Named.

Ask me
You whispered,
Your quiet voice a throaty mix of
Cigarettes and lust.
Ask me.
I was riding high on the
Chemicals of climax,
The fact that I'd told you only moments before
I'd never call you that name.
Never once did I ever think
The word would escape my lips.
But it did.
It slid across the tip of my tongue,
Teeth tried to lock it away
But it slid out from in between my lips,
Easy,
Easy like four hour conversations,
Easy like the first kiss
Easy, like bumping into someone at a bar.
What is difficult,
Is finding where you belong.
See, I've always categorized people into
Neat little compartments in my head.
You don't fit in neat little compartments,
That much I knew the second I saw you.
And now,
Now you have a name.
I name I wouldn't have given to just anyone.
And I'm not sure if it's just because of the lust,
Or something else.
Maybe it's because there is something primal lurking in you.
And the animal in me
Sees the animal in you.
This isn't about bringing them out,
Because I'm not quite sure if that's where we end up going.
I don't know where we end up going.
I do know,
You asked me to name you.
And I did.
For now I'm happy wondering,
If and When the time comes
If I ask you to name me,
If the notes of your smokey, throaty voice
Will just as easily
Call me by name.

Heat.

I woke up at a quarter to twelve.
I padded into the kitchen,
Made coffee just the way I always do,
Cream, sugar, steaming, strong.
I hummed some song
I'd heard on the radio
Driving the 10
When I was 20.
These floors are cold.
Into the bathroom now,
Turn the water on
Scalding
And
Then I think about you.
I don't know if you even exist
In reality
But there you are, in my mind's eye
Watching me from the mirror.
Laughing at the mess of hair piled
Haphazardly on my head,
Smirking
While I burn the roof of my mouth
On scalding coffee,
Rolling your eyes as I curse like
The gypsy woman
I was never raised to be.
I test the water with my fingertips,
Wipe down the mirror
And breathe in the steam.
I don't know if you exist
Outside of my mind,
But the belief that you're out there,
Maybe thinking about a woman,
With hair piled atop her head,
Who wakes up at a quarter to noon,
Burns her mouth on coffee
And swears like sailors she never met,
The belief that you might just exist
Keeps me alive.
People in my life,
They think I'm the girl who needs to be protected
From the world,
From my own poor judgement calls.
I was raised in an ivory tower
Sheltered from the big bad,
It's no wonder,
When I climbed down,
I lost my virginity to danger,
Ran with wolves and
Breathed chaos.
My blood boils
With passion.
My heart doesn't beat
It fires bullets of primal heat
That scream through my veins.
I have never been more alive
Because I believe in something out there
That is mine.
I don't know if you exist outside of my thoughts,
And if you do I don't know
Where you are,
Who you are.
But I know
Your heart doesn't beat.
It burns.

Countdown.

18.
The age I met you at. I just moved in with my high school sweetheart and you let me borrow your lighter outside of a coffee shop.
17.
The exact amount of minutes it took me to ask you if you had a girlfriend.
16.
The amount of cigarettes I went through the first time we hung out one on one.
15.
The number of weeks from the time I met you, to the time my high school sweetheart and I broke up.
14.
The number of days before I took you after that to rescue your girlfriend.
13.
The number of days it took me after that to be able to admit to myself that I was in love with you.
12.
The number of years it's been since I met you.
11.
The number of times I have thought about you in the last three days.
10.
The number of miles we drove to feed the ducks.
9.
The number of times I have wondered if you still have the cd I gave you.
8.
The number of years since I saw you last. 7.
The number of times I have admitted to you that I loved you.
6.
The amount of unpublished love letters I have written to you and never sent.
5.
The number of times we've tried to see each other but never made it.
4.
The amount of times I have actually written about you in poetry form.
3.
The number of times I have asked you to marry me.
2.
The number of times you have asked me to marry you.
1.
You are my one.

Denial.

I have earned my freedom.
It doesn't matter who was right and who was was wrong,
I made the choice to leave
And start a new life
Without you.
But I keep finding myself
Reading through old emails,
Text messages and
Facebook posts
Trying to find some semblance
Of the good people we were.
And the truth is,
we weren't.
You made me defend every decision I ever made.
And every decision you ever made.
You conned me into believing you'd love me forever.
And I took the bait.
We were fire and oil and we burned too brightly and too quickly,
Though neither of us could contain the blaze,
The truth is
I enabled your bad decisions.
You tried to enable mine and when I tried to stop short you'd push me further and further toward the edge.
Until I made the right decision.
To leave.
But you can't let me leave.
You'd rather lie and con your way back into my life.
I've had worse.
I've had worse.
Don't think I haven't had worse.
I'm a survivor.
And I will survive this.
My track record isn't perfect
And my legs are tired from running,
So I'll meet you head on.
And when the fire burns out I will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes.
I will rise above you and this and fly.
I won't turn around.
Not for fear of turning into a pillar of salt,
No.
I won't look back because you don't deserve it.
I have earned my freedom.
I chose freedom.
I won't be looking through old love letters anymore.
I won't be hanging on to misguided hope.
Do what you have to do.
You just don't have permission to drag me down with you.

Simple

Just words just words just words

You say my whole life has been 

Just words. 

Hullabaloo

Globular

Incandescent

Repetitive. 

The mishmash of language boils in my cranium. 

My lexicon is impressive. 

But it's the simple words,

Anger. 

Hurt. 

Sadness. 

That I have the hardest time voicing. 

You can see, from my 

Actions,

Or lack thereof,

That I am all these things as well. 

Similes and metaphors don't compare

And contrast

The starkness

The whole-ness

The truth

Behind those word-emotions. 

Other simple words start fires:

Love. Hate. Inspiration. 

But your actions provide the kindling.  

I can't live this way, can't live this way can't live this way 

can't live. 

Like this. 

Anymore. 

Compassion and empathy

Dried up like your touch

The moment I started to feel

Simple. 

Right and fairness and good,

Expired when

New life

Began. 

It's a choice you made somewhere along the road. 

In the before time,

I would wake up next to you

And happiness consumed my bones. 

I wake now

To empty beds

Empty promises

Empty love. 

I won't let the hollowness eating at me

Devour my legacy. 

I won't let the steam in me

Waft away into nothingness. 

I won't let you

Push me down

Into the depths of grey. 

My words are black on white pages. 

And I will shout them into existence. 

I will watch them lift off of the page

And flow into your ears. 

You cannot shut me out. 

I will fill your head with letter algorithms,

Anecdotal pieces

Of paragraphs. 

Until you hear me in the very bottom of your being. 

And maybe then you'll realize

I never left. 

I don't want to go. 

I just became

Simple. 

Memories

I still remember

The "Some Dude's Birthday Party Poetry Tour"

Back in 2011,

When I was just this girl

Who just knew how to use words

In just the right way

To justify anything. 

I remember the day we were almost killed accidentally,

By a flying queen sized mattress. 

When you were just this guy

Who just knew how to love me

In just the right way

Without justification. 

I used to write you love poems,

And you'd ask me if my seatbelt was buckled. 

I remember sleeping on the floor in the living room with you,

Watching the A-team on the mattress we moved in front of the fire place

like we were in high school. 

I remember flirting with you

When you came to see me at work. 

And I remember when we went to Prescott together. 

I remember how much I loved you. 

It's been three years since I have seen you, or spoke to you. 

I lived my life after you, knowing you were never coming back,

Knowing you were justified in your decisions,

Knowing I had to live with the consequences. 

I wanted you to know I made it through the last few years, 

And I have always been thankful for what you said to me before we walked our seperate ways. 

You meant so much to me, no matter what it was that I did to cause it all to end.

We are just passing memories now. 

But I remember them fondly. 

Is.

"She wanted love so strong it wouldn't be anything but a destructive force in the end. And that scared me because I couldn't do it to her. "

Love IS a destructive force. 

It burns deep down into the very darkest corners of my hidey-hole heart. 

It causes me to tear down barriers, strip my soul naked and beat myself up. 

Love murders former entities, breaks people, and destroys them. 

And it doesn't have to apologize. 

Because love is simultaneously

A constructive force. 

A force that binds me to you,

A desire to be the very best I can be. 

A drive to live not only in the always now,

But also in the maybe tomorrow. 

Love doubts,

Love struggles,

Love does not have to be financially stable,

Though it does have to be well-fed

Love 

Love is talk til three in the morning about when we were younger

Love is that orgasm where we both are breathing so hard it sounds like we're crying and dying

Love is language that drips from our glances and 

Love..

Love is.