It's all in your head,
every last strain of insecurity,
and it's turning you ugly.
You internalize your own pain,
swallowing unspoken words and
bitterness until it lines your
stomach and you become
addicted like
it was an over-the-counter
drug; and now you're constantly
high on your own self-pity,
because it's easy to succumb,
easy to revel in your own despair,
easier to just open your eyes
but never actually wake up.

When I look at you...

Time stops for a while,
The rest of the world drops away,
Taking the backseat to your smile.
You are so beautiful.
All that matters is this moment,
this moment.
When everything feels out of reach,
When I can't take anymore,
The second before a tear hits the floor
You grab me and look me in the eyes,
in the eyes.

I can see your heart,
And for once,
I know that I'm safe
And that everything will be alright
Because I'm with you,
I'm with you.

dating you

Blue skies as far as the eye can see
Puff, puff on my majesty
Blank stares in the gallery
We’re all stars according to astronomy
Don’t you know I shine at night?
Dreaming in the same frequencies
Clouds align so beautifully
I’m way beyond what I used to be
You have no idea what you do to me
Don’t you know you get me high?
Parted lips but we let the music speak
Making love artistically
Just wondering how far is too deep
Bright lights, the city never sleeps
Don’t you know I feel alive?
The passion ignites the heat
Inhaling the perfume of peace
Can’t tell you of all the secrets I keep
But you ask me why I don’t need to breathe
Baby, don’t you know I know how to rhyme?

my tells and don't tells

This is why I remember.
This is why I cleave.

Because you knew the things
in me that I had kept
secret. Ego thinly
veiled and the heavy
chalk of verse
outlining my form
       in transit,
and you know
wordless
words thicken
my veins
when I speak.

All of my tells and don’t tells—
given answers to
questions which
yet, unasked,
you already know;
receiving resolution,
able to be still....
for once.

memorization

Can I trace my fingers softly over your features?
Timidly breech my curiosity with my hand,
and carefully run a finger along the bridge of your nose to the tip,
and count the number of fingerprints it takes to reach
the peaks of your cheekbones and cascades back down again,
and may I memorize the shape of your lips?
Can you hold still long enough to let me feel the creases in upon your eyelids?
Do you notice how such peculiar colors float around behind them?
As if someone dropped paint within us as children and left our minds to swirl images with it;
do yours create landscapes of faraway places like mine do?
Do they form old memories like faded photographs?
Do they create new worlds and birth a scenery in vivid detail?
With intrepid fingers and with intent, can I draw the line of your jaw,
and escape down the steep waves and hollow caverns of your neck
until the horizon of your shoulders becomes set
with the last colors of the sun and incandescent stars float around us?

Can I keep searching your eyes? Peering in, trying to learn the art that is you?
I need to memorize you, so I know that you were real, when you, too, poof out of existence.

so happy I could die

"I will always make you feel safe. I will always make you feel wanted.
Kaelee, you deserve to be happy."

I died.

when we lay together quietly,

listening to perfectly mood-fitting music, and when certain lyrics stick with me because they can't say it better:

"I belong to you, you belong to me, my sweetheart"
"I know that I'm sleeping because this dreams too amazing"