[ tread softly ]

i like to write. i don't like to capitalize. "but poetry, beauty, romance, love -- these are what we stay alive for."

[scriberos]

one minute

i don't even know your middle name

but we're making love while

the world is coming apart at the seams

like we're an island all our own

the next

you're down on one knee

and the world is falling back together like

the stitching is made of steel

and we're still an island all our own

and i wouldn't have it any other way

[scriberos]

i remember that night

like it was last night

 my hair spilling across your pillow

your sheets tangled around my limbs

barely covering my chest

the very likeness of aphrodite

 you told me how beautiful i was

how tempted you were

by the bare skin you knew

lingered under the thin cloth

 you kissed

the canyon of my collar bone

the valley of my hips

 but my best friend doesn’t like you

because she knows men

who’ve gone off to war

and the person that left

never came back with them

 and i come with baggage

more than two hands can carry

 and you’re not looking for love

a girl you can give a future to

but rather someone

to fill up your time

while you wait for your life to start

 that night i fell for you

and how twisted

how unfair is it

that feelings can arise

where they shouldn’t

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and babe, i have my legs di- splayed across the back seat my shorts hiked up around my hips the skin screaming for you to reach back and touch me won't you reach back and touch me

[scriberos]

you are the words i speak without having to say anything

mid-day musings

[scriberos]

someone new

i fell in love with you that night, in your car, speeding one hundred and twenty-six down the highway, your hand clasped around the inside of my thigh, your thumb stroking beneath the leather of my knee high boot

and oh, those knuckles, i could write pages on those hilltops, those strong, rough boulders that could crush me in an instant if i wanted them to (and how desperately i do)

while you sang along to the music so loud it found its way in my ears and down into my chest, throwing your head back, belting out, missing every other word and every single note, but you didn’t care and neither did i

i fell in love the next morning, too, as those same fingers trailed up the pillar of my neck and down to where my skin melts into the fabric of my clothing, audible shockwaves stirring in the bottom of my throat, escaping through the lips i crave for you to crave, settling into the small space between us

in my parents eyes nothing i ever do is good enough, and some days i can barely find the strength to look myself in the mirror, and other days i pass right through walls and friends and obligations as if i were a ghost, a lost soul

but with you, i exist

[scriberos]

i wrote this on an airplane.

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three reasons why we weren't meant to be

I. i tried rolling around your name in my mouth but quickly spit it out because the taste reminded me of something like bitter coffee and regret II. last year around this time i would have gladly given you my heart on a cutting board screaming at you arms wide open to do with it what you will but my how the earth has made its way around the sun so can you just imagine the distance that i’ve come III. slowly you’ve become something of a lone star in a vast constellation to me an empty idea something that died thousands of years ago

[scriberos]

ramblings of a realized soul

i was reading warsan shire when i got your message and my foundation shook underneath me the foundation i built after the earthquake that was you and i must have reread it a thousand times and i must have thought up a thousand responses but never sent one because to do that is a sign of weakness all my friends tell me and i can never show weakness or falter but what about the weakness you exposed in me the cracks you chipped further with your brutal axe and i can remember the way it felt to hear you say the words to know that you let another girl touch you like i used to how my chest caved in on itself and for a while there i lost myself because i didn’t know who i was without your name attached to mine and you have a new girl now one who doesn’t hold the stars in her eyes for you like i did and i’ve fucked my fair share of guys trying to get the taste of your mouth out of mine and my throat is bursting with things i want to say words words words with no meaning except anger and hatred but i know it would all be for a boy who couldn’t even tell me my middle name so i keep it inside me and they say you should never hold in anything for fear of coming undone at the seams but i’m the one who stitched myself back together and found my footing again without you and i pierced my ears and got that tattoo on my back not for you but to separate myself from you separate myself from the girl who would gladly sit underneath your thumb and i used to count anniversaries but now i just count days since and it’s been three months since you took away a part of me but it’s a piece that i no longer need so save it for a day when she doesn’t fit your mold of a perfect woman when you remember how much i loved you for free

[scriberos]

for the girls who are impossible to love:

you watch as your best friend comes and goes with guys draped on her arm like jewelry interchangeable and temporary dripping off of her skin and clinging to her every word men who fall to their knees at her feet when is it your turn when will they follow your trail of smoke your irresistible smile and heart full up with love if i can teach you one thing it’s that boys will come and go candy-coated in charm and talking of the future one with you in it but at times it will feel like you’re drowning while they watch from the shore trust me when i say that you have to wade through the shallow water first in order to get to the deep end wait for the guy who sets your world on fire the guy who ignites the spark in the pit of your stomach the guy for whom you’d sit in the middle of a burning room smiling as the world continues on around you

[scriberos]

i wonder what you said to get her into bed were they the same things that you’d whispered to me the ones that made me feel like the only girl in your world how easy was it for you to reuse worn-out phrases and tattered words and make them seem brand new how easy was it to make her believe there was no one but her and how easy was it to give yourself away when for nine months you told me i was the love of your life when i’d stayed true and faithful i wrote countless words innumerable lines for you and only you but you showed me how easy it is to transfer these elsewhere he can fit perfectly into the empty spaces in any one of my poems the ones that used to have your name hung up like a do not disturb sign i thought i’d never be able to fall in love again but life does continue on this earth keeps on spinning and i wonder what you said to get her into bed

[scriberos]

i’ll kiss another’s lips to get the taste of yours off of mine and it was difficult at first, the way he and i kept bumping our mouths together, because all i could remember was the way ours used to shape together i wasn’t anticipating his next move, but rather waiting on yours my own body was turning against me but i’ll learn the contours, the curves, the give and take of someone else’s embrace, because i know that’s the path i need to take to make my body my own, and no longer yours i deserve that much

[scriberos]

i bought that book for you, and marked my favorite pages, and highlighted my favorite lines, all so you could know the colors that were bursting from inside me, the things i always wanted to say but never knew how; but you never got the chance to delve in and explore the words that mirrored those that were running through my mind; you never took the time to know me as i am, and not as you wanted me to be; but there’s a part of me grateful that you didn’t and won’t ever be able to, because i’m saving that moment, saving myself, for a boy who will actually care.

[scriberos]

epiphany.

“turn it up,” your friend said that day in my car, and you told him that i don’t ever play my music loud, like i was some sort of killjoy, the rain on everyone’s parade; like you were me and you knew why i did the things that i did.

truth was, i was so in love with you that i wanted to hear every word, every single breath that came out of your mouth without anything drowning you out; i wanted the air to be filled with beautiful conversation, not with meaningless noise; but you’d rather have listened to someone else’s voice than to the sound of mine.

i met a boy who recently took me out, and i could see the volume in his dashboard turned all the way down, and we talked and talked without the need to fill the silence; and now i know that i need someone who will want to soak up my words like they are sustenance, who will sing along not to the radio but to the notes and tones in my voice.

someone who is the complete opposite of you in every aspect.