovered too late and too soon that bullets were the salt and we are the wound; while this world is on the edge of an infection, i am ill with fright; this is for everyone who died that night:

there are those with hearts, and there are those with a pulse,

but there are not enough of those with both.

Perhaps it’s easier

when the illusion

of security doesn’t

force itself unhidden

like a broken key

to a room with cool

sheets on a bed

like a cloud

after a long day,

you know the kind,

to try to wreck us.

And perhaps we won’t

wish for easier.

if you listen close,

you'll hear the collision

of breaking bones

collide head-on with fate

as the future doubles back.

the lines told me

to stay in my lane.

erase me from the scrolls, stretched

broad like a sail, painted black

from self-inflicted piracy.

I won't look down, at the surface

because, the water distorts my illusions

back to me as judgements.

the gavel stops my heart.

I can't get away from the voices

in my head, the jury,

always unanimous in my conviction.

I sharpened my feet by stalling

and every step bled the clock,

now identified in the morgue

by conscience, the old rat that

always betrays me for immunity.

Please don't forget to remember me.

I hope that a smile

creeps across your prickly face

when you do.

If you find that you're missing me,

pick up the tin can I left behind.

Bring it to your ear.

Listen to my heartbeat.

When you're looking for company,

travel by way of string.

Close the distance

between us two.

Let my hips be the space

where your hands come to rest,

and my lips be the cushions

that yours crash against

as you recover from string-lag

and lost innocence.

...and if you should remember me,

and again our string grows taut,

I, too, have known tin's sharpness.

It's something I never forgot.

I

His shoulder blades are broken glass protruding like some foreign shrapnel and it is all I can do not to pluck them from his spine like petals from a buttercup.

II

The sun catches his coffee eyes like flash paper yet I am the one going up in flames and his cheeks are freckled with ashes and my neck is bruised by the passion of his parted lips.