Take me there

He told me, "I can take you anywhere."

               Take
                       me 
                             to 
                                the 
                                     bottom
                                                    of your coffee mug, 

                                                           smother me in the leftover espresso cupping it’s end. 

                                 Fold me in the pocket of your rain coat and pull me in to your ribs, 

                      let me sleep within the beds between them. 

Take me beneath the wood washed floors of your kitchen where you stumble each night, 

                                
                               let me kiss your ankles while you devour sweets. 

Tuck me under your tongue and pronounce me carefully.

                      I am fingers through your hair and bathwater to your skin,  

the sweets dripping from your mouth and crawling back in each night.

n.w

Reflecting back on 2013

It's hard to believe that we're almost a month in to 2014, soon I will graduating and starting a new chapter in my life.

I wrote this on new years reflecting the past year and all the hardships i experienced. Life was hard man, but it sure felt good to grow. I learned a lot about myself in 2013 and a lot about people.
I learned that avoiding what you feel does not make you strong, it just makes it hurt more when you let it out. That hardening your heart also does not make you strong, it just makes you lonely. I learned that you don’t need someone to touch to be happy and you shouldn’t rely on another person to make you feel better. But, having a friend and family who understands you and pushes you and loves you and tells you that they’re proud of you when you are able to do the smallest things means the world (thank you, friend) I learned that vulnerability is important. That you can’t force yourself to feel something or stop feeling something, so you just have to keep going and be happy anyways. I learned that love has nothing to do with wanting or needing or having but everything to do with appreciating a person as they are and being happy for them because they’re happy. I learned that seeing someone you love with another person only hurts when you think you can’t survive without them (you can, I promise). I learned that mean people are hurting so either send them love or ignore their attempts. It really isn’t worth fighting them. I learned that it’s important to look at your naked body in the mirror and make a mental note of the parts you really love. I learned much earlier that you can’t change people, but recently I learned that you should accept them and love them (all of them). I learned that it’s important to interact with strangers, and even better to interact with ones you’ll never meet (like taping notes all over the city saying “have you told them? what’s stopping you?” or “I hope you take some time today to appreciate yourself” or “tell someone you love them” or “thank you for existing”). I learned that people will hate you and it doesn’t matter. I learned that it’s okay to fall to the floor sobbing in the shower thinking about terrible things, as long as you get up and get help after. I learned that it’s okay to not be okay. I learned that fear is no reason to not do something you really want to do. I learned that going on walks alone is important. I learned that you will always survive heartbreak and that being alone is not bad at all, that most discoveries will be made that way. I learned that the smallest changes lead to beautiful realizations. I learned that creating is important. That letting go is important. That making peace with yourself, with your past, and with all people is important. That loving is important (and that there are many different levels to love). That forgiving is important. I learned that anxiety and depression do not need to be the most powerful thing your life. I learned that pain does not last. I learned that the universe works in strange ways, and that you need to pay attention to all things. I learned that when two people dream of each other at the same time it means something. I learned how to let go. I learned how to be patient with myself. I learned how to rip myself open and pull out all of the rot (thank you Listener for that beautiful metaphor) and sort through it, and that you will shake while you do but you will be stronger because of it. That this rot does not need to stay inside. That sorting through that rot is the only way to grow again. I learned that growing again is inevitable. I learned to be at ease with myself.

It's past 12 AM, dear

My eyes are closed and I’m typing this hardly awake and hardly asleep and hardly aware and hardly rational but that is okay because a lot of the times my heart is right here at my finger tips or right on the tip of my tongue and I speak on it when most of the time I shouldn’t. People don’t know how to handle tasting that sort of love with a little kiss, how can you be sure what someone’s intentions are unless you question them with your lips? The edge of the jaw, their bare throat, you have to know what to pay attention to. Because it is all in the way they move it is not about the kiss it is the placement and the raw touch that will tell you everything you have to know, don’t be such a silly girl with that melting and mushy heart of yours, save it for the day when your windows were left open though that’s such a misleading term because you always prefer them that way, and you keep your lips clenched tight and touch your toes to the rain that’s soaking the washed boards beneath them and I know you’re thinking and I know you’re standing there with ankles chest fingers numb but stop thinking for the night and don’t say those words, don’t trip over the throbbing ache in your mouth I know it’s straining I know it’s tiring, you should have long ago been in bed but it’s not such a place at all for rest without a pair of knees to kiss your own. But don’t they always tell you it’s so foolish to need anyone else. Well so what if I just nudge out that word what if I get rid of the need and keep it for when it’s needed, no, no no I am not that vulnerable girl I do not need you but I crave you that’s more fitting does that keep things light on our toes enough, is that the right amount of emotion you’re looking for? And you’re happy on your own you’ve learned and you’ve wandered and you’ve shared late nights with the moon but doesn’t it seem silly when all you can quite think about is how those deep cheek bones might look in the night’s mouth and you wonder if the night keeps it’s heart on it’s tongue just like you do and if just maybe at the right time, just maybe there is a right time to say everything that you need to. There is that awful word again. But I do not want to need you, please believe that it may be the last choice I may make from this position, eyes glued to the dripping pane, waiting and impatient and wondering and barely at my knees barely crawling laying there split open for you to pick apart, I can’t help but to notice if you notice. No, but you might. I do not want to need you but tell me what it means to need someone when you are unsure of what you need? Tell me what it means to want without knowing how or feel without control, without pause and without any interruption even tasteful, when not even the salty tang against the tip of your tongue could quiet it. It is always that sort of night where if you were wise you’d curl into bed and let your analyzing and love drive you mad, but you’ve never been that type of girl. No, you want teeth sinking into every single place that makes you drip and stain your skin and lips and sheets and bones and fingers you want a constant reminder of things that might soon need to be forgotten, but you savor what you can get. And right now the blood on your lips, whether mine or your own, is enough for me to make the wrong choice maybe for one last night. Who knows what we could become by morning.

the art of exploring a human being

Thinking about actually being able to study and explore someone excites me so much. the most intimate and tiniest of things just get me so anxious. and I mean actually watching them, taking in every tiny little aspect of their body while it’s living right there with you. to watch the skin stretch along their rib cage whenever they take in a breath. to watch if their lips move even just for a few words while they’re reading, to watch and see if any emotion strikes them from the page. to watch someone’s cheeks fill up furiously with a flushed red, splotching their neck and their chest and their shoulders and every which way it spreads. to watch the skin of their lips tear right when they’re pulled apart from one another, and actually watch the corners of their mouths curve noting when exactly the dimples dig in. to hold their palm and watch their knuckles roll while their fingers fidget against yours. to watch the exact moment someone’s eyes glaze over when tears are swelling up their eyelids. to watch their limbs tremble and their teeth chatter when a chill slides through the room. to watch the muscles in their back contract when they stretch and their body just slightly shake for that brief and calm second they lose control. to watch their habits when they’re laughing so hard it’s difficult to catch their breath, what they do with their hands, their toes, their lips, their eyes, their bodies. to watch the water drip from damp, showered hair wherever it travels off to. to study their expressions shifting from disgust, to irritation, to fluster, to sympathy or to disappointment. to watch them get goosebumps. to press your fingers into their skin and watch it fade to a perfectly imprinted white before the blood rushes back. to watch their stomach jump when they have the hiccups. i don’t know, Such little things could keep me content and locked up in a room gone nearly mad with a list of things I’d like to marvel at. okay yes. That was just on my mind okay. Alright.

( and then, to think, no matter how many times you commit each of those answers and findings to memory, another body entirely would leave you completely clueless and unsatisfied, hungry once again.)

THIS IS NOT A LOVE POEM

I have written too many love poems
 

to write another about the stars


and the way the sun always visits the east
 and west so neither feels alone

so this is not a love poem


but instead it is a poem about the way 
your chest rises and falls
,

when you are sleeping and I cannot.


You have found peace in your bed, 

while
 i am still struggling to share my space,


but you have let me in
 and I am leaving my doors unlocked.

This is not a love poem,
 but a letter to your hands
,

because I feel more beautiful


when they are touching me
,

and even the summer breeze 
cannot boast that honor.

I will not write you a love poem
 because they become about the metaphors
,

and no one is sure
 whose Shakespeare’s sonnets were really about.


I never want you to be anonymous.

There are too many poems


lining the boxes in my head
,

so this is not one
 because 

I will love you,


without needing to write it down.

goodbye November

Christmas, come sooner

cinnamon and spice cake candles, crisp wintry air, flushed cheeks and blood rouged hands, thick cotton knits comforted around necks, constant sniffling from raw noses, snowflakes freckled on long hair, fogged breath, slosh of foot prints, a midnight fires indecisive shadow, crackling of the miniature forest folded beneath, garland strung to greet each hallway, ice cold milk alongside mother’s home made recipes, apple pie pungent throughout each room, carols sung gently from each station, huddling to one another’s body heat, the gust of warmth stirred from home’s entryway, fingers cradling hot chocolate endlessly, skins’ pale translucence, evergreen en maroon. 

1:20 A restless night

       My legs are twisted within my pale blue sheets, the heat of my laptop humming against my lap as I sit with eyes wide, aching to close though nowhere near able to. Bold crisp letters are listed on the screen before me, the color raging against my mind as my toes and fingers fiddle numbly. Sitting back with a huff, the headboard creates a dull imprint on the skin along my spine, limbs aching of discomfort and procrastination. My eyes scan the bulleted points for the fifth time this November evening, stress fully credited to this last week before thanksgiving break. Inhaling is difficult, sleep is near impossible, a restless night it’s sure to be.

Everyone knows the incredibly grueling feel of hours of sincere restlessness. Eyes aching from a few chunked, dedicated to a English paper. The next few minutes occupied with a few distressed breaths out, groggy blinks and an entirely elsewhere mind. Homework seems to be such an enormous understatement, more so a home deprived of sleep, though plentiful in slow, and mostly unenjoyably seconds being ticked through a skull while the clock seems to take it’s time reaching an hour reasonable to use the excuse of “It’s getting late, time to turn in.” Though with a handful of papers and tasks yet to be checked off, the bed seems dragged miles away.

The neon numbers flicker up in increments at my side, it’s only eleven o’clock. Checking my to do list, my to-stress about list, my unanticipated and worry producing chores, the satisfaction of a strike through across one dainty line seems minimal compared to the text that stretches nearly halfway down across this document. Brief moments are taken to crack my knuckles, one of my short but somewhat fulfilling split second breaks pursued while suffering through a six page paper on a topic in which my mind has never grasped. My eyes square in on the top right hand corner of the current page before me, the blinking cursor intimidating with it’s constant ticks, still, page two is filled a quarter of the way through. My stomach churns, my fingers lifting up from the keys they so fervently have been fingering, slowly pulling my hands back while the debate of whether or not a bite of food between paragraphs could truly hurt.

The last sentence my fingers had keyed idled as the finish of this paper for merely an hour, during which time my mind was not wrapped in anything nearly worthwhile or serving as any bit of an excuse to delay. Page two still lingers upon another opened document strolling along side by side on another, both of which unfinished and mid thought. Yawns are continuously coaxed up from my now sinking body, the heat radiating from beneath my covers beckoning me towards it, to just crawl in. Yet five tasks remain for homework, stress-work, worry-work. Nora Jones is streaming from the television perched on the opposite side of my living room, the music is captivating, alluring, beautifully strung from chord to chord. My topic should rather have been on the comfort and soothing nature of a piece of music. That is, until the channel is indecisively scanned to a cartoon, a lifetime movie, a horror flick. The soundtrack of my thoughts are constantly swarming back and forth from genre to genre, and all that seems to exist is the bed cradling my weight, all my ears desire is a lullaby. Instead, all that speaks up are keys.

Page three exists, though it is blank spare ten words. And now thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, it’s not nearly midnight. My eyelids are tugging themselves shut, only for a few seconds my mind murmurs to itself. Those few carry on through the next, after all five minutes on an hour’s worth of a research paper seems fair enough. Two more tabs are opened within my browser, Bach’s Canon in D is streaming from the speakers on each side of this open pad, while a blog of tire inspired words is filled with text that would rather easily fill the requirements my fingers and mind cannot reach. It’s just past midnight, and now my mind is mustering up desperately to me, searching frantically for some bargains. To give in now and finish as soon as my eyes awake the next morning, though knowingly it will not be until late afternoon. My fingers have officially decided, picking up the laptop burning against my skin and replacing it with the comforter tickling my legs.

12:46 in the morning is a time for sleep, they say nothing good happens past 12 o’clock. My still, though entirely unstill, sleepless body is a prime supportive detail of such a thought. My legs fidget, my arms try and find a proper way to grasp and hug the pillow molded to my side. My body seems to find a content position, and within a few minutes I feel myself being lulled into unconsciousness, though it likes to tease me. Three pages are already complete, tomorrow is another day. Restless thinking and a restless girl occupy this bed, through an entire twenty-four hour period my concentration managed a subtle two assignments out of seven, the last sentence of this will complete three. As anyone would agree, now is a time that is for sleep, now is when my body should give to the sheets while a sigh passes my lips, my mind drifting off to dreams beyond me. Three assignments out of seven, headlights illuminate my bedroom with every passing car, my stomach’s rumbling again. A few minutes’ worth of a snack could do no harm. This is the life of a restless night, a procrastinator’s fight.