out you don't

                       life watch

                  staircase of

              step up the

         spring in your

    gives you a

Being in love                                  trip.

this isn't my vessel

it's not mine to own

it's not mine to give to someone else or to let you hold

it's not my choice to say

if you can hold my hand

or to give you a chest

where your head can lay

it isn't my place

to give you a warm embrace

or to make you feel safe

this isn't a shelter

this isn't a home

this is a body for the dead

and soon it will be bones

Soak me in bleach

To get me clean

Burn me in lye

Leave no trace behind

Mold me like clay

Until perfect to you

Ignore the truth

Build me anew

I love you

Not as a friend

But as so much more

I wish I could wake up next to you

Every morning

Bathed in the sunlight of your smile

I should have taken you seriously

When you said you had loved me since the second grade

Instead of laughing

But I was young, stupid, and afraid

I will always regret that

I should have told you to stay

That night

I didn't want you to go

And looking back

You didn't want to either

But I didn't know you weren't coming back

If I had

I wouldn't have shoved you out the door calling you an idiot

You knew I was joking and feigned insult

But I wish I would have at least said

Goodbye

if embers burn then you are a forest fire beaconing life into your arms only to destroy the fibers of all that lives in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree circle around your gleaming smile. everything around you turns to dust but the air smells bittersweet and death doesn't seem like much of a defeat. if the ocean breeze reminds me of home than the scent of vanilla and mint take me to the place where i belong. i can't count how many days i've longed for you to take me from hell but it turns out that pretty face doesn't have a soft embrace- as if you didn't already know damn well.