SoUpRRmaN

one. he was an avalanche, rapidly pulling you down the hills of soft morning dews and all your left behind dreams and taking you in under his sleeve of ice skin and snowy bones but he did teach you that when you're up on a hill, the only place you can go from there is down. two. he was a hurricane, flooding you in lies and creating waves of pretty words, telling you everything you wanted to hear but meaning everything you didn't and he was the illusion of a cyclone eye, calm in the center until it passes but he did teach you that our centers of hearts and lungs are the lowest pressure and therefor, the easiest place to hurt. three.

i. she touched your sleeping face and kissed your hair away and said softly, 'there are five things i'll never be' and then pulled out her leather notebook from the dresser drawer and wrote them all down in silky looped cursive. ii. she rings the doorbell to your house and waits for your parents to answer while you're upstairs, spraying cologne under your shirt. by the time you come down, your parents are already saying 'angela was such a pretty, pretty girl and so sweet and smart. she knew five languages, you know. we still think he should've married her.' and she's already fake smiling [she's been doing that more and more lately]

by the power rested in me, a soft kiss before a piano key.

00. i write your name on the shower walls filled with steam and send you letters through the public sink drains and believe that every time you scratch your ear, it's code for you'rebeautiful so i blink twice to say thanks,butyou'rebeautifuler. i write poetry in henna paint on ripped notebook pages and place them in library books about suicide and flowers and i find something sort of beautiful about the idea that someone might read them and see the core of a stranger or that someone might read them and think that agony is sometimes beautiful or that they could create instead of grow. i hide secrets between piano keys and the ink of pr

one. if the stars could dream, they'd dream you were with them. if the skies could scream, they'd scream to the heavens. if the trees could whisper, they would lie. and if i could breathe, i would choke. but stars can't dream and opposites don't attract. skies can't scream and heaven doesn't exist in reality. trees can't whisper and they aren't wise enough to lie. i can't breathe and i wish i would choke. two. you taught me a lot of things, like that you can't fall [in love] without expecting to fall and that adumbrate is just a pretty way to tell someone they're fake. three. the trains that whirl behind my back are really e

one. 'just promise me you won't write about this tomorrow.' i nod as you unbutton my shirt. three. my journal has been under my bed for the past week and we've been on the bed for the past week. my journal has been on my mind for the past week and you've been under my skin for the past week. five. 'i just don't want to become another poem.' i nod as you unzip my jeans and when you fall asleep, i whisper into your ear. ['i just don't want to become another one of your girls.'] seven. i used to carry a halo and the angels slept on my shoulder but lately, you've been the demon under my sheets and the inspiration for the poems i

my name is lissa spelled with two s's and a heart above the i and my eyes are milky blue oceans with sharp edges and i'm drowning the one sprinkle of brown i inherited from my mum in my ocean. [i think the fact that something inside of me is sinking is beautiful. is that a bad thing?] my skin is ivory colored and fragile and my nose is freckled with the sun's foot marks and i have broken blood vessels in all the places you kissed me and you can hide yourself in the purple shadows under my eyes and i have 103 moles. i counted. my fingers aren't double jointed and i don't have a hitchhike thumb, but i can crack them and make chalk on

i. sometimes, i rip myself apart and place my skin and flesh in a purple-red box and sit under the corner streetlight to wait for someone, thinking maybe this is the time you'll show up with sparkles glue and put me back together. but then i remember you're the one who broke my heart and locked it in your black box with dust bunnies and mold on the sides without enough sun to survive and i begin to rip through my hair, wondering what anyone who counted out each piece would come up with. [we read a bible verse in school that says god knows your every strand of hair, but that only makes me feel shameful for how much i've pulled out.] i

00. i want to stay awake in your arms and let you stroke my hair from my face to kiss my temples and i want to go on long walks where all you're holding is my pinky and you squeeze it three times every few minutes, just to remind me it's there. but then i remember she's the one sleeping under your shadow and she likes kissing lips and you're the one carrying her across the sidewalk when she passes out and pulls on your sleeve to make sure you won't leave. maybe i'm just second place and maybe that isn't enough. 01. i want to count the stars with you and let you nuzzle me under the milky way with hands so tenderly touching and i want to