II.

I've wrote a thousand words about you inside my head that never made it to paper.
I have all these words coiled tightly around my tongue,
words I never let out their cage.
I bite into my own flesh to fight the release of speeches with too much meaning,
but very little comprehension.
Every complex sentence that I would pin to the inside of your eardrums
would go searching for something in you to care.
Missed opportunities cupped inside your hands,
occupying the space where I should be.
You feel like a secret that I've held onto since before I could speak.
So I kept you tucked away behind my sternum,
snuggled next to my heart, selfishly.
And I bit my tongue in mixed company,
in fear that everybody could see through my flesh
and find you and every word I've hid about you.
My heart is drunk with an idea that could never be.
You intoxicate me.
You're a comfort I've always had, just misplaced.
I want to show you every emotion for you I've kept wrapped around my ribs,
caged behind distant memories.
Times I've feuded with myself to hold my composure
and keep my hands to myself
when my finger tips are begging to know
how many scars you have
and memorize the lines God etched into the palms of your hands.
Times I wished I could be fluent in your body language
so that we didn't have to tear a moment apart with words neither of us understood.
But instead,
we exchanged sandpaper love songs
that scratched at us until we bled
and avoided the conversation neither of us had the courage to have.
So we let questions build up inside our stomachs for the butterflies to feed on.
Everything I know is borrowed, broken or blind,
including you,
a dangerous mixture of all three.
But what I’ve seen of beautiful in the past
now feels merely implied compared to you.

I.

If I’m human, how does the world drift me around without my consent?
Who gives the permission to my peers to use me like tools as they neglect to cherish me? 
I always forgive but its a task to forget. It’s consistently the same thing. 
I watch friends and enticed flames grow roots around my ribcage and bait me into showing them how to open locked doors with no obvious space for a key. 
I let them inside, 
times after I promised no one else would tread within the temple or gaze upon my weaknesses. 
And I tend to put my hope in the wrong seeds and they never grow to be the kind of dream I want them to be. 
I need them to be flowers. 
I worry that I’ll always be the lover and never the loved. 
Cuz everyone’s heart is looking for a throne room 
but they always oblige my chest temporarily until some other pedestal is divinely delivered that seems to hold them better but is less of a challenge to get on. 
So one after another, 
I become the change that needs to be made to in order to achieve perfection and I am unapologetically discarded. 
And I pluck the dry weeds, that never sprouted floral buds, from the space beneath my collarbones. With one blade I buzz, 
“You love me” 
and whisper 
“You love me not” with the next. 
What excuse is there for all the failed gardens that tried to flourish in the fence of my bones? 
There’s rainy days, 
my eyes puffed up the size of heavy gray clouds. 
I keep the sun hidden in the creases of my smile just to share in moderation. 
But nothing grows with me. 
Only apart.